Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Kate Kaufmann on Life as a Non-Mom

Kate Kaufmann embarked on her life as a non-mom when she abandoned fertility treatments, quit her corporate job, and moved from the suburbs to a rural community to raise sheep. Since then, she has talked intimately about the topic of childlessness with hundreds of women and men, and hopes to spark 2 million conversations to dispel stubborn stereotypes and stigmas about the childfree and childless.

I spoke to Kate about her work and about her new book, Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No.

Life Without Baby: Can you tell us a bit about your journey from wanting children to where you are now?

Kate Kaufmann: In my mid-thirties I went through several years of infertility treatments and never got pregnant. I was a wreck from the drugs and monthly emotional rollercoaster, and we decided to stop treatments. I was about forty-two, my then-husband eight years older. We reconsidered our life plans and made a radical change—we quit our corporate jobs and moved to a rural area. I rarely met other women who didn’t have kids, which instigated my quest for sources of information and guidance that proved difficult to find and challenging to approach. It took quite a long time, but I gradually found women willing to talk. Those conversations lead to more comprehensive interviews that form the spine of my book, Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No.

Thanks to my project, I now have a growing network of women and men with whom I can explore unique aspects of life as a non-parent—from careers, friendships, and family to aging and the legacies we leave. I now recognize and celebrate the broad-reaching value we offer our communities as a result of not having kids of our own.  What’s the hardest part for you about not having children

LWB: What’s the hardest part for you about not having children?

KK: Over the years certain holidays, especially Mother’s Day and Christmas, have been challenging. Once I faced that reality myself and with select loved ones, it got a little better. Then the challenge was figuring out what to do about it. Traveling somewhere in December helped, especially to places where there was less hoopla surrounding holidays. Asking for acknowledgement from friends and family also helped. So has recognizing that holidays are just like other days, and I have choices about how and with whom to celebrate.

I may always wonder what the kids I’d hoped to have would be like, but now I realize it’s much more fruitful to notice and appreciate the many wonderful people of all ages who are now present in my life, those who graced my past, and those I’ll meet over the rest of my days. 

LWB: How do you answer the question, “Do you have kids?

KK: I used to say, “I tried but it didn’t work,” but that either stopped conversation cold or elicited a sorrowful “aw” and what felt like a pitying pat on the arm. Now I often try to engage the other person about the topic. Sometimes I’ll say, “No. Who else do you know who doesn’t have kids? Do you ever talk about how their lives differ from yours?” If I want to change the topic immediately, I say something like, “No. Other than kids, what’s getting your time and attention these days?” Of course, since starting my book project, I relish talking about what it’s like not having kids. 

Since we who aren’t parents already know the answer to the question, I think it makes sense to approach social and work situations prepared with several responses. We’re going to get the question for the rest of our lives and can take advantage of the opportunity to lead conversations in a direction that suits our current circumstances, emotional readiness, and states of mind. 

LWB: How have your relationships with family and friends changed because you did not have children?

KK: I’m the eldest of 4 girls, the only one without kids, and most of my friends have historically been parents. Once I noticed the imbalance, I started to consciously seek out non-parent friends. I still love my parent friends and family members, of course, but because our interactions so often focus on their kids, I often feel like I know them better than they know me. I try to shift the conversation to other topics that matter to everyone present, but that only works when others are willing to engage. Sometimes that seems impossible. 

LWB: Many of us worry about aging without children. What advice would you give?

KK: Consciously increase and deepen friendships with women and men who don’t have kids, and don’t limit yourself to people your own age. One of the greatest gifts I’ve received from writing Do You Have Kids? is the discovery that childless and childfree people of all ages have so many shared experiences, joys, and concerns. I’ve developed what I hope are lifelong connections with non-moms and dads by taking initiative to open up about this rich topic with sensitivity and respect.

I’m a big believer in pooling resources, which includes brainstorming how and where to live and who we can ask to play important roles in our futures. Parents can be blindsided when their kids can’t or don’t engage (due to geographic distance, competing priorities, or other issues). In some ways we’re at an advantage, because we know for sure our kids won’t be there to help us and can explore options and put plans in place that fit our vision for our elder years. 

LWB: Your goal is to kickstart 2 million conversations about childlessness. What do you want people to know? Do you have suggestions for anyone wanting to start their own conversations, but nervous about the reactions they’ll receive?

I want people to know that those of us who don’t have kids are not better or worse than parents; our lives simply differ significantly, which can be really interesting to explore. We have a lot to offer each other when we approach the topic with open hearts, curiosity, and lack of judgment. If those elements are missing, the conversation is bound to be rocky, so go slowly and pay attention. Take care of your needs in the moment, even if that means excusing yourself from the conversation. In Do You Have Kids? I offer specific suggestions for how both parents and non-parents can broach the topic constructively and with respect.

LWB: What is your hope for yourself this coming year?

I’ve been entrusted with true stories about how life can unfold when kids of our own are not in the mix. Using my book as a tool to broach the topic, my mission is to address the stigmas and stereotypes people hold about us, which haven’t changed in decades. Those who wanted kids and didn’t have them most often elicit pity; those who chose not to have kids a mixture of envy and disdain. Pity, envy, disdain—none of those put us on equal footing, rather we’re often seen as lesser “others.” Truth is, there will always be people who aren’t parents, and we fill crucial roles in our culture that warrant interest, care, and respect. 

Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No is available from Amazon and wherever books are sold. Learn more about Kate and her work at KateKaufmann.com.

Some (Good) Changes Coming to Life Without Baby

If you’re a regular reader, you’re probably expecting an “It Got Me Thinking” post from Kathleen today. However, we’re making a few changes to the format in 2019. Don’t be alarmed. In this case, change is good. 

Kathleen is hard at work on a new book (I’ve read an early draft and I can’t wait to tell you more about it soon.) In order to give her the time she needs to do final rounds of revisions, we’re shifting things around a bit here. 

On Mondays, you’ll still see posts from me (Lisa), mixed in with with the occasional post from Kathleen. Whiny Wednesdays will continue as normal.

If you’re craving “It Got Me Thinking”, you can find all Kathleen’s posts here. You can also read through her “Our Stories” posts for a reminder that “You are not alone.” 

Please join me in wishing Kathleen luck with her project. She’ll be back before long to tell you more about it. Meanwhile, thank you for growing and changing with us! 

Lesley Pyne on Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness

When you’re in the deepest, darkest depths of grief, the idea of ever finding joy again can feel unreachable. How can you work through the sadness? How can you ever tap into the old you? How can you make your life meaningful again?

In this interview, I talk to Lesley Pyne about her new book, Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness: Inspiring Stories to Guided You To a Fulfilling Life. We talk about:

  • The dangers of putting grief in a box and hoping it will go away.
  • The importance of hearing the stories of others when you feel alone.
  • The idea of following curiosity to find joy, and
  • Our need to find “purpose” when we don’t have children.


Lesley spent the first 50-plus years of her life putting everything she didn’t want to feel in a box, including her grief following multiple failed fertility treatments and the loss of both parents. In the process of writing this book she dug deeply into the subjects she writes about including, grief, letting go, connecting you to your body, self- acceptance and writing. She writes openly about her challenges and how she has emerged as a different person, able to say confidently, “I absolutely love my life, the adventures I’m having and I’m excited about what will happen next.”

Lesley’s new book is “Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness: Inspiring Stories To Guide You To A Fulfilling Life.” It’s out in paperback and kindle now. And you can catch up with Lesley and find out more about her work at www.LesleyPyne.co.uk

 

 

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It Got Me Thinking…About a Book to Get Us Through to the New Year

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

The holiday season is right around the corner, and with it comes all the regrets, disappointments, slights, heartaches, and painful reminders we thought we’d overcome. Yeah. Right. Having been there, I know there will be some tough days when I’ll find myself sinking back into feeling isolated, lost, cheated, and, yes, crazy.

Fortunately, I (and you) have a role model named Lisa Manterfield, who frequently reminds me that I am not alone. She once stood where I stood on this rocky path, she survived…and now she’s thriving. And she shares her hard-won wisdom in her brilliant book, Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen.

Life Without Baby_Front_book 3DLisa is a gentle and supportive guide, and she shares from her own experiences, from the workshops she’s led, and from the stories and tips LWB readers have passed along. She says this is the book she wishes she’d found when she first had to acknowledge she wouldn’t have children. Me, too, and as I read through the raw, real, and practical advice she’s included, I’ve found there’s something for every step of the journey.

You may have wounds so raw, you’re not sure how you’ll ever breathe again, let alone hold your composure during your nephew’s first Christmas. Lisa’s exercises will help you actively work through the stages of grief and arm yourself against social landmines, like the office holiday party when everyone talks about their kids. Maybe you’re feeling closer to accepting being childfree-not-by-choice, but haven’t the faintest idea what the heck you’re going to do with the rest of your life. Lisa’s got some suggestions for how you might thrive in a new happily ever after of your own design. And you don’t have to wait for January 1st to get started! Throughout, Lisa breaks open taboos and addresses the very real emotions and challenges we face every day, while offering understanding, support, and encouragement.

I know this because I had the privilege of editing Lisa’s book. After I finished the work, I tabbed several pages that spoke to me and highlighted exercises I wanted to revisit. Yes, even after all the work I’ve done to make peace with my given path, I still found there are some tender spots that need attention and resolution. Lisa’s book is helping me, and I believe there’s something in there that will help you too.

So, might I suggest the first item on your gift shopping list is one for yourself? Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle versions.

 

This holiday season, Kathleen Guthrie Woods is wishing for peace on earth, as well as a bit more peace about her childfree status.

These Childless Women Are Thriving…and So Will You

Seven years ago, when I started this blog, I was a desolate mess. I’d made plans to build my dream life and, bit by bit, those plans were crumbling beyond my control.

I’d quit my corporate job to become a writer. My plan was to make a living writing articles for magazines, which would allow me time to write my novel. Then, when my children were born, I’d be able to work from home and be there to take care of them. It was a perfect scenario.

Except, the children didn’t come and magazines started to go out of business and my novel wouldn’t sell. My dream quickly began to fall apart. I felt alone, despite being surrounded by people who loved me, and my life felt hopeless and utterly out of control.

And once things fell apart, it seemed like so many areas of my life suffered too. I felt challenged in my career, finances, marriage, health, family, all while trying to navigate grief. I had already hit my rock bottom when I decided to start this blog. It was a first step in starting my climb back up.

All of us hit our rock bottom at some point and each of us has to make our own way back to the surface. I hope this site and this community have served as a small step up for you.

So today, I’d like to share some stories of other women from our community. I met most of them through their blogs, when they were already on their way back up from their lowest points. These women have incredible success stories, but I know that, at some point, they each felt out of control and hopeless. They suffered through depression, failed marriages, health crises, and deep grief. I hope that sharing their successes will inspire you to keep moving forward and keep believing that things will get better.

Last week, Jody Day presented her first TED talk, “The Lost Tribe of Childless Women”. She has become a powerful advocate for women aging without children.

Melanie Notkin of has also done TED talk and has shone a new light on “Otherhood” and the value of childless aunts.

Tomorrow, Tracey Cleantis launches her second book, An Invitation to Self-Care, hot on the success of her infertility-based debut book The Next Happy.

Also preparing to launch her second book, The Mother of Second Chances, Justine Froelker is coordinating a tour of 21 infertility blogs leading up to National Infertility Awareness Week.

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos was the first blogger I found when I started to reach out for my tribe. She is continuing to blaze trails with investigative journalism and advocacy work around the fertility industry.

Lesley Pyne is hard at work on a book that has come from her wonderful world coaching women through grief after infertility. I hope to share news on that later this year.

And our own Kathleen Guthrie Woods is in the revision of her story, The Mother of All Dilemmas, early drafts of which I have been privileged to read. More to come on this soon, too.

As for me, I’m doing all right. My plans are working out too, even if not quite as I’d first envisioned them. Tomorrow, my debut novel, A Strange Companion (the one that couldn’t get a sniff) will be published. I am enjoying a relationship with Mr. Fab’s grandchildren, something that would have been too hard to navigate seven years ago. And, I never believed I would say this, I’m happy. My life is good.

Today, my rock bottom feels a long way behind me. I hope that yours will someday, too.

My “Life Without Baby” is better because of you

By Lisa Manterfield

This week marks the 7th anniversary of Life Without Baby. In March 2010, I sat with my laptop on a sunny patio in a little restaurant (now gone) in Northern California. I ordered a glass of sparkling wine and a dozen oysters, and I tentatively wrote my first blog post.

It was more of a mission statement, really—a public show of my intention to talk about infertility and childlessness. It was a shout out for help, too, a call out into the world in the hopes of hearing someone call back, “Me too.”

No one did.

In fact, no one commented on my posts until I wrote the first Whiny Wednesday post the following month. It’s remained the most popular feature of the site ever since. Turns out there were lots of us wanting to be heard, after all.

Kathleen was with me from that very first day. I texted her to tell her I’d written the first post and we celebrated this wary step out into the unknown. A few weeks later she wrote her first guest post about finding a new path. By the end of the year, she had was writing her regular It Got Me Thinking column, and she’s been here ever since.

That year, I also discovered Pamela’s book Silent Sorority: A Barren Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost, and Found. It was my first encounter with someone who’d shared my experience and had put into words all I’d been feeling.

Since then, I’ve posted almost 1500 posts, received more than 11,000 comments, and welcomed more than a million visits from over 100 countries. I definitely don’t feel alone anymore.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about the importance of marking anniversaries—the happy and the sad—as a way of measuring how far we’ve come. I could never have imagined that, seven years after that first post, I would still be writing posts and meeting new people, or that I would have written two books about life without baby.

I also could never have imagined the level of peace and, yes, happiness that I have in my life, even though it will never include children of my own. For those of you just trying to figure all this out and wondering what your lives will hold, I hope this serves as encouragement. It does get easier, you will find a new path, and there is even happiness, more than you could imagine, in a life without children.

No good anniversary celebration would be complete without presents, for this week (until March 20), the ebook versions of both I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home: How One Woman Dared to Say No to Motherhood and Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen are half price ($4.99) on Amazon.

Finally, a big thank you to all of you who’ve supported me all these years. I never dreamed when I started this site that I’d get to know people from all around the world or that I’d get to form real friendships and even get to meet some of you in person. It’s been a journey I could never have imagined, and I’m grateful to have had you along for the ride.

Helping Childless Women Find Help

By Lisa Manterfield

screen-shot-2016-10-15-at-1-37-24-pmWhen I first realized I wasn’t going to be able to have children, I had no idea where to turn. Online searches for “infertility” only turned up more sites and books with miracle cures to help get me pregnant. Googling “childless support” almost always turned up groups and books celebrating being childfree-by-choice. There was some help out there, but often it was buried several pages back.

Ten years later, there is more support for people who find themselves childless-not-by-choice, but often that information is hard to find. So, today, I’d like to ask for your help in helping others.

If you’ve read books on the topics of infertility and being childless not by choice, and especially if you’ve found those books valuable, please consider writing a short review on Amazon.

The reason Amazon reviews are so important is that Amazon isn’t just a bookstore, it’s a huge search engine, enabling someone searching online for help to find the handful of books out there. Reviews of books on our topic help to push them up the rankings to make them more likely to pop up on the first page of a search. Reviews also let potential readers know that the book is trusted by others.

So I’d like to ask you now to take a few moments to help others find help and support. If you’ve read my books or if you’ve read books by Pamela, Jody, Justine, Jessica, Tracey, Melanie, or any other authors, please consider leaving a short review. (And if I’ve missed any books or authors, please add them in the comments.)

If you’ve never written a book review before, don’t worry. You don’t need to write more than a couple of sentences. Here are some examples borrowed from actual reviews:

Start with a quick sentence about what the book is about, so readers know what to expect:

“This book captured the many emotions of dealing with an infertility diagnosis and facing a life without children.”

“After learning I would not be able to have children, I found this book. It was like reading my own story.”

“This is an awesome book. I’ve been through the same challenges, concerns, worries, emotions, and could relate to the author’s journey.”

Then add something about why you liked I (or didn’t like) the book:

“I couldn’t put it down. I laughed, cried, laughed, and cried some more. A must read.”

“The author’s story is so similar to mine that I empathized with every word.”

“I really appreciated her sense of humor on this serious topic.”

You can also make a recommendation for who might find the book useful:

“A must read for anyone struggling with infertility, the ethics of medical procedures, whether to adopt, etc.”

“Great read if you’ve gone through the struggles of trying to have a child.”

Below are links to my books, and the others I mentioned above. If you do write a review, please let know so I can say a huge and heartfelt thank you.

Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen by Lisa Manterfield (Steel Rose Press, 2016)

I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home: How One Woman Dared to Say No to Motherhood by Lisa Manterfield (Steel Rose Press, 2010)

Life Without Baby Workbooks by Lisa Manterfield:

Workbook 1: Letting Go of the Dream of Motherhood

Workbook 2: Getting Through the Grief of Childlessness

Workbook 3: Dealing With the Day-to-Day Challenges

Workbook 4: Thriving in a New Happily Ever After

Silent Sorority: A Barren Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost and Found by Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos (BookSurge Publishing, 2009)

Living the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfilling Future Without Children by Jody Day (CreateSpace, 2013)

The Next Happy: Let Go of the Life You Planned and Find a New Way Forward by Tracey Cleantis (Hazelden, 2015)

Ever Upward: Overcoming the Lifelong Losses of Infertility by Justine Froelker (Morgan James, Publishing, 2014)

The Pursuit of Motherhood by Jessica Hepburn (Matador, 2014)

Otherhood: Modern Women Finding a New Kind of Happiness by Melanie Notkin (Seal Press, 2014)

Avalanche: A Love Story by Julia Leigh (W. W. Norton & Company, 2016)

Resurrection Year: Turning Broken Dreams Into New Beginnings by Sheridan Voysey (Thomas Nelson, 2013)

Finally, a big thank you to Cathy at Slow Swimmers and Fried Eggs, who did a really nice write-up for I‘m Taking My Eggs and Going Home last week, and reminded her readers (and me) of the importance of reviewing books on this topic.

Story Power: Why Writers Must Ask “Why?”

Photo by Rebecca Lacko

Two weeks ago I got to visit the beautiful Pacific Northwest to teach a workshop about book promotion. I met the most generous and supportive group of writers at BARN (Bainbridge Artisan Regional Network) and we dug into how to find readers for fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

One of the most important questions to ask as a writer is “Why?”

Why should a reader care about my work?

Why should she invest her valuable time?

And why the heck am I writing this story in the first place?

It’s not reasonable for an writer to expect to inspire someone to pick up her book if she doesn’t know what inspired her to write it in the first place. How can you assure someone they won’t regret reading it when you have no idea why they might get something valuable from it?

So, the first exercise we did in the workshop was to answer the question: Why are you doing the work you do?

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Photo by Rebecca Lacko

I watched brows furrow around the room as the members of the group considered the question. Then, one-by-one, I watched realization hit. When people shared their reasons—everything from giving a voice to baby boomers to inspiring children to explore outdoors—you could hear the passion about their topics in their voices.

Whenever I read a book I love, I always want to know what inspired the author to write it. Don’t you?

So if you’re thinking about writing your story, or any story for that matter, start by asking “why?”. Why am I compelled to share this? What do I want to say and why would a reader care? Understanding your personal “why” will make starting to write an awful lot easier.

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For now, I’ll leave you with some pictures that have inspired me to put the Pacific Northwest on my list of places to visit again soon.

Mandatory lunch at Elliot's

Mandatory lunch at Elliott’s

 

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View of Seattle from the Bainbridge Ferry

 

The result of buying too many books at Eagle Harbor Book Co.

The result of buying too many books at Eagle Harbor Book Co.

 

A slice of paradise

A slice of paradise

Living the Life Unexpected: A Conversation with Jody Day

By Lisa Manterfield

Jody Day - Credit: Simon Fairclough

Jody Day – Credit: Simon Fairclough

Early in her new book, Living the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfilling Future Without Children, Jody Day writes, “Having children is not a free pass to a happy life. If we look at the lives of mothers without envy and listen them without prejudice, we know this to be true. They suffer too and sometimes their children are the very source of that suffering.” It’s a refreshing point of view.

Reading through Jody’s book, is like sitting down with that one friend you can always trust to speak frankly. What comes across in her words is an understanding that, yes, this hurts…a lot, and yes, all the feelings of anger, sadness, and hopelessness are real and normal, but you cannot allow this experience to take over your entire life for the rest of your life. And while Jody offers plenty of gentle support and practical exercises to work through the hard stuff, I walked away with an overall feeling of empowerment.

Cover living-the-life-unexpected-978150980903501Jody opens the book with a Plan B Healing Inventory, a list of questions about your current state of mind, such as “How often do you blame others for your situation?” and “How often do do you really laugh?”  These questions help get a sense of where you are now, but are also a means to measure your progress. Often improvement is incremental and you don’t realize how far you’ve come until you hit a big milestone, such as being around children or making a big plan for your future. It’s very helpful to take this kind of inventory to remind yourself, especially on the tough days, how far you’ve come.

In this new and expanded edition of her earlier book (previously titled: Rocking the Life Unexpected) Jody includes case studies of eight women who’ve found themselves unexpectedly childless for a broad range of reasons. As we know from the stories shared on this site, hearing from someone who’s walked a similar path to you can be a powerful tool in the healing journey.

Throughout this book, Jody is a beacon, showing you the way to move forward and build the life you want. Much of what she encourages is about changing your shifting your perspective from what’s lost to what is.  She talks about “liberating yourself from the opinions of others” and letting go of some of the assumptions we’ve been fed about the wonders of motherhood.

I had a few questions for Jody about her work. Here’s what she had to say:

Life Without Baby: In this new edition of the book, you’ve added case studies. What have you learned about the power of both telling your story and of hearing the stories of others?

Jody Day: When I started the Gateway Women blog in 2011, it was the beginning of me sharing my story with others. That first woman who wrote a comment saying “me too” was a moment that will stay with me forever. Knowing that I was not alone in struggling with my childlessness was extremely validating – finally!  Over time, as I started to meet other childless women in person, I realised too that the ‘story’ society tells of us – that we are broken, damaged, pathetic weirdoes – began to seem more and more ridiculous! And with each ‘other’ woman I realised that about, I also let go of a bit more of my own subconscious beliefs that my childlessness meant I was defective in some way. I now understand why sharing our stories is one of the oldest form of healing and I wanted to find a way for readers of the new edition to have an experience of that.

LWB: A real sense of resilience comes through in your writing. In several sections it’s clear you have an attitude of not rolling over and letting this take over your life. I’m guessing that attitude was hard-won. Can you talk about what changed for you?

JD: Recovering from childlessness is the hardest thing I’ve ever done – and I hadn’t had an easy ride before that so I wasn’t new to coping with incredibly hard things – my resilience comes from coping with an unstable childhood, chronic illnesses, living with mental illness and addiction within my family, as well as losing my marriage to my husband’s addiction issues. Yet I’d been able to learn from all of these difficulties and pick myself up again. But childlessness? No.

There was a period during the worst of it when I really didn’t know if I had the strength to carry on with the rest of my life feeling this awful. But I didn’t know it was grief. Once I found out it was, it was the missing piece of the puzzle as to why this loss, this trauma, was so much harder than the others. To this day, I still cannot believe how none of the therapeutic and medical professionals I consulted mentioned that I might be grieving… the grief of childlessness is still so little understood by those who haven’t experienced it. I feel so grateful that as part of my training to be a psychotherapist we looked at bereavement and I had that ‘aha’ moment that grief was what I was dealing with.

LWB: Your discussion about a “shadow life” really struck a chord with me. Can you share what you mean and how you finally recognized that in yourself?

JD: It was one of the very first things I realised, on the day that I accepted (cognitively!) that I would never be a mother, because I had an extraordinary experience of feeling in my body the two versions of myself – my real life and my shadow life – and feeling them merge. It was a powerful energetic experience. I guess my ‘shadow mother’ went ‘pouf’ in that moment and I realised that for the last 15 years I’d been spending a lot of my life in la-la land, psychologically ‘nesting’, long after it was wise or healthy or helpful…  I guess it’s probably a very natural part of planning to start a family – thinking all of the aspects of your life through in terms of how to organise it best for the coming child – but because I carried on hoping/fantasizing long after it would have been logical to have given up, my shadow mother became a rather toxic fantasy that stopped me facing reality.  Once she was gone, grief came roaring in, so it was definitely being fuelled by denial.

 

Jody Day is a British author, social entrepreneur, trainee integrative psychotherapist and the founder of Gateway Women, the global friendship and support network for childless women. Learn more at: Gateway-Women.com

Information on where to purchase Living the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfilling Future Without Children, click here.

I’m Back from the Life Without Baby Blog Tour!

Life Without Baby_Front_book 3DI’m back from my blog tour and what a wild couple of weeks it’s been, despite rarely leaving my desk!

Even though it was a lot of work to coordinate the tour and write ten posts (!) it was so worth it. I got to chat by email and skype with some of my favorite bloggers, in some cases women I’ve never spoken to beyond the comments section here. We got to know one another on a more personal level and marveled at how far we’ve each come in making peace with our childlessness. I felt, more than ever, a real sense of community and of having a sisterhood of women who completely understand me.

I also got to interact with some of you in a different space, on someone else’s blog. Seeing you there felt like arriving at a foreign airport and seeing a friend waiting with a bunch of flowers. Thank you to everyone who made the tour with me.

If you missed the tour bus, here is a round-up of my travels and all the blogs I visited. I hope you’ll take a little time and hop over to support these wonderful and generous bloggers.

Michelle Marie McGrath’s Unclassified Woman, where we talked about legacy and the myths surrounding childlessness

Loribeth’s The Road Less Travelled, on the topic of embracing possibility

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos at Silent Sorority, where I answered questions about how far we’ve come

Catherine-Emmanuelle Delisle at Femmes Sans Enfant shared a video of a live story performance I did at Expressing Motherhood a couple of years ago

Justine Brooks Froelker of Ever Upward had questions about what prompted me to write a new Life Without Baby book

Lesley Pyne, on the subject of knowing when it’s time to let go of the dream of motherhood

Sue Fagalde Lick at Childless-by-Marriage, where I wrote about aging without children

Mali at No Kidding in NZ, on the topic of claiming your right to grieve

At French-language site, Bamp.fr, I talked about the benefits of writing through infertility and loss

I’ve also received some great early reviews for the book Here are a couple of snippets:

“As soon as I started reading ‘surviving & thriving… ‘ I felt that Lisa was right there with me, leading me gently by the hand and giving me permission to feel anything. She acknowledges how messy it will be, gives practical ways to get through, and lots of assurance that it will get better. For me, the grief section is particularly helpful; it’s the first time I’ve seen childless grief described in such an empathic and compassionate way.” ~Lesley Pyne, Coach

“I wish Manterfield’s book had been available a decade ago.  It would have been a valuable lifeline, a tremendous support at a time there was nothing available for women lost in a maze of fertility treatment promises and murky what ifs, uncertain about how to find balance and a path forward.” ~ Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos, author of Silent Sorority

“Page by page, Lisa holds your hand with gentle, unflinching support, openly sharing her story with you, and giving you permission, guidance, and gentle queries that help in your journey of healing. I only wish that when people called their reproductive endocrinologist’s office to tell them that they were “drawing a line in the sand” that the doctor was honor bound by the Hippocratic oath to send their patients a copy of this wonderful guidebook.” Tracey Cleantis, author of The Next Happy

I am extremely appreciative of these kind and generous words. If you’ve ever bought a book online, you’ll know how influential good reviews can be. If you do happen to pick up a copy of Life Without Baby and find it helpful, I would be thrilled if you’d consider posting a review on Amazon. Goodreads, or other bookseller sites. It would mean a lot to me.

So, now I’m back, normal programming will resume. There’ll be a Whiny Wednesday post this week and Kathleen will be back on Friday with her It Got Me Thinking…column.