2021 - Gateway Women

Jody interviewed on the Primal Happiness Podcast, December 2021 [Audio + Transcript]

December 28, 2021 Jody Day 0

Click here to listen to the show. Full transcript below. WRITTEN TRANSCRIPT BELOW Intro: You’re listening to The Primal Happiness Show, a podcast dedicated to helping you thrive in this crazy modern world. Every Tuesday we explore the nature of how our minds really work. What exactly the human-animal requires to thrive and how we can live happier and more fulfilling lives. If you’re new here and haven’t yet taken our free class, then there’s no better place to get a jumpstart on reclaiming your primal happiness. It’s where we’ll guide you step by step through our antidote to today’s […]

Reflect and Renew: navigating the sometimes tricky ‘twixmas’ week as a childless woman

December 27, 2021 Jody Day 0

Amongst the myriad exhortations to move on from Christmas like you haven’t just survived the toughest day in the childless calendar, and throw yourself into the coming new year with gusto, we often ride roughshod over some of the less glamourous feelings that arise at this time of year. Feelings of loss, sadness, grief, wistfulness, regret and confusion which are so much a part of every life, and so often close to the surface for those of us living the life unexpected. If this resonates with you, I thought you might find this recording of my Reflect & Renew webinar which […]

Jody Day interviewed by Sally Garozzo for ‘The Menopause Mindset’ podcast [Dec 2021]: being childless at Christmas; dismantling negative stereotypes; fetishization of motherhood and the childless menopause!

December 16, 2021 Jody Day 0

In this episode of Sally Garozzo’s podcast ‘The Menopause Mindset’, Jody Day covers: Being childless at Christmas Childlessness and childfree as a spectrum Disenfranchised grief The healing power of grief Having a language to describe your experience Unconscious bias towards parenting (pronatalism) Dismantling the stereotypes of childlessness women (Cruella De Vil) Yearning for motherhood as a last-ditch attempt to feel normal Reclaiming the childless life (or not) The fetishization of motherhood The cultural fear of childless women (the deviant) Ageing without children To listen, go to: sallygarozzo.com/podcast and click on ‘Episode 84’ or search ‘The Menopause Mindset’ wherever you get […]

Watch ‘Solstice Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen’: Recorded 21st Dec 2021

December 9, 2021 Jody Day 0

RECORDED LIVE ON ZOOM ON TUESDAY 21ST DECEMBER 2021 Since we first came together for World Childless Week in 2020, the #NomoCrones (nomo = not-mother & crone is not an insult!) have been meeting each solstice and equinox for a series of informal online zoom gatherings called ‘Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen‘. To find out more about our ‘Gateway Elderwomen’ project and to watch previous sessions, click here. To sign up to our mailing list to make sure you don’t miss the session planned for March 2022, click here. December Solstice 2021: ‘Spiritual Malnutrition’ For December 2021’s Solstice Session, we’re […]

Reclaiming the Childless Holidays with Jody Day, Karin Enfield, Catherine-Emmanuelle Delisle & Sophia Andeh – recording now available

November 18, 2021 Jody Day 0

We know that for those of us who are involuntarily childless, this time of year can be especially tough with our consumer society’s relentless focus on ‘togetherness’ and ‘happy families’. From Halloween through to New Year’s Eve, there seem to be so many different days in the holiday calendar, whatever your faith, including if you have none, that can be complex for us. Our advice: plan ahead. Whatever your partnership or familial situation, we hope that during this webinar we were able to offer you some ideas and comfort on how to manage YOUR childless holidays. ‘Reclaiming the Childless Holidays’ was […]

‘The Childless Menopause’, still the missing story on #WorldMenopauseDay #IncludeMyMenopause

October 18, 2021 Jody Day 0

Back in 2014 I wrote a blog called ‘The Childless Menopause’ here on the Gateway Women website that got a LOT of comments. It seems that I’d hit a nerve in being open (who me?!) about something many of us were experiencing (or would experience in the future) and yet which nobody was talking about – what it’s like for those of us who are childless to make sense of our menopause when all of the available literature, support and messaging seemed to presume that everyone experiencing menopause was also a mother (and a white, middle-class, well-resourced, heterosexual and partnered […]

Jody Day interviewed by Laura Behnke for ‘The Life Actually Podcast’ on childlessness across the life course; working to deshame ourselves as part of healing; how understand the grief process helps us deal with all of life’s changes and much much more! (Audio + Transcript)

October 14, 2021 Jody Day 0

[October 2021] Jody Day interviewed by Laura Behnke for ‘The Life Actually Podcast‘ in which we discuss, amongst other things: the data around the numbers of childless/free women, and why it’s on the rise; about shame as a powerful tool of social control; about how not having children means you also won’t get to be a grandmother either; about my own unplanned pregnancy and abortion at 20 and how this is a hidden part of many women’s stories, both mothers and childless women; about how our childhood experience of being mothered may influence our later thoughts about becoming mothers ourselves; […]

Jody Day interviewed by Dr Karin on her ‘Love and Life’ Podcast: ‘When You’re Not a Mother, But Wanted to Be’ [Audio & Full Transcript]

September 16, 2021 Jody Day 0

[September 2021] Jody Day, the founder of Gateway Women is here interviewed by Dr. Karin Anderson Abrell for her ‘Love & Life’ Podcast. Karin is the author of ‘Single is the New Black: Don’t Wear White ‘Till It’s Right‘ and her work mainly focuses on the experience of women who are single not by choice. Karin herself is a childless stepmother. In this conversation, as well as discussing World Childless Week 2021, we explore how one of the unintended consequences of second-wave feminism has been an increase in circumstantial childlessness and my frustration that involuntary childlessness is a topic absent […]

Jody interviewed on ‘That Grief Relief Podcast’ with Katie Overy on friendships, dealing with awkward questions, grandchildren-grief, the fetishization of motherhood, holding ourselves back in life whilst ‘waiting’ for motherhood, the unrecognized, unsupported and unspoken nature of ‘disenfranchised grief’ and more…

September 10, 2021 Jody Day 0

September 2021: Jody Day interviewed by Katie Overy for her ‘The Grief Relief Podcast’. The clip above is about how Jody answers intrusive questions about whether she has children. You can listen to the full episode here in which Katie (who is childfree by choice) and I discuss my story, about the experience of the disenfranchised grief of childlessness, about the bingos that childfree women experience as well as childless women, about my new ‘conscious childless elderwomen’ project, about the shifting nature of friendships when you’re childless and your friends all have kids and how this can shift again when […]

World Childless Week 2021: Free Fireside Wisdom Webinar with the #NomoCrones: ‘Leaving a Legacy’. [Recording now available]

August 18, 2021 Jody Day 0

RECORED ON WEDNESDAY 15TH SEPTEMBER 2021, 8PM UK TIME: CLICK HERE TO HEAR ABOUT FUTURE SESSIONS! Since we first came together for World Childless Week in 2021, the #NomoCrones (nomo = not-mother and crone is not an insult!) have been meeting each solstice and equinox for a series of informal online zoom gatherings called ‘Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen‘. And we got the band back together again, with an even BIGGER lineup of amazing childless elderwomen World Childless Week 2021 to discuss the often tricky issue of ‘Leaving a Legacy’ as a childless person, as part of a whole day […]

[WATCH NOW] World Childless Week 2021 Free Masterclass: Childlessness & Sexual Intimacy

August 9, 2021 Jody Day 0

RECORDED ON TUESDAY 14TH SEPTEMBER 2021, 7PM UK TIME FOR WORLD CHIDLESS WEEK 2021 Since we hosted the Gateway Women Masterclass on Childlessness & Sexual Intimacy in May 2021, it’s proven to be one of our most popular and most watched discussions. It was an incredible experience for us to Host and for the Panellists to take part in too. So, when the discussions about this year’s World Childless Week ‘themes’ came up, we suggested that this should be one of them and it is. Tuesday 14th September 2021 is ‘Childlessness & Sexual Intimacy’ Day for World Childless Week. This […]

If you’ve ever wanted to have a productive conversation about childlessness with your friend, colleague or HR Director and found it too hard, listen to this brilliant interview by Doryn Wallach @It’s Not a Crisis Podcast – and maybe even share it with them? This is bridge-building in action.

July 26, 2021 Jody Day 0

You can listen to the clips above by clicking on them and find the full interview here or by searching ‘It’s Not a Crisis podcast’ wherever you get your podcasts. The full transcript is below. In this interview with Doryn Wallach, who is a mother in her 40s (as are most of her audience) we talk about the challenges of being childless in a world full of parents, how pronatalism operates, about how the whole ‘As a Mother’ thing works against childless/free women, about the difference between childless & childfree, about the complexity of childlessness after abortion, about what NOT […]

The next time someone suggests to you, ‘Why not have a baby on your own?’, like it’s an easy option, ask them to read ‘The Mother of All Dilemmas’ by Kathleen Guthrie Woods

July 23, 2021 Jody Day 0

When you’re a single and childless-by-circumstance woman approaching the event horizon of your fertility, still hopeful that somehow partnership and children might happen for you, one of the most common pieces of ‘helpful advice’ (and I use those quotes advisedly!) you might hear is, ‘Why don’t you just have one on your own?!’ It can also be phrased in the past tense, once you’re a little older, accompanied by that pitying head-tilt… These enquires are usually delivered as if this were (a) something that hadn’t ever occurred to you and (b) slam-dunk easy. When Guthrie Woods found herself in exactly […]

About normalizing how hard it can be for parents and non-parents to have the ‘hard conversations’; the deep unconscious roots of society’s discomfort with childless women; the gifts of grief and what envy can teach us… Jody interviewed on the Sara Avant Stover podcast, June 2021

June 21, 2021 Jody Day 0

You can listen to the full interview by following the links here, or search ‘Sara Avant Stover’ wherever you get your podcasts. The full transcript is below. In this interview with author, yogi and feminine spirituality teacher, Sara Avant Stover, we go deep into the experience of involuntary childlessness – both my story and, at a much deeper level, the archetypal ‘stories’ that attach to childless women and perhaps lead to much of some people’s evident (and mostly unconscious) discomfort with us. I also talk about what it will take for us to begin to ‘normalize’ that having honest conversations […]

Guest post by Andy Harrod for Father’s Day 2021: ‘Free floating: Who am I if I’m not a Dad?’

June 20, 2021 Jody Day 0

Who am I if I’m not a Dad? This is a question that has and still does haunt me. Of late the hauntings have lessened, but a recent loss has raised again the question of meaning and purpose. Who am I and what kind of life am I trying to live on a rock hurtling around a ball of hot gases? I once read existentialism as there is nothing so I can be anything. I am well aware of the structural and societal inequalities, it was more about the limits I put on myself through the messages I had taken […]

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