Ageing Archives - Page 4 of 4

The Childless Menopause

September 8, 2014 Jody Day 127

I turned 50 earlier this year which was a cause for celebration amongst my family and friends. However, when I officially became ‘post-menopausal’ the year before, nobody wanted to know. In our youth (read: fertility) obsessed culture, becoming post-menopausal means the end of bearing a biological child and, it seems, the official beginning of your pointlessness and invisibility as an older woman. But, it seems, just as in other stages of my ‘failure’ to become a mother, I don’t fully buy into this cultural narrative of my worthlessness. And maybe even the ‘invisibility’ might work to my advantage too, as […]

The voices of childlessness: ‘A Family Without A Child’

August 17, 2014 Jody Day 8

On Friday 15th August 2014, a documentary presented by the BBC presented by award-winning journalist Sangita Myska was aired on BBC Radio 4. Called A Family Without A Child it featured the candid and rarely-aired stories of four women: Sangita herself, ‘coming out’ about her and her husband’s infertility issues; myself, reliving some of the darkest moments in my journey through the heartbreak of childlessness; Jessica Hepburn on her hardcore experiences in the world of IVF and author Paula Coston on the reality of being a single, childless woman of 59 and once again experiencing loss as friends become grandparents. Although all four of […]

Things I wish I’d known at 40

July 16, 2014 Jody Day 60

This week, I celebrate my 50th birthday. It feels like a heck of a thing, to find myself turning 50 at peace with the past, happy in the present and excited about the future. It didn’t come easily and, looking back over the screenplay of my 40s it does seem to include just about everything from farce to tragedy… So that got me thinking about boldly going into a new decade where no Jody has gone before – if I could talk to my 40-year-old self, what would I want her to know about the decade ahead? Here are some […]

Growing Older Without the Milestones of Motherhood

May 14, 2014 Jody Day 4

Jody Day for the What I See Project ‘Age’ month – May 2014 I’m turning 50 this summer and I’m excited about it – it feels like another powerful threshold that I’m crossing and very different to my 40th when I was still hopeful of becoming a mother. I look a few years younger than my age – I always have done – and it’s interesting how many women suggest to me that I could ‘get away with’ saying I am younger. I find it puzzling – why would I want to pretend I was younger? I remember when I started […]

This Wild and Precious Life

April 8, 2014 Jody Day 7

Gateway Women turned three years old last weekend. It’s now 3 years since I published my first blog about being childless-by-circumstance titled Light at the End of the Tunnel and in which I described the space that had been my uncomfortable home for many years: Welcome to ‘the tunnel’. That narrow, cramped claustrophobic space that gets more cramped as each year passes. Made for one. The only view ahead is a very narrow shaft of light, somewhere off in the distance. And behind you in the dark is every wrong decision, every failed relationship, every missed opportunity. The tunnel. A lonely, pressurized […]

DoubleWhammy: Single & Childless

October 29, 2013 Jody Day 142

Very soon it will be the UK’s third National Fertility Awareness week which is being organised by Infertility Network UK, the British charity which supports those undergoing infertility treatment. Cue lots of ‘miracle baby stories’ in the press about couples that despaired of ever having a child but who managed thanks to the help of this amazing science. The week even ends with the annual hopefest that is The Fertility Show at London’s Olympia, an entire exhibition hall filled with stands from fertility clinics and associated industries looking to ‘educate’ (sell to) potential new ‘parents’ (customers). But what I bet we […]

Self-care and other gremlins

August 5, 2013 Jody Day 27

As someone with ‘a mother’s heart’ you’d think that nurturing myself would be easy. After all, I spend 15 years longing to nurture a child. But you’d be wrong. In my continuing recovery from the heartbreak of childlessness, I’ve found that nurturing myself has turned out to be one of my biggest challenges. It seems I’d rather be of service to just about anyone other than myself. When I was married, this found its perfect home in something called ‘codependency’ – which in my case was a perfect energetic two-step between my ex-husband’s addictions and my own obsessive over-involvement in his condition. It […]

Menopausal Mojo: why being post-fertile is yet another taboo to bust!

August 11, 2012 Jody Day 20

This article was written in 2012 Perhaps one of the things that’s surprised me most about coming to terms with my childlessness is how it’s impacted every area of my life: my identity, my dreams and my hopes. And one of the most unexpected shifts has been in my ideas about intimate relationships. I was with my ex-husband for 16 years, and both before and after that had serious, long-term relationships. Really, from the ages of 15-45 I had sex and heteosexual relationships on the brain. And now, aged 48, and four years into accepting that my quest for motherhood […]

« 1 2 3 4