Childless by Circumstance Archives

[WATCH NOW] ‘FRIENDSHIPS ACROSS LIFE’, A WORLD CHILDLESS WEEK SESSION OF FIRESIDE WISDOM WITH CHILDLESS ELDERWOMEN

August 26, 2024 Jody Day 0

Recorded live on Thursday 19th September for World Childless Week 2024 Issues with female friendships (particularly with those who become mothers when we do not) are such a common part of the childless experience that I termed it ‘the friendship apocalypse’ of childlessness. And although I wouldn’t wish this painful experience on anyone else, it did come as a huge relief to me when I discovered that it’s something many of us can identify with – I thought I just must be a rubbish friend! The friendship issues that get stirred up can take us into deep waters that can […]

[WATCH NOW] GATEWAY WOMEN MASTERCLASS WEBINAR: AN INTERVIEW & BOOK GIVEAWAY WITH AUTHOR, SUE FAGALDE LICK

June 29, 2024 Jody Day 0

Watch Jody Day, the founder of Gateway Women (and Gateway Elderwomen) interviewing Sue Fagalde Lick, the author of No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s, published June 25th 2024 by SheWritesPress and available online and in bookstores. More info on Sue’s website and she’s also on Instagram @suefagaldelick and on Substack as @suelick Sue is 72 and the author of the memoir & blog Childless by Marriage, the collection Love or Children: When You Can’t Have Both, and a wonderful series of novels (beginning with Up Beaver Creek) featuring her inspiring and relatable childless heroine, ‘P.D.’, as well […]

[Father’s Day Guest Blog] ‘Time for Men to Speak Up’ by Robert Nurden

June 13, 2024 Jody Day 0

A guest blog for Father’s Day 2024 by Robert Nurden, author of I Always Wanted to Be a Dad: Men without Children I was recently interviewed by BBC Radio 5 about my book I Always Wanted To Be A Dad: Men without Children and what it was like being a childless man. It went quite well and afterwards, I posted a short message about it on Facebook. I chose three childless Facebook groups – Childless not by Choice, Childless over 50 and Ageing without Children (AWOC). I received great support – a total of 198 likes and lots of lovely […]

[WATCH NOW] Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen on ‘Courageous Conversations’ (Recorded 19 June 2024)

June 3, 2024 Jody Day 0

For the June 2024 Solstice, Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women brought together a panel of #NomoCrones (nomo=not-mother + crone is not an insult!) to explore the topic of ‘Courageous Conversations’. As all women grow up (and exist within) a patriarchal culture that valorizes female silence and compliance, this is no small task. Although some of us may have grown up in families and cultures that role-modelled and supported some freedom around speaking up for your needs, correcting misunderstandings and seeking to redress injustices, we are often encouraged by the overculture to become more compliant as move through puberty and […]

[WATCH NOW] Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen: Caring for the Caregiver – Recorded 20th March 2024

March 17, 2024 Jody Day 0

For the March 2024 Equinox session of ‘Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen,’ we focused on the topic of caregiving; both the care we give to others, and thinking too about the care we might need ourselves as we age without children… It’s often the case that childless women are expected to be the ‘natural’ caregivers for vulnerable family members, although our own potential care needs for the future are often hard to talk about or plan for. This is a topic I explored in some depth in my Substack essay ‘It’s not like she’s got anything else to do, is […]

[WATCH NOW] Free Gateway Women Masterclass: ‘Navigating Friendships, Old and New’. (Recorded Feb 2024)

February 3, 2024 Jody Day 0

Childlessness can be experienced as a relational wound and can ask a lot of us and our friendships – Sometimes more than they can bear. As many of our friends move into parenting, coupling and families, we can find ourselves increasingly isolated and feeling like outsiders in family-centred relationships, social spaces and workplaces. Yet childless people have much to give as friends, and we deserve relationships with others who can be authentic, empathetic and available. In this free Gateway Women Masterclass, Sarah Roberts, Judy Graham and myself explored the different types, purpose and contexts of friendships in our lives, and […]

To the Childless Woman at Christmas – I See You

December 25, 2023 Jody Day 18

I originally published this post in Christmas 2020, when many of us across the globe were under pandemic-related restrictions. However, although that may have changed, much of the experience of being childless at Christmas hasn’t… Many of us are hanging out in the round-the-world round-the-clock live chat in our private online community – come and join us there for empathic company and some random and often frivolous chat to distract you! However you are spending your holidays this year, I send you a warm hug. Hugs, Jody x I see you sitting at home muting the rolling TV ads of […]

[WATCH NOW] Gateway Women Masterclass: ‘Reclaiming Your Childless Festive Season!’

October 27, 2023 Jody Day 0

To watch previous GW Masterclasses click here. To sign up to future free GW Masterclasses, click here. Christmas and the December holiday season can be some of the most challenging times of the year for those of us who are childless-not-by-choice. It can made even harder as our consumer society uses images and ideas of ‘togetherness’ and ‘happy families’ as relentless marketing tools to sell us a fantasy life that we are excluded from. From Halloween through to New Year’s Eve, there seem to be so many different days in the holiday calendar, whatever your faith (or not), and whether […]

[Watch now] ‘Challenging the Lazy Stereotypes of Childless Women in Fiction and Films’. A free World Childless Week webinar: Thursday 14 September 2023, 7pm BST

August 14, 2023 Jody Day 1

This special World Childless Week webinar, ‘Challenging the Lazy Stereotypes of Childless Women in Fiction and Film’ was filmed live on Thursday 14th September as part of the ‘Childless in the Media’ themed day of World Childless Week 2023. From fairy tales through to modern fiction, childless women are often portrayed as damaged, deranged and deviant. Whether it’s Snow White’s evil stepmother, the psychopathic puppy-killer Cruella de Vil, Glenn Close’s bunny boiler in ‘Fatal Attraction’ or the unreliable and half-cut narrator of ‘Girl on a Train’, we never seem to come out well! Unconsciously, it seems writers default to using women […]

[WATCH NOW] ‘You’re so Lucky to Not Have Kids! — Does that include when we are old?’ A Special Fireside Wisdom session for World Childless Week 2023

August 14, 2023 Jody Day 0

The NomoCrones (nomo = not-mother = crone is not an insult!) gathered around the Zoom cauldron for a special ‘Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen’ session for World Childless Week on Friday 15th September. Our discussion was framed around the World Childless Week theme for Friday 15th September which was ‘Words That Hurt: You’re So Lucky to Not Have Kids”. We explored whether the perceived ‘luck’ in that bingo (throwaway statement) holds true for those of us ageing without children too… It was, as ever, a lively and frank discussion which did not shy away from the challenges of aging/ageing without children […]

Poster affixed to telegraph pole: "lost mojo"

Surviving the Childless Weekend Blues

April 10, 2023 Jody Day 0

There, it’s said. Weekends can be absolute hell as a single, childless woman. “They creep up on you,” said one friend recently. Many of us are so busy with work commitments and after-work activities Monday-to-Friday that we can’t wait for the peace and quiet of the weekend in order to recover. And then, when we wake up on Saturday morning to an empty bed, an empty house and an empty weekend, it doesn’t feel relaxing; it feels hideously oppressive. Alternatively, we pack our weekend schedule to the gunnels with activities and appointments only to feel burnt out and resentful and […]

Getting through Mother’s Day as a Childless Woman

March 18, 2023 Jody Day 0

UK and Ireland have their version of ‘Mothers Day’ (it’s called ‘Mothering Sunday’) on March 19th 2023. With International Mother’s Day coming up in May, we hope this helps you too. Both of the recording below were offered from our hearts in the hope that by sharing the strategies that we’ve each developed over the years, we can help you to naviage the complex emotions and triggering situations of this very multi-layered holiday with more ease. As this is one of the most difficult days of the year for many childless not by choice women, over the years we have […]

Encore Airing: ‘It’s International Women’s Day, not International Mother’s Day!’ – Jody Day on New Legacy Radio [Audio + Transcript]

March 8, 2023 Jody Day 0

‘It’s International Woman’s Day, not International Mother’s Day.’ Jody Day was interviewed by Christine J. Erickson, founder of the New Legacy Institute on 8th March 2022, and this episode, from the Pilot Series of New Legacy Radio, was re-aired on 7th March 2023. Click here to listen or read the transcript on the New Legacy Radio website. Or search ‘New Legacy Radio’ wherever you get your pods And do connect/follow the New Legacy Institute on Twitter @NLInstitute and Instagram @newlegacyinstitute or explore the New Legacy Institute website, where I am proud to be a volunteer Advisor.

[Audio + Transcript] ‘Why is Policy Engagement Essential for People Without Children?’ Christine Erickson, Founder of the New Legacy Institute in conversation with NLI Advisors Jody Day, Dr Robin Hadley, Therese Shechter and Nandita Bajaj [Recorded Jan 2023]

January 26, 2023 Jody Day 0

Why is Policy Engagement Essential for People Without Children? on New Legacy Radio, a Voice America Show. [Episode recorded 23 January 2023]. Featuring Christine J. Erickson, founder of New Legacy Insititute in conversation with New Legacy Institute Advisors: Jody Day (founder of Gateway Women and author of ‘Living the Life Unexpected’), Dr Robin Hadley (adademic researcher and the author of ‘How Is a Man Supposed to be a Man? Male Childlessness – a Life Course Disrupted’), Therese Shechter (founder of female-led production house Trixie Films and director of ‘My So Called Selfish Life’) and Nandita Bajaj (Lecturer on pronatalism at […]

Revolutionizing Your Single Holidays (aka ‘the festive season’), a free GW Masterclass with Jody Day, Shani Silver, Sasha Cagen, Yael Wolfe & Nicola Slawson

December 1, 2022 Jody Day 0

The holiday season, from Halloween right through till New Year’s Eve, can sometimes feel like a special kind of hell for single women without children… but what if they didn’t have to be? What if you could craft your own way to celebrate in a way that works for you? If you’d like to explore this radical thought then watch this amazing webinar, filmed in 2021 with me, Jody Day, and my four arse-kicking, taboo-busting single writers, podcasters, artists, coaches and thinkers for this amazing Gateway Women Masterclass on ‘Revolutionizing the Single Holidays’. Recorded live on Saturday 11th December 2021. […]

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