Coping with Other People Archives

‘Where Is My Home?’ – Navigating the sense of not belonging that can be caused by the intersectionality of race and childlessness. A free GW Masterclass Webinar with Yvonne John and Sophia Andeh.

February 26, 2022 Karin Enfield de Vries 0

Historically, for women of colour, shame in telling our stories has prevented us from healing from the trauma of the racism and oppression we’ve experienced. In parallel, being childless not by choice or by circumstance can lead to feelings of shame, and add not only to isolation and exclusion from wider mainstream society, but also from within our own communities and cultures. Join Yvonne John, author of Dreaming of the Life Unlived: Intimate Stories and Portraits of Women Without Children activist and Licensed Gateway Women Reignite Weekend Facilitator, and Sophia Andeh, an award-winning childless coach, Founder of Butterfly & Beyond and […]

‘Finding Community and Connection as a Childless Woman’: a free GW Masterclass with Karin Enfield-de Vries & Sarah Lawrence. [Watch now]

January 15, 2022 Karin Enfield de Vries 2

It’s often the case when you’re childless either through infertility or circumstance that your social circle dwindles as your friends sail away to the motherland… Jody Day, the founder of Gateway Women named this the #FriendshipApocalypse of childlessness and it’s sometimes really hard not to take it personally! Join Karin Enfield-de Vries, GW’s Operations Director, a trainee grief counsellor and the Lead Trainer & Facilaitor for our Reignite Weekend programs, and Sarah Lawrence, a therapeutic counsellor, one-third of the Full Stop Podcast, and also a Licensed GW Reignite Weekend Facilitator, for this free GW Masterclass and learn more about reaching […]

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 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 3

[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; […]

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 4

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 […]

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 6

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 […]

Why do the issues of motherhood get so much more attention than those of childless women? Jody Day interviewed by Helen Russell for her ‘How to be Sad’ Podcast (May 2021)

May 24, 2021 Jody Day 0

Listen to a short clip of Jody Day’s interview with Helen Russell for her How to Be Sad’ podcast above or click here to listen to the whole interview (56-minutes). Read the full transcript below. Helen Russell’s interview with me for her ‘How to be Sad’ podcast interview covers so much ground that I hardly know where to start! We go fearlessly into places that normally childless women don’t discuss publicly including some things I’ve never discussed before: My journey from childhood and young adulthood where I didn’t think I wanted children, to becoming an involuntarily childless woman experiencing unexplained […]

How do we help our friends who are mothers to become ‘mother-allies’ to us? Jody Day interviewed on ‘A Certain Age’ Podcast by Katie Fogarty

May 11, 2021 Jody Day 0

Listen or share the 3-minute clip from the show above. Click here to listen to the full 38-minute interview. See below for a full written transcript below. It was such a pleasure being interviewed by Katie Fogarty for her ‘A Certain Age’ podcast which ‘celebrates life 50+ in all its sexy, smart, funny, fabulous, weird, sometimes unsettling, yet profoundly liberating glory.’ What I appreciated most deeply, apart from Katie’s warmth and humility was her genuine desire, as a mother, to understand more about what it means to be a childless woman, and how to become a better friend and ally to […]

Celebrating the highs and the lows of 10 years of Gateway Women with The Full Stop Podcast [April 2021]

April 10, 2021 Jody Day 0

For Gateway Women’s 10th Anniversary in April 2021, I was thrilled to be interviewed by Berenice, Sarah and Michael of The Full Stop Podcast on what those ten years have been like, what has changed for me, and for the childless community in that time, and what my hopes and dreams are for the next decade. This is a very honest episode in which I reflect on some of the behind-the-scenes challenges of creating Gateway Women, and why turning it into a financially and culturally sustainable organisation that will outlast me is so important to me. You can find the […]

Jody interviewed by Shani Silver of ‘The Single Serving’ Podcast – January 2021

January 9, 2021 Jody Day 6

I was so delighted to be the first guest for the 2021 season on Shani Silver’s “Single Serving” Podcast. You can listen here on her website where you’ll also find shownotes and links to other podcast plaftorms. A transcript of our wide-ranging and delightful conversation is below. And a big thank you to “S”, (you know who you are!) one of the members of Gateway Women ‘Single Life’ subgroup as well as Shani’s own membership community, for suggesting me as a guest on the show. To listen go to https://www.shanisilver.com/home/jody-day or search “Single Serving” at Apple, Spotify or iHeartRadio. Thank you […]

Meet the author of ‘Confessions of a Forty-Something F**k Up’ – a new novel by Alexandra Potter

January 2, 2021 Jody Day 2

Alexandra Potter is a British author, whose first novel ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’ was published in 2000, a week before her 30th birthday and immediately made the top ten. She has since written twelve novels of romantic comedy including ‘Be Careful What You Wish For’, ‘Me and Mr Darcy’ (which won Best New Fiction Award at the Jane Austen Regency World Awards) and ‘Love From Paris’ which was shortlisted for the RNA Comedy Award. Her latest book is Confessions of a Forty-something F##k Up and features a totally relatable single, childless, middle-aged woman as the main character, ‘Nell Stevens’, whose life […]

To the Childless Woman at Christmas – I See You

December 17, 2020 Jody Day 47

I see you sitting at home muting the rolling TV ads of ridiculously happy, rumbunctious, multi-generational families hilariously solving some Christmas dilemma in under 2 minutes. And yet somehow no one shouts at anyone else and the scene where someone makes painful assumptions about your life because you don’t have kids is missing. And no one asks you if you’d mind sleeping in a tent this year… I see you scrolling through Facebook – like seductively picking an emotional scab – and gasping as your last sister-in-childlessness scanbushes you (and the whole social media universe) with a surprise sonogram. A […]

What does it take to get through childlessness? Guts, hearts, head, new friends, community, connection and a BIG sense of humour! Jody Day interviewed by Australia’s [un]Ripe Podcast (November 2020)

November 14, 2020 Jody Day 2

In this interview from November 2020, Jody Day (founder of Gateway Women) joins Penny and Jo in an episode for the Australian childless/childfree podcast (un)Ripe. You can listen to the full episode here (transcript below). As well as talking about the early days of Gateway Women and how it grew from a blog to the global organization it’s become, Jody also shares what goes on behind the doors of the amazing Gateway Women private online community, and the massive diversity of its 35+ subgroups covering everything from being a Childless Stepmother or Childless & Single to a group which is […]

Never married, over sixty and childless: Donna Ward on living and writing an invisible story.

August 5, 2020 Jody Day 51

Full Transcript Below Donna Ward is an Australian writer, publisher and editor, living in Melbourne. Her 2020 book She I Dare Not Name: A Spinster’s Meditations on Life energised me in a way that few books still have the capacity to do, so eloquently and accurately does it portray not only ‘the life unexpected’ (to paraphrase my own book’s title!) but also, the life ‘invisible’ which is that of the unpartnered, childless woman in our society. In a world focused and built on the needs, attitudes, prejudices and ‘stories’ of those who couple and have children, to be a […]

Coping with International Mother’s Day as a Childless Woman

May 6, 2020 Jody Day 1

To watch this one-hour recording, click the image above or this link Whatever stage of your life you’re at as a childless woman, Mother’s Day can be a complex one to navigate. And for my international readers, it’s coming up this Sunday 10th May. For this video chat, I invited four childless guests to explore how they cope with Mother’s Day. Each of them has a unique viewpoint and I hope this conversation begins to represent a few of the less discussed ways that Mother’s Day and childlessness can intersect… As well as discussing their stories, we also answered questions […]

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