Coping with Other People Archives - Page 3 of 4

We are all born worthy; childlessness cannot take that away.

April 19, 2018 Jody Day 4

One of the things that almost all of the thousands of childless women I’ve spoken to, corresponded with or worked with over the last seven years have in common has been a sense of unworthiness: unworthy as women, as ‘real’ adults, as sexual beings, as valid members of society, even (as I mention in my video below), as members of the human race. For those who are childless due to infertility or other physical reasons there can be a deep sense of betrayal by our own bodies. For those of us childless due to circumstance, particularly if it involved not […]

#WorldChildless Week 2017, Day 6: Let’s Talk Openly About Childlessness

September 16, 2017 Jody Day 3

World Childless Week has been created by a British childless woman, Stephanie Phillips as a way to highlight the experience, individually and globally, of women and men who are childless not by choice. Each day of World Childless Week has a theme, and the theme for today, Saturday 16th September 2017 is Today is the most common birthday in the world Please find out more, share your thoughts, images, experiences and stories of being childless-not-by choices either below in the comments, on the World Childless Week Facebook page (where most of the activity is taking place this first year), on Twitter at @ChildlessWeek (using the #hashtag #WorldChildlessWeek) or […]

#WorldChildlessWeek 2017, Day 4: ‘Words That Hurt’

September 14, 2017 Jody Day 4

World Childless Week has been created by a British childless woman, Stephanie Phillips as a way to highlight the experience, individually and globally, of women and men who are childless not by choice. Each day of World Childless Week has a theme, and the theme for today, Thursday 14th September 2017 is Words that Hurt. Please find out more, share your thoughts, images, experiences and stories of being childless-not-by choices either below in the comments, on the World Childless Week Facebook page (where most of the activity is taking place this first year), on Twitter at @ChildlessWeek (using the #hashtag #WorldChildlessWeek) or find out more at www.WorldChildlessWeek.com For today’s theme on […]

#WorldChildlessWeek 2017, Day 1: From Isolation to Connection

September 11, 2017 Jody Day 9

World Childless Week has been created by a British childless woman, Stephanie Phillips as a way to highlight the experience, individually and globally, of women and men who are childless not by choice. Each day of World Childless Week has a theme, and the theme for today, Monday 11th September 2017 is is Childless in… Please find out more, share your thoughts, images, experiences and stories of being childless-not-by choices either below in the comments, on the World Childless Week Facebook page (where most of the activity is taking place this first year), on Twitter at @ChildlessWeek (using the #hashtag #WorldChildlessWeek) or at www.WorldChildlessWeek.com Childless in London: my […]

Childlessness after Miscarriage - a blog by Jody Day for Tommy's Charity

Childlessness after miscarriage: the untold story. A guest blog for Tommy’s charity

July 4, 2017 Jody Day 4

Tommy’s guest blog, 03/07/2017, by Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women Tommy’s is a British charity supporting women and couples through miscarriage, early-term loss, still birth and other pregnancy and birth related difficulties. You can find out more about Tommy’s and read this article on their website here The losses of miscarriage, stillbirth and early-term loss are devastating and still something that women and couples are encouraged to keep to themselves. However, in recent years, high-profile individuals such as Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan and, only this week, British singer Charlotte Church, have chosen to break the taboo by talking of their […]

Coping with those childless holiday blues…

November 21, 2016 Jody Day 16

As I’m based in the UK, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. However, because unchosen childlessness is a pain shared globally, there are many US and Canadian women who read this blog, and who are members of the private Gateway Women online community. It’s from them that I’ve learned that it’s like having to do Christmas…twice. Whilst I was still grieving my childlessness, topped off with being divorced and single, Christmas was like a thorn in my paw from September onwards, so I get it what a big deal it is. I’m wondering what the focus on ‘gratitude’ (which seems to be […]

Mothers in Our Hearts on Mother’s Day

May 6, 2016 Jody Day 9

As dawn was breaking over London on UK Mother’s Day morning, I was on my way to one of London’s most iconic churches: St Martin in the Fields on Trafalgar Square to take part in their Mothering Sunday service being broadcast live on BBC Radio4. As my black cab passed under the shadow of the iconic lions, a big lump came up in my throat. I remember the young woman I was who, aged 19, stood in a then rather grubby Trafalgar Square and protested against apartheid in South Africa, or who slumped exhausted against those same lions as dawn broke […]

Honouring your experience of Mother’s Day

March 1, 2016 Jody Day 5

In the UK, we celebrate Mother’s Day as “Mothering Sunday”, three Sundays before Easter and so this coming Sunday. It was originally a day when all domestic servants were given a coordinated day off so that they could visit their families and together attend a service at their “Mother” church. It was a family day. However, gradually that original meaning has been lost and has been overtaken by the “Mother’s Day” first introduced in the US by Anna Jarvis in 1914 and falling on the second Sunday in May. Interestingly, Anna Jarvis was childless and the scope of her Mother’s Day also […]

Talking About Childlessness: Jody Day interviews Lisa Manterfield of www.lifewithoutbaby.com

December 13, 2015 Jody Day 7

One of the thing that has helped me enormously in my recovery from involuntary childlessness has been hearing other women’s stories. Over the last few years I’ve got to know some amazing childless women and it’s been a privilege and a delight that I wanted to share with you. I know that it would have made a huge difference to me when I was still struggling if I’d been able to eavesdrop on conversations between women who’d recovered from their childlessness and were moving on in ways that felt meaningful to them. Firstly, because I didn’t know women like that, and secondly because these conversations weren’t (and still […]

Talking About Childlessness: Jody Day interviews Alicia Orre of www.aliciaorre.com

November 1, 2015 Jody Day 6

One of the thing that has helped me enormously in my recovery from involuntary childlessness has been hearing other women’s stories. Over the last few years I’ve got to know some amazing childless women and it’s been a privilege and a delight that I wanted to share with you. I know that it would have made a huge difference to me when I was still struggling if I’d been able to eavesdrop on conversations between women who’d recovered from their childlessness and were moving on in ways that felt meaningful to them. Firstly, because I didn’t know women like that, and secondly because these conversations weren’t (and still […]

Honouring Your Childlessness on Mother’s Day

March 13, 2015 Jody Day 33

In the UK, we celebrate Mother’s Day as “Mothering Sunday”, three Sundays before Easter and so this coming Sunday. It was originally a day when all domestic servants were given a coordinated day off so that they could visit their families and together attend a service at their “Mother” church. It was a family day. However, gradually that original meaning has been lost and has been overtaken by the “Mother’s Day” first introduced in the US by Anna Jarvis in 1914 and falling on the second Sunday in May. Interestingly, Anna Jarvis was childless and the scope of her Mother’s Day also […]

4 Tips to Cope with (and even enjoy!) Your Childless Christmas

November 2, 2014 Jody Day 34

For many childless women, the best day of Christmas is the 26 December… when it’s all over again for another year! Having worked with hundreds of childless women face-to-face, and thousands of women online over the last few years, the topic of ‘coping with Christmas’ is never far below the surface, and once summer is over it looms on the horizon like a troubling iceberg. Although each woman’s situation is different, similar feelings consistently arise about the upcoming holidays: fear, shame, loneliness, isolation, stress, secrets, pressure, exposure, dread, sadness, anger… I’ve come to think that Christmas is, in many ways, the […]

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 […]

Help! I’m so jealous of pregnant women and mothers!

April 22, 2014 Jody Day 11

A guest post by GW+ Community Member: Marjon Bakker A few weeks ago I listened to a BBC World Service radio programme about envy. It features a British writer, Jessica Hepburn, who is experiencing severe ‘baby envy’ because she cannot have a child. She tells us how envious she can be because she longs for something other women have achieved so easily. On the Gateway Women Google Plus community (or GW+ for short!) someone wrote that she thought it was in interesting programme, but that it was a pity that no answer was given to the question of how to […]

Honouring your Childlessness on Mother’s Day

March 18, 2014 Jody Day 28

In the UK, we celebrate Mother’s Day as “Mothering Sunday”, three Sundays before Easter and this year falling on Sunday 30th March. It was originally a day when all domestic servants were given a coordinated day off so that they could visit their families and together attend a service at their “Mother” church. It was a family day. However, gradually that original meaning has been lost and has been overtaken by the “Mother’s Day” first introduced in the US by Anna Jarvis in 1914 and falling on the second Sunday in May. Interestingly, Anna Jarvis was childless and the scope of her […]