Creativity Archives - Page 2 of 2

Elegy in an English Country Churchyard

October 17, 2012 Jody Day 28

Just recently I was on a residential training as part of my psychotherapy studies. I arrived at the venue, a gorgeous tumbledown old Abbey in the English countryside without having given the days ahead much thought – after all, I’ve been training with some of my fellow students for three years now. I had no real anxiety apart from whether the beds would be OK and whether I’d be able to sleep. Turned out I was right to worry about the beds, but what did come as a great surprise to me was to feel my scar of childlessness touched […]

Creating a new life for yourself as a childless woman

August 29, 2012 Jody Day 20

Creativity is one of the words that brings out the ‘woo woo’ faster than almost anything else. It’s as if it’s the one word guaranteed to make our inner bitch jump up and say “no thank you, we don’t do that around here!” before you’ve even had a chance to open your mouth. Why is creativity so scary? I’ve come to believe that creativity is one of the roots of recovery from involuntary childlessness. However, it’s quite easy to become so comfortable with our “poor me I couldn’t have children” persona that we’re actually a bit reluctant to let go of it. I mean, […]

What the hell am I going to do with my life if I don’t have a baby?

August 21, 2012 Jody Day 23

This is the question that haunts you: What the hell am I going to do with my life if I don’t have a baby? It’s often the driver that keeps the engine of anxiety churning, night and day… It’s the 3am question par excellence, although we’re a bit sheepish to admit it to anyone. I’ve got some good news and some bad news The Good News: Once you’ve got to the time where ‘running out of time to have a baby’ becomes ‘I ran out of time to have a baby’ things get a whole lot simpler. The Bad News: It may […]

Banksy, Sorry the Lifestyle You Ordered is Currently Out of Stock, 2012

If I’m a childless witch, where’s my broomstick?

June 26, 2012 Jody Day 37

From the archives: First published June 2012 Perhaps one of the most difficult things about being childless by circumstance, and the one that those who are parents or who have chosen to be childfree find hard to grasp, is working out what our life is ‘for’. So much of our hoping, planning, dreaming and fantasising has been in preparation for a life that is not to be. And, much as fertility medicine has brought joy to some, it’s also condemned a lot of other women to extended periods of ‘hoping’ well into their forties, or even longer…. Fertility treatments or […]

What Talking Heads has to do with finding your mojo again as a childless woman

September 8, 2011 Jody Day 15

Perhaps one of the most delightful discoveries of coming to terms with not having children has been that my natural joie-de-vivre has returned. In other words, I got my mojo working. Now, this doesn’t mean that I wake up every morning like Mary Poppins, thrilled with the way my life has turned out in every tiny aspect, but neither am I so daft as to believe that: (a) anyone really feels like that every day (with the exception perhaps of the Dalai Lama and I’m sure even he wakes up occasionally with neckache and wishes he could bunk off) or […]

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