Dealing with Grief Archives - Page 4 of 8

Women without children in the workplace: a hidden and growing diversity issue

September 22, 2018 Jody Day 14

After issues with unempathetic friends and family, workplace issues are the next biggest issue that seem to create problems in the life of childless (and childfree) women. This anonymous guest blog (below) was written by a member of the Gateway Women Online Community during World Childless Week and she shared it with her whole organisation by email. It was well received and thus I wanted to share it with you. Here is an excellent example of an organizational Diversity Policy which includes childlessness, from Bristol University in the UK. It was suggested and created by a Gateway Women member (Dr Lindsay […]

10 Tips for Healing from the Heartbreak of Childlessness

July 18, 2018 Jody Day 13

Birthdays can be very hard work when you’re childless not by choice – reminding you of yet another year passed without the family you longed for and also socially excluded from the milestones and rituals that others around you get to experience and you don’t. That’s something that m/others often fail to grasp about our situation, that it’s not just that we didn’t get to have a baby, but that for the rest of our lives we’re either excluded or on the far reaches of the socializing and shared conversations that parenthood involves. Well, some good news for you… Today […]

Embracing the Grief of Childlessness – a video recording of my More to Life webinar in July 2018

July 9, 2018 Jody Day 5

Click the image above or this link to watch or share: https://youtu.be/6M4EE7UIBfQ Learning that the despair that I was feeling around my childlessness was GRIEF was the beginning of my healing. That was seven years ago, and I’ve been in a good place with my childlessness for five years now – in fact, I’m pretty sure I feel as at peace with my childlessness now as if I had chosen it – although I still have my ‘griefy moments’ – usually when a new aspect of my loss that I hadn’t been aware of before comes into view and my heart […]

“Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness” by Lesley Pyne

June 8, 2018 Jody Day 2

I am very proud to have written the Foreword for Lesley Pyne’s book, ‘Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness: Inspiring Stories to Guide You to a Fulfilling Life’, published on June 18, 2018. You can download the first chapter free on Lesley’s website at www.lesleypyne.co.uk and it is available to pre-order as a paperback or e-book online, with a Kindle special offer of £1.48 (UK Amazon) or $1.99 (US Amazon) up until publication date. In our friendly and positive video chat above, Lesley and talk about how we have both been changed not only by our shared experience of childlessness, but how […]

Poster affixed to telegraph pole: "lost mojo"

Surviving the childless weekend blues

March 30, 2018 Jody Day 39

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 […]

An album about coming to terms with childlessness – Seamonster, by Chiara Berardelli

March 19, 2018 Jody Day 1

Seamonster is a new album by the Scottish singer/songwriter Chiara Berardelli. In it, she chronicles her own journey through grieving her childlessness, the support and solace she found in the Gateway Women online community, and her Plan B life that gradually took (and is taking) shape in place of the family she always expected to have. As she says on the notes for the album here: The songs on this album have been inspired by the loss of a dream, my dream of one day becoming a mother. It’s an invisible loss, hard to put into words, even harder to […]

Getting through Mother’s Day as a childless woman

March 11, 2018 Jody Day 8

“Mother’s Day” – the two words that signal the most dreaded time of the year after Christmas when you’re grieving childlessness. For UK readers, Mother’s Day falls today on Sunday 11th March although, thanks to social media, we get to experience it all over again when international Mother’s Day happens in May… I was interviewed at length for an article which was published today in the The Observer about being childless on Mother’s Day. One of the questions really made me think was this: “Does the notion of Mother’s Day upset/anger/depress you?” I thought about it and although whilst I was […]

The Black Woman in the Room

March 5, 2018 Jody Day 12

A guest blog by Yvonne John, author of Dreaming of a Life Unlived: Intimate Stories and Portraits of Women without Children, and a licensed Gateway Women Sister who will be leading Gateway Women’s first Reignite Weekend for Women of Colour in London in April 2018 and in Luton in September 2018. Click here or scroll down for an video interview with Yvonne where we discuss childlessness after abortion, the impact of infertility on marriage, Yvonne’s difficult experience as a single, childless women in a charismatic Christian church, race, identity and more… One of my earliest memories of childhood was when […]

Let the new shit begin

January 2, 2018 Jody Day 31

There’s something oppressive about New Year, and all these exhortations to become some new version of ourself. I mean, if I had free choice to select which time of the year to mark as ‘New Year’, one that felt like a promising time for us all to ‘start afresh’ it wouldn’t be NOW for goodness sake! For many of us who are childless not by choice, we’ve just survived the longest and trickiest holiday season there is. It started on 31st October with Halloween and has been careering downhill, picking up speed as it’s snowballed through Bonfire Night, Thanksgiving, Sinterklass […]

#WorldChildless Week 2017, Day 7: Finding Support & Moving Forwards

September 17, 2017 Jody Day 7

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, Sunday 17th September 2017 is ‘Finding Support & Moving Forwards’. 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 For the last […]

#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 5: ‘Will I Ever Get Over Not Having Children?’

September 15, 2017 Jody Day 1

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, Tuesday 12th September 2017 is We Are Worthy. 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 For today’s theme of ‘We Are […]

#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 […]

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