Finding Your 'Plan B' Archives

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 […]

‘Childless’: a new radio documentary. Download the podcast and/or watch the live Q&A with the Director, Hilary Fennell [Recording now available]

January 23, 2022 Jody Day 0

TO LISTEN TO THE DOCUMENTARY AS A PODCAST: On the Newstalk.com website: ‘Documentary on Newstalk’: episode ‘Childless’ Apple Podcasts: ‘Documentary on Newstalk’: episode ‘Childless’ Spotify Podcasts: ‘Documentary on Newstalk’: episode ‘Childless’ Hilary Fennell’s website: www.hilaryfennell.com “It’s hard to imagine that there remains a subject so taboo that although shared by one in five women over 45, it is never discussed. That subject is being childless, but not by choice.” Hilary Fennell, programme maker and journalist is one of a growing number of such women in Ireland. In this documentary she explores what it means to be childless in a child-centred […]

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 […]

‘The Plant-Woman’ – a guest blog by Rachel Giles about nature, healing, grief and finding your Plan B

April 30, 2021 Jody Day 0

RACHEL GILES is a writer, lecturer and editor on art and design and has worked for the National Gallery, Tate, V&A, Gagosian and other galleries and museums. She grows and sells flowers from her cutting garden in London and is passionate about nature’s ability to heal. In 2014 she attended one of Gateway Women’s Reignite Weekends and in 2016 she completed her art history MA dissertation on the visual representation of infertility and childlessness at Birkbeck, London, with distinction. She spoke at Fertility Fest 2018 and co-curated Arts at ESHRE – Fertility Fest’s visual art exhibition – in Barcelona in […]

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 […]

What happens at a Gateway Women Reignite Weekend?

December 19, 2020 Jody Day 10

Since Jody created the Gateway Women Reignite Weekend in 2012, it’s helped thousands of childless women shift the way they experience their childlessness. So what’s so special about it? And how might it help you? Well, first of all, let me go back in time to 2012… I was still in my own early days of recovery from childlessness and this blog was just one year old. Being around families and children was incredibly painful for me and, on many days my grief felt so familiar that I presumed this might just be what being middle-aged felt like! I struggled […]

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 0

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 […]

Oppressed by advice… all over again!

April 4, 2020 Jody Day 13

When I think back to my days of wanting/trying to become a mother and then wanting/trying to recover from that and build a new kind of life that did not include motherhood, one of the things that eventually stopped me from discussing my situation with anyone – was advice. (For me, the fact that the last four-letter spell V.I.C.E seems very apt!) In my training to become a psychotherapist, one of the earliest things we learned (and it’s not an easy habit to break!) is to stop giving advice, either asked for or not, but instead to support our clients […]

#LTLU Living the Life Unexpected (2nd Edition): World Blogtour, 1-19th March 2020

March 1, 2020 Jody Day 45

I’m so proud to announce that the fully-revised and updated 2nd edition of my much-loved book, ‘Living the Life Unexpected’ is being published by Bluebird (PanMacmillan) in the UK on 19 March 2020. With fifty (I know, fifty!) prestigious endorsements inside the front and back jacket, a lovely new cover, a new subtitle, How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children, and new content, (including a new introduction from me which outlines what’s new), I hope you’ll find it exciting whether you’re a returning reader or a brand new one. 25+ chances to win a personally dedicated […]

Salt Water & Honey by Lizzie Lowrie: a powerful new memoir of childlessness and faith

February 28, 2020 Jody Day 0

Lizzie Lowrie is a Christian clergyman’s wife in the UK and one of the writers behind the popular, frank and earthy Christian blog about miscarriage and involuntary childlessness, Salt Water & Honey. Although what remained of my own childhood Christianity was eviscerated by the grief of childlessness, my spirituality survived and has returned to what was there before Sunday School – a deep sense of connection to the natural world; but that was hard-won too as there was a time when even that felt denied to me, exiled as I sensed I was from the natural cycles of birth and […]

Distressed chicken looks at broken egg www.gateway-women.com

Forty, Single and Childless dammit!

February 12, 2020 Jody Day 9

From the archives: first published in October 2011, GW’s first year. I’m 55 now. Have you ever stopped to question why you want (or wanted) a baby so much? Do you find the question shocking? Taboo even? Well, I didn’t question it. And because I avoided this level of deep introspection, I failed to realise that I spent fifteen years of my life chasing a dream based partly on the premise that someone or something would make me feel fulfilled, content, satisfied, real, right, good… I thought a baby, a family, a home, what Zorba the Greek calls ‘the full catastrophe’ – […]

Coping with Holiday Expectations

December 2, 2019 Jody Day 0

Click the image above or this link to watch this 1-hour webinar hosted by More to Life as part of their excellent free webinar series for childless people, this one on the topic of “Coping with Holiday Expectations”. As well as presenting my ‘Perfect Storm’ model to help you analyze and prepare for your holiday triggers in a new way, I am joined on the call by three members of ‘Team Gateway’, each of which are leading one of Gateway Women’s Plan B Mentorship Programmes in 2020: Lauren de Vere, Karin Enfield de Vries and Elizabeth Grambsch. Here is an […]

What if I never find my ‘Plan B’?

November 16, 2019 Jody Day 3

After more than a decade of travelling the path of recovering from childlessness (what I call ‘creating your Plan B’) and having been alongside many of you for much of that time, one of the questions I get asked most often (other than “What can I do about my mother slash boss slash sister slash friend” is this: “What if I never find my Plan B?” It’s a big fear and I completely understand it. I remember when my own life was in meltdown after infertility, divorce, narcissistic abuse, long-term singleness, involuntary childlessness, loneliness, career collapse, insomnia and peri-menopause. And […]

Book review: “Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No” by Kate Kaufmann

July 17, 2019 Jody Day 2

Kate Kaufmann’s book, “Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No’ is the latest addition to a pleasingly growing pile of books about women without children that I am now asked to review. A decade ago, when I first realised that my childlessness was the terrifying endpoint of my fifteen year journey towards motherhood, there was practically nothing out there, apart from a couple of books which were out of print then (and now), such as Rachel Black and Louise Scull’s 2012 Beyond Childlessness and Linda Hunt Anton’s 1992 Never to be a Mother, neither of which I […]

Father’s Day for the Non-Father: a guest blog by Sheridan Voysey

June 14, 2019 Jody Day 1

This is a guest blog by Sheridan Voysey for Gateway Women. Sheridan and his wife are childless not by choice. You can read more about him at the bottom of this article or www.sheridanvoysey.com Thank you so much Sheridan – I really appreciate you taking the time to share your experience with us. Hugs, Jody x As Sheridan Voysey writes: Not long ago I took part in a segment for a television breakfast show. As the cameraman and I drove to the filming location, he told me a story. “Last night some mates and I were in the pub,” he […]

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Finding Your ‘Plan B’