If your New Year’s Resolution is to get some new local friends who ‘get’ what it’s like to be childless in a world gone motherhood-mad, I wanted to let you know that there are free Gateway Women meetups around the world you can join!
Perhaps one of the hardest (and most unexpected) losses of childlessness is that as well as losing the family we longed for, many of us also lose the vast majority (or even all) of our peer group too. Friendships between mothers and nomos (non-mothers) can be stretched to the limit by the now very different life experiences and priorities, and that’s without adding a toxic brew of resentment, jealousy, envy and grief. And that stuff can go both ways too, as mothers mourn the loss of their independence and identity, and we struggle with loneliness and trying to find our identity in a culture that considers childless women as not quite ‘proper’ adults…
So, come and join your tribe – either online and/or in person. And make 2015 the year when you discover not only that you’re not the ‘freak’ that society makes you out to be, but rather part of a growing global phenomenon with 1:5 women remaining childless (about 10% of which are ‘childfree’ which means they have chosen not to parent). More on this in my book, which can download the first two chapters free on the Gateway Women website.
The list below may be out of date – check the listings on our ‘Find a Meetup’ page to be sure!
Gateway Women UK & Ireland:
Aberdeen, Barnstaple, Bath, Belfast, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Brighton, Bristol, Bromley, Cambridge, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Chester,Dublin, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Guildford, High Wycombe, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London: Brixton, London: Dalston, London: Holland Park, London: Kingston, London: Primrose Hill, London: West End, London: Wimbledon, Lyndhurst, Maidstone, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Petersfield, Preston, Reading, Rugby, Salisbury, Sheffield, Sherborne, Southampton, Totnes, York…
(join and suggest your local town/city)
Gateway Women USA
AZ: Sedona, AZ: Tucson, CA: Los Angeles (Hollywood), CA: San Diego, CA: Sacramento, CA: San Francisco (Mission), CA: San Francisco (Oakland), CO: Boulder, CT: New Haven, DC: Washington, IL: Chicago, GA: Atlanta, MA: Boston, MD: Baltimore, MO: St Louis, NC: Charlotte, NM: Albuquerque, NY: Brooklyn, NY: Lower East Side, OH: Cleveland, OH: Cincinnati, OR: Portland, PA: Philadelphia, TN: Nashville, TX: Austin, TX: Fort Worth, UT: Salt Lake City, VT: Burlington, WA: Seattle…
(join and suggest your local town/city)
Gateway Women New Zealand
Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington, Napier, Dunedin…
(join and suggest your local town/city)
Gateway Women Australia
Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane…
(join and suggest your local town/city)
Gateway Women Canada
Edmonton, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg…
(join and suggest your local town/city)
Gateway Women South Africa (new!)
Cape Town…
(join and suggest your local town/city)
GW+ Online Community
And of course, don’t forget our amazing private online community, available wherever you are in the world – even the bathroom at work when you need a dose of sanity in a workplace gone gaga over babies!
Click here for a list of all currently scheduled Gateway Women workshops
Jody Day (50) is the Founder of Gateway Women, the global friendship and support network for childless women and the author of #1 Amazon best-seller ‘Rocking the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfilling Life Without Children’ (Published Autumn 2013). She set up the Gateway Women in 2011 to support, inspire and empower childless-by-circumstance women (like herself) as they develop meaningful and fulfilling lives without children. Jody runs private sessions, workshops and retreats for women coming to terms with the fact that motherhood didn’t happen for them as well as private meetup groups in the UK & Ireland, USA, Australia, NZ and Canada as well as thriving private online community. In October 2014 she was made a Fellow of Social Innovation at Cambridge Judge Business School at Cambridge University for her work as a social entrepreneur. She speaks regularly in public, in the media and online about issues and prejudices facing childless women in our society today and is becoming known as ‘the voice of the childless generation’. For more about Jody and Gateway Women, click here.
Hi Jodi, I was wandering if there any meet up groups in Cornwall, England.
Hi Sarah – the closest to you at the moment would be Exeter or Totnes – both of which are quite a distance! If you’d like us to help you set one up in Cornwall, email us at community@gateway-women.com and we’ll help you get one going. Hugs, Jody x