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In this Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen webinar, organised during World Childless Week 2025, and part of its programming for the ‘We Are Worthy’, prepare to meet a group of older childless women who, having reclaimed their worthiness from childlessness, aren’t prepared to now relinquish it to ageism!
DATE: Saturday 20th September
TIME: 7.00pm BST (UK/Ireland). Find your timezone HERE
Your nomo-crone host (nomo = not-mother + crone wasn't always an insult!)
YOUR HOST: JODY DAY(UK/Ireland) is the English/Irish founder of Gateway Women (2011) and a World Childless Week Ambassador and hosts the ‘Childless Elderwomen’ subgroup with more than 200 members, aged 50-80, in the Childless Collective Online Community. An author, speaker, systems thinker and integrative psychotherapist, she’s known for her best-selling Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children (Self-Published 2013; PanMac 2016/2020) and her TEDx talk ‘The Lost Tribe of Childless Women‘ has been watched 220,000 times. Now in her early sixties, she is increasingly focused on the challenges and adventures of elderhood without motherhood, and is co-creating a local Alterkin Circle (Alternative Kinship Circle) for those ageing without children in her own rural Irish location, and writing about it as it develops on her bestselling Substack, ‘Gateway Elderwomen.’ She was a founding and former board member at the UK Charity Ageing Without Children, and is a former Fellow in Social Innovation at Cambridge Judge Business School. After a lifetime in London, she now lives in a tiny hamlet on the Atlantic coast of West Cork, Ireland.
Our wonderful panel of nomocrones to include:
DR STELLA DUFFY OBE (UK/NZ) is in her early 60s. She grew up in Aotearoa/New Zealand and has lived in the UK since her early 20s. She is an existential psychotherapist and also teaches psychotherapy theory and practice, as well as an award-winning writer of seventeen novels, over seventy short stories, and fifteen plays. Her doctoral research was in the embodied experience of postmenopause, and she is currently rewriting her thesis for mass-market publication with Virago, entitled Being The Change – it’s a guide to embracing our creative postmenopause. Stella is also a yoga teacher who teaches yoga for writers. She and her wife are childless due to cancer treatment and subsequent failed IVF. http://stelladuffy.blog
SUE FAGALDE LICK (US) is in her early seventies and the author of the memoir & blog ‘Childless by Marriage’, the collection ‘Love or Children: When You Can’t Have Both‘, a wonderful trilogy of novels (beginning with ‘Up Beaver Creek‘) featuring her inspiring and relatable childless heroine, ‘P.D.’, as well as journalism & poetry. She is childless due to her second husband not wanting (more) children and in 2024, published her memoir ‘No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s‘, about their marriage, his decline, her life whilst being his sole carer, and death. A musician and singer, she lives alone in rural Oregon and writes a Substack about her experience of ‘solo ageing’ called ‘Can I Do It Alone?‘ Main website: www.suelick.com
JULIE GREENAN (UK) is 70 and lives in Newcastle, N.E. England, and regularly spends time in Spain, where she lived for ten years from the age of 59. She’s single, having been married and had several long-term relationships in the past. For many reasons, including ambivalence, circumstances and physical issues, including two pregnancy losses and many encounters with the medical profession, she did not become a mother, but prefers to avoid categorising herself as either childless or childfree. In 2023 she was a panellist at StoryhouseCHIDLESS as part of Jody’s ‘Finding Community in Elderhood’ panel, and has appeared on the Full Stop podcast episode ‘Single and Childless in a Pandemic‘ speaking of her experience of living alone through lockdown in the south of Spain. Julie is passionate about open-water swimming, loves singing and, when she gets down to it, writing. She’s an active member of the Singles sub-group in the Childless Collective (formerly Gateway Women) online community, and the Childless Elderwomen group (hosted by Jody).
BYDDI LEE (UK: Northern Ireland) is an Irish writer in her late 50s. Her most recent book is Barren – a fictional account of infertility set amid the backdrop of climate change, and ultimately offers hope across the millennia. Her other books include Rejuvenation, a speculative fiction trilogy about reverse-ageing that confronts society’s infatuation with youth and questions where our values lie, and her first book, March to November, a quirky but dark relationship drama set in Belfast. She has also published flash fiction and short stories. Byddi also writes for stage and screen and is a member of BBC Writersroom Voices 23. Her most recent play is a climate change satire called Toxic Relationships. For more information, visit www.ByddiLee.com
MARIA HILL (US) is in her mid-seventies. She is a World Childless Week Ambassador and a long-time member of the Gateway Women/Childless Collective online community. She is the founder of Sensitive Evolution and the author of The Emerging Sensitive: A Guide For Finding Your Place In The World. She is a writer, coach, healer, and transformative thinker illuminating the connection between culture, identity and the self. She can be found on her Substack, where she discusses the current cultural shift from hierarchical to egalitarian systems. https://mariahill.substack.com/
STEPHANIE RAFFELOCK (US) is in her early 70s and is a novelist, poet and essayist. She holds a degree in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University, a small Buddhist-inspired school in Boulder, Colorado. In addition to teaching her how to write, Naropa taught her about community service and over the years, Stephanie’s service has taken the form of teaching creative writing to marginalized communities, including but not limited to, halfway houses for teenagers and incarcerated women. She’s the author of A Delightful Little Book on Aging, Creatrix Rising and the editor of the anthology Art In the Time of Unbearable Crisis, for which she wrote the introduction. Stephanie writes an excellent Substack called Creative Eldering. Website: www.byline-stephanie.com
ELIZABETH GRAMBSCH (USA) is in her early 60s. A musician, performance coach and licensed Gateway Women workshop facilitator, she lives with her husband near Minneapolis, USA; they are childless due to health-related issues and after multiple miscarriages. Elizabeth has shared Germanic and Obijwe heritage, which deeply informs her approach to ancestral healing and reintegration after trauma. elizabethgrambsch.com
DR. DIANE OSGOOD (US) is in her early 60s and for thirty years has worked to make the world a better and kinder place. She has a Ph.D. in Environmental Economics and has helped companies to create products that are better for people, for the planet, and for businesses. She’s understandably proud of her work on human rights, including slavery in supply chains, and helping companies develop climate change strategies. She’s advised people such as former President Bill Clinton, heads of state from Caribbean countries and Costa Rica, the Vatican and private philanthropists, and for five years worked for Richard Branson as a director of sustainability. Diane is childless-by-circumstance and lives between Chicago and rural France and, as a personal friend of Jody’s, has seen the Gateway Women project evolve from day one; her sage advice, ‘You need a book’, was one of the reasons Jody wrote hers! Diane’s book, Your Shopping Superpower: Follow Your Values and Better Your World One Purchase at a Time, was published in 2025, and she’s the co-author and editor of 2022’s The Carbon Almanack: It’s Not Too Late, as well as appearing in countless articles and journals over the years. Diane’s Substack is Your Shopping Superpower, and her main website is https://www.dianeosgood.com
CAROL SCOTT (UK) is 70 and has been a therapist for 25 years. She has worked extensively with those who are childless not by choice and went through her own journey of miscarriages and baby loss. Carol is currently writing a book and creating a 6-week program about recovering from the end of a long-term relationship, with the working title of ‘Beyond Break Up’, which includes a chapter on being single and childless not by choice. Carol’s therapy practice is listed on Gateway Women’s Childless Therapist’ directory here, and her therapy website is: https://www.carolsuzanscott.com
Find out more about Jody’s Gateway Elderwomen project here. Read Jody’s FREE essays on her Bestselling Substack ‘Gateway Elderwomen’ here. Join Jody’s ‘Childless Elderwomen’ subgroup (hosted by the Childless Collective) here. Join the Gateway Women newsletter so you don’t miss notice of the the next Fireside Wisdom call here.
