No Children? What is your Plan B?

Jody Day, a British woman who founded Gateway-Women.com an online community for childless women, recently published a book called Rocking the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfiling Life Without Children. In it, she tells about how she struggled with infertility and other issues that prevented her from having children. They also prevented her from enjoying the life she had because she was so busy thinking about the life she did not have. In her book, Day talks about the “shadow life.” She was simultaneously living the life she had living a shadow life in which she was a mother.

“At no point in that time (a 15-year stretch no less) did I fully and completely embrace the life I was actually living, that of a childless woman. I was always in transition to the next stage when my real life would begin.”

My friends, we only get one life. As my father likes to say, “It is what it is.” And it could be much worse. Ask anyone who is paralyzed or suffering from a fatal illness or who has lost a limb. Ask anyone whose spouse or child has died. Every day that we can get out of bed on our own and choose what we want to do is a good day and should not be wasted.

We risk poisoning our relationships not only with our mates but with everyone else around us if we see only that they have kids and we don’t. Try to see beyond that. Why do we love these people? How would we feel if we lost them?

Examine your lives. Acknowledge what you are probably not going to do. One of the childless women I interviewed for my book said she looked at having children like a lot of other things she had never done and probably never would. She would not be a published author, would not live in Paris, would not be a concert pianist, would not be rich, tall or thin. But she loved the life she had.

If there’s something you really feel you must do, then do it. If it means finding another mate or adopting a child instead of giving birth, just do it. But if you are not willing or able to take these steps, look at what else you can do. You probably have more choices than most because you are not tied down with children. The "childfree" crowd sees that as a good thing.

Make a list of everything that you CAN do, that you get to do, that God gave you the opportunity to do. Now use that list to design your own Plan B.

In future posts, we’ll talk about rituals to let go of childless grief and places to find support from people who understand. Meanwhile if you haven’t read Rocking the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfiling Life Without Children, do yourself a favor and read it. Jody will take you through the steps toward starting to not only survive but enjoy the life you have.



Copyright 2014 Sue Fagalde Lick

Over-40 wisdom for childless women

Today I'm yielding my platform to Jody Day of Gateway Women who on her 50th birthday has published a marvelous post titled "Things I Wish I'd Known at 40." She offers the truth about fertility, menopause, grief, relationships, society's views of childless women, and the joys of life beyond the childless dream.

Lines I love in this post include:
"Freed from chasing the dream (and fantasy) of motherhood, you begin to realise old dreams and create new ones."

"The life you're going to create instead of motherhood is going to be richer and more fulfilling than you can yet imagine, and in ways you cannot yet imagine." 

Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women, is also the author of Rocking the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfiling Life Without Children, a great book about dealing with childlessness.

I can think of a lot of things I wish I had known when I was 40. Foremost would be realizing how short and precious life is and how important it is not to waste any of it moping about things that aren't going to change.

What about you? If you're past 40, what do you wish you had known before? What advice would you give to our younger readers. I welcome your comments.

Some Tidbits for Your Childless Christmas Stocking

I’ll bet most of us are going a little crazy with Christmas only a week away. I was out of town for my dad’s surgery in early December (he's doing great), so I got all off schedule. To catch up, I decided to do everything in one day: shopping, cards and decorating. For those inclined to try it, take my advice and don’t. About a third of the way through the decorations, I started sobbing. It was just too hard with no kids, no husband, and no family nearby. Why bother? The dog hovered around me, trying to lick my face as I dove deep into my pity party. 

The next day I was over it and finished what I could, deciding I didn't need to do everything I had done every year before. To be honest, not having children or grandchildren meant a lot fewer gifts to worry about. I had my presents in the mail before the post office closed at noon. Now I’m done decorating and almost finished with the cards. I'm finally able to listen to Christmas carols.

As we established in last week’s post, I don’t have any young children in my life. Everybody’s kids have grown up. But that’s not the case for lots of childless people. This time of year, they find themselves surrounded by people obsessed with making Christmas special for their kids. I’ll bet some of you can identify with this reader’s dilemma over the family gift exchange in the Ask Carolyn column. I like Carolyn’s answer. Do you?

 

In lieu of any brilliant thoughts of my own today, I offer two additional articles that I think you’ll find worth reading. In the first one, Jody Day of Gateway-Women offers a powerful essay, "Childlessness is a Political, as Well as a Deeply Personal, Issue" on the difficulties of being childless at Christmas  and throughout the year.

This piece, “I’m So Glad I’ve Frozen My Eggs,” linked from the Have Children or Not blog, offers a fascinating look at one possibility for women who are worried about not being able to have children until after their eggs are too old.

Happy reading, and please try to enjoy all the good things about the holidays and let the rest go. As always, I welcome your comments.

‘Otherhood’ and Fifty Ways to Be Childless

Today’s post is a trio of goodies for you:

1. Jody Day at Gateway-Women.com has compiled a wonderful list called “50 Ways Not to Be a Mother—with Apologies to Paul Simon." It’s amazing how many different ways a person can wind up not having children, a lot of them through absolutely no fault or choice of their own. Me, I seem to fit numbers 9 and 39. Check out the list and see what number fits your situation.

2. Some of those 50 ways deal with not having a suitable partner, which leads me to my second link. Melanie Notkin, author of Savvy Auntie and the accompanying blog, has written a new book called Otherhood: The Unrequited Love Story of Modern Women, which talks about how many of us never find the right partner. As a result, we don’t become parents. It’s due out in February, but you can pre-order it now. Melanie has also written about this at her Huffington Post blog. Read "The Truth About the Childless Life" there.   

3. Marcia Drut-Davis, author of a new book titled Confessions of a Childfree Woman: A Life Spent Swimming Against the Mainstream, has a blog called Childfree Reflections, which may offer some comfort to you. The site includes a free resource list, but I must warn you that you have to sign up for the newsletter to get it, and nearly all of the resources are for people who are childfree by choice.

Oh what the heck, I’ll plug my own site. I’ve got a ridiculously long resource list on my Childless by Marriage website, which you can access with no strings. If you’d like to buy my book, I’d be delighted, but the list is my gift to you.

Have a wonderful week.

Check out these childless/childfree links

Having written myself down to my last syllable this week, today I am sharing some interesting links about having or not having children. 


Get tired of people asking when you're going to have kids or failing to understand that the decision has been made and you're not? This fun article in Jezebel by Karyn Polewaczyk may give you some ideas on how to counter those nosy nellies. Thanks to Beth Follini for sharing this in her "Have Children or Not"  blog.

From a book called Why Have Kids by Jessica Valenti comes this excerpt reprinted in The Atlantic, titled "Not Wanting Kids is Entirely Normal." 

For a perspective on babymaking vs. careers, check out "I am More Than Just a Uterus" on the Road Less Traveled blog.

Finally, visit my friend Jody Day's Gateway Women blog to read "Healing the Friendship Gap Between Mothers and The Childless." 

Have a great weekend, dear friends.

Tasty childfree treats from the web

Today I've decided to share some tasty treats from the web that should give you a balanced meal of information, inspiration and laughter.

At The Not Mom site, recent posts include New Year's goals--can you express your intention for 2013 in one word?--a tribute to non-mom and screenwriter Nora Ephron, and a look at whether actresses without kids can effectively play mothers.

Visit Gateway-women.com to read "No More Nice Girls," in which Jody Day takes us from a familiar nursery rhyme to the justifiable anger many women feel in our situation.

Then hit the Children or Not blog for a link to a great article by a woman who decided to become a mom on her own and also a delightful link to a goofy song by a couple who decided to break up because he wanted children and she didn't and used a music video to announce their decision.

Have a great weekend, and if doesn't turn out so great, write a song about it.

Got the Childless Holiday Blues? Curl Up with a Good Book

Anyone else feeling all grinchy on this Friday before Christmas? As the saying goes, this too will pass.

Meanwhile, I've got a couple new books to tell you about.

Kidfree and Lovin' It by Kaye D. Walters just came in the mail this week. I haven't read too much of it yet, and I can tell from the title that the book leans a little more toward people who don't want children than toward people who do. But it is extremely well done, with an almost encyclopedic collection of information and references, and she does include us "childless by circumstance" throughout. In fact, I was one of the many people she surveyed for this book. I was tickled to find one of my quotes on one of the first pages. She doesn't mention my name, but I'm the "56-year-old writer from Oregon."

What to Expect When No One's Expecting by Jonathan Last won't officially be out until February, but I have already put my order in. This book is not about the whole childfree/childless business but about what's going to happen in our world when we're having far fewer children. Last maintains that it's going to have a big effect on our economy and culture because the population will be shrinking and getting older. It sounds fascinating.

Jody Day of Gateway-women.com has a new book coming out next year that should make us feel good all over. Meanwhile, don't miss her blog or her website.

My own Childless by Marriage, which debuted last Mother's Day, is the only book I know about that spends more than a few paragraphs on the situation where one does not have children because his/her spouse is unable or unwilling to make babies together.

Or, if you don't have the energy to read and winter storms have knocked out your cable TV like they did mine yesterday, you can curl up on the couch and watch four episodes in a row of "Little House on the Prairie" on DVD. They sure don't make guys like "Pa" anymore.

Have a happy weekend.