Immediate help for childless holiday survival

Holidays making you nuts? You can survive. You will survive. Here are some things that might make it easier.

Life Without Baby: Holiday Companion. Lisa Manterfield and Kathleen Guthrie Woods, who write the Life Without Baby blog, have compiled their favorite holiday blog posts  into one 57-page e-book that just might help you get through these crazy days. Family traditions getting you down? Is it kids, kids, kids everywhere you turn? Tired of people asking when you’re going to have children? This little e-book offers advice for all those situations and more. Plus it’s fun to read. You can download it right now and be reading it just in time to face Christmas with a more positive outlook.

Watch a movie! Television being full of sappy specials these days, I've been using my Netflix movie subscription to the max. Last night I watched "The Last Ride," which is a fictionalized story about country music star Hank Williams. So good. Not a baby or pregnant woman to be seen. Earlier this week, I watched "Great Gatsby" with Leonardo DiCaprio. Wonderful and also childfree. You could rent this version and the older one with Robert Redford and spend almost five hours in no-baby bliss. Another excellent movie is "Now is Good," which is about a young woman who is trying to pack everything into her life before she dies of a fatal illness. No babies, and it's very upbeat despite the subject matter.

If you're into monsters, suspense, fantasy or romance, I'm sure there's a movie out there for you. Go to the theater or stay home and watch it on your DVD player or Internet-connected device and forget all about your troubles.

Can you suggest some other great distractions?

Read my guest post at Life Without Baby

Dear friends,
Lisa at the Life Without Baby blog was kind enough to display my guest post "That He Would Do This for Her" today, Friday, March 23. I think you will relate and enjoy many of the posts at that site. Lisa Manterfield is the author of a fine book, I'm Taking My Eggs and Going Home,which I have discussed here before. Her circumstances are a little different, but we have a lot in common. In addition to her own posts, she invites other writers to join the discussion.

I have been informed that people are having trouble subscribing to my Childless by Marriage blog. Try clicking "follow" and then "posts" and use the Google interface. It seems the most user-friendly. Please let me know if this doesn't work. I'm thinking about moving to a different blog host and this would be a good reason to do it. I don't want to lose any of you.

My book is coming soon. A childless friend told me yesterday that my books are my babies. She may be right. What do you think? Are some of us destined to produce things other than human children?

Manterfield really understands childlessness

Here's a book you might want to read.

I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home by Lisa Manterfield, Steel Rose Press, 2010. This is a memoir that includes all phases of childlessness. Manterfield's first husband did not want to have children. She was still hoping he'd change his mind when their marriage broke up.

Then she met Jose, who was older, already had children and had had a vasectomy, but he was willing to do whatever it took to have a baby with Lisa, including having surgery to reverse the vasectomy. Surgery complete, Lisa and Jose set about trying to make a baby. They had names picked out and all kinds of plans for little Sophia or Valentino, but she didn't get pregnant. Ultimately, Lisa had to accept that she might never be a mother and that maybe life without children could be all right.

Wherever you're at on the childless spectrum, I suspect you will identify with this book. It is well-written, well-researched and suspenseful enough to hold the reader from beginning to end. It’s a welcome addition to the literature of childlessness.

There's more. Manterfield blogs at LifeWithoutBaby.wordpress.com. She also has a fantastic video on her childless experience at http://lisamanterfield.com. It will make you smile and feel less alone.