Childless by Marriage book

This Childless Book Gets It Right

Sue Fagalde Lick Childless by Marriage book, Childless reflections, Gillian Guthrie, The Last Two Eggs

I have mentioned this book before, but I have finished reading it now and can heartily recommend it to my childless friends. 

Childless: Reflections on Life’s Longing for Itself by Gillian Guthrie, Short Stop Press, 2012. This is a marvelous book that covers a vast range of topics related to women who don’t have children. Guthrie, who grew up in South Africa and lives in Australia, spent many years working in television news before tackling this book that is close to her heart. Married twice to men with problems, she didn’t find a man who would be a suitable father until she was at the end of her fertility and she was not able to conceive. 

To produce this book, Guthrie conducted extensive research and called together childless women to meet for Childfree Lunches where they would talk about things people with children wouldn’t understand. The resulting book is beautifully written, nicely weaving Guthrie’s own story into the overall picture of childlessness in Australia and the rest of the world. Currently one in four women are childless in her country. 

Chapters introduce us to all sorts of women without children and how they happened to be that way. Guthrie writes about gay women, women in politics who have been trashed for not having children, women who grew up with abusive and/or mentally ill parents, women who suffered through legal and illegal abortions, women who waited too long, women who waited too long, the grief of childlessness and so much more. 

The book is available in print and as a Kindle ebook.

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Speaking of Kindle ebooks, my book Childless by Marriage is still scheduled to be released for Kindle on Mother’s Day. Things are moving a little slowly with cover design, but I’m still hoping for that date. 
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Finally, if you want a giggle or just to see me make a fool of myself, I recorded a humorous piece called “The Last Two Eggs” on YouTube last week. Take a look. 


See you on Thursday.

Childless by Marriage book publication date set

Sue Fagalde Lick Childless by Marriage book

I know. I’ve been talking about it for years. I wasn’t even pre-menopausal when I started this project, and now I’m post-menopausal. But it’s coming. Childless by Marriage, the ebook, is scheduled to be released May 13, which happens to be Mother’s Day.Instead of moping about your childless state, you can read this. I’m starting with a Kindle ebook, which will be very reasonably priced. In that format, we can easily work out the kinks–if we find any–before the paperback goes to press.

I’m currently tweaking the formatting and stressing out over how my family, especially my stepchildren, will react. I worry about revealing so much of my life to everyone I know and everyone I don’t know, but we need to tell our stories so people will understand what it’s like to be childless in a world where most people have children.

Right now, I’m working with an artist on cover ideas. If you have suggestions, I’d love to hear them. I don’t want anything cartoonish. There is occasional humor in the book, but being childless because you have a partner who can’t or doesn’t want to have babies with you is a serious matter. It deserves a dignified cover. So I welcome your ideas that I can share with Jeffery over the next week or so. He designed my Shoes Full of Sand cover, so I have faith that he’ll come up with something wonderful.

So, ideas?

New focus for Childless by Marriage book

Sue Fagalde Lick Alzheimer's Disease, caregiving spouse without children, Childless by Marriage book, My Imaginary Daughter, Still Crazy, widow without children

As many of you know, I have been working on a book called Childless by Marriage for several years. At least four times, I have considered the manuscript finished. So far, no big publisher has accepted it, but it keeps coming close, and I have hope that that will be accepted this year. One way or another, it is going to be published.

I was out of town on a book-selling trip last November when, as I sank into a well-earned hot bath, I had a sudden realization that changed the focus of the book. I jumped out and typed for the next three hours in my bathrobe. All this time, I have been trying to leave out the fact that my husband Fred had Alzheimer’s Disease, that he spent two years in a nursing home, and that he died in April, 2011. I didn’t want to bum people out, it didn’t seem like part of the book, and, until April, I didn’t know when it would end.

But I realized in November that Fred’s illness is an important part of the story. I can’t hide it from my readers. I wound up caring for him as if he were my child. And, because we had no children together, I did it alone. Now, as a widow, it makes a huge difference that I don’t have grown children and grandchildren to turn to for help and for company.

So now the focus is more on my connection with Fred, the love that led me to give up children in order to have him, and the cruel turn that left me without either one. In essence, I chose Fred, and this is what happened. What do you think?

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A piece of good news: An excerpt from the book, a chapter called “My Imaginary Daughter,” appears in the January issue of Still Crazy, a terrific literary magazine. Click here for info.

Book revisions done

Sue Fagalde Lick Childless by Marriage book

I finished revising my Childless by Marriage book tonight. Whew. I think of it as a “memoir plus”. I tell my story but also include comments from a vast number of other people, including many childless women. There’s a good deal of motherly 🙂 advice thrown in, too. Now comes the hard work of getting it published. I will also offer excerpts to appropriate markets. All suggestions appreciated. I’ll keep you posted.