Jody Day

Over-40 wisdom for childless women

Sue Fagalde Lick fertility in your 40s, Gateway-women, I wish I had known, Jody Day, Rocking the Life Unexpected, wisdom of age

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

Sue Fagalde Lick Carolyn Hax, childless at Christmas, Christmas for kids, frozen eggs, Gateway-women, Have Children or Not, infertility, Jody Day, older mothers
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.
In lieu of any brilliant thoughts of my own today, I offer a couple of 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.

Jody Day’s book rocks the childless life

Sue Fagalde Lick books about childlessness, childless by circumstance, childless by marriage, childless grief, Gateway-women, Jody Day, non-mothers, Plan B, Rocking the Life Unexpected, UK authors


Jody Day of Gateway-Women.com and I have corresponded off and on over the last few years. We both write about childlessness in our blogs. She lives in the UK, where it really seems as if the conversation about not having children has advanced far beyond that in the United States. When she said she was writing a book, I couldn’t wait to read it, and I was not disappointed.

In Living the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfilling Future Without Children, Day offers childless women a way to define what their lives can be without children. If Plan A, to be a mother, didn’t work out, what is Plan B? Day’s Plan B is to write about and create a community to support women who are childless by circumstance–which includes those of us who are childless by marriage. In addition to her blogs and online groups, she hosts gatherings of childless women and 12-week courses to help them find their new path as non-mothers, nomos, as she calls them. If you live in the UK, you can actually meet in person. But if you don’t, you can be with them in spirit through this book.

Day, who is training to be a psychotherapist, tells her own story and provides exercises to help women dig themselves out of their childless grief and discover the new life that is still available to them. Chapters explore family histories, our relationships with our bodies, stereotypes about childless women, our views of ourselves, ways to heal from our grief, and much more. She also includes extensive lists of resources that in themselves are worth the price of the book.

I did get a free copy of the book, but I would recommend it just as highly if I had paid for it. There are lots of books about childlessness on the market these days, but most focus on the joys of the “childfree” life or the sorrows of infertility and don’t get at the things bugging those of us who are childless by circumstance. I hope you’ll read my Childless by Marriage book if you haven’t already, but do read this one, too. It will help, I promise.

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[Sue Fagalde Lick is part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. ]

Thinking beyond our childlessness

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, grieving over childlessness, Jody Day, longing for children, Rocking the Life Unexpected, thinking about childlessness, Unleashed in Oregon
https://amzn.to/2VHJVkWSometimes I get tired of thinking about childlessness. I’ve got a million other things on my mind, including nonstop meetings and rehearsals this week, my ongoing struggle to put my water-damaged den back together (see my Unleashed in Oregon blog), my need to practice for two upcoming musical performances, my job playing the piano at church, my dog’s ongoing flea problem, my aging father’s ailments, my best friend’s close call with breast cancer and continuing fight with COPD, missing my dead husband, selling my novel, wondering when I should prune my hydrangeas, the floods in Colorado, the shootings in Washington D.C., the conflicts in the Middle East, why some fools are angry that our new Miss America is of Indian descent, what I’m going to wear to the church fundraiser on Friday night . . .
There’s so much to think about besides the fact that I never had children. I wish I had them. If I could go back and do things differently, I would. I think. I’m not 100 percent sure. Marrying Fred was the best thing that ever happened to me. Losing him was the worst. Not having children is barely a blip in comparison. I want kids. I want grandkids. I want sticky-fingered hugs and kid pictures all over my house. I want somebody to buy toys for and to teach and to love and to watch carry on our family heritage into the future. I want all that. I didn’t get it. It makes me so angry I want to throw things.
But I can’t change it now, and there’s no point in ruining the life I do have because I didn’t get the one I thought I’d have.
Some of these thoughts are coming up because I’m reading Jody Day’s new book Rocking the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfiling Life Without Children. It’s a wonderful book that can help women who wanted children and don’t have them to deal with their grief and move on. I will give you a full review as soon as I finish it, but you can order it now.
My dear friends, I hurt for you. I feel your deep pain as you struggle to deal with situations where you feel lost, where you don’t know what to do about your mate who can’t or won’t give you children, where you go nuts when people with children just don’t understand how you feel. I know. I’ve been there. It’s big. It’s huge. It affects your whole life. That’s one of the main things I tried to show in my Childless by Marriage book, that everything is different when you never have children. But there is more to life. And there’s more to you than just the fact that you don’t have children. Think about it.
Group hug?

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[Sue Fagalde Lick is part of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. ]

‘Otherhood’ and Fifty Ways to Be Childless

Sue Fagalde Lick 50 Ways Not to Be a Mother, Childfree Reflections, childless by marriage, gateway-women.com, Jody Day, Marcia Drut-Davis, Melanie Notkin, Otherhood, Savvy Aunt
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

Sue Fagalde Lick Beth Follini, childlessness and friends, Gateway-women, Have Children or Not, Jessica Valenti, Jezebel, Jody Day, More than a uterus, questions about having children, Why Have Kids

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

Sue Fagalde Lick actresses without children, breakup song, Chilldren or Not, gateway-women.com, Jody Day, Nora Ephron, The Not Mom

Today I’ve decided to share a couple treats from the web.

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 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

Sue Fagalde Lick childless by marriage, Jody Day, Jonathan Last, Kaye D. Walters, Kidfree and Lovin' It, Little House on the Prairie, What to Expect When No One's Expecting

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.