This last Saturday, 5th April, was the 14th anniversary of the my very first âGateway Womenâ blog. I was 46 when I wrote it, and looking at it again today, it's reminded me, just for a moment, how very tough this path has been at times. I was a long time in the wilderness before I felt healed enough to realise that my life was just as valuable and precious as if I'd been a mother. I had swallowed the lies of pronatalism hook, line and sinker from the overculture, and it took a lot of work to unhook myself. It didn't help that, at the time, there was zero support out there (in person or online) for someone who found herself in midlife, divorced, single-not-by-choice, childless-not-by-choice and having never had fertility treatments.
This newsletter grew out of that blog (as did everything I've done) and, over the last 13 years, it's charted the stages of my reconnection to my self-worth as a human being (rather than as a failed woman, which is how I used to see myself). And now, as I move through my sixties, I hope it continues to be of interest to those of you who are younger, as well as those who, like me, are adventuring into elderhood without motherhood. With my deliberate championing and mentoring of younger voices and older voices together, my goal is that you can find some reflections of where YOU might find yourself. And that you are encouraged and supported to remain curious about where your childless life might take you⊠(As I have been known to say, if this is my Plan B, then it must be my second trip through the alphabet!)
A big thank you to those childless sisters who have walked this path alongside me, some since that very first blog. We healed each other, in community. I couldn't have done it alone; I know that for sure, because I tried. And a big welcome to those of you who are still processing the shock of finding yourself childless when that absolutely wasn't the plan. Hang on in there; it can and will get better, in connection, in community and with oodles of self-compassion. Go gently dear one and know that we older ones have got your back.
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Well, after the trip of a lifetime to Japan and Thailand these last couple of months, I arrived back in Ireland at the end of March an absolute dishrag of jetlag and exhaustion (especially from the last few weeks of changing hotels and locations every day or so!) and full of incredible memories. It was an incredible privilege to explore the peoples, history and landscapes of Japan, and it was every bit as fascinating as I'd dreamed of since my early twenties - and way more beautiful.
In my mind I held the iconic images of Kyoto and Tokyo and the way both cities merge ancient and urban Japan, but I knew nothing of the countryside⊠and it blew me away. I'm a mountain girl at heart (even though I've ended up living by the sea), and Japan is more or less mostly mountains (and tunnels/bridges - the engineering is incredible!) It's a place of ancient temples, deep reverence, and a culture of kindness and politeness designed to make living in close proximity with other humans as friction-free as possible. I loved it, although sadly as a non-fish or meat eater, the food was a bit of a challenge!
I also got to visit Hiroshima, a place I knew of because of its terrible atomic bomb trauma, and found a modern and elegant city that holds its history with great tenderness. Should you ever get a chance to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, it is sobering and profoundly moving, as is the âAtomic Domeâ (above), the skeleton of a building that survived the epicentre of the blast and which has been left as an iconic reminder of that hideous day in August 1945, and the aftermath of devastation which killed just as many in the year following. My political awakening began as a teenager in the Lake District (north-west UK) when I became a member of our local CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) group, and thus it was a pilgrimage of sorts for me to visit Hiroshima; I had the sense of my younger self, with her passionate and unrealistic idealism, meeting the aging version of me - just as passionate, but necessarily more tempered by the realities of life; they both had something for the other to learn from, it seems.
I've been busy since I got home to Ireland, and just this last weekend I held my first Work That Reconnects workshop based on the root teachings of Joanna Macy. This work is all about opening our hearts to the grief we feel about what is happening to our world, so that we are liberated to be of service to Gaia during what Macy terms âThe Great Unravelingâ. It's transformative and healing work that encourages us to let go of the shame that is part of our necessary complicity in the modern industrial system, so that we can each do our part (however modest) to move towards creating âlife sustaining societies'. It's a big ask, but the alternatives are looking increasingly grim, as Hiroshima reminded me all too well. Later this year, there will be more workshops on this theme as part of my âGateway Elderwomenâ project as I hope to show that there are many ways to become a âGood Ancestorâ, and you'll be the first to hear about them. I'm also planning to weave the themes/practices of the Work That Reconnects into future projects connecting childless women intergenerationally. My amazing guests touched on this in the last âFireside Wisdomâ webinar which I hosted just after I'd got home: âEldering in a Time of Collapseâ and you read/watch more about that below and here.
Talking of younger generations, this coming Saturday 12th April, I'm proud to be supporting the author Lana Manikowski with the launch of her excellent new book So Now What? Create a Life You Love Without the Children You Always Dreamt Of. I liked it so much I agreed to write the foreword for it. The webinar is free, live & recorded (so even if you can't attend live, you'll get the recording the net day) and you can also enter a prize drawer to win one of 10 signed copies. You can find out more and register here.
The Reignite Weekend is the transformational healing weekend that I created in 2012 (and ran personally 50+ times!) in many different countries. It now continues with my team of licensed facilitators in the UK (London/Edinburgh) and Australia. The testimonials continue to show that this weekend often marks a âbeforeâ and âafterâ moment in the trajectory of childless women's lives. There's nothing else in the world like our Reignite Weekends, and we offer no-cost payment plans too. All info here.
