OCTOBER's theme in the CC online community is ‘Reimagining Holiday Traditions'. To helpyou get prepared for the season ahead, this month explores what it means to create holidays that honour your current life by adapting or letting go of what no longer fits, and building new traditions that feel meaningful to you. Access now or join instantly with a free 7-day trial. Memberships to suit all pockets; same level of access.
OCTOBER, Sunday 4th (today!) One place left on Feel-Share-Emerge, a 10-week supportive online circle in English for childless women in Europe, led by my dear friend, therapist, licensed Reignite Weekend facilitator, and World Childless Week Ambassador, Catherine-Emmanuelle Delisle. A group for North America begins in January 2027. Full info here.
OCTOBER, Sat 10th - ElderZoom with Jody for members of the Childless Collective at 6pm BST UK/IE time (works well for UK/EU and North America). Hosted by me (Jody), not recorded, and open to all members of the Childless Collective over 50. Click here to join the call if you're a member, or click here to join the CC with a 7-day free trial.
OCTOBER, Sat 17th, Fireside Wisdom Live with Maria Hill. 6pm BST UK/IE (works for UK/EU & North America). This will be the first in a series of 30-min video interviews with individual NomoCrones (Not-Mother-Elders). Our first interview will be with Maria Hill, one of my long-time childless elderwomen mentors, and a regular panellist at our Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen webinars over the last six years. Maria is an author, HSP thought leader, and trained life/cultural frameworks coach. She writes at A Different Dream on Substack. You'll need a free Substack account to attend. No need to register, but if you become a (free or paid) subscriber to my Substack Gateway Elderwomen, you'll get reminder notifications for the event: Saturday 17th October at 6pm BST, 10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern at this link.
NOVEMBER: REIGNITE LONDON. As our October Reignite Weekend in London sold out, we have an additional date on Sat 7th & Sun 8th November withYvonne John and Sarah Lawrence co-facilitating. Also, Reignite for London weekends for February and October 2027 are now open for booking here.
MARCH 2027: REIGNITE MELBOURNE. Sat 13th & Sun 14th March. Earlybird closes 30th November; all bookings close 25th January. All Reignite Weekend info here.
None of these are affiliate links; I share them only to help you find support and connection. If you have something you'd like me to consider for inclusion, please let me know. And if you felt able to appreciate my work with a small tip, you can do so at BuyMeACoffee :)
Dearest First name / One,
I am just home after a whirlwind visit to England and Wales to see friends and family, plus World Childless Week AND StoryhouseCHILDLESS! I'm very pleased to say that my health continues to improve, after being given a real boost by learning the Lightning Process in late August. Thank you to those of you who reached out to tell me about your own positive experiences with this ‘brain retraining’ programme with your own ME/CFS/Long Covid. I was so nervous about my extensive commitments in September, so thank you HUGELY to each of you who reached out by email or DM about the Lighting Process; it's helping a lot!
During World Childless Week, I took part in two wonderful webinars, both of which are below. The first one, Nothing to Prove: The Beauty of Life Free of Pronatalist Culture, was an absolute joy, and with only four panellists, we had time to go quite deeply into the topic, and so I found myself sharing things I haven't talked about before. It was hosted by Maria Hill, who I'll also be interviewing for the first episode of my new Fireside Wisdom Lives series on October 17th at 6pm UK time (more info on that above, in the Quick Links section).
For the We Are Worthy Saturday of World Childless Week, I invited a panel of nine NomoCrones to record a special WCW edition of ‘Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen’. The resulting session, Worthy at Every Age, is packed full of honesty, candid reflections and hard-won wisdom. I particularly appreciated hearing the message we each had for our younger selves. Having not been well enough this year to host these webinars, it was an absolute joy to do so again. You can watch the full one-hour video below and see short video clips from each panellist, find out more about them, and read the transcript here.
It was a delight to return to the StoryhouseCHILDLESS festival in Chester for its 7th year. The buzz in this beautiful building, and from being surrounded all weekend by other childless and childfree people, is a tonic like no other. I felt I could be fully me without having to ‘brace’ for awkward questions, and knowing that everyone else there is a non-parent gives you the freedom to start a conversation with anyone! The dates for next year are Friday 24 September to Sun 26 Sept 2027, and it's a hard recommend from me to attend, if you possibly can. Storyhouse is a charity and doesn't have the budget for filming or livestreaming, so the events are not recorded.
My highlights of Storyhouse this year were the keynote from the founders of We Are Childfree (inclusive of the childless experience too), Zöe Noble and James Glazebrook; the opening panel on Childless/childfree Neurodivergence; the Men's Panel (still groundbreaking to hear chyildless/free men talk openly about their experiences), and of course, the panel I was part of, talking about our Alterkin (Alternative Kinship Circles) project for those ageing without children in my local, rural Irish community, and the other projects it has already inspired! The photo below is a full-circle moment: seeing your work and photo featured in the keynote (that's James Glazebrook, one half of We Are Childfree).
After World Childless Week and Storyhouse, I spent a delightful few days in Wales narrowboating on the Brecon and Monmouthshire Canal. It turns out to be a lot more physical than I'd anticipated, which was actually an excellent way to distract me from all the capital-T thinking I probably would have done instead after such a rich and full couple of weeks. Below is Puffin, enjoying the Welsh early Autumn peace and beauty of it all (because he didn't have to deal with the locks and all the rest of it!)
This year's World Childless Week was its 10th, and I feel it was one of the best - the range of topics covered, the amazing submissions from you all, and the incredible webinars gave me the sense that the childless community is really finding its feet. All the materials from this year and the previous nine years are all available to explore on the WCW website. We all owe our deepest thanks to Stephanie Joy Phillips, who has created this global online event single-handedly for a decade now, without funding or support. If you can make a small (or large!) donation to support her INCREDIBLE efforts, please do so here. It's become such a crucial part of the childless calendar, and it deserves our support.
I'm thrilled to announce that our Reignite Weekend programme continues to change lives around the world! In 2027, the workshop will be 15 years old, and thousands of childless women have walked nervously through the doors to discover a whole new outlook (and friends) awaiting them! For those of you who are hoping I'll host another one in Ireland, I very much doubt it, as my focus is on my new workshop, Romancing the Crone, which launches in November 2026 (sold out; click here for more info and to join the info list for 2027). Info on ALL Reignite Weekends here.
