Jody Day - Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children

Chapter 1 The Power of Our Stories

for a more detailed analysis of this data.

For Olafz

This is a book about hope. Right now, thats probably not where youre at. Maybe youre holding this book at metaphorical arms length thinking, Really? Im going to read this? when actually its the last thing you want to do you dont want to be one of those childless women and this is not the club you wanted to join you had your name down for the school-gates one. But then maybe youve just had a particularly bad day at work with yet another pregnant colleague waving her scan under your nose, or have returned grey-faced with exhaustion from a big family gathering having kept your sadness hidden to cry alone in the bath, again. Maybe youre processing some awful news from the doctor or fertility clinic, your last childless friend just announced her defection, a hopeful new date has fizzled out into nothingness or youve just passed a significant age and cant fool yourself anymore that somehow, against all the odds, this could still work out. For whatever reason, and there are so, so many of them, youre facing childlessness as your future reality, rather than as some overlong stop on your eventual path to motherhood.

About giving up hope. Now I dont know about you, but hope and I broke up for good when I didnt get to be a mother and I was pretty sure Id never have anything to do with that charlatan again. It hadnt served me well and I felt like Id duped myself big-time. As well as being on the floor with despair, I also felt pretty stupid; how could I have managed my life so badly? But then again, without hope, how was I meant to continue? What was there to look forward to? I mean, over the years, whenever Id tried to talk about my fears about not becoming a mother, all Id ever been told was, Dont give up hope... I heard this story... (you know the ones). And so I hadnt. And yet still, there I was. What I didnt yet understand was that giving up hope is actually really important. Its the first (utterly excruciating) step to coming to terms with childlessness.

About burying hope. It might be that the idea of maybe one day having a different kind of hope for your life other than motherhood feels at best ludicrous and at worst, blasphemous. And, as for this whole meaningful and fulfilling future thing, get out of here youd settle for the lights coming back on in your life. I get it, I was motherhood-or-bust for so many years (from my late twenties to mid-forties) and if anyone had dared to suggest to me during that time that perhaps I might find fulfilment without children I dont think Id have believed them. (Or would have been particularly grateful to them for their advice!)

About new shoots of hope And yet here we are together, you and I. Maybe youve been wearing your hopelessness about the future around the house for a while now and you can sense that its getting old. You look around you sometimes in despair, sometimes in curiosity and think, Surely there must be some way through this? I mean, maybe Ill never be as happy as I would have been if Id had children, but surely I dont have to feel this bad, do I? And thats it, thats all you need: just a tiny little green shoot of hope that maybe theres a life waiting for you that you havent met yet. A different life to the one you imagined.

A message from your future hope. Life after childlessness a fulfilling, happy, meaningful, connected and enjoyable life is possible. I know, because Ive created one for myself and Ive helped thousands of women like you to do so too. Its not easy, it doesnt just arrive, its rarely what we expect and it certainly isnt what we ordered! Embracing it takes huge courage, but it is possible. Whilst in no way do I wish to diminish the heartbreak you might be feeling right now (Ive been there; its the darkest place Ive ever been) hope has an important message from your future for you:

Your childless life isnt a runner up prize to motherhood. Its a different, messy, imperfect human experience to the one you signed up for, but no less valuable. And it can be as meaningful and fulfilling, just in different ways.

Hope leaves clues. This book will take you through a step-by-step process to open your eyes, heal your heart, forgive your body, renew your connections and inspire you to create a new story for your life. It arose out of my personal experience of healing from childlessness, my professional background as a psychotherapist and the experience of creating and leading workshops and programmes for other childless women to help them heal from the heartbreak of childlessness. I believe that not only is there a new role in life for each of us childless mothers, but that society needs us to step into those roles. It feels to me like the world has never been so in need of our generous, nurturing hearts! However, one of the many things that makes our healing so hard is that theres no societal script for women like us to follow (well, not one youd want to follow!) and precious few inspiring role models. Yet were all around you, around one in five women, each of us quietly contributing to a childless revolution.

Hope changes. I wrote the first draft of this book in 2012 when I was forty-eight. Id already done a lot of healing around my childlessness and had helped others to do the same. I was in a good place and felt more at peace with my childlessness than I thought would be possible. Im now fifty-five and I have good news for you the healing continues. Whereas back then I would have felt that my childlessness was the most important thing anyone needed to know about me, these days I feel that my identity has grown to encompass my childlessness; its now part of who I am, not who I am. And from that place, its been a great privilege to revisit this text as its helped me realise that Ive healed at even deeper levels. I no longer feel in any way less than the mothers around me, or even the mother that I had hoped to become. Nor do I resent mothers or feel envious of them; they have their struggles too and I have space in my heart for that now. I see that were all fighting the same battle: to be valued and respected as women. A new edition has also given me a chance to refresh my research and to include more about the issues facing younger childless women. Some Millennials are beginning to experience involuntary childlessness and are doing so against a very different cultural background to those of us born in the 1960s and 1970s, one defined by climate breakdown, shaped by a global economic downturn and lived in the glare of social media. Ive also included more diverse approaches in the text to speak to the childless experience of women of colour, women of faith and lesbian, gay and bisexual women. A decade ago, there was practically nothing, either in print or online, to support us and its wonderful that this is no longer the case and so Ive fully updated the Appendix, as well as many of the references and statistics throughout the book.