The past two Fridays, I've enjoyed two really great recent podcasts with some excellent spokespeople from this community:
- On Aug. 8th, the CBC Radio program Day 6 with Brent Bambury featured a discussion with three prominent "No-Mos: Women who aren't having children" (by choice and not) -- including Lisa Manterfield, Melanie Notkin and Laura Scott.
- On Aug. 15th, BBC Radio 4 spent a half-hour on the subject of A Family Without a Child, featuring interviews with Jody Day, Paula Coston & Jessica Hepburn.
"That growing sense of emptiness you feel in the pit of your stomach? No soulmate or cherished baby is ever going to obliterate it for you. The only person who can content with the deep-down scary you-ness of you is yourself."Yep.
As always -- beware the comments section. :p (I love how they always degenerate into a "have kids or don't have them, don't whine to me" rant. Ummm, you all kind of missed the whole point here, lol. I often wonder if the people commenting actually read the articles or listened to the podcasts.)
Thank you for the link, I'm looking forward to watching/listening to the discussions!
ReplyDeleteI like Jody Day a lot but I don't agree with her strong push for women who don't have children to make the childnessness into their primary identity that defines everything they do or say. I dislike the mothers who start their every sentence with 'as a mother...' and I also reject starting every sentence with 'as a nomo'.
This is my personal opinion, though, and I can see that many women can find comfort in such self-identification.
I haven't listened to either of the interviews yet, but did read the article. Like you, I cringed at the last line, and the focus on "looking good." Infertility and loss didn't do anything for my looks, and my husband went grey! I've been contemplating writing a post about it. Maybe this will encourage me to do it, rather than hiding in shame.
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