(More)(childless/free living) Odds & ends

• The private Gateway Women community recently moved to a new platform, as Google+, its home for the past few years, is shutting down on April 2nd. I always found Google+ a bit daunting, but I've been hanging out a bit at the new site, and I'm quite enjoying it!  :) 
• The GW community is a safe, private space for childless-not-by-choice women.  Highlights include unlimited topics and special interest sub-groups, topic filters, events, a monthly "fireside chat'"with Jody just for members, live comunity chats, online courses, and more! 
• You can access the community online, or via a specially designed app!  
• To ensure it remains a safe space for all, new members are ID checked. 
• The first month is free, after which there is a monthly or annual subscription fee. 
• More than 260 GW members have already made the move to the new space.
• Beyond the private community -- if you are childless not by choice, you simply MUST check out Gateway Women's public website, which is home to Jody's blog and a ton of excellent resources, including information about GW meetup groups and Reignite weekends, excerpts & purchase information for Jody's book ("Living the Life Unexpected"), links to videos, podcasts, media, recommended books, blogs and support organizations, and much more! 
• I enjoyed listening to Jody talk about "rediscovering joy after infertility" on the Magnificent Midlife podcast recently. 
• I think I found The Uterus Monologues blog through Jody/Gateway Women. Wonderful writing... A couple of sample posts:  "Hello from the other side" and Empty-nest syndrome. Sample passage:  

When babies don’t arrive as expected, what you start to feel keenly is a slow loosening of the usual social rituals, an absence of structure outside of the foregone conclusions of post-hospital visitors, christenings, first birthday parties and so on. Accordingly, you start to realise that there are things you had been counting on children to bring into your life – chaos, routine, celebration, warmth, visitors, play, noise, joy, meaning, belonging – and you may have no choice but to create them for yourself, in some shape or form. 

So perhaps that’s what the empty-nesting is about, that’s why it feels therapeutic – it’s the forging of a slightly different kind of family home, in recognition that you are already a family, right now. Instead of waiting for your real life to begin. Saving things for best, always.

• Another new blog with some great writing, as pointed out by Jody: Chasing Creation.  I especially like her post, "Do you have kids?" and how she's detailed her thinking on what to respond, when & why. 
• Brooke alerted me to a CNBCer I should check out. Tia has a blog at Forever, Orchard, but these days, she is mostly on Instagram, and devoting her energies to organizing an infertility summit in suburban Chicago on April 27. (Anyone planning to attend?)  

• Personally, I can't imagine ever describing myself as "infertile AF" (infertile, yes, but "infertile AF"?)(And I don't think the "AF" here stands for "Aunt Flo," lol). I guess it's a generational thing (at 58, it occurs to me that I am old enough to be Tia's mother... GULP). Nevertheless, I wish them luck with the conference! & I will be following Tia on IG.
• Tia authored this December 2017 article on IVF Babble, telling her story and explaining why she & her husband chose to walk away from infertility treatment, and the chance at parenthood. Excerpt: 

This is not the life I want to live anymore. 

After five incredibly taxing years, searching for the right combination of medication, lifestyle and luck, we are walking away from the path to become parents... 

I keep writing and sharing my story because, although IVF is typically the golden standard on the road to parenthood, it doesn’t always work out that way. And that’s okay.