unRipe - Learning to Embrace the Childless Life

When your Plan A doesn't go as planned, what's your Plan B? What does our future hold without children? Can we Google the answer? What about Jeeves?

We speak to Anne Barratt from Empowering Health about her story after IVF and a hysterectomy. Anne is a professional practitioner who employs kinesiology, EFT, counselling, hypnotherapy and a host of different modalities to help reset our minds and bodies to focus clearly on what we want for our future.

Stats: Our elder community tell us how their lives have turned out without children.

In Shit that comes up on our Feed, my guest co-host has a beef with the way women introduce themselves in a business Facebook group.

Question of the Week: What is your Plan B? What are you going to do in the future? Even if it's your Plan A!

Today I welcome Sarah Roberts to the podcast.

We talk about grief and second chances! Sarah is not only a counsellor for childless women, she’s one of us! With over 25 years experience in counselling, teaching and community work, Sarah brings her lived experience to The Empty Cradle where she focuses on involuntary childlessness and motherhood loss. She understands the complexities of supporting women who experience involuntary childlessness.

As the founder of The Empty Cradle, Sarah aims to bring women together in loving community to mourn the loss, be transformed by the grief and create a life they love.

The Empty Cradle is a place where mourning, complexity, hope, spirituality, ambition and lifestyle collide. She offers rock solid strategies (think:  psychology, counselling, feminism, education, sociology, practical philosophy and spiritual practices) to clarify decision-making about your journey, grieve your loss and move forward with confidence about the future.
 
 Sarah believes that grief is a skill to be learned: it deepens your ability to live and love and it awakens your whole being. And being childless herself, she gets us, and to a grieving woman, it makes all the difference. So while our conversation focuses on the losses for childless women, she brings us back around to the joy we can find once we allow it.

When did you know you weren’t going to have children.  Did you decide or were you a fence sitter? Or maybe you didn't decide, but there was a point when you just knew.

My special guests are Dr Bronwyn Harman who is currently finalising her phD about childfree women. We also speak to friend of the podcast, Lovisa, who talks about her journey as a childfree woman, both in Sweden and in Australia.

Stats: We crunch the numbers and facts about why women are childfree by choice or by circumstance, and looks at IVF failure, delayed childbirth & just not meeting the right partner. 

In Shit that came up on my feed, we talk about Australian Federal Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg's, recent rally cry to get Australians to start having more children as part of our economic recovery. Nice one.

Question of the Week: When did you decide or know that you were not going to have children?

Christmas can be exhausting, both physically and emotionally.  Today,  I'm also bringing you a series of tips to get you through the big days over the holidays. These tips will help all of us without kids to navigate the Christmas landscape when there might be a tonne of happy families with kids.

Of course, you might love it! I find it exhausting so I keep it simple, but if you have no choice and you're heading off to a family affair where there will be family that you may not see very often, and who will likely ask you the usual series of "bingo" questions like: are you married? in a relationship? when are you having kids? - you know the ones - I hope that today's episode gives you some ideas for coping. And at the end, I also give some suggestions to people with children on ways they can help you get through the hols.

What happens to friendships when you don't have kids but they do?
In this episode I share my experience of all the friendships that have been lost to motherhood over the years. If you are a mum and you’re listening we’d love to hear your thoughts on your friendships with childless women and if they fell to the wayside or how you maintained them.

In Shit that comes up on our Feed, Jo is angry (surprise!) over a recent IVF TV ad. 

Question of the Week: Childless women – how did you maintain your friendships with those who became mums?

Aging without children isn't always a choice, and this week we speak with 67-year-old Heather who surprises us with a story she hasn't shared with anyone. It’s a big story and we are honoured to have her share it.  Heather hopes her story helps other women share.

Stats: We investigate advocacy for the aging childless and childfree population in Australia and New Zealand. There's plenty of room for improvement.  

In Shit that Comes up on My Feed we share a must read Facebook page that flips sexism on its ass.

Question of the Week:  Have you talked about your experience, with other people, about not having children?  What was the reception to your conversation?

What is the point of having a period when you can't or don't intend to have children?

In this episode, we go deep and get super personal all about period and speak to members of the community to find out what periods mean to them.  From 67-year-old guest Heather  who teaches us all about “rag suspender belts” to 34-year-old Skye, who had to have a hysterectomy at 31, and 44 year-old Pen, with heavy periods and nine miscarriages. 

Stats: What can impact periods (plenty) and the average ages we “become” women and when it all ends.

In Shit that Comes up on my feed, we have a doozy. Stay tuned.

Question of the Week:  What does your Period mean to you?   Is it pointless?

How did our family influence our childlessness? This week's special guest, Maree, is one of four adopted siblings. We chat about her family, her mother's trauma over her own infertility, and how that influenced Maree's choices around family, relationships and children.

Statistics: What are the stats relating to the backgrounds of childless women, are there common threads?

Shit that comes up on my feed: The online Tupperware party! Icebreakers can be heart breakers. Be warned. We also ask, are we being too sensitive?

Question of the Week: Did the family you grew up in impact your decision to have children, not have them, or delay having them? 

This week's episode is all about the birth of UnRipe. Who is Unripe, who is Jo? What is the (un)Ripe mission and our focus on Women in Australia and New Zealand who do not have children?

Statistics: An intro to childless and childfree stats for women n Australia and New Zealand. 

Let's talk about our families. We’re going to talk about families and the relationships we have with them as childless adults. What are those family occasions that hurt because we're childless at events that focus on families and children?
(Please excuse the sound in parts of this episode. We had a few tech issues!)

Statistics: We talk about household sizes over time.

Our guest this week shares her childless story that includes chronic illness, IVF, marrying into a large family and her healing career.

In Shit that comes in our Feed we bring good news about magazines that are publishing articles about women who are living childfree and childless lives.

And don't forget our question of the week! 

I'm back from semi-retirement to bring you one of my favourite episodes of the other podcast I produce! 

When was the last time you celebrated a milestone? So many of us childless women simply don't. On the other hand, when you’re a parent, there are so many milestones that everyone celebrates – new baby, first step, first word, first day at school, first girl or boyfriend, graduation, first marriage, first grandchild… You get my drift.

In the childless and childfree community, we talk about building a community with adults, where we’re not always surrounded by babies, kids, pregnant women and people talking about their kids. And it’s not just the childfree who are looking for a reprieve. Even us childless folk talk about adult only spaces – like planes, restaurants, resorts, you get it. 

What If I told you there is a perfect adult only space, a real community where nobody brings their kids, it’s unlikely there will be any pregnant women, and, actually, nobody talks about their kids at all?

What if I told you that these communities could be found everywhere. In your neighbourhood. Maybe even your street. 

Would that group pique your curiosity? I mean, an adult only space where kids are pretty much never mentioned? Would you want to join that group?

In this episode, I speak with Joy Sharp, originally from Israel, about her 9 IVF cycles, divorce and her rebirth as a rope master in the Kink community.

When I first heard about childless stepmums, I thought to myself, how lucky! You may not have had your own, but here you are, an instant family.

But then I started hearing from women who have this exact experience and, honestly, it seems so fraught and complex. Not only are you dealing with, potentially, angry exes, but kids who don’t really want a new parent. Plus, having someone else’s family doesn’t take away from the grief of not having your own biological family. 

Tanya Hubbard and her husband live in Vancouver Canada and, like Australia, they have a robust public healthcare system with long waiting periods for elective, non-emergency surgery – and it certainly doesn’t over IVF. Tanya explains that, like so many of us, she didn’t start trying to get pregnant until her mid to late 30s, and by that time, she learned she had a massive fibroid that needed attention before she could even think of trying got carry a baby.

As always, with guests, I’m curious about what brought them to this space, how they came to be childless not by choice, and what they’re doing instead.

I've mentioned it before - I'm an only child. So I reached out to see how many of us childless are also onlies and today's guest, Alisha Saavedra put up her hand. 

Alisha lives in Southern California with her husband. She is originally from Mexico, and her husband is from Bolivia, where big families play a big role. 

With unexplained infertility and two chemical pregnancies behind her, we talk about what it's like being an only child AND childless in  our Latin cultures that put motherhood big families on a pedestal.

We also talk about the weird and, well, weirder, things we've done to improve our chances of getting pregnant, like drinking raw liver smoothies and walking around with crystals in your undies.

Laura Curtis uses her voice to tell stories through song and sound. She met her husband when she was 22 and he was 36. He’d had a vasectomy in a previous relationship, so when Laura expressed her desire to become a mum, he had a reversal. Easy peasy. After all, Laura was not infertile and, in fact, she had a healthy reproductive system. But things didn’t quite go as planned when the reversal didn’t work. Cue a few years of fertility treatment, and several embryo transfers and the couple were still no closer to the dream. They took a break, and a holiday, and decided to give it another go, and that’s when Laura was diagnosed with MS.

I am my own worst enemy and a terrible cheerleader. That’s why I want you to meet Jody O’Brien. Jody is calls herself the "Chief Cheerleader" and she is cheering us all on. After being diagnosed with early menopause in her late 30s, and the only way she would carry a baby would be with a donor egg, Jody and her husband moved to China for a few years, tried Chinese medicine, then decided that they would simply get on with life. And they have!

Adopted just weeks after she was born, Jody is the ray of sunshine we all need, the vibrant cheerleader we could all use in our lives.

Jody O’Brien lives in rural Victoria in Australia and you can find her working with food producers, paddling on the river, walking her dog, giving excellent advice, engaging in stand up paddle boarding, catching up with friends and sharing non-alcoholic bevvies, wearing hot pink boots and riding around in a convertible on her Instagram page Childless and Confident. Jody is a traveller and, sorry for the cliché, she’s a real inspiration to us childless folk. She's both childless AND confident!

Stay tuned as Jody gives advice to women who are facing the choice to be childless or pursue treatment.

If you are facing any challenges with anxiety, depression or addiction, please speak to your GP or call Lifeline on 131114

 “What’s my purpose in life if I don’t have kids? Hold my beer while I find out.”

That's a quote by Brigid May of The Fruitless Figtree. Brigid is everything you want from a bestie - she's angry, vocal, honest, a little bit dark, wants to light things on fire (in her head only!), and she's a little pissed at Brooklyn 99. Brigid is also a Montessori pre-school teacher, she's married and infertile - a terrific combination!

From her home in Washington State in the US, Brigid tells us about the challenges of being a teacher to little kids, especially when parents say things like "oh you'll understand when you have kids".  She's a cocktail crone (her husband is the cocktail maker) and she loves to post drunk rom-com reviews on Instagram.

Brigid is also a gardener and poet. 

Her journey to infertility is pretty normal but with a slight difference in that, when she found out she was infertile and that the next step would be fertility treatment, she opted for wine and sushi instead.

“I was given a sample jar and a key; the technician then tells me that I’m in the room behind me. “There is only one key so you can feel secure that once locked no-one else will enter”, she said. “There is scotch in the cupboard and magazines in the draw, wash your hands before you start and do not get any other liquid in the sample jar”.  In a daze I turned, opened the door and stepped inside, then the reality of my situation dawned on me. Lock the door, lock the door, I thought.”

I didn't get a bottle of scotch at my IVF clinic!

Today I speak with Michael Hughes about male infertility and what it's like to be a childless man in a world that thinks all men can keep fathering children until the day they die, like Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart.

But here are the facts: Those men are the odd ones. One in six couples have difficulties falling pregnant. Overall, one-third of infertility cases are caused by male reproductive issues, one-third by female reproductive problems and another third by both male and female reproductive challenges or by unknown factors. Plus, the paternal age effect is a huge factor. What's that? Have a listen. 

Enough of the stats. Let’s talk to a real live man who, along with his wife Vickie, has grappled with infertility, and has written his story in a moving and honest blog – Married and Childless. Michael talks bout his experience and, today, he’s going to enlighten us about a lot of things, including the toxic language around male fertility.

Kati Seppi is the supercharged founder of Chasing Creation. In today's episode we tackle the big topics -  Designing a childfree life, strengthening relationships after infertility.

Katy grew up Mormon in Utah, and lives in Utah today with her husband, and she calls herself “unexpectedly childfree after infertility".  We speak about her journey to infertility through endometriosis, and about the life she and her husband have found for themselves despite that. Katy went from being someone whose life ambition was to be a stay at home mum, to someone who found fulfilment in outher ways, finding independence, getting degrees that gave her alternative challenges and building a life outside of children.

Her story is both heartbreaking and inspiring.

 We also speak about an exciting, upcoming event - The Childless Summit.

What is the Childless Collective Summit?

Four Childless Women Walk Into a Bar... Actually, we're at my house, which can sometimes look like a bar. And all four of us are childless. Ranging from 34 to 51, we're all at different stages of our childless journeys. and we all come from very different backgrounds culturally. 

Obviously you know my Italian culture, Mariecris is 38, Phillipino, she’s currently engaged and has been married once before, and there’s a lot of cultural pressure in her community for women to have babies and grow big families. Mariecris is the first to admit, however, that she’s done a lot of personal development work so she hasn’t let that pressure influence her. But she does want kids, so she’s currently starting IVF. 

Lauren’s family is the complete opposite - she was always told she could do whatever felt right. Lauren is 34, she’s married and, at the moment, she’s still undecided, but knows that she’s starting to get to the pointy end of her fertility so she wants to make a decision soon so she can either go for it, or go on with her life and not give it any more thought. 

Laura is 42, a British emigree, she’s currently single, and, wow, she probably got more pressure from her mother to NOT have children. Laura is a world nomad, having lived in seven countries throughout her life and is currently in Australia. 

I really hope that by listening to four women, all at different stages of our lives, you get some clarity, and firmly feel that you are not alone. That your thoughts are more common than you think.

PS. There were four of us sharing two microphones so the sound can sometimes get a bit iffy. Sorry.