01: Jody Day, Founder of Gateway Women

Jody Day is an author,  social
entrepreneur and the founder of Gateway
Women a global friendship and support network for
childless women.  She is a founding member at AWOC, (Ageing
without Children Collective) and a Fellow in Social Innovation at
Cambridge Judge Business School at Cambridge University in the UK.
 Jody’s book, Rocking the Life Unexpected: 12
Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfilling Life Without
Children is an Amazon bestseller. Jody runs
workshops, social events and private sessions for women coming to
terms with the life that doesn’t include motherhood as well as
speaking out about the issues and prejudices that childless women
face. You can find out more about Jody’s
work here.   In this episode, Jody shares how she be
turning 51 this year and her journey and experience of being a
childless woman up until this point in her life.  At 20 years
old she had an abortion. She was in a long line of women who have
had children at a very young age and her mother had impressed upon
her that she needed to live her own life before she should have
children.  At 29 she tried to conceive with her then husband.
However, by 33-34 she still was not pregnant. By this time she was
doing all she could to conceive.  Unfortunately her marriage
started to deteriorate. At 38, her husband suggested they try IVF.
However she realised that it wouldn’t be right to bring a baby into
their marriage. After having a nervous breakdown soon after and
many realisations, she decided to divorce her husband. By the time
she was 43 and had experienced a few other relationships, she
realised that that her opportunity to be a mother had passed.
Reflecting on her life and wanting to have a child, Jody realised
how obsessed she had been. She admitted that at one point she even
was willing to ignore her husband’s addictions because she wanted
to have a child so badly. It was a very difficult and challenging
time. Realising and accepting the fact that she wouldn’t be a
mother was an excruciating and long process. For about 15 years she
had the strong feeling of connection within her belly that she put
her life on hold and planned her whole life around that feeling.
She called this, psychologically nesting. She
was preparing this space in her life for the family that was
coming. She was living a half-life – it became one-track. It was a
massive shock realising that this life would never happen. She went
into a profound period of grieving which she wasn’t aware of at the
time. Since she couldn’t find the right help for herself at that
time, she decided to become a psychotherapist. At first she thought
that she couldn’t be a good psychotherapist since she wasn’t a
mother but then realised that after going through her experiences
she could be a great one. She is in the process of completing her
studies.. When she was going through the portion of her class on
grief she realised that was what she was going through a few months
previously. She wrote down a map of her emotional experience
including the emotional experiences of the women she was meeting
while she was writing the Gateway Women’s blog and realised that it
was a perfect fit. With great relief she realised that:
There was a name for what she was experiencing.
She wasn’t going crazy. This will be over
one day. She compares this grief to losing a parent. Once
you lose them, you can’t have another. That’s the same as realising
that you can never have a child, you will never have all the
“firsts” experiences. The grief also came in the form of alienation
from her peer group or how they thought about her because she’s
childless. The loss of her identity as a woman. Some of her friends
were understanding but it was too painful for her to be around
them. She withdrew. People made the most hopeless but well-meaning
comments. How do you deal with some of the inappropriate
questions or comments? “It depends on who the person is,
what the situation is and people are a bit clueless about it but it
is still a socially acceptable question.” Some feisty women in her
Gateway group have been known to say – usually to strangers – if
someone asked “Do you have kids? Why not?” The response, “Well, I
didn’t know that we were going to get personal so quickly, so how
much do you earn?”  This is a private matter!  Jody found
that her answers have changed over time after facing her grief.
 There’s a myth that people who don’t have children hate
children. Jody says that it couldn’t be farther from the truth. Her
response has changed to, “No, I’m just not fortunate enough.” She
feels that the culture should probably change to where if someone
does (or does not) have children, they should be the first to
mention them. People may not be intentionally unkind, they’re just
being thoughtless. This is no longer a small subject. 1 in
5 women are turning 45 without having children.
10% of those have made the choice. 10%
have some kind of medical infertility or other medical issues that
prevent them from having children. 80% are
childless by circumstance due to so many reasons at the time of
their fertile years. “The really important reason they
haven’t had children is because they haven’t gotten pregnant
accidentally on purpose.” Social Infertility 
is a term that is commonly used now – There are so many women out
there in their 30’s and 40’s who want to find a suitable partner
but just can’t. Jody feels that there are some important reasons
for that. She calls the current generation as the “shock absorber
generation” after the sexual revolution because: We have
access to the pill.
We have access to legalized and safe
abortions.
We have access to higher education.
We have access to executive professions.
We have access to fertility treatments. 
There has been an increase of women going into the higher
professions but we don’t have the same corresponding number of men
doing so.  It’s important that we put our situation
into the social and economic context of our time. We are living
through an extraordinary moment in the history of dating and
mating. Can you now see the gifts and benefits having gone
through all that experience?  For Jody, not being
able to have children really broke her heart. “…broke me but also
broke me open in a profound way that has changed me…childlessness
broke my heart but grief healed it bigger.”  It has helped her
become the woman that she was meant to be. Jody has been able to
use her mother’s heart in a different way in the work that she’s
doing now. It’s deeply satisfying. She’s comfortable with the idea
that she might be single for the rest of her life but there are
times that it is difficult. She really loves her life now. “How am
I going to fill my life until death?”  Jody understands that
grief is a form of love. “We only grieve that which we have loved.”
Grief is a relational emotion. It may allow us to love again. “Time
does not heal grief, only grieving heals grief.” Grief needs to be
related to. The most important thing about grief is it needs to be
heard. Steps toward healing from grief: Allow yourself to
feel those feelings.
Allow yourself to go through the process, don’t try to stop
it.
There needs to be some kind of dialogue – with
anyone.
Allow yourself to be vulnerable.
Being open and vulnerable allows others to be open and
vulnerable. Moving forward, Jody is excited to
confirm that her book is going to be republished by Bluebird
(PanMacmillan) in the UK to come out for International Women’s Day
in March 2016. It’s a revised and expanded version and will be
translated into other languages. She was also made a Fellow of
Social Innovation at Cambridge University for her work
with Gateway Women. This gives her the opportunity to
teach the new generation of leaders. These group of women are an
extraordinary resource in a culture in desperate need of cause.
It’s not a coincidence. Jody feels that this group of women are
filling in the gaps, where mothers out there may be too busy
raising the next great generation. See here to order Jody’s
book Did you enjoy this episode? Do you have any
friends or family members that you feel would benefit from this
podcast series? Please share.