Writer, creative writing facilitator and amateur flamenco dancer, this is my first attempt at blogging. I write every day, even if it is a few pages of rubbish. I consider reading at least one poem a day to be therapy. Nothing feeds the soul like a good scone.
“Sister, the stars have no children” (Naomi Shihab Nye) Today’s ‘Way’ is simply a book I found whilst researching for my masters. The subject of my masters was how we can use language to subvert those old, dominant and clichéd ways to describe the experience of the childless woman. These are the descriptions that wound … More #Seven Days – Seven Ways
Day two of ‘Seven Days – Seven Ways’ where I describe seven things that have helped me over my years of being childless not by choice. I’m writing these to coincide with Fertility Network UK’s #YouAreNotAlone Week. Go over to see what they are doing here. Do Something to Make Your Physical Self Feel Vital … More #Seven Days – Seven Ways
All this week those lovely folk at Fertility Network UK are running their #YouAreNotAlone Fertility Week. They are organising talks, webinars and events to raise awareness of fertility issues and childlessness and to try to break through some of those myths and taboos many of us face every day. In the spirit of this … More #Seven Days – Seven Ways
The Power of Words I’m very honoured to be presenting in Fertility Network UK’s “More to Life” webinar series on 12 December 2018 at 7pm. Please click on this link to see more details for this free webinar. Follow this link to register for the webinar. I hope you will be able to join us. In this More … More Webinar for Fertility Network UK’s “More to Life”
Today is National Poetry Day and I thought I would post a poem that always makes me smile. Some of you may remember the story around 20 years ago of a container that fell off a ship near the Aleutians and that the container was carrying thousands of plastic animals, including bath ducks. Wind and tide … More Happy National Poetry Day!
(Not Always) Plain Sailing Sometimes it amazes me how, on a weekly – even daily – basis, I can swing between the hauntings of old ghosts and the blessings of freedom. As I’ve said before on this blog, I don’t believe I’ve ever found what you might call ‘resolution’ for the grief of childlessness. But … More The Ghosts of Grief and the Blessings of Freedom
“My heart goes out to all those who wanted children and didn’t achieve the dream of being the parents they so longed to be – whether they had IVF or not.” IVF is no ‘rite of passage’ Some readers of this blog will have had fertility treatment and there will be many of you who … More A Few Thoughts on IVF as it Turns 40
Sacred Objects For seventeen years I’d kept three small stones in a long-emptied chocolate box on a shelf in a cupboard. They weren’t particularly beautiful stones – to anyone else they would have been just standard Sussex beach issue but for me they held all the ‘magic’ of sacred objects. I didn’t look at them … More The Ceremony With No Name
From my heart… This is not the post I had planned to write. I’m afraid ‘the stuff of life’ got in the way last week and I wasn’t able to deliver on my plans. To mark Father’s Day, I had wanted to write (in greater depth than I have here) about how the male … More Father’s Day – The voices of childless men
“To emerge from grief, to find a way to live with the loss is a continual creative act – an on-going project to build our resilience muscle.” As I sit here writing in a café I am looking at a family sitting around a table, a pram next to them. The grandfather and two waitresses … More Creating Your Own Brand of Resilience: emerging from the grief of childlessness
Without Issue 