Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
These words by Mary Oliver, from her poem The Summer Day, have surely called to many a childless woman — and man. What is it you plan to do with the life without the children you dreamed of?
They called to me. I went on adventures. I wrote books. I became a public infertile, and an Ambassador of World Childless Week.
I would sometimes read the words of other members of the childless community telling me (and presumably you too) that I (we) didn’t need to ‘mother the world’ as a response to our grief. I thought: bollocks to that. I do. I will.
And I wouldn’t change any of it. I wouldn’t change what I’ve done. I wouldn’t change what I’ve written and said. I wouldn’t change my childless life story — even if I could.
But the time has come to go and mother myself for a while. Frankly, I’m sick of my story. Or maybe I just want to write a different one. The story of the private infertile.
I am writing this blog for you as one of my final acts of love to the childless community. From January 2026, I will be stepping down as an Ambassador of World Childless Week as I embark on a year of what I’m calling Radical Pause.
It’s partly a response to burn-out. I’ve been selling my childless wares for over a decade (and if you’re thinking of following suit — let me tell you, there isn’t a lot of money in it). But it’s also a decision to step away from the validation that comes with sharing your shit with the world. The validation I’ve needed since childhood, but which was multiplied when I couldn’t conceive and carry a baby.
That’s why I’m also calling it a Surrender Sabbatical. I know I need to try and let go of my need to ‘matter’ because I couldn’t become a mother.
I don’t know what’s on the other side. Maybe everything. Maybe nothing. But I do know this is the next adventure I need to take in my life — and it could be my biggest and bravest yet.
There is another line in Mary Oliver’s beautiful poem that is less quoted than the final line I mentioned above — the one where she says she knows how to be ‘idle and blessed’. I have had times over the last decade of my life where I have felt very blessed to be childless.
I have had very few moments of being idle.
That’s the thing I plan to do with my one wild and precious life now.
What about you?
