Music has always been home to me. When I am filled with joy and wonder, I express it through music. When life gets hard, as it so often does, I retreat into the waiting arms of songs and melodies and allow them to embrace and soothe me.

I have been a photographer for about 15 years and my proposed project Inconceivable Motherhood is the most personal one I’ve done to date.

We belong to a long lineage

of grief

and longing for

The Feminine Tree represents the changing seasons of our grief. 

The haunting outro of the song hits like a dagger to the heart. So many of us going through this journey struggle with the concept of emptiness, lack of legacy, and existential grief.

The inspiration behind Blackbird came from a deeply personal place—my experience of being childless, not by choice.

I painted these forget-me-nots in dedication to the children we longed for, dreamed of, and lost.

Stop it.

………………………….You know you screwed up, don’t you???

The meditative rhythm of stitching and therapeutic whack of mallet strikes – the noise and mess of crafting; and healing.

I created this mixed media piece after accepting the reality that I will never have children.

The ache.

The constant ache as I lie awake or I walk in day.

I have never been creative

Or so I thought

I'm sitting at the piano and want to write you a song. But, just like so many times before, I have to cry while I try to find the words to describe what you mean to me.

I am strong, striving, and succeeding,

The pen is the healer, as I express,

I am a sociologist and I have been researching and writing about childlessness and nonmotherhood (nonparenthood) for 35 years.

The project “without fruit” is an unusual way of processing deeply hidden feelings and emotions; about the heart's desire to become a mother that never came true.

I want to share something extremely special with you today. Something that shows not just the strength of sharing our words but the power and impact our words have.

I have been ‘knowingly’ living without the possibility of having children for 21 years now; and though I have come to accept it, the questions that go through my mind never really go away and I suppose I tend to keep myself busy as a way of coping.

Dear Grieving Self,

You are enough. You are not broken.

They find it in her water bowl

no tooth fairy in this quiet house

Just a flash of what might have been.

I’ve long been drawn to ceramics and pottery from Spain and other places, both for its artistic beauty and functional reasons.

When I started writing my first book – The Pursuit of Motherhood – I thought it was just me and Frida Kahlo who had made art out of our infertility.

Motherhood walking away from me
The grief of an identity leaving me behind to find new meaning in life...

I grew up with the privilege of a most marvellous Mum. She was a wonderful woman, an artist, and in my lifetime an art teacher.

Wishing my child would be born

Is very similar to wishing a deceased loved one would reanimate or return from the dead.

I created this mandala at the beginning of the year, my word for 2025, before joining a childless group and meeting so many lovely ladies.

My silent film shows an autobiographical interactive concertina I created  to spread awareness of childlessness and how pets play crutial role in grievieng, processing and surviving our existence without a child through my own authentic experience.

There is no quick fix for this grief and this pain. It is relentless some days. But I am trying to heal, rebuild myself and move forward as many of you reading this will be too.

It took me

to be on my knees,

to pick up the pen.

I’m a musician and a psychiatrist, and still, I had always struggled with my childnessness state. Was it a choice, was it circumstances.. I wasn’t sure.