Circumstantial childlessness is complex, nuanced, and often unresolved, shaped by timing and circumstances that never quite aligned rather than by a clear decision. We are often left perplexed, silenced by shame and with a sense of being somehow complicit in our own childlessness, “having never tried hard enough”. Hear from four women who identify as circumstantially childless as they add a third voice to a conversation long dominated by voluntary and involuntary childlessness.
DATE: Monday 14th September
TIME: 9.00am BST - Find your timezone HERE
REGISTER FOR THIS WEBINAR HERE
Please note: Whilst the panellists will be recorded, your camera and audio will be turned off. If you are unable to attend the webinar live, you DO NOT need to register to watch the replay. Just subscribe to the World Childless Week YouTube channel and you’ll be notified when new recordings are added.
PANELLISTS
Naomi Menahem - Australia
Naomi spent over 10 years making sense of her childlessness, researching, synthesising and ultimately writing a doctorate that changed her. She identifies as circumstantially childless, having never made a conscious choice to be without children, nor,
to her knowledge, was she infertile. Now a childless advocate, she founded Childless Conversation, a monthly in-person gathering to break the silence. Not a support group, or a therapy session. A conversation, gently held, for those who have been quiet for too long.
Professionally, she is a strategic communications specialist with over 20 years of experience in corporate, government, and higher education, working across campaigns, change programs and events. She is also a certified non-fiction book coach and founder of Distil Your Book, helping aspiring authors anchor their foundation before the writing begins. At the heart of everything she does is storytelling. The childless story is one she knows better than most.
Jo Gibson - UK
Jo is an integrative psychotherapist who is childless by circumstance. During her training—which focused on human development through relationships, including the infant–mother relationship—Jo noticed that childlessness among practitioners, and
childlessness as an aspect of diversity, were rarely acknowledged. She therefore focused her research on the experiences of psychotherapists who knew they would not have children of their own.
Jo’s study explored the experiences of those who identified as either voluntarily or involuntarily childless. Its findings illuminated the complexity of pathways to childlessness and the interplay between identity, choice and constraint. Jo continues to explore the experiences of childless women from a therapeutic perspective, with a particular interest in ambivalence and its role as an internal constraint.
Sebastiana Black - UK
Sebastiana is a certified Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist and counsellor, working in private practice. Her personal experience of non-parenthood, alongside her background of moving from the Czech Republic, informs her therapeutic work.
She supports childless individuals and immigrants, navigating identity, minority stress, cultural stigma, loss, and grief.
She has found, both in her own experience and in her work with others, that childlessness by circumstance often intersects with childhood, intergenerational, and relational trauma. She therefore supports people in understanding and healing the parts of themselves shaped by these experiences, and in exploring how they continue to influence their relationships and sense of self.
Sebastiana is committed to guiding her clients towards greater self-compassion, clarity, wholeness, and balance.
Susan Dowrie - Australia
My story will not be the same as yours, but I hope you will recognise some of the emotional experiences and feel seen and understood. My story includes having a disabled brother when many thought they should be hidden away, and the shock
of the man I thought I would marry telling me he was gay. I am a spinster, accepting this after an attempt in my 30s to partner with a man with mental health conditions. It all left me despairing and exhausted, and with choking shame.
I turned to Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to start unpacking it. It has not always been a kind journey, but it has helped me to hold all these complicated truths.
Now I’m retired, I enjoy doing more NVC and travelling around Australia. I also enjoy learning French and sketching in pen and watercolour. You may know me as one of the NomoCrones.
