How do you discover and identify your story when the traditional one no longer applies? Learn how this difficult issue of identifying a new story for your life has been negotiated in a world still very challenging for women.
DATE: Saturday 20th January
TIME: 7pm GMT - Find your timezone HERE
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Please note: Whilst the panellists (see below) 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 on YouTube.
Story
Story is an important part of our lives. We all create stories from our experiences. Identities are a story, all cultural narratives and belief systems are a story, and all attitudes are a story. These various kinds of stories are our way of making meaning, and our feelings tell us a lot about whether the story is working or not.
Stories connect us with the world as it has been created and are how we learn about it. They do not tell us, though, about the world as it is becoming. They tell us what “reality” is, at least the reality that our social group or culture thinks it is. These stories are an important part of our connection with others and how we see ourselves. They can be constructive but too often fail us by not seeing or relating to us in a limited way. They can also be rejecting when life throws us a curveball and we do not fit the “story” we have been assigned, which, of course, happens for childless women.
Stories keep us connected, and that is a beautiful thing. Sometimes, though, we discover that the stories are not working. When you discover that you will be childless, the stories about life, what it is like, what it should be like, and what it could possibly be like are all put on the table. When the story does not work, we have to release it and discover a new one. No one knows that better than childless women.
The journey of childless women is not only a grieving process but also a journey to a new way of being. It is a journey to a new story, one that we create out of the ashes of a lost dream. Interestingly, childless women are making this journey while the human race is journeying to a new way of being as the old ways fall away.
No group is better prepared for the challenges of change than childless women. Our journey as childless women invites us to reground, change our perspective, and develop new skills. We have to release the old and find a new path for ourselves. It is a very challenging journey that helps us develop the skills of the emerging wise Queen.
Our purpose in our conversations about this Queen is to illuminate the ups and downs, the discoveries, and shifts that have helped us discover this new Queen energy in ourselves, invite her to the table, and help others do the same.
Stories can support us or keep us trapped in the past. In this webinar series, we explore how the childless journey challenges old stories and invites a new story for ourselves, others, and the times we live in as we discover the new emerging mature Queen in ourselves.
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Who is the Queen?
The Queen and our Queen conversations are about our becoming. It is not a stage of life, not an age. It is where we arrive after going through something; in fact, you have to go through something to activate the grounded, wise energy of the Queen. She has seen what is not true and discovered what is. She has questioned what matters and where she wants to put her energy. She is no longer just a role; she has become a person, and as a result, she has recovered her own agency and learned how to direct it wisely. She has learned to trust herself, her feelings, and her experience.
The purpose of these conversations is to explore this process of becoming, which is a current and ongoing journey for all of us. What is important is what you have noticed, experienced, and rethought and what you have changed for yourself. What is the inner change creating an outer change, and what does that mean for your life? We will be exploring using the theme of stories because we can reimagine our lives most easily that way.
Your Queens for this webinar are:
Maria Hill
I have worked in health care and the computer industry, and have an MBA. But when my life started falling apart, I took an opportunity to go to art school and then started Sensitive Evolution, an online platform for sensitive people, most of whom are childless, just like
me. I came to Gateway Women, now Lighthouse Women, about ten years ago, and enjoy supporting other childless women including our group for sensitive childless women. I have additionally trained in coaching, cultural and other frameworks, Reiki, and Theta healing.
My online work has become a transformative coaching practice teaching energy and cultural discernment skills to sensitive and/or childless women through Magic Of Joy. I also participate in Jody Day’s Fireside chats as part of her Gateway Elderhood Project.
I believe women are being freed to come into their power in a way impossible in the past.
Stephanie Joy Phillips
Stephanie spent a large part of her twenties in an abusive relationship and took the contraceptive pill to ensure children would not be born into that situation.
In her early thirties she met her husband to be but they didn't try to conceive until nearing forty. At the age of 39 she was told by an unsympathetic doctor "if he manages to get you pregnant it is highly unlikely you'll carry full term". She knew in that moment, she would never be a mum.
In 2016 Stephanie Joy Phillips founded three childless support groups on Facebook: Childless Path To Acceptance focuses on support, Childless Chit Chat is a trigger free zone and Childless Perks!! is all about laughter and finding the positives of being childless, without a parent saying 'I told you so'.
In 2017 after realising there was no national recognition of the childless community she founded World Childless Week. Seven days that enables the childless community to have a platform where they can find their voice and share their stories with confidence.
Steph lives in Worcestershire with her husband and two rescue cats, Storm and Tea-Cup. She enjoys gardening, arts and crafts, a good book, dining out and relaxing in front of the television with a puzzle book and one of her two cats snuggled up beside her.
Yvonne John
Yvonne John is the author of ‘Dreaming of a Life Unlived: Intimate Stories and Portraits of Women Without Children’ (2016). As an activist and public speaker Yvonne has appeared on numerous radio and television programmes, including ‘Woman's Hour’ on BBC Radio 4
and the Myleene Klass: Miscarriage & Me documentary, to talk about her experience recovering from the devastating grief of involuntary childlessness as well being a panellist for the Independent Newspaper’s conversations on ‘The Parenthood Question’ and ‘What does being a woman in 2023 mean’.
Yvonne is a graduate of Gateway Women (GW) year-long Plan B Mentorship programme and is a trained facilitator of the GW reignite weekend workshops.
Yvonne is passionate about creating an inclusive space for black women and women of colour to openly talk about their childless journey and is the leading voice on the childless WoC’s experience of infertility.
Catherine-Emmanuelle Delsile
At the age of fourteen, I was diagnosed with unexplained early menopause without having reached puberty. I learned I would never be able to have biological children. I also knew right away adopting was not the path for me: grieving was.
In 2012, I decided to be vocal about my experience as a single childless woman through my bilingual blog (French/English), Femme Sans Enfant. I am now a TRA, Therapist For Relationship Assistance ™ and World Childless Week Ambassador based in Montreal, Canada and I help childless women accept and embrace their lives through one-on-one therapy and workshops.
Sandra McNicol
Sandra is the founder of Caledonian Coaching, an ICF Coach, holding a Master's in Psychology of Coaching, and a Postgraduate in Grief Therapy. She is also permanently childless, not by choice.
She has personally experienced the multi-layered living losses of becoming (and being) permanently childless, not by choice. Her own path involved facing challenges in finding her life partner, freezing her eggs, enduring multiple baby losses (miscarriages), and experiencing failed IVF. The process of becoming permanently childless left her feeling lost, alone, and utterly empty.
Finding World Childless Week was a turning point in her healing journey. She realized that she was not alone and quickly started to host support calls to aid both her healing and accompany others on their healing journeys. She has been working in the childless community since 2020. She provides individual grief therapy support, runs healing horseshoes (grief circles with ceremonies and workshops), and helps women find new purpose and fulfilment in her "Embracing Us" Community. Sandra empathizes with how challenging this journey is and offers safe, non-judgmental support from her own lived (and in-progress) experience.
Jinny Nash
My name is Jinny and I’m childless by circumstance. Like many women of my generation I was taught mainly how to be a wife and mother throughout my childhood. The reality of navigating the world as a highly sensitive person while experiencing the trauma of several controlling and abusive
relationships with partners who did not want children made the realisation of motherhood impossible for me during the fertile years that are now behind me. Finding the CNBC community a few years ago helped me to unravel my story of childlessness and gain more confidence in myself and my contributions to my communities.
Beginning a yoga practice helped me to begin to find various ways to discover and accept my true self underneath layers of generational trauma and fear-based conditioning. Alongside other careers I’ve worked as a yoga teacher for 15 years, changing the style as I changed as a person. I continue to have a fascinating journey of self-discovery and am presently learning to allow myself to find and nurture creative ways of expression including singing, art and writing that bring me peace, joy and delight in this human experience.
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