In anticipation of World Childless Week (September 14th-20th), we connect with with its Founder, Stephanie Joy Phillips in Worcestershire, England.

Steph started World Childless Week ten years ago, after discovering there was no representation for the CNBC community anywhere she looked in the world.

She opens up about her own childless experience and the many lessons that came from that. With invisibility often at the core of the CNBC experience, she found that being seen and heard by people in online support groups was immensely transformative.

Online and through World Childless Week, she gathers many people together to share similar and different struggles, and to remember their value in a community of people who care.

She keeps an open and non-judgmental policy for creative expression in World Childless Week submissions, providing an outlet for genuine connection. We talk about the courage of speaking up and also how nervous it can make a person feel, but how it gets a bit easier - and rewarding - with practice.

She promotes the idea of employers recognizing childless employees, to include them in policies, as one way of creating more equity for CNBC people. She also believes that teaching children that it’s normal to grow up and not have kids would take away the fear behind it.

We expand on the symbolism and language of the Forget-Me-Not flower, emblem for World Childless Week.

LISTEN to the conversation HERE