I’m proud to be a part of World Childless Week, launched in 2017 by Stephanie Phillips. The 2nd World Childless Week is happening from 10-16th September 2018 and I was delighted when I was asked to get involved as a World Childless Week Champion, especially as I had just launched a counselling practice focused on supporting people who are childless not by choice.

I tried to have children from 2008 to 2015, mainly through adoption, but it didn’t work out for me. At that time it felt as if everything had fallen apart, and now, thanks to support from my childless sisters and brothers, from my friends old and new, from my family and from organisations including Gateway Women, Walking Forward Inspiration Network and World Childless Week, things have fallen back together. I now understand that although my life is different from that of someone with children, it is not worse, and that I have as many possibilities for happiness, for fulfilment and for living a life of meaning as a mother or father has. I hope to share my new understanding, happiness and sense of freedom from grief and shame with others who find themselves in a similar position to me.

I’m proud to be a World Childless Week Champion because I am proud of the way I have transformed my difficult experiences into creating a meaningful life for me, and a determination to support my childless peers through offering specialist counselling for men and women who are childless not by choice.

I’m proud to stand among the other men and women who are World Childless Week Champions, and I hope that our diversity means that all childless not by choice people will feel represented and will feel that they are not alone. Our community is what will support us, sustain us and help us to move forward with hope and confidence. It has done this for me.

I’m so grateful to Stephanie, to Berenice, and to all of us and I’m looking forward to an inspiring, challenging and supportive week.

Here are the themes for the 2nd World Childless Week 2018: 10th-16th September 2018!