GUEST BLOG
Mid April 2023, I was scrolling through social media, and spotted a post from my local Facebook community group.
A journalist was looking for women in their 50s for an article she was writing, about how they had found ways of making friends.
I immediately thought of the friendships and connections I have made in the childless community. I turned 50 last year and recognised how lucky I was to have made new friends.
This is the message I sent:
I am 50 and have made a new group of friends who are childless not by choice (CNBC). We all wanted children, but for a huge variety of reasons our dreams didn’t come true. There is a global community of CNBC women, and a friend and I organise a monthly social gathering in Brighton for CNBC women. I also join a weekly online CNBC meditation class run by the friend I organise the socials with and have made friends across the UK and globally through those. While all my friends were becoming mothers and making new friends in my late 20s/30s I have now found a group of women with a shared experience to connect with.
I added a link to World Childless Week, as this is where Bindi Shah and I advertise our monthly socials. In fact, this month we are having our first mid week social as well.
Then, last week, a CNBC friend messaged me to say she had spotted my name in the August edition of Woman and Home. Naturally, I went straight out and bought a copy!
The article is titled ‘How to Make Friends in your 50s‘. It gives five tips, one of them being ‘look for like minded people’.
And there I am. There we are! The CNBC community highlighted in the mainstream media as a way of connecting with others with a shared experience.
I’ve already had one woman reach out to me through Facebook, asking for more information about World Childless Week. The magazine has a readership of over 200,000 in the UK, and I know it has helped at least one person discover our community.
Our monthly socials in Brighton bring me so much joy as do the connections through Bindi‘s meditation classes. I love World Childless Week and hearing all our voices come together.
I’m so happy the journalist chose to highlight our community in the mainstream media. May there be more of it!
Nina Thair
Shared in full with Nina’s permission. You can see the original blog at: Chaos in Slow Motion – Nina’s Life – More Than Meets the Eye
