In my recent talk for the Childless Collective Summit, I asked the question ‘What if being childless were an opportunity?’ And before you recoil in horror, let me explain… This idea originated from my interview with Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos for my book Finding Joy. To quote her … ‘I was talking to a woman in New York, who said women who have children easily, who move through the typical day-to-day existence of being a parent, don’t always understand how they fit into the world because they don’t always have the time to sit and contemplate it. She said for many people life is quite ordinary: they pack a lunch, they send the child off, they help them with homework, and they get up the next day and do it all over again. Society’s norm is people who pair off and have children. They can pretty well anticipate a road map of what’s ahead. For those of us women who did not have the familiar or conventional routine, we are forced to create our own routine, our own road map. In that sense we are in many ways living a rather extraordinary life, because the world is not suited to our patterns. We have to create our own ‘normal’, and then adapt it to society’s normal. Many people don’t realise until they retire or become an empty nester, how they want to invest their time or evolve themselves, or the way they go about their day to day. We are thrust … Read more