On this blog, I share so many layers about marriage and my own married life as well as what I have learned as a Life Coach working with my clients.
What I have never shared is anything about motherhood, because I don’t have kids. The decision to be childfree is something that took my hubby and I years to come to and I know it’s a struggle for so many couples – some feel ambivalence about parenthood or guilt for not wanting to be parents or a whole host of other feelings.
The choice to become parents or not is one of the most important decisions we make in life and yet it is one of the least talked about.
That ends today. I had the honor and pleasure of speaking with Sarah Dobson from The Maybe Someday Podcast, A podcast about figuring out what it means (not) to be a mother. And in our conversation we went deep about how we made the choice not to become parents, what it’s like to be childfree by choice and we were open-hearted and real about how that choice has affected our lives and relationships.
Here are some of the highlights of what we talked about:
- the decision process my husband and I went through when deciding not to have children (1:31)
- facing resistance from others who challenged our decision (6:10)
- making decisions from your own highest wisdom (10:59)
- approaching our marriage as two individuals who deeply love and care for each other, while realizing that different things are more important to each of us (13:49)
- my childhood experiences of mothers, how not all mothers are the same, and how this factored into my decision (16:56)
- the idea that your life isn’t complete or fully lived if you don’t have kids and my view of living a fulfilling and satisfying life (21:19)
- letting go of some childhood fantasies and making peace with our decisions (25:43)
- the struggle in our society with “my choice is better than your choice” (29:19)
- dealing with other people’s expectations of what your life is “supposed to” look like (36:34)
- our quest for belonging and coming to peace with who you are (39:25)
- working through discomfort and choosing the meaning of our decisions and experiences (44:03)
Listen to the whole conversation here:
I think this is such an important conversation that we need to be having more of. If you get any value out of listening to our chat, I invite you to write a podcast review in iTunes so more people can find and participate in this conversation. You can find really simple instructions on how to do that here:
https://www.maybesomedaypodcast.com/episodes/2018/how-to-write-a-podcast-review-in-itunes
Sarah Dobson is an academic editor, grant consultant, and writing coach based in Vancouver, BC. Sarah has an MSc in public health from the Université de Montréal and a BA&Sc from McMaster University. She worked in research management and grant facilitation in academic institutions across Canada for more than a decade. This show is a passion project she founded after a life-threatening health scare and got really interested in the distance between what we say matter to us and what we do to make it real.
