When childless elderwomen talk...

Video and transcript from December 2023's Solstice Session of Fireside Wisdom on the topic of 'Role Models'. News about other Gateway Elderwomen events coming soon...

For December 2023’s Solstice session, the NomoCrones gathered around the Zoom Fire to unpack ‘The Power of the Role Model’ for those of us ageing without children. Who are they? Where the heck are they? How do we find them? How do we become them? And why is all this so important?!

See below for written transcript.

Thank you to my guests Sue Fagalde Lick, Kate Kaufmann, Tessa Broad, Trish Faulks, Donna Ward, Karen Malone Wright, Jackie Shannon Hollis, Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos, Sue Newsome and Mary Henson. And big hugs and get well soon to Elizabeth Grambsch and Stella Duffy, both of whom were unwell when the recording took place and had to step down.

Some of our wonderful panellists! Click the video at the top of the page to watch. Click here to find out more about each of them and their work.

As well as discussing our own role models, during the webinar I shared the results of the poll of YOUR role models (for those who chose to answer that question on the registration form). You can see those results here.

Also, a very special thank you from me to Maria Hill, who wasn’t able to join us for this call, and who has been such a powerful childless elderwomen role model to me for over a decade now. She continues to model wisdom, grace, courage and creativity in ways that inspire me in my apprentice croning. Maria, you rock!

Join our Childless Elderwomen group - we’re 200-strong already!

I do know that many of you are looking to make personal connections around these topics, so do consider joining me in our ‘Childless Elderwomen’ group (hosted under the umbrella of the Childless Collective online community) - there are over 200 of us already!

Please note that the Childless Collective is a paid-for membership group. However, reduced or donation memberships are available for anyone who needs one so please don’t let finances put you off joining your peers, and the chance to make new childless elderwomen friends and to both give and receive support. Please reach out to Sonia at hello@childlesscollective.com for any support/info about this, or just click here for more info or to join.

On Saturday 6th Jan I’m hosting an online Zoom meeting for members of the Gateway Elderwomen group to discuss my ideas for projects I’m planning to create this year. I hope you’ll be there.

Next free Fireside Wisdom Session: Wednesday 20th March 2024: Caring for the Caregiver.

Join us again for Fireside Wisdom on the March 2024 Equinox when we will be discussing ‘Caring for the Caregiver’, including exploring how to navigate sharing responsibilities for vulnerable adults in your life with any siblings you may have - and other pressing topics! Free, live and recorded and you can register here.

---

Transcript: Lightly edited for clarity and not 100% accurate!

SPEAKERS

Jackie Shannon Hollis, Patricia Faulks, Tessa Broad, Donna Ward, Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos, Sue Newsome, Mary Henson, Kate Kaufmann, Jody Day GW, Sue Fagalde Lick, Karen Malone Wright

Jody Day GW  00:09

Hello everyone, and welcome to this webinar. We are the Nomo Crones - and Nomo equals 'not mother' and crone is not an insult in our book. And we're here for 'Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen'. And I have an amazing panel of childless elderwomen around me. I know that many of them are faces that become very beloved to many of us. So, my name is Jody Day, I'm the founder of Gateway Women and I'm an Apprentice Crone. I won't be 60 till next year, but I’ve got my training wheels on. And I'm getting a lot of support from these wonderful women around me over the last few years, as I've been growing into that new part of my life and identity. 

And actually, that feels like a good segue into what today's webinar is about, which is really the power of role models, and how important it is to find role models of women who are aging without children. And how we do that? Who are they? How do we become them? Why is it so important to have role models?

And so I just wanted to introduce you to Sue Newsome - Sue's from the UK. She's a therapist and a longtime member of Gateway Women. Sue has kindly volunteered to monitor the chat for this call. And also Sue, I will be sharing with you the really interesting results of all of the role models that you nominated - those of you who listed them - on the registration form. So I have spent some very unscientific time working out those earlier on today. 

So without further ado, we're not going to do a huge round of introductions because there are so many of us but if you go to the Gateway Women website, which is www.gateway-women.com, and click on 'Gateway Elderwomen', there's a tab called 'Who are the NomoCrones?' you will find pictures and biographies and links, the titles of all the amazing books and things that these wonderful women have done.

So who would like to kick us off today on what you know, maybe who your role model is? Because I'd love for all of us to share that. And just your thoughts on why it's so important that we find role models and how do we find them? 

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos  02:43

So I give a lot of thought to this. I'm first of all, so delighted. Everybody could join us today. It's wonderful, and especially on the winter solstice. Thank you all. This morning, I woke up thinking this question and two women popped to my mind immediately. One of them is Katharine Hepburn and the other is Marlo Thomas. And for those outside of the United States, Marlo Thomas was one of the most defining women of my childhood. She developed an incredible following with an album called 'Free to Be You and Me'. And it has stayed with me forever because it celebrates all of us in our own uniqueness. And from a little little child, I knew that no matter what happened in my life, Marlo Thomas had my back. 

Sue Fagalde Lick  03:32

Marla was on my list too. I think I'm a bit older than you because I remembered her first is 'That Girl' on the old TV sitcom. But she's one of the few that we actually know had a situation like mine where she never had her own children, but she married an older man who had his own bunch of children, so she was a stepmother - she was childless by marriage. And so often, people who are childless because of their spouse never talk about it. But Marlo was one that we know about. And yeah, she did do some marvellous things. Most of my other role models are all people that had children, or like bits and pieces of them, but not all of them. It's difficult to find somebody who's a real role model.

Jackie Shannon Hollis  04:29

I’ve thought a lot about this Jody since you first proposed this as an idea and I almost didn't come because I don't have anyone... Up until now. Until I wrote my book, there wasn't anyone who was a role model… I feel teary about this. My Great Aunt Lena was the only childless woman I knew and I wrote about her and my book. And I really regret that I didn't connect with her. She didn't live long enough for me to get to an age where I became curious about her childlessness; I knew she was a widow, and she didn't have children. And she competed with my grandmother for us, and my grandmother boundaried that, so it was difficult to spend time with her. And so, and when I think about it... there were people in the media, like Marlo Thomas, I totally love that as an example. But I find it hard to place them as role models, because I feel like we're getting a very curated view of them. 

And so what I wished for, and thought about when I was getting ready to have my book published, was 'Who are the people that are out there?' and I found Jody Day and I connected with Sue Lick, and I connected with Kate Kaufman, and I got to have contact with Donna Ward. And I could go through the list of all of these people, my, you know, like, and I think of each of you as a role model in a different way. Trish Faulks is like this incredibly, powerfully vulnerable person who's a style queen - and I just love seeing pictures of her. And, you know, I've just, I mean, the smarts of Donna Ward, I mean, I just could go on and on. These are my role models now. I didn't have those before. And like Sue said, I had role models, my mom was very much a role model for me, not in her mothering, but in many other ways. And so I have women in my life, who are mothers who are role models because they don't fully only identify as mothers. So, I don't have a person - now in my life, I feel like this group of women, and the women that I've connected with, and a whole bunch of younger women who are coming along behind me are my role models, because they are championing this in a way that's very different than anything I have.

Jody Day GW  07:21

Something noticeable on the registration for these calls, and, and I think we'll see it in the chat as we go on, is that lots of lots of younger women are attending these calls; women in their 20s and 30s, as well as kind of 40s and 50s. The space that we create is something that they really want, and they really value. And I do reflect on what it might have been like for us 20 years ago, to have met us as a group of outspoken, heartfelt, interesting, passionate, older women without children - with very, very different lives and experiences. Because I agree, it's like maybe a role model gives this idea that it's this one thing that we're going to be like, but I liked what you said, Jackie, that it's like a kind of a kaleidoscope - that we take a little bit of inspiration here, a little bit of support there, a little bit of insight there and we build that up into maybe an internalized picture of what a role model means to us. I think that's really powerful. Yeah, and Trish is a style queen! 

Mary Henson  08:41

I don't have any role models either. When I first came to infertility and childlessness, there wasn't anybody outside you [Jody] out there who didn't have children apart from one aunt in Ireland, who I had some contact with, but not a lot. And she wasn't very interested in talking about not having children, she just wanted to enjoy herself and fair play to her. And she did - she travelled the world she had a good life, you know. So I've come to this sort of whole childless thing, and I found that younger women are quite inspiring as well. And well as you Jody, you know, and and the other ladies here, too. So I don't necessarily think we need a role model as such. As long as we can sort of learn, grow, you know, from each other. That's the main thing, isn't it? 

Jody Day GW  09:37

I'm thinking of that old expression, you know, 'You can't be it if you can't see it.' And I think, you know, just to have older women who are visible and who are who are childless and childfree, and unapologetically living their lives, is something we haven't seen before in our culture. And I think it is, and it will continue to have a powerful influence on younger women, and us on each other. I mean, we've all influenced each other here in this group so much over the last three years.

Kate Kaufmann  10:14

Well, I was thinking about three fictional models for me. And I forgot that they were my models until I saw the Barbie movie and Barbie got me like, 'Yes, I can do anything!' And Nancy Drew was awesome. I mean, she ran around in her little convertible and took care of stuff. But the one that made me smile the most was Mrs. Piggle. Wiggle, who I don't know if you know, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, but she was a widow, and she was round, and she lived in an upside-down house. And she was the hero of the neighbourhood. And all of the moms and kids and stuff came to her for her magic cures. I recently read Mrs. Piggle Wiggle again and she normalized all of the ways that she is in the world, which is something that I credit this group, for doing and modelling for ourselves, and for all the viewers.  As far as living models. I think the first person I spoke with was Sue Lick and she has been a model for me since the bat reached out, I was so I was blown away when I found her online in the decades past, and she lived about an hour away from me, so that was pretty sweet. And then another one, I will call her Wendy here, but she is turning 90 this year. And she and I befriended each other, probably 20 years ago, and I sat in a circle for an eldering group (I was too young to be part of it but they let me in anyway). And I said, 'I am not going to have kids and I can't picture what my life is going to be like if anybody doesn't have kids.' And she was one of the co-leaders and she befriended me shortly after we had a wonderful conversation. It's been a long time, and now I'm very, very deeply involved in her life and her plans for her elderhood.

Jody Day GW  12:17

Yeah, that's been a really important friendship. And I'd love to talk to both of you actually, one day about that; it could be really interesting to do just a session with, you know, just the three of us because it's been, as I've heard it unfolding over the last few years, I'm always left with a lot of questions and admiration and curiosity about that relationship. 

Patricia Faulks  12:41

Well, I, you know, like everybody else, I thought about it and thought I better think about it and then it just came this, this, this image just came walking the dog. And it's not anybody that anybody knows. It was somebody that I knew many years ago. But her name is Betty. And Betty is dead now, but Betty was our old neighbour. And Betty, she would say wish you've all heard walk to the beat of her own drum. And she certainly did. And she was an eccentric. And a real eccentric, and eccentrics tend to be charismatic. And she was that as well. But she didn't care. And we became just became very good friends. She was our neighbour way back in the day. And we stayed friends when my husband and I split up and I moved away and then I moved back and we had many drunken Sunday afternoons together when my husband had died and you know, all sorts of things. It was just, she was much older than me.

Betty taught me how to be stalwart; Betty taught me grounding, because that's what she was. She didn't care about anything. She was childless; they were childless. Her answer was, and I think we're after the watershed… when I said, 'Why did you not have children?' Betty would say, 'I couldn't stay stand the little beggars.' And I don't think that was true. I don't know if they could have them enough, or if they just didn't want them, but kids were drawn to her like a magnet. She was like the Pied Piper.

I admired her. Her stalwartness, her grounding. She was able to push through barriers. She didn't care what people thought - that I admired. She just didn't care what they thought. She used to say, ‘You don't need women's lib’ (this is years ago remember). She was an eccentric, and she was known as an extra eccentric in the village. And I never realized how much I just wanted her company. She lit up a room. She was very outspoken, her wicked wit, her pragmatism. She went off her legs and she put herself in a nursing home without anyone else, and eventually, she died.

And she said to me, once, when her husband had died, and she came to me for Christmas and New Year, 'I never thanked you, she said, for inviting me for Christmas that Christmas, because I'd have been on my own.' It's nothing, Betty!’ I said. 'Yeah,’ she said, ‘But I never thanked you properly. I'd have been on my own.' And I remember that because I wish other people thought the same way. Because they don't, always. But every one of us who knew Betty, I think our life was touched by her. We won't forget her. 

Jody Day GW  16:04

Can I just say Trish, that it sounds like you could almost be describing yourself? She sounds like she's had a big impact on you.

Patricia Faulks  16:16

I'll go sometimes even now, and this is how I knew it when I was walking Lilley. ‘What would Betty do?’ Right?

Jody Day GW  16:22

What would Betty do? 

Patricia Faulks  16:24

Betty! That's it! It's Betty. I don't know how we become them. Jody, she would say 'Just be you.' Just be you. Just don't care what others think! Because we do care…

Jody Day GW  16:41

But we do… I mean, we're social creatures. We do care what others think.

Patricia Faulks  16:45

And sometimes it's necessary, isn't it?

Jody Day GW  16:46

Sometimes! Just maybe not as much as perhaps we sometimes constrain ourselves by...

Patricia Faulks  16:53

Only one other I thought of - I don't know that much about her, but I've always admired her - is New York model Iris Apfel, I think she's now 102. And she became a model quite late in her life - driving through the scene in her Nissan or something - and I just love her style and her way. So all the eccentrics, all the eccentrics...

Karen Malone Wright  17:20

I've been doing a lot of thinking, listening to all of your comments. And when I first you know, knew that Jody had chosen this topic, my answer was gonna be Oprah. It has nothing to do with really, her being Black, I always loved Oprah in general. And I didn't know what Jody emailed us about, that Oprah had a child from incest that died. I knew she’d had an experience with incest, but I didn't realize she had had a child. The only thing I did know was that in the 10 years since I started the NotMom, I have googled and googled and reached out to her staff. And I could not find in all those years, a single time when Oprah had a show where the only topic was childlessness. And what I did find was one article, which I don't know whether to trust, that said she never had the topic because it hurt her too much, because she always wanted children. And this was long before she started her school. And I've watched as the school, has developed and grown and I'm so happy for her because she does have all those girls now that are hers.

And I had tried that early in my - I'll call it suffering - and I was going to be a 'Big sister, little sister'. And I was told there was a five-year wait for any girl who was under the age of 16. And then I signed up to be at the local elementary school near my home, as a mentor for a second grader, which the first time I had great fun and we liked each other. And then I found out that every time a mentor came, they were assigned a different child, which meant that I couldn't really get a relationship going with that child. So anyway, I kept trying to just develop a relationship with a child. I have a god-daughter, but she lives 500 miles away from me. So at any rate, that's where I was when I thought about joining this discussion. 

But listening to you guys, I realized that once, several years ago, I had written a blog post. I came from a family of predominantly women, they were either divorced or widows, and my mother was married four times before she died. And three of those women who are my aunt, you know, like, my grandmother's sisters and different people's sisters, were childless. But the difference from what I've heard, listening to this discussion is, that I didn't know anybody who was childless who chose to be childfree. Until I got into this work, it had never occurred to me that anybody would choose to be childfree. And the three women that I grew up with, were very, very sad that they didn't have children. So they glommed on to me. And they fought with my mother all the time because they were convinced my mother wasn't raising me, right - you know, you shouldn't let her wear this, you shouldn't let her do this. Well, that caused, you know, friction and whatever.  But I was always aware that they were sad that they regretted how their lives turned out - one was a widow, one remarried, and soon after she remarried, this was years and years ago, he developed diabetes that wasn't diagnosed and he went blind. And suddenly, he wasn't the man she married, if you know what I mean, they stayed married the rest of their lives, but it wasn't right. And she drank, she drank a lot; she drank because of the childlessness, she drank because she had a blind husband as a walker. I mean, it was just a sad story.  So I'll stick with Oprah.

For the most part, I enjoy hearing the stories of the women who chose to be childfree, because it's just so different for me. And what Jody was saying about the current generation, I find, I am very happy that they talk, but I'm very interested in going to Jody's website more because, in many ways, I feel like Jody is the only person I see online who is dealing exclusively with women who did want to have a child and couldn't. Because the childfree by choice, and I mean, this in a nice way ladies, are taking over the internet is what it feels like!

After I had my two NotMom in-person conferences, which followed the mission of the NotMom to get women who chose childlessness and women who didn't, to see that they had so much in common. And yes, they're very different. But they really do share so much. They all have a boss who thinks they can work Christmas Eve, they all have an aunt who's in their business and won't get out of it, no matter what they do to set boundaries. They all have this, they all have that. And it wasn't until the end of the second conference, some of you may know Amy Blackstone, a professor in Maine. And Amy admitted to me that she never thought my conferences or my website could work, because there was no way that a woman who always wanted children and a woman who never wanted children could bond somehow. And she was fascinated that it did work. And she was fascinated that although she knew intellectually that it's hard to ignore someone's pain when you're looking in their face, she'd never seen it happen. And that's what happened at my conferences, women who arrived thinking, 'Oh, I'm only gonna hang with the childfree women'. Suddenly, were bonding and giving a shit about the women who never could.

Jody Day GW  24:32

I'm thinking back to a webinar that we did. Not this year, but the year before, when we had both childless and childfree elderwomen on the call. Because I think as we get older, and maybe we heal a little bit, and maybe we learn more about the other way of doing it, maybe we have more childfree women in our life or they meet more childless women. I think it's a binary which can potentially soften as we age, I think when we, I think when we're in our rawest state, I think the potential to misunderstand or offend each other can be quite high. And as we know, and to your point about your event being live, and I was there, I think we're a lot kinder and more careful with each other in real life than online. 

Karen Malone Wright  25:25

I feel, especially the more I age Jody is - and I write about I talk about this all the time - is the experience of suddenly not being a grandmother is reinvigorating all my experiences of my 30s. You know, after, after my friends, their children grew up, and they moved away, or they went to college, I got my girlfriends back. But boy, once those grandchildren came the door shut again. And I really wasn't involved.

Tessa Broad  25:58

Like you and like many others, I don't actually have any role models, either. I think I first started watching these Fireside Wisdom things when they first started, I've watched all of them, so it's a huge deal for me to be part of them. And you Jody, I  heard your voice on the radio quite a few years ago and it was the very first time I'd heard anyone saying how I felt, and it just felt huge for me. And then you endorsed my book and did all those wonderful things for me. So I've always had a connection and always followed the work of everybody on here. 

Jody Day GW  25:58

I think we are going to do a whole webinar on friendships and relationships next year. And I would really love to come back to your points then, because I think that is that's something people ask me about a lot: they ask me about intergenerational friendships, they ask me about making new friends with other women their age, they want to know how to keep the connections going with my friends who are grandmothers —I think it's a really hot topic. And so I'm definitely going to have you back on that. I'd love for everyone who's on the call, who hasn't yet spoken to maybe share their role models, because then I want to share the results of the polls that were sent in.

Tessa Broad  27:28

As to actual other role models, I think sometimes with famous people or whatever, we don't know them, we don't really know what their lives are like, I mean, yeah, I think Helen Mirren is absolutely fabulous and many of the other women who were mentioned, and Frida Kahlo is a bit of a hero heroine of mine (she had a miscarriage and then difficulty conceiving) is someone I also admire - I think I probably look most for writers and artists because that's just what I'm into. And I love the work of Lionel Shriver, and I particularly think she's a very, very brave lady to write about motherhood not being quite so peachy in 'We Have to Talk about Kevin'. So there are lots of women and artists that I admire. But I couldn't say they would ever be role models. I think it's people who are like us, who are actually living it and getting on with it are the ones you want to look to I think.

Donna Ward  28:36

It won't surprise you I'm sure, that most of my role models of politicians. I want to I want to say I just want to adjust this comment about role models - I think, for me, the women that I'm going to speak about in a minute, ignited in me the desire to inhabit their space, if you know what I mean. I guess, in a way I wanted them to step into my being, and so that I could channel the kind of person and actions they were taking in their lives.

And also, if I could just address the participant who just asked in the chat about whether there's a quest difference between single women without children and couples without children… I have to say there is a remarkable difference between them, being a single woman without children myself. I can see the value and privilege of having a partner and it's great if you've got children as well, but there's a whole raft of things that are different about being single and not having children. We can talk about that's a whole other story. But I just wanted to acknowledge that comment. 

My first role model, if you like, my inspiration, of course, was Germaine Greer. She was the one who told me that I could choose not to marry badly. She is childless. She was the one who wrote a book on the sadness and grief, she felt about not having children. Anne Summers, who wrote 'Damned Whores and God's Police' also was a woman who told me I didn't have to marry badly. And both of those women told me that I could be a feminist, and both of them are Australian. And so I was really feeling that I could inhabit this space and and take no rubbish from people, that they were so passionate about wanting to change the world and make it a better place for women and I embodied that desire in myself. 

The third woman I want to speak about, of course, is Julia Gillard, who was our first Prime Minister who, although she has had several relationships, has never married and stood - even though we were trying to get the same-sex marriage laws in here - she stood very firmly on her understanding about marriage and how we didn't have to get married, and reminded us all that our laws in this country have been framed so that marriage isn't more of a privilege, or more prestigious than de-facto relationships. And that took the sting out, I believe, of the idea of being single. 

The fourth woman that I have been inspired by and want to inhabit just about every day when I go to my desk to write something, of course, is Joan Didion. Now, of course, she was very married, and she had one child, and there had been some difficulty in having that child. And both of them died within a year. And of course, she wrote that amazing book called 'The Year of Living Dangerously'. And that was the book that made me understand that I could write about my life in a similar way, not as beautifully as she writes, but you know, I was trying. That's a person I inhabit daily. 

And the last person I want to speak - oh actually, there's two more. So the second I want to speak about is a journalist here in Australia, who is also very married and has, I don't know how many children she has. But she is one of those journalists who is such a complete and integrated person, I honestly don't know what her politics are. I believe they're the same as mine. But what she does, is she inspires us to do the best we can in the world, and to respect both sides of every argument. Her name is Catherine Murphy, she writes for The Guardian, Australia. And I have a quote of hers that sits on my desk, and this is what is says: ‘The universe only requires one thing from you to be brave, look for opportunity, and never squander it.' And so I read that to myself every day to remind myself to not squander the opportunities that I have. 

And the final person is our Minister for International Affairs, and her name is Penny Wong. And despite incredible divisiveness here in Australia, particularly about the war in Israel and Palestine, she stood up and said, 'We must have restraint.' Now, she's done all sorts of amazing things in the past, but it is her quiet capacity to do the right thing and stick to it all the time. That inspires me every day. And I like to inhabit Penny Wong every day. So they're the women that inspire me.

Jody Day GW  34:25

I'm thinking that rather like Jackie, there's this sense of kind of taking a little bit of this person, a little bit of that person, and different parts of us being inspired by different parts of them.

Sue Newsome  34:46

Well, I guess, similar to some of the other speakers so far, when I was growing up I really didn't have any significant people that I felt I could really trust, that I could really put all of my focus or attention on — they just didn't exist for me. And I guess, as I've got older, it's been much more about people who - it's not about their achievements, it's not about accolades, — it's more about people I could really good with, and that inspire me to be the best that I can. And that could be a neighbour. Or it could be, you know, anyone on this call. So it's, I noticed that it's very much changed for me as I've gotten older.

Jody Day GW  35:38

Well, I mean, my role model is she's not with us on this call, but she's normally with us on every call... My first elderwoman role model was Maria Hill, who's not with us today, she's on holiday, which is lovely. When I started the very first version of the Gateway Women online community, it was on a now-defunct platform called Google Plus. It was on Boxing Day 2012, which is the day after Christmas; I'd just endured a family Christmas and I was sitting on the laptop in my bedroom, and I fired up Google Plus which had just launched and I thought, why don't I start a community on here? Because I really didn't want to do on Facebook which, as I've written elsewhere, I’ve called 'self-harm for childless women'.

And, Maria was one of the very early people who joined. And what she modelled for me was a grounded way to support lots of different points of view. I mean, I was in my early years of training to be a psychotherapist but I could see in her online presence just the most awesome, empathic, written communication skills. And I saw the way she responded to new members, and I learned so much from her. 

Maria is in her 70s. She’s a good 10 to 15 years older than me and that was my first real experience of what it might be like to be in the presence of a healed, older-than-me, childless person. And I thought, wow, you know, I could be like that. And it was just that glimpse of possibility, of where the path I was living might go to, and I'd never seen that before.

Because I started Gateway Women because I didn't know any of us. I didn't know a single other, woman, either, either in my life, in my family, in my social circle, or even in the public eye who was childless not by choice, and also childless by circumstance, and single and childless by circumstance. The only women without children who were being vocal were childfree women: Oprah was pretty much the only one then, and in the UK, a childfree woman called Lucy Worsley, a TV historian. But it was still, you know, still very, very undercover 15 years ago. And then I met wonderful writers like Pamela. And Lori who's not here, and Sue and other bloggers. (For the young people on the call tonight blogs used to be a really big deal. And you know what, I think they're sort of coming back with Substack - I think there's almost a return to essays in a new form…)

And my fictional role model is Miss Marple. Miss Marple is Agatha Christie's detective. She is an older, single childless woman living on a reduced income. And she's overlooked by everyone. Depending on which TV version you watch, she's in her sort of late 60s or early 70s. And she uses her spinsterhood as an invisibility cloak. 'Don't mind me, I'm just here knitting.' Meanwhile, she's always the smartest person in the room. And I just I just love the way Agatha Christie used her invisibility as her superpower, and how she always finds empathic and emotionally intelligent reasons why things are happening. And also, it's so satisfying that at the end of an Agatha Christie novel, everything is resolved, everything is understood -unlike real life which is just full of fucking loose ends! 

Of all of you who registered about 350 of you shared your role models with us. Now, if you add up the number of people who said that I was their role model (thank you, I was very chuffed by that!) and all the other members of the NomoCrone were - all of us added together were the role models that got the greatest number of your votes at 84. 

And the next largest votes, and this is sad, but I think it's really coming up on the call as well, is people who said they didn't have a role model. And they didn't even really know where to start thinking about it. 

The next biggest number at 45 votes was people - and this really heartened me - and it was personal friends - family, aunts, godmothers, relatives, colleagues, teachers - people who are actually in their life, and we're known to them, who were their role models of sort of older women without children. 

And moving into the celebrity territory. Helen Mirren, the British actor, who's 78, got 22 votes, so she was our kind of highest vote as a celebrity role model. Really interesting story with Helen Mirren, she identifies as childfree but interestingly, she chose not to have children because she has tokophobia -she was shown films of childbirth in her Catholic school, which are basically designed to sort of terrify young girls. And it terrified her so much that it gave her tokophobia, which is a phobia of giving birth. And she decided not to have children because of that. So once again, choice is complex - unless you are completely infertile there is a lot of ambiguity, sometimes around choice. And I'm very happy that she's happy with not having children. But you know, there's a more complex story there. 

Oprah Winfrey, we were touching on that a little bit before she's American talk show host, aged 69. She got 14 votes, Oprah's story, she calls herself childfree and it’s also a complex story. She is a bereaved mother, having had a child as a teenager, the result of a pregnancy through family incest; that baby died a couple of weeks later and she decided after that she didn't want to have children. 

The next biggest vote is Dolly Parton, the American singer, she's 77. She got 12 votes, Dolly's story is also complex, the childfree community often claim her as ‘one of theirs’ but she tried to have children and struggled with endometriosis, and was unable to have a family, and has since really embraced her non-motherhood. I have to say she's a bit like Oprah - really such an amazing role model of a kind of maternal heart and it shows that mothering energy doesn't only have to come out through having children. 

Next one, maybe not surprising Jennifer Aniston. She's a little bit young to be an elderwoman at only 54, she got eight votes, as did Mary Oliver, the American poet, who was 83 when she died. I can’t find out what her story was beyond that she might have wanted children, but she was in a long-term partnership with another woman until they died. And this was a time before fertility treatments were so ubiquitous; it wasn't as easy then to try and have children if you weren't in a heterosexual partnership. And also Georgia O'Keeffe, who was a big shero of mine, the American artist, once again childfree. She had wanted children, but she and her partner and manager decided that she had to choose between her art and having children and she chose her art - complicated.

And then three notable mentions for Kim Cattrall, Stevie Nicks and Theresa May, who all got five votes, I have to say that would be a very, very interesting dinner party! Now you're probably better at maths than me, but you can see that these doesn't add up to the number of votes… there was a really long tail of women who got maybe one or two votes. And one of the things I found really interesting was how few of them were actually elderwomen - an awful lot of them were middle-aged, very few of them were in their 60s or older, which I think shows us how invisible older women are in the culture, let alone older, childless women. 

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos  44:33

I want to circle back to the reality of the world we live in versus a world that we may have grown up in and the world that we're going to be embracing in the new year. One thing that really struck me is that this group of women is unique in that we had a foot in both worlds. We lived a life pre-IVF, before all these fertility treatments were widely available, and now we live in a world where it seems that anyone who has enough money and enough, I guess scientific, shall we say, creativity and, and desire to pursue all possible avenues, can somehow try to get to that role of parenthood. Hope in a position to help women and men who have come into this discussion with realizing that the complexity of the world around us today, adds many nuances when people meet you for the first time. And I think it's all the more reason to be very confident. And I love Donna's list of people because they range across a pretty wide spectrum but at the same time, they're relatable. And I think that's one of the things that everyone's been trying to touch on. How do we relate? And how do we project ourselves into the world? And I just wanted to come back to this notion that it's not so much your self and your own self-perception, but how you reflect and interact - it’s a sort of three-dimensional view. And we all I think, really want very much to reach across those dimensions and say, ‘It's not that straightforward, it takes a little bit of work, but we're out there.’

Jody Day GW  46:29

Thank you, Pam. Yeah, I mean, none of us are one-dimensional. I suppose it's how do we have those conversations? How do we make the space for those kinds of dialogues? I mean, they're happening a lot online, but it's so powerful when we can also meet in person, which was what made Karen's event so amazing. Kate, I'm wondering, because you're writing a blog with Psychology Today, you know, such an incredibly mainstream and influential publication, how do you find the responses when you write about being a childless elderwoman? Because you've written some amazing stuff.

Kate Kaufmann  47:11

Oh, thank you for that. Unfortunately, they turned off the comments a few years ago, but I do get people who circle back and go and find me through my website and all. I will say that the piece that I wrote about connecting with elderwoman, was by far the most popular thing that I've ever written for Psychology Today. I was really touched by that. And one thing I wanted to talk about touches on how do we go about making those relationships happen? And I think regardless of who the people are that we're talking to, whether they're our elders, our youngers, our contemporaries, instead of talking about ‘the how come you don't have kids?’ when we talk about what the impact is of not having kids that like, like, Karen, saying, that is such a juicy bunch of stuff that just go off to the races on all the different ways we're impacted, and what solutions we've come up with. It's fascinating,

Jody Day GW  48:22

Yeah, thank you for that. Lots of food for thought here, as always,

Donna Ward  48:28

Yes, I think that also, what I'm finding as I'm going about my business is talking about the impact of not having a partner or not having another income in a dual-income economy... given that we've I don't know about the rest of the world but we screaming about inflation and the cost of living crisis that's collided with a housing crisis that's the result of 20 years of neglect in housing policy. And, as I'm talking about that, too... it's provided funnily enough, there's always a silver lining, it's provided the exact environment in which I can talk about what the social and economic impact is about not having a partner, because now it requires two incomes to just maintain a house, whether it's a rental property or not. And, women of course, in our country, and depending on the data, but I'm going to say earn up to 22% less than men, and so single women without children are really seriously behind the eight ball - the numbers of homelessness is increasing, and it's you know, serious, big time serious. So I think it is better if anyone asks you 'How come,' just change and talk about the impact the effect, they can relate more to that because it relates directly to their lives, they can recognize the importance of having a partner is an economic one, as well as the romantic and relationship. Yeah.

Jody Day GW  50:18

And if anyone would like to hear Donna talking about this more, she gave a brilliant interview to New Legacy Radio which went out yesterday, and you can find it on the New Legacy Radio podcast too.

Jackie Shannon Hollis  50:30

I have two things, someone in the chat mentioned Ann Patchett, who I think is younger than me, I'm quite sure. But she, I do think is an incredible role model, and having written essays about not having children, she is also able to write about motherhood. In her most recent book, 'Tom Lake', she's writing about that, which is, I think, something that women without children have sort of, there's such a capacity, particularly women who wanted to have children, to mother in so many ways. And I was reading something about Oprah Winfrey earlier today, and they talked about a quote that Maya Angelou had said to her, which is "Your legacy is not one thing, your legacy is every life you touch." And that for me I feel like the absence of children has given me... I really do know, I am a role model for younger people in my life. And there are a lot of younger women who've reached out since I wrote my book, but a lot of it has come from speaking more openly about both my own joy and my own loss. And being open about that. And I think that as we get to a time where it feels comfortable to do that, that's a way of bringing other people, both on your own journey as well as on theirs. 

Jody Day GW  51:17

I agree. I think being able to hold both of those is so powerful; it wasn't something I could do when I was first coming to terms with my childlessness. And I found childfree women very problematic at that point because I had internalized the pronatalist message that somehow they were ‘deviant women’, and I didn't want to be confused with them. And part of my journey was beginning to realize that I had brainwashed myself, especially as I began to realize that the best writing and the most insightful stuff I was learning about childlessness was coming through childfree writers! So I had to go... ‘okay, these women and people seem to understand something I'm really trying to understand’, and so I leant into it, and I got past that prejudice. And also, I understood from a childfree writer called Laura Carroll, who wrote 'The Baby Matrix' back in 2012, I understood what it was that had brainwashed me, and it was something called pronatalism. And once you know what it is, you can't unsee it -- it’s really, really important. 

I just wanted to look at something in one of the questions that's come up. I won't say the person's name: "Can any of the panel explain how you reach the stage where you no longer feel that you need to justify your role in society as a childless elder woman, like Trisha's Betty, she owned her space? How did she get there?"

Patricia Faulks  53:59

I'll answer that. Listening to everybody talking. Can I just say something that Karen had said that I have to agree with that - and probably we've touched on it about the childfree - sometimes it does feel as if the childfree are sort of taking over the whole conversation... I'm sure it's not true but I do worry that we are somehow I feel I'm not getting my message out there to the people that need to hear it, which is not the childless and the childfree, if the people who have families, they turn away from it. And I forgot what you'd ask me?!

Jody Day GW  54:43

How do you become Betty? How do you stop caring? How do you no longer feel you have to justify your role in society?

Patricia Faulks  54:50

I think that honestly, I hate to say it, everybody, but I think that comes with aging, possibly. Because as you age, you do get to that stage where you just don't give a toss. And you don't care. You don't care anymore what they think. You used to, you used to care a lot, but you don't now, it doesn't matter what they think, at all. So that said, you kind of do somewhere inside, you get home and you're mulling it over... But it's just probably coming with aging. And also, because you're alone, when you're aging alone. I'm talking about this at the moment as well, when you're aging alone without children, it's not easy. And it really isn't easy. And you know, you have to make it look easy, you have to be easy about it, you have to be comfortable with it. But you're not always. I just want the world, you know, out there, outside my childless zone to know about it. And I'm finding that quite difficult to get that message out there. So like they don't want to know, I don't know if anybody else has experienced that?

Jody Day GW  56:07

I think you've hit the nail on the head there, I think we represent an uncomfortable part of the human experience that people would rather look away from. And they miss so much that is wonderful about our experience by deciding it's only an uncomfortable thing. 

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos  56:22

I'd like to address that question directly. Because I do have a really simple answer, at least from my point of view, I finally looked at my worst fear. And I thought what would happen if I were 100% naked and told everybody, this is who I am. And I literally went through every single one of those. Everything from shock, to disbelief, to denial, to shame, all of it. And I just thought, I really don't give a damn, I really don't. And if someone can’t accept me for who I am—their loss.

Jody Day GW  56:57

They call it the IDGAF energy of postmenopausal as well! And you can probably work out what that stands for. It's like as estrogen leaves the room, so do the fucks.

Sue Fagalde Lick  57:14

Yeah, I think age does make a difference when it's a done deal and you really can't go back and change that decision. I think that that makes a big difference. And yes, you do reach a place where you don't give a fuck. But you know, have I totally gotten past justifying it? With most of my world, yes, with a few family members - never will happen; they will never get it. But myself personally, so many other things have happened that are more important at this point in my life that it’s like, that's just one little part of things.

Jody Day GW  57:51

And I think that some people might not ever get it, and maybe you get to put it aside. And that's okay. Not gonna happen...

Donna Ward  58:00

Two things. When you get to a certain age, it might be 30 and it might be 70. You realize what your achievements are. And you have done those things, no one else has done those things. And your friends who are living a life that is of the mainstream will never understand the achievements you have done. You hold them close to your heart. And that is what makes you walk well in the world. Those achievements.

Jody Day GW  58:37

Ah, Donna, that was a beautiful way to end our call. And you know, you are such a role model to me, and everyone on this call is such a role model to me, you know, you're kind of helping, we are helping each other elder and for those of us who are at the younger end of the spectrum here, we are being eldered in your presence. Thank you so much. So yes, Karen wants to have the last word.

Karen Malone Wright  59:01

Well, I'm sort of supporting what Donna said. But also I'm supporting Patricia. As I said, the NotMom, now in its 11th year, and then in a number of interviews from the media from many countries. And so, first of all, let me start by saying we all know that not every reporter is a good reporter. Oh, yeah. So I don't know what the hell kind of research they do. All they got to do is to go to my website and read my bio, but most of them didn't. And so when the interview began, they clearly assumed I never wanted children. And I would have to correct them and with a little kind of pissyness because it's like, ‘did you read anything?!’ You know, I mean, that's not me. But, and what they would say is, well, it's like there's so many childfree women out there, we just assumed you were one of them. And what it made me think and so I say this to the group, and especially to those of you who have written books, is that those of who didn't choose it, we do need to speak out, because we have been silent for centuries. And it's assumed that oh, well, all these women who are talking must be that new breed. And we're not necessarily.

Jody Day GW  59:24

And there have been childfree women with us for centuries too…

Karen Malone Wright  1:00:37

And they couldn't talk about it either...

Jody Day GW  1:00:38

I think the choice to be childfree, is becoming less stigmatized and they're proud of their choice, and it's easier for them to talk about. For many, childlessness comes with shame and trauma and silencing. There are many, many fewer childless people who feel comfortable speaking up, which is why I'm so grateful to have all of you here with me today. Lots of love coming for you in the chat. 

Quite a few people saying. ‘I'd really like to meet other women, I'd really like to connect’. If you go to the Gateway Women website, that's www.gateway-women.com. And click on "Online Community", you'll find the details there on how to join our online community, which is now called the Childless Collective. There’s is a group within it that I host called 'Childless Elderwomen' and I'm going to be actually organizing some events through that next year. So come and join us. We are there. We've got about 200 women in our childless elderwomen group there!

So thank you so much for being here with us. We wish you a very peaceful Solstice and how it as they say in Australia, however you travel through the next week or so, I hope it's peaceful and meaningful for you in whatever way you can make that happen.  And we will be back in March on the Equinox. And we're going to work out what we're going to talk about I am feeling it's going to be friendship. So, go Well, everyone, lots and lots of love. Thank you for being here with us.