Finally, acknowledgement for No Kidding women

I'm feeling a bit nervous. Recently, I was interviewed by a major women's magazine here in New Zealand. The writer had found my blog here, and I guess she thought what I had said was interesting, and wanted to interview me for an article she was writing about women without children. I was initially a bit hesitant, especially when I learned that her focus was going to be on women who were childfree by choice. But she was aware of the numbers of women who don't have children, and wanted to see what our lives were like. This wasn't going to be one of those nasty, attack articles about the selfish and frivolous lives of the childfree. So I bit the bullet, and gave her my name, and - it turned out - some quotes for the article.

The magazine arrived in the mail earlier this week. I read the article tentatively. She had written the article as originally envisaged, and I was accurately quoted, making at least one or two points I wanted to make. But there, in a magazine anyone in New Zealand might pick up, this month or for years to come in doctors' waiting rooms or fish and chip shops or Chinese takeaways, is my name, the name of this blog, and some of my history. I have generally kept this blog private. I guess that's blown now, as this magazine is the most widely read magazine in New Zealand (according to its own publicity).

Two things grated a little with me. The first was referring to my ectopic pregnancies as miscarriages. As someone who spent years volunteering for an ectopic pregnancy organisation, ignoring the difference just feeds the ignorance of the population, and this ignorance can, in fact, be very dangerous, even lethal. Still, I guess it was incidental to the topic of the article, so I can live with it.

The second jarring note was seeing my age in black and white. I don't feel that old, and seeing it in print was - laughably, I guess, considering it is no surprise to me -  quite shocking!

I don't have a link to the article yet. I am told that it will become available once the magazine is off the shelves in about a month, and will make it public here. For any kiwis reading this, the magazine is the Australian Women's Weekly (NZ edition). Feel free to read it!I actually think that No Kidding women sit confidently and comfortably next to the inevitable gushing about little Prince George and Princess Charlotte and their mother (who, of course, features on the cover) that is the main fodder of a women's magazine.

The whole point of this post though, is how pleased I am that a major women's magazine has focused on the sheer number of women who don't have children, and highlighted some features of our lives, that others might not have considered. Finally.