World Childless Week 2025

World Childless Week starts today. Well, if I'm accurate, it probably starts in about six hours time, given time zone changes, but I'm also probably one of the first bloggers in the world who will write that first sentence! (I'll take my small wins where I can!)

I have contributed two pieces this year. As I say every year, this blog is both My Story, it speaks to I am Worthy, and Moving Forwards. Even if events have meant this year that my own story has meant I have been thinking back a lot. It's about life after infertility, and life as a childless woman, and embracing that life as much as possible.

The topics this year include: 

• Our Stories – Monday 15 September 2025
• Childless LGBTQI+ -  Tuesday 16th
• Childlessness and the Arts – Wednesday 18th
• Childless Health Care – Thursday 19^th
• Have you Got Kids? – Friday 20^th 
• We are Worthy – Saturday 21st
• Moving Forwards – Sunday  22nd

I've written submissions for "Childless Health Care" and "Have You Got Kids?" and will post them here later this week.

I hope you get to take part in some of the activities of the week - whether that is actively in a webinar, or just reading the submissions - and that it both inspires you and helps you feel less alone.

Thanks to Stephanie Joy Phillips in the UK for founding WCW and putting in so much work every year to bring the community together. 

 

 

When does caring count?

Does caring count if you never show that you care? 

People who find it difficult to support others – “I don’t want to say the wrong thing” – always forgive themselves (or so it seems) by saying, almost as an afterthought, “but I do care.”

As if that is supposed to make their silence or insensitivity okay.

Others excuse them by saying, “they find it terribly hard.”

And in saying that, they easily dismiss our feelings of disappointment, neglect, isolation. In fact, we’re practically admonished for feeling hurt.

I understand that others might have limitations that mean they can't provide the support we want and need. Even after we specifically articulate what we want and need. But being told that "they care" is really irrelevant, if the person in need of support doesn't feel that. Doesn't even hear it, because it is never said by the person who counts. Having to hear “they care” from a third party kind of proves that they don’t care enough to tell you themselves. That their feelings of awkwardness and discomfort outweigh our feelings - of trauma, of loss, of despair, of grief, or whatever is relevant when we desperately need support.

For those of us in the No Kidding space, this feels all too familiar. We are told not to make people feel awkward, put our feelings after others. Our losses are minimised by flippant or trite comments; "just adopt," “here, have mine,” "you never had anything to miss," "at least you can <fill in the blanks>"  etc, that dismiss our concerns about not having children. Someone once said to one of my sisters-in-law that she never knew what to say to me when I lost my pregnancies. “I’m really sorry, I don’t know what to say,” would have been nice to hear. How hard is that? That person maintained their silence for 15 years!

So I’m not even asking the question. I’m coming to a conclusion. Caring isn’t Schrodinger’s caring. You don’t both care and not care until you break your silence. Because it is the silence that hurts. Sometimes, it hurts a LOT.

Caring doesn’t even matter if you never show it.