The Full Stop

World Childless Week preview, August 2021

In this episode, we were joined by the founder of World Childless Week, Stephanie Joy Phillips to get the inside information on the plans for the 5th year of this week-long event. World Childless Week brings together Ambassadors selected from the thought leaders, campaigners, and awareness raisers who volunteer alongside Steph, to give hope, support, and strength to our childless not by choice community.

In this exclusive gathering with Sarah Lawrence, Ambassadors Michael and Sarah, Steph also discussed what next for World Childless Week, how you can be involved and some of the events that are new to the week for 2021.

Men and mental health, July 2021

"No feeling is good or bad, right or wrong. I don't get to judge, but I can sit with you and help you know you are not alone and that there is support out there." Chrissy Pantlin

Our guest this month is Chrissy Pantlin. She’s based in Australia. After illness, Chrissy qualified in counseling and set up her practice in the pandemic. Chrissy has taken all her knowledge from working in health and safety in heavy industry where she saw an absence in support mental and physical health and skills to provide a much-needed service. In this episode, Chrissy talks about what she’s learning from the men who come to her practice and shares a wealth of advice that we know will be useful to all genders.

The joy in the everyday, June 2021

Please be aware that we discuss failed pregnancy and suicide in this episode. If you would like further support you can find resources here on our toolkit.

Episode 28: The joy in the everyday is a celebration of self-care and looking after ourselves. We hope you’ll be inspired by our guests, Bindi Shah and Clare Elleray

Bindi Shah is a meditation teacher, a life coach and a healer. She’s started online meditation classes specifically for our community and Berenice loves them. 

“I love meditation practice but it was always hard to find a space that was trigger-free. I know that each week, I have a class in my diary and a time to connect not just with myself, but with friends in the group. I have complete trust in Bindi to guide me through a peaceful meditation that is part of my healing journey.”  Berenice

You can find out more about the classes and Bindi’s work on this link to her website here

Clare Elleray is the founder of Growing, Singing Childless and Whole which is an experience that Clare says is best understood by joining for a taster session. 

“We spend an hour on Zoom in the company of other women who happen not to have kids, when that was their plan, learning and singing lovely, meaningful, positive songs with beautiful harmonies and rhythms and helpful, fun, uplifting messages in them that we'll maybe find are useful mantras to carry with us in our daily lives.  While not focussing on talking about our childlessness we do get a moment in every session to connect with the other women in the session.

By connecting and singing together we gain confidence in using and enjoying our voices in our lives and find so many others just like ourselves who are growing into their childless selves acknowledging the sadnesses and the joys of being who they are.

Joining in requires no specialist musical or singing skills at all. You won't be heard by others on the call but will be able to hear all the song parts on recordings that support your singing voice wherever you are.  You'll then have access to the website (if you decide to join us) where all the details of the songs and recordings of many of them are shared so you can refer to them between sessions.”

Here’s the website for more details

Clare also wrote a song to celebrate 10 years of Gateway Women and you can find that here

 

It’s our second birthday! May 2021

Join us - Sarah, Michael and Berenice - as our guests turn the tables on us. We were not able to have an in-person party because of COVID and travel restrictions across the world, so we set up an open house with Jody Day, Robin Hadley, Sarah Roberts, Victoria Firth, Yvonne John and Lesley Pyne, with a special message from our podcast inspiration, Civilla Morgan.

Celebrating 10 years of Gateway Women, April 2021

When Jody asked us if she could celebrate 10 years of Gateway Women with The Full Stop podcast, we were delighted. All three of us are proud to call Jody a friend and an inspiration.

Gateway Women means a lot to Sarah and Berenice who have been members for many years and the model and thinking of the community has inspired Michael who has seen great change.

To find out more about Gateway Women and how to join please click here

Simply Us, March 2021

This episode actually began as an ‘admin’ chat! We hit record and we realised there might be a few nuggets of wisdom. Join us as we riff about screen sharing, Covid in our countries (we do get a bit emotive here, and this was recorded in early February so the statistics have changed), handling Zoom meetings and boundaries.

Navigation with Kate Kaufmann, February 2021

We are delighted to share with you, our next episode with Kate Kaufmann in another cross-continent broadcast - we get very excited about making connections across the world! We’ve called this episode Navigation because Kate, for us, is a fantastic voice for our community, not just through her book Do you Have Kids, Life When the Answer is No, but in the many articles she has published, as a World Childless Week Champion and a good friend to many of us. She’s steering a path for all of us and for the future. She’s inspired us along the way with the podcast as a speaker outside our community, helping to educate and bridge the gap with eloquence and knowledge.

We were absolutely thrilled to have her as our guest. It’s fair to say that when Michael and Sarah had finished the recording, they were both telling Berenice (who missed this recording because of a vaccine appointment) how powerful it was.

You can find out more about Kate, her book, and find links to her social media and articles through her website by clicking right here.

Making connections, January 2021

We wanted to use this episode to discuss how we’ve had to adapt in this current climate of online communication. Who better than Helen Louise Jones who has been raising our spirits with singing through her Childless Voices project and Chanting Circles. The choir began before lockdown in the UK in March 2020 and she had to quickly adapt the delivery to keep providing support and it’s been growing as a result.  She joined us to talk about the power of voices and how it’s helped her to grow too.

We were also delighted to welcome Lisa Ann Kissane who talked about her love of books and how she’s encouraging our community to read through her website and Gateway Women’s NoMo Book Club which hosts online meetings to chat about the books she's recommended. If you’ve ever been triggered by a book then you need Lisa in your life! We encourage you to check out her website for her reviews, it's such an inspired idea.

Making connections is such an important part of our lives today but it can be hard, especially in this current climate. If you're setting up an event for our community then we'd love to hear from you and offer you our support. Please do get in touch.

The Alternative King’s and Queen’s Speech 2020

In this episode, we were joined by Sarah Roberts from The Empty Cradle, Stephanie Phillips from World Childless Week, Andy Harrod from Invisible Childlessness with Jody Day from Gateway Women to share our reflections on the year passed and our hopes for 2021.

"It’s almost like we’re starting to claim our space in the culture" Sarah Roberts, The Empty Cradle

Worthiness, November 2020

In this episode, we were joined by our good friend Andy Harrod who is the voice behind Invisible Childlessness. He’s one of many new, powerful contributors to our community as he explores coming to terms with involuntary childlessness through writing and academic study. He’s also part of the Clan of Brothers.

From the start, this episode poses questions about events that lead us to this space called involuntarily childlessness and we do mention infertility treatment.