Why you need to be ‘Living The Life Unexpected' by Jody Day #LTLU

We’re always delighted to hear about new resources for our community. Some are long standing ones that have served us all well. So we - Sarah, Michael and Berenice - were delighted to hear that Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women was revising ‘Living The Life Unexpected’ and asked us to endorse it last year. Bluebird (an imprint of PanMacmillan) will be publishing this updated edition on 19th March.

There’s a focus on hope in this new edition, as reflected in the new subtitle ‘How to find hope, meaning and a fulfilling future without children’. This theme builds on the the powerful feelings around creating a new identity at a time when you may pick up the title and feel hope is a distant emotion. Jody is keen to show how it’s possible to give up the hope of parenthood but to exchange that for a new future.

What I loved is the additional focus on Millennials. As Jody notes in the pre-launch conversations about ‘Living The Life Unexpected’, this demographic will be approaching their late 30s in 2020 and may be coming to terms with not being a parent. New data that Jody has researched show that between 6-10% of the population are now voluntarily childless which has grown since the first edition was published in 2016.

The exercises are accompanied by Jody’s commentary and gentle guidance. If you already know of Jody’s work, the you maybe aware of her infamous blog post ‘50 ways not to be a mother (with apologies to Paul Simon). Jody deftly deals with these different paths to childlessness by focussing on the path yet to take. In short, this book is for you no matter which route got you here.  The first chapter give more depth to those reasons and ‘does a better job of banishing the false dichotomy that childlessness arises from either ‘not wanting’ or ‘not being able to have’ children’ (Jody Day, 2020)

Dealing with grief is incredibly personal yet we may have much in common. In the revised chapter 4 ‘Working Through Grief of Childlessness’, Jody gives advice to demographics of grief after abortion, if you’re a solo woman and as a couple It’s the first time that the LGBTQIA+ community, women of faith and colour have been given a voice too. 

There’s also updated resources with details of Gateway Women information, 30 global resources, 22 blogs and 15 pages of recommend books that cover a vast range of demographics within our community. We’re thrilled and honoured to be mentioned. Wow!

The wide range of endorsements from journalists, broadcasters, researchers, doctors, authors and healthcare workers demonstrates how important this book is. Jody’s dedication to our community has grown this book and created a go-to publication that is authentic and truthful. Just like the author. 

If you’d like a chance to win a signed copy of ‘Living The Life Unexpected’,  by Jody Day, please tune into our next episode which will be published on 15th March when we’ll be sharing all the details on how to enter. You can listen to our next episodes right here or sign up to our newsletter for a non-spammy alert.

Jody is also giving away a copy of the book to those who sign up to her Mother’s Day webinar. This free 1-hr webinar, hosted by Jody Day, Founder of Gateway Women and author of 'Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children', will look at the experience of Mother's Day from the viewpoints of our different childless guests, as well as sharing self-care tips and answering your questions to help you navigate this day. Here guests are:

• Lauren de Vere (UK), a licensed Gateway Women facilitator, will share about her experience of being narcissistically mothered, and how this impacts her feelings around Mother’s Day;

• Lizzie Lowrie (UK) is the author of ‘Salt Water & Honey’ (March 2020) in which she writes about the struggle to cope with her childlessness alongside her Christian faith. Lizzie created the ‘Mother’s Day Runaway Services’ as a safe Christian alternative service to Mothering Sunday events;

• Kate Kaufmann (USA), author of 'Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No' will talk about her experience of being both childless and grandchildless on Mother’s Day;

• Karin Enfield de Vries (NL), a licensed Gateway Women facilitator, will share about her experience of becoming childless at the relatively young age of 33 due to cervical cancer, before many of her friends and family had even started having children and how she’s learned to navigate Mother’s Day.

You can register for the webinar right here

You can also pre-order your copy here and do check out the book tour online by searching the hashtag #LTLU !

Berenice