Samara Jones-Hall is 47-years-old and lives in Kent.

What would I say to someone who found out they couldn’t have kids? I would say, that’s really fucking shit. I always imagined I would have a lot of kids. I had that in mind when I volunteered at a kindergarten, worked as a primary school teacher and collected favourite children’s books. When I retrained and did my law degree, this led to a career change that was very consciously about better opportunities for financial independence and maternity packages, as in that period of my life I thought I might have to parent alone.

After getting married and peeing on a lot of sticks I found out I couldn’t have children. Various assumptions by doctors about stress or diet and a range of diagnoses were perfectly valid but, as it happened, incorrect. When I finally found out that not only had the menopause come early but it had already been and gone, I was distraught, angry and in extreme grief.

I took a sabbatical and with my husband we embraced the freedom of working from laptops. We took a long working honeymoon for a few years travelling to, and working from, America, England, Scotland, Spain, Thailand, Malta, Ireland, Russia, France, Macau and Hong Kong. I am very lucky that I had my husband by my side whilst I worked through my grief and anger. He gave me a lot of space and support whilst also grieving himself.

Our families have been pretty understanding but in the main people just don’t think and assume you have kids. They talk to you as if you do. Sometimes I correct them, sometimes I don’t. This seems to me not just a slight on childless women or childfree women but on all women. A common reaction when told is,”oh, why don’t you just adopt?” as if that would make everything ok.

There are a lot moments when I really enjoy the freedoms that it brings. There are others when that sense of loss, grief and anger is still very much there. At these times it is hard to not be overcome by what feels like total media saturation of mothers, kids and parenting and at these times I feel isolated and alienated.

Last week the President of Turkey said that childless women are ‘deficient’ and ‘incomplete’. The press did report it but there were no signs of the kind of visible outrage, twitter storms or trending hashtags that we have seen accompanying other outrageous statements about women. Instead there was just apathy and a deafening silence about this view of women as baby machines.

My husband and I are now in the process of being assessed to become foster carers. We’ve chosen to foster because we wanted to mentor kids and to be professional parents whilst helping to keep families intact.

Resources for childfree living:
Life without baby – Lisa Manterfield
Coping with infertility – Nagar Nicole Jacobs and William T O’Donohue
Living the Life Unexpected – Jody Day
Gateway Women
Accepting Infertility
Childfree