Maybe Someday

Jennifer Rogers never felt that ticking biological clock. So she and her husband (who also doesn’t want kids) decided to focus their love on their four rescue dogs, their nieces and nephews, and their friends’ kids. On this episode, she shares a lot of hard-won wisdom about what it’s like to step outside of the mainstream, what it’s like to challenge the belief of “that’s just the way things are” and really stop to think for a minute about what you want and why you want it. Support the show! Become a patron Follow Maybe Someday on Instagram Jennifer's episode page  

Tia Johnson grew up spending a lot of time with her grandmother and step-grandfather. When they died, Tia went through a period of deep grief and transformation. Tia’s spiritual journey after the death of her grandparents helped her to redefine herself, her life, and her outlook on having children. Tia used to second guess becoming a mom because of how unsafe the world is. But after a lot of reflection and a lot of talking with people she trusts, she has changed her mind. She’s decided that in spite of all that, she does want children. Now, she juggles a full-time job, running a business, and getting back into the dating scene. Support the show! Become a patron Follow Maybe Someday on Instagram Tia's episode page

Sarah reflects on the conversations she's had recently about mixed feelings and potential regret around not having kids. Ambivalence doesn't have to mean that you're indecisive. It means that you're thoughtful and introspective about how you want to live your life. Continue the conversation! Become a patron. Follow Maybe Someday on Instagram

Sara Hopkins is ambivalent about having kids. She's decided that she won't have them, but she still struggles with the choice. She wonders why her ambivalence keeps showing up, she wonders what to do about her ticking biological clock, and she wonders whether she might be missing out on "the greatest love of all." In this wide-ranging conversation, Sara and I talk about ambivalence, loss, friendships, intuition, and creativity. Support the show: become a patron Follow Maybe Someday on Instagram Learn more about Sara

Leslie Cason is getting close to her “fertility expiration date”, as she calls it, but she hasn’t spent a lot of time thinking about it - until now. Our conversation explored ambivalence, grief, legacy, and restlessness towards the end of our fertile years. Leslie is at the point in her life where she feels the clock running out, but she doesn’t want kids badly enough to have them on her own. Still, she struggles with the idea that one day this decision won’t be hers to make.  Support the show! Become a patron Visit the episode page Leslie's website Follow @maybesomedayshow on Instagram

Veronica Armstrong has a complex and painful family history. That history played an important role in her decision not to have children of her own. In this episode Veronica opens up about how her past influenced her choices to nurture and set an example as an auntie. Visit the episode webpage Follow Maybe Someday on Instagram Support the podcast by becoming a patron  

Sarah talks about a recent experience in the medical system, what it's like to live with a rare and progressive genetic disease, and how it feels to have your pain dismissed.   Hang out with me on Instagram! Become a patron of the show and join the Maybe Someday community  

Meng Wang gave up her steady, comfortable dental practice in the city to work in the Australian outback.  She travels long distances by road and air to visit remote communities in North Western Queensland, where she provides dental services to people in need. Meng has interned and volunteered as a dentist in 5 different countries, and she loves to travel off the beaten path. In 2018, after ten years of suffering, Meng was successfully treated for endometriosis. The procedure that would put an end to her pain meant that she wouldn’t be able to get pregnant in the future. So, she electively chose to be sterilised at the age of 29. The procedure drastically improved her quality of life , and she hasn’t looked back. But she had to fight to be able to get it done. Hang out with me on Instagram! Become a patron of the show and join the Maybe Someday community Learn more about Meng  

  Karen Anderson doesn’t remember a time that she ever wanted to have children. She just assumed she'd have them anyway. She thought she’d go to college, meet a guy, get married, and have kids. Cause that’s what you do, right? When she had an unwanted pregnancy in her senior year of college, she decided to have an abortion. Karen is now 56 and has been married for 21 years to a man who has three (now adult) children. When she met her now-husband and fell in love with him, it was such a relief for her to learn that he didn’t want more kids. Karen reached out to me by telling me than in the years since her abortion she has explored, deeply and on many levels, the hows and whys of who she is and why she didn't want to have children. Part of that exploration led her to healing her relationship with her "difficult" mother (and writing a book about it, for other women who have difficult relationships with their mothers). And it led her to explore and to write about the truth of her relationship with her husband's ex-wife (and the mother of his children) who died nearly five years ago (her essay was published in oprahmag.com in January). I wanted to talk to Karen about deciding not to have biological children, about being a stepmother, and about her work on difficult mother-daughter relationships (and other difficult relationships). ******* Become a patron of the podcast and join the Maybe Someday community: www.patreon.com/maybesomeday Follow Maybe Someday on Instagram: www.instagram.com/maybesomedayshow Learn more about Karen: https://www.kclanderson.com/  Full episode notes and details: www.maybesomedaypodcast.com/episodes/2019/healing-difficult-relationships

Bon Jon is a self-described queer feral cat. A few weeks ago, in a hot, cramped sound booth at the Vancouver Public Library, I sat down with Bon for a long conversation about gender, parenthood, and family. Bon identifies as genderqueer and goes by the pronouns they/their/theirs. I asked Bon to share some of their insights about gender and parenthood, family, and being childfree by choice—but as you’ll hear - Bon is a natural interviewer and they pretty much ended up interviewing me. What I loved so much about our conversation, beyond Bon’s gentle, insightful approach to queering parenthood, is that it was a great reflection on the first season of Maybe Someday and helps set the stage for our new season. You can find Bon over on Instagram (@bonnbury). They just released a new podcast called Gender Blender (#genderblenderpodcast) - look it up! It's amazing. www.maybesomedaypodcast.com/episodes/2019/queering-parenthood

The second season of Maybe Someday launches on May 16, 2019. Sarah talks about what you can expect from Season 2.   Listen to Season 1: http://bit.ly/maybesomedaypodcast

In this final episode of Season One, Sarah reflects on her relationship with her boyfriend's daughter. Learn more about all this season's episodes at: www.maybesomedaypodcast.com/episodes

Therese Shechter is a documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn. Her latest project is My So-Called Selfish Life, a feature-length documentary about choosing not to have children in a society where motherhood feels mandatory. Find out more about the film at: myselfishlife.com

When Sonja Overhiser was diagnosed with a rare hereditary form of leukemia in her mid-twenties, she and her husband Alex had to rethink their plans for starting a family.  In this episode Sonja and I talk about the different paths to motherhood and the choices we make to create our family. She shares the story of adopting of her son. 

Sarah reflects on her follow-up conversation with Myriam and what it brought up for her around making life-changing decisions.

Sarah catches up with Myriam Steinberg from Episode 1: Catalogue Baby. Myriam reveals some surprising news! To hear Episode 1, visit: http://bit.ly/MaybeSomedayEp1 For more information about Myriam, visit www.cataloguebabynovel.com  

In this episode, Sarah reflects on her conversation with Maggie Reyes and what it means to be childfree by choice.

When Maggie Reyes got married, she and her husband both assumed that they’d start a family eventually. But every time they checked in with one another, the answer, for both of them, was ‘not yet’. Eventually they realized that their marriage would not include children. In this episode Maggie talks about her experience of being child-free and how it has changed her relationships with the people in her life.   Become a patron of the podcast and join the Maybe Someday community: www.patreon.com/maybesomeday You can learn more about Maggie and her coaching work by visiting www.modernmarried.com    

In small-town Connecticut in the late 1970s, Carol Egan got pregnant—quite unexpectedly—at 18. In this episode Carol describes her experience being sent away to a home for unwed mothers to give birth, being forced to give up her child and fighting to get him back, and raising her son as a young single mother. Become a patron of the podcast and join the Maybe Someday community: www.patreon.com/maybesomeday Learn more about Carol by visiting www.carol-egan.com

Tammy Cannon lives near Seattle, WA with her husband and three teens. In the early days, she was at home with her three children, who were all under the age of three. I wanted to talk to Tammy about the expectations she had for herself as she shifted from working at a job she loved to being at home with three young kids. She talks openly about the little corners of herself that feel like mothering might have gone differently for her in the beginning. Become a patron of the podcast and join the Maybe Someday community: www.patreon.com/maybesomeday