It's pretty normal to feel like you don't belong when you're a childless woman. We grow up thinking that eventually, we'll belong to the mom club. And then it leaves us with a pretty big feeling of exclusion when we don't get to join.
Most people in the childless space, assume that this feeling of not fitting in is a part of the grief and that once the grief starts to lift, we'll also start to feel more included. But that is not the case.
In this episode, I'm going to share :
If you are ready to start taking action toward developing your own sense of belonging, DM me "ep 89" and I'll share how you can take this deeper!
Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca
References from this Episode:
Work by Dr. Kelly-Ann Allen : Making Sense of Belonging
If you want to create your best life in 2024, even without kids, download my free guide. You'll discover how to find purpose, joy and fulfillment and what might be standing in the way.
Click here for your free guide
It's pretty normal to feel like you don't belong when you're a childless woman. We grow up thinking that eventually, we'll belong to the mom club. And then it leaves us with a pretty big feeling of exclusion when we don't get to join.
Most people in the childless space, assume that this feeling of not fitting in is a part of the grief and that once the grief starts to lift, we'll also start to feel more included. But that is not the case.
In this episode, I'm going to share :
If you are ready to start taking action toward developing your own sense of belonging, DM me "ep 89" and I'll share how you can take this deeper!
Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca
References from this Episode:
Work by Dr. Kelly-Ann Allen : Making Sense of Belonging
If you want to create your best life in 2024, even without kids, download my free guide. You'll discover how to find purpose, joy and fulfillment and what might be standing in the way.
Click here for your free guide
I hear a lot of childless women share their feelings of not fitting in or being excluded, or like they just don't know where they belong, and those feelings get pretty mixed up with grief. And yet that's not grief. There's a difference. It doesn't actually have anything to do with grief and that may surprise you if you are feeling these things as a childless woman. But if you want to find out why you're actually feeling that way and how to actually feel like you do belong, then keep on listening. Hi, I'm Sherry Johnson and you are about to discover how to embrace your life as a childless woman who wanted to have a family and never could. This is where we combine mindset shifting tools with practical tips so you can break free of outdated societal norms that condition us all to believe that women without kids just don't measure up to the moms. It's where we take action on processing grief and accelerating the healing journey so you can feel free. When childless women awaken their self-worth, they transform from hopeless and inadequate to worthy, accepting and purposeful. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of light bulb moments that will shift your perspective as a childless woman, about yourself, about your need, power to change yourself, your future and maybe even the world we live in. If that's what you want, then keep on listening. Welcome back to the Awakening Worth podcast.
Speaker 1:On today's episode, we're talking about something that comes up a lot during the holidays and other times of the year. It's not just the holidays, but it seems to be amplified during the holidays. Everybody being with family members or siblings who all have children when you don't, can really make you feel excluded. Going to a party where all the other women are moms can make you feel like you don't fit in. Just thinking about your future without kids can make you wonder how you'll ever feel like you belong somewhere. Now, if you're like most women, you're probably sitting back thinking that once the grief starts to go away, that these feelings of exclusion are going to go with it, and that's the biggest mistake I see women making. And if you were one of these women, don't worry, it's okay, I was one of them as well.
Speaker 1:There are some very legitimate reasons why you feel like you don't belong, but it's not because of grief and it won't just go away as time passes. Lots of people in the childless space were talking about this feeling, as I was kind of first walking the childless path, but nobody was really talking about how to overcome it. I see lots of Instagram posts in our space that talk about this feeling of never fitting in, feeling excluded, and I haven't come across anyone who is talking about it, first of all, even talking about how to let go of that feeling and how to develop that sense of belonging but I also have never found anybody who's talking about it as a separate feeling from the grief that you might be experiencing. So this might be a very new way of thinking for you, but if you embrace it, I promise you it will lead to relief. So stay with me.
Speaker 1:The desire to belong is actually a huge part of the human experience. I've done some research on this and have learned that it can't not be, and there's a few reasons for that that I'm going to share with you in this episode, and we're also going to. I'm going to share with you where belonging really starts and why we have such a deep need to belong, and also to how to gain a sense of belonging, no matter what crowd you're in. So, even if you are a childless woman in a crowd of moms, there is a way to feel like you belong, and I'll share some of my tips today. So let's start with what even is belonging? What is this sense of belonging?
Speaker 1:Dr Kellyanne Allen, who is a psychologist? She talks about how it relates to a yearning for connection with others and the need also for positive regard from those others. It doesn't actually depend on participation in a group. So, as childless women, we think of motherhood as this group that we don't feel like we belong to and we think that our sense of belonging will come when we're able to participate in that group and we'll feel excluded when we don't. But that's actually not true. That's not what the research shows. We actually feel like we belong when we connect. It doesn't matter whether it's connection with a mother or with another childless woman or a child, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1:Have you ever thought about this idea that we change our behavior? We change the things that we say, even sometimes the way that we think, depending on who we're with. So maybe you've caught yourself stifling your opinion. I've done this a ton of times, silencing myself because I'm afraid of how my own opinion might be perceived. Or sometimes I'll even go along with an opinion that I don't agree with because I'm so afraid of how that might be perceived, and I don't do this quite as often anymore because I've learned what the root of it is and how to actually overcome that. But there was a time when you know this would come up when we were discussing politics. It would.
Speaker 1:You probably came across this during the pandemic, when there was a very divided we were a very divided world, and so if you're in the company of someone who thinks differently than you and you're the only one who holds the differing opinion, did you voice it or did you stay silent, or did you even go along with the others? There's this fear that will be socially rejected for saying certain things and that can sometimes override the need to be true to ourselves. And if that fear overrides the need to be true, we will not say the things that we actually believe. Oh, another place that comes up a lot in is meeting rooms. That happens all the time. There's a thing such as group think. You know, if you hear everybody else stating an opinion and then someone else agrees, then another person agrees, you get less and less likely to actually state your opinion because, because there's a fear that that might not be well received.
Speaker 1:That comes from our need to belong. So where does that actually start? So one thing is that, from the time that we're born, we have a need to belong for survival purposes. If you're familiar with chakras, the root chakra is the first to develop, and that root chakra is all about belonging. It's about belonging to your people, your tribe, whatever you want to call that. We have a physical dependence on our parents, and so that innate need to belong is actually a survival skill, and we automatically begin doing things that will help us to be long in our family. It is also a part of our evolution. Our prehistoric ancestors required cooperation and groups for survival. If you think about it, a person who was rejected from the tribe would not survive long on their own.
Speaker 1:There's actually this there is a series out on the history channel called alone, where they drop people I think it's 10 or 12, I forget onto somewhere on Vancouver Island. They are all at least like four miles apart, so they can't find each other the bush is too thick to do that anyways, and they have to survive as long as possible and, first of all, many of them are so hungry they they tap out because they're that hungry and, by the way, this is a show where they actually have to film themselves. There's no camera crew following them around, there's absolutely no social interaction. They are truly alone. So they they're trained ahead of time to do all their own camera work and and there's nobody following them around and they have to find their own food. I think they're allowed to take 10 items or something with them. It's called alone on the history channel. It's not. I think it's actually on Netflix now in Canada. I'm not sure whether it is in the States or not, but it's quite.
Speaker 1:It's quite fascinating to watch how these people survive and and, as I said, you know, lots of them actually go hungry and they're so hungry that they tap out. So there's one thing the need to actually gather in groups and hunt in groups and Like. Those are actual if we have a need to be in groups for those physical survival purposes. But a large majority of them tapped out. So when I say tapped out, they left the show or they, like ended their time on the on the island Because they were so, so lonely they were. So they missed their families, they missed human interaction. They were that need, that longing to be with other people was so huge that they couldn't take living alone, for for some of them it was, you know they tapped out after a couple of weeks. For others they lasted, I think the longest so far has been like 80 days or something. So it's an interesting show If you want to watch that.
Speaker 1:It's called alone, but it's you know. This is we are so, so driven to be with people. We cannot survive for very long on our own, so that that need to be, to belong, to be with other people, that is very deeply seated in our biology. So why does this lack of belonging show up when we're childless? How does this actually play out in our world? You know, even though we have food on our plates, we have homes to live in If you're listening to this podcast, you also you have the technology to do so, so you are safe and yet we still have this fear of Of not belonging. Even though there's no physical threat to this, this need, there's still the, that emotional need, and you can see this from from how we have, how, how this has played out in our world.
Speaker 1:So social isolation has been used as a form of punishment for centuries. Because it is so. It is a punishment Rejection from the tribe. So if you did something that that was deemed inappropriate or you know something so wrong according to the rules of your social circle, then you might be rejected, and and Our ancestors would not have survived if they were rejected From the tribe. There's also more in more modern day there's solitary confinement in prisons. So we use that as a punishment. We remove even children from social situations when they misbehave. So we are. We're so deeply conditioned to fear social isolation that it's a very easy punishment. And when society tells us that you don't belong if you're not a mother, that can feel like a really scary place to be. They can feel very socially Isolating. It can feel like punishment.
Speaker 1:The other way that I see this playing out in today's world Is that society continues to depict childless women as a source of rejection. If you think of movies, particularly fantasies, where the witches and the old hags, they, they live alone on the edge of society. They're never. They don't live in town, they live on the edge of it or outside of it. They live deep in the forest. And even if they're depicted as, say, a witch doctor, you know that's about as positive as it gets. They might have healing, you know they might be a, a healer or a shaman or something like that, but they're still depicted as the social outcast there's.
Speaker 1:Then there's the evil stepmother. That's a really common, common character in lots of you know, walt Disney movies and Children's movies. That that kind of conditioning, you know when, when we're watching that as children, that becomes a pretty deeply ingrained Character. The evil stepmother. And even more recently there's there's the career women who, who rise to the top, but they're at the top alone. They don't have children. They and they have to be bitchy in order to get there. The devil wears Prada is a perfect example. Even the you know, the sweet intern that was played by Anne Hathaway, or she was initially this sweet Intern who didn't really know what she was doing. Your relationship with her boyfriend breaks down as soon as she begins to see success. So we depict these, these women, as career women, as Women without children are, are Bitchy, and there's that's the reason why they haven't been able to hold on to a relationship, that's why they don't have children, because they don't have a nurturing instinct. So there's these depictions of, of childless women in society that tell us that we are rejected from society.
Speaker 1:So how do we counteract this? How do we gain a sense of belonging, no matter what crowd we're in. This is a really key piece of my Meaning Beyond Motherhead framework that we use inside my group immersion for a child to swim in. In fact, it shows up under two of the three pillars in my framework. That's how important it is. So I'm going to give you three different ways to find the sense of belonging. The first is connection. So I talked earlier about how a sense of belonging actually comes from connection, and we don't necessarily need to connect on similar things. We can connect with somebody else on values or opinions or beliefs, whatever it is. So you can find connection with other women, and finding the ability to find a way to connect with another person is going to be key to your belonging. So that's why we have connection sessions inside of my group immersion.
Speaker 1:But that is not the only way that I teach women to gain connection, because ultimately you need to go out into the world and be amongst the mothers, and you might think that it's impossible to connect with them, but I challenge you on that. Is it really all mothers that you can't connect with? Do you have to have children in order for mothers to connect with each other? No, I'm sure you can actually think of a friend who is a mother and you can connect with that person, someone who you can trust with your grief or your secrets or your vulnerabilities. I'm willing to bet that you can come up with one person that you can connect with who is also a mother. And when you think about that, what is it exactly that allows you to connect with that person? Is it something that you're doing or something that they do that makes you feel like you can connect? Is it something they say? I'm willing to bet that it's probably a bunch of different things and you might not even be able to put your finger on exactly what it is, but I can almost guarantee that you have some shared value.
Speaker 1:You don't necessarily have to have shared experiences or shared family structure. You just need to share values. So the trick is to just go out and find those people, and you have to be willing to be courageous and vulnerable in order to do that, because sometimes you are going to come up across somebody who cannot connect with you, and there are people in the world who just who don't think that they can connect with someone who doesn't have kids. But they can. They just don't know how, or haven't been taught or maybe haven't even given you a chance. But you will be able to find people that you can connect with and start with the people who don't have kids first, if that's easier. But eventually, when you begin to share your values, share your opinions, share your truths and your vulnerabilities and your secrets, that's when you begin to make true connection. So do that. So that's.
Speaker 1:The first way to gain a sense of belonging is simply to find that connection and search for values, for beliefs, for commonalities in those things. You don't necessarily need to find someone with the same family structure. The second way to gain a sense of belonging, no matter what crowd you're in, is to work on your self-worth. This comes up on almost every one of my podcasts. Self-worth comes into play at some point and getting to the heart of belonging often means getting to the heart of your self-worth. The counterintuitive thing about belonging is this when you give up your true self in order to fit in, it's actually more detrimental to your wellbeing. It doesn't create a sense of belonging because it doesn't create that sense of connection If you feel like you have to give up something, if you feel like you can't be your true self, if you can't share your true opinions, if you have to do something that, if you have to change yourself in order to fit in, that's gonna feel like a betrayal to yourself. So, for example, when you hide your true opinion in order to conform to a group of friends who all have the opposite opinion, you're gonna walk away feeling a lack of connection and that sense of having betrayed yourself because you hidden your true opinion or you've stifled your true self.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you a story about how this actually played out in my life when I was young and this is a bit of a different example, but I was really, really shy. It's very ironic that I talk into a microphone for a lot of my life. Now, every week, I turn on my mic and I talk, because I did not talk when I was a kid. I was so shy and was introverted. I had no idea what an introvert was at the time, and neither did my parents. I had a very extroverted mother who saw my shyness as a weakness, and a father who was constantly trying to disown his own shyness and introverted nature, so that gave me the sense that I couldn't be my true self in my family. I couldn't be an introvert, I couldn't be myself. I had to disown that. My parents and my other sister my younger sister were also very athletic, and my parents tried to encourage me to join various team sports and I wasn't very good at any of them, and that made me feel even more like they were trying to get me to conform to their ideals, to what they thought of as a well-rounded kid, and so that also made me feel like I didn't belong in my own family.
Speaker 1:So whenever we're made to feel like a true, our true selves, a true part of me, is not accepted, we feel that sense of social rejection, that lack of belonging. And it wasn't until I became an adult and started recognizing my own true nature as a strength. It wasn't until I started to find the sports that I loved, which were not the ones that my parents were good at. They were individual sports, and I started to notice that searching for their approval and trying to fit in with their expectations didn't make me feel a sense of belonging. It actually made me feel worse.
Speaker 1:When I became an adult and started finding my own self, what I was good at, what I enjoyed and started actually I stopped the disowning of my true nature. That was when I started to feel like, okay, I'm actually seeing me, I'm seeing my true self and I'm allowing my true self to be expressed. I learned that it's when you start honoring your own true self, even when it doesn't meet your parents or your friends' expectations, that's when you start to feel a much deeper sense of self-worth and a sense of belonging to yourself, to your true and authentic self. So there's a third way to increase your feelings of belonging that I don't really touch on in my program, but it's still important, and that is to talk about your childless life, although I guess my work does help women to get to a place where they feel more comfortable talking about their childless lives, because at first most women are pretty private about it. They are not comfortable talking about their experiences outside of the childless community, and when we don't talk about it, we remain invisible.
Speaker 1:Invisibility is a social construct that makes us feel overlooked and excluded, and you've probably felt this before. I felt it at church, for example, on Mother's Day, when all the mothers were honored with a carnation, or maybe you've experienced this at work or at an event I certainly did where all the mothers were asked to stand up and they were honored for being there, being at that event, for all that they sacrificed in order to get there. Maybe you felt it in other ways at work, when the childless experience simply isn't recognized. But there are actually differences between the way that parents and childless people are treated. I've been in workplaces where there's this sort of unspoken understanding that the mothers leave at five to pick up the kids and the others stay late because they didn't have an excuse to leave early, or leave on time, for that matter.
Speaker 1:Any marginalized group, which is what childless women are, will feel suffering when they are overlooked or ignored or diminished in value. And there's only two ways to change that. You can either change yourself and accept your childless status, not be triggered by it anymore I teach that inside my program. Triggers are big or you can change the system. The system's a lot harder to change. It takes a lot more work and most workplaces and social circles etc. Have no idea that childless women are invisible. It's like a blind spot. You don't know that it's there. It doesn't even cross their mind Race, skin color.
Speaker 1:You know we're talking a lot about these things now. We're talking a lot about gender and sexuality. Those are the marginalized groups that people are talking about they're not talking about childless women, and if you want anything to change, you actually need to start talking. So that was the third one, so the three, once again, are a connection. And then there's the self-worth, so getting to the herd of what your true self needs, what your true self wants, and honoring that instead of pushing that aside in order to fit in.
Speaker 1:And then there's talking about your experiences, and sometimes you'd be surprised by how talking about your experiences can create connection. It's it's surprised me time and time again how you know once I start opening up about my experiences and suddenly someone says, oh, I think I understand that I've had this experience, or I know someone who has been through this, and or they ask questions about what it's like and it starts a conversation. So it can be surprising sometimes how open people will be once you take that initiative yourself. Okay, now that you know that belonging is something that is quite different than grief as a childless woman, and that there is something that you can do about how you feel, you now have two options. I say this a lot at the end of my podcast you can keep doing what you're doing or you can take action and discover the tools and practices that are going to help you get to a place of deep belonging. If you are the latter and you want to start taking some action, then just send me a DM at Sherry Johnson coaching. I'll link that up in the show notes and just send the word Episode 89 and I will show you how to take more steps towards getting to that place of deep belonging.
Speaker 1:Okay, that is it for today. Come back next week. I have a special Christmas episode. Christmas happens to fall on a Monday and this is for you. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, it doesn't matter. This is going to be a really beautiful episode, so stay tuned for that and check in on next Monday. Bye for now.