What happens when the life you imagined includes motherhood, and then you learn that future may never come?

Stephanie Joy Phillips spent much of her twenties in an abusive relationship, taking the contraceptive pill because she knew she did not want to bring a child into that situation. In her early thirties, she met the man who would become her husband, but they did not begin trying to conceive until they were nearing forty.

At 39, an unsympathetic doctor told Stephanie that even if she became pregnant, she was unlikely to carry the pregnancy to term. In that moment, she knew she would never be a mum.

In this episode of Becoming, Stephanie and I talk about childlessness not by choice, the future she had imagined, and the difficult path toward accepting a life that looked different from the one she expected.

We also talk about the silence surrounding childlessness and how isolating it can feel in a culture where motherhood is often treated as an inevitable part of womanhood.

In 2016, Stephanie founded the support group Childless Path to Acceptance. A year later, after realizing there was no widespread recognition of the childless community, she created World Childless Week, an online global platform where childless people can share their stories and find their voices.

This is a conversation about grief, acceptance, identity, and creating meaning from a life you did not choose.

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If this conversation made you think of someone who has felt alone in her childlessness, send it to her. Sometimes hearing another woman speak honestly about the life she did not choose can make her feel less invisible.