Maybe Someday

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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.