31: Life Without Baby with Lisa Manterfield

Unclassified Woman

Welcome and today's guest is Lisa Manterfield!

Lisa is the creator of Life Without Baby.com and the author of the award-winning memoir, I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home: How One Woman Dared to Say No to Motherhood. She offers workshops and popular e-books.

Her new book, Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen, is recently available. She lives a contented life in southern CA with her husband and cat. Lisa has successfully created an online community that gives a voice to those without children. Let’s chat with Lisa!

In this episode, you’ll hear the following:

• Lisa’s child-free life is not really by choice, but by circumstance. She always wanted and expected to have children, but experienced fertility issues and a unpleasant fertility clinic encounter.
• She and her husband came to the realisation, “We ARE already a family—just a family of two.”
• Lisa explains the anger, grief, and confusion that plagued her for a long time.
• The loss of any hope of biological children was a HUGE loss that no one around her knew about.
• You have to give yourself space and permission to grieve the loss of plans and dreams.
• Lisa never set out to write her book about her experience; she was primarily a fiction writer. The book was an outgrowth of her personal healing process.
• “I just needed to tell my story.”
• Her 2nd book is the How-To resource that she couldn’t find when she needed it most.
• Regarding prying questions that others sometimes ask, Lisa felt defensive, hurt, and embarrassed about her inability to have a baby.
• Her advice is to prepare some stock answers to those questions and pick whichever one you’re in the mood for!
• Some of the myths that Lisa has dealt with are: “you didn’t want it badly enough if you stopped trying,” and “you just have to keep on trying.”
• Lisa’s meaning and purpose comes from her writing and the freedom she has to do things she wants and needs to do, like being available for her aging mother.
• She enjoys the life she now leads with infinite possibilities for travel and living ANYWHERE!
• Lisa hopes her writing will be her legacy.
• “I want to live as fully as I can and care deeply about those who are important to me.”
• An added benefit of her lifestyle is the deep friendships with others that might not be as possible or as accessible if she had children, as they don't have the same amount of time available.

Grab a copy of Lisa's new book at http://amzn.to/21QjrxA

Find out more about Lisa and her work at www.lifewithoutbaby.com and www.lisamanterfield.com.

I do hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. For more episodes go to michellemariemcgrath.com