Margaret O'Connor on trusting yourself: Episode 57 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast

‘OK, well I'm not going to have children so what do I do with my life? What does life look like? How do I prove myself? How do I validate my existence?’I so adored talking to Margaret O’Connor and hope you enjoy Episode 57 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast where she explores her journey with self-care and becoming an advocate for the child-free.And for this week’s deeper dive for the Sole to Soul Circle, I’m delighted to be sharing more with Margaret O’Connor around discerning our energy levels, the impacts different people have on them and some reminders that you get to choose how you respond to the different demands on your time and attention.Full transcriptWhat do I do? Like, what is important or who will support me? You know, and there's the fear because you're repeatedly told that you will die alone and you'll regret it and it's the worst thing you'll ever do. So that you, given that you live in a pro natal society, of course, there's a chance you'll have internalised some of those beliefs and it can be really hard to navigate that.Welcome to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday I release new episodes to help you feel better every day. They're trauma-informed and VAST/ADHD friendly, Self with an uppercase S and lowercase s self-care designed ideas to support you in connecting with and taking care of your Self: that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself. To create a life you don't need to retreat from.I hope you enjoyed this new episode and if you haven't already listened, older episodes at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com or at selfcarecoaching.net or through whatever platform you prefer.You can also access lots of free resources to find out more about how we might work together at selfcarecoaching.net and through the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing and for deeper dives into each podcast episode, there's a bonus interview with my guests where I have guests or into the theme, as well as access to the complete archive, including the entire Love Your Whole Self chakra journey and you can access all of that by joining the Sole to Soul Circle.That's S-O-L-E for the sole of your feet. It's a fully embodied approach and soul S-O-U-L, it's a transpersonal approach. It's very holistic and you can find out more at selfcarecoaching.net and evemc.substack.com. So thanks again for listening and I hope you enjoy today's episode.Welcome to episode 57 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. I'm delighted to be joined by Margaret O'Connor, who I only met recently at the IACP (Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) conference the other week. She was one of the guest speakers and it was a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous, so gorgeous presentation on the expectations around motherhood and not motherhood.The permission to be mediocre and child-free was permission I didn't know I needed to hear but it was like, of course. There's so much and I'd love for you to say a little bit about what you're working on about your work, how you got into it and the pro natal society and if I'm asking too many questions all at once!I'll keep talking so interrupt me if I go too far. Thank you so much for having me, it's lovely to be here and speak with you.I am a counsellor and psychotherapist. I am based in Limerick in Ireland. I work in private practice and some kind of general counselling and then specifically with a service called Are Kids For Me which is aimed at people who are not sure if they want to have children or not. Or people who have decided not to have children and are kind of navigating that decision. So it is niche which is fine. As well I work with a counselling college so I'm involved in training with people who are training to become counsellors and psychotherapists.I suppose my own reason for getting into that specific kind of work is because I am child-free by choice. I suppose just to distinguish a little bit you know that's a positive choice that's something that I have wanted to make and obviously that's very different from someone who is not able to have children and that's not their choice. I just want to distinguish that.But yeah and I suppose you know for me it even feels a bit strange to call it a decision because it's just something I've simply never wanted to do. I have never had that urge or when I was looking at my life or making decisions about what I was going to do it's never something that appealed to me or that I saw in my future.As I talked about a little bit at the conference I suppose it did move between being an abstract choice around something that may or may not happen you know far off in the future.And then it became a very tangible choice of like, ‘Oh OK. You know do I actually mean this? You know do I’ll follow through on this?’ when I was about 29. Yeah, I just said didn't really foresee anything changing and as I said I'm 42 and nothing has changed you know my view on that has stayed the same.So kind of adapting to life of thinking, OK, well I'm not going to have children so what do I do with my life? What does life look like? How do I prove myself? How do I validate my existence? What do I do with all my free time and money? You know, all that stuff.But it was it was hard navigating that and I suppose that's why. I was in my therapy training at the time. Anyways, I would have been involved in therapy and as I said didn't find it the most supportive place at the time. That really encouraged me to offer you know the specific service to people because I think it's really important. If we skip on to the pro natalism word which is really important.Pro natalism is the belief that birth is good. It's pro-birth. Which, as I'm always very quick to say, is fine. I'm not saying I'm anti-birth. The problem is we need people and we have more than enough people.We're not into killing anyone!But the impact I guess of pro natalism, if you're living in a pro natalist society, which we all do, basically this is what happens.If a you can't have children or you don't want to have children because really it's such a pervasive. The impact of it is so pervasive. We see it in the majority of religions. Based around the idea that it is good to reproduce and have children.Government policies, economic policies are around you know family friendly. And that family, I'm air quoting here, family being parents. And you know so when everything is designed with the assumption that a) you want to b) you will c) you can have children what happens when you don't or you can't come under that?That's why it's hard to navigate that decision if you're unsure. It can be why it's hard to commit to that decision even if you're quite sure because there is this this real divide I suppose or split I'd almost say.You know, we have so many representations of what parenthood looks like. This is what family, again family with children, looks like. You know there are pathways to follow. There's so little representation and so little positive representation of what life looks like if you're not doing that that it can feel like a void. It can feel like, ‘Well, what do I do like? What is important or who will support me?’ You know and there's the fear because you're repeatedly told that you will die alone and you'll regret it and it's the worst thing ever.Given that you live in a pro natal society, of course there's a chance you'll have internalised some of those beliefs. And it can be really hard to navigate that. I've gone off now on a mad tangent. I suppose it's just right to put that in put that in context is that it's very, very pervasive and it can be really challenging in lots of way for people. And it can evoke a lot of anxiety or a lot of uncertainty for people.I do believe, you know, very passionately that it's important to be aware of this. To provide supportive objective spaces where people can address their concerns. As I said there's lots of people who want to have children who are also anxious about it because it's huge. And lots of unforeseen aspects can be part of it. So allowing people to address those concerns, to address their ambivalence if they're unsure or they feel like they're changing their mind, and indeed for people who do not want to choose that.And we know from statistics like there are more people choosing not to have children. There's a large portion of the society, you know it's around one in four, one in five women now in in Europe and America who won't have children for a combination of choice and not. When you think about that, one in four or one in five people, that's a lot.Absolutely.That's not even counting the men who don't get counted, well who never get asked.Absolutely.Yeah, so there's a lot of people and, at the moment, they're not being seen. They're literally not being counted and they're not being represented. And that can be so isolating and so stigmatising. So yeah, I'm passionate about it. I'm raising awareness around it and about.You know, hopefully trying to provide some support for people in that situation. Which is wonderful. I mean I'm postmenopausal now and I remember I did my work experience when I was about 13 I think at a preschool. And I flip-flopped between, ‘I love kids!’ and ‘I'm never having kids!’, ‘I love kids!’ ‘I'm never…’ and because I didn't know the word pro natalism until your session, but because of the pressure, but then… I'm postmenopausal but I had endometriosis. Diagnosed in my 20s so that kind of awareness but your talk was so healing for me.Just thinking, like I kept waiting for, ‘Is there going to be some day where I'm in floods of tears that I never…?’ and it's all this kind of pressure. My partner...