Shared connection

Rooting ourselves within a NoMo Tree of Stories

Something that non-parents can feel that they lack is a sure sense of rootedness and connection through time – the timeline that is most easily defined by the continual cycle of the generations of family. We may feel unable to pass on the knowledge of our ancestors or the inheritance of our forebearers, fear that our lives will go unremarked and unremembered, or grieve over the fact that we leave no legacy of our own.

But whilst that physical sense of familial connection may not continue, there are other paths towards connection. This quote from the memoir Without Child by Laurie Lisle captures something about this potential between those of us who aren’t parents:

As whilst we have to, in many ways, let our biological families fall away - both those who came before us and those who will never come after us - non-mothers can connect themselves to our own wider framework. What if we could reframe ourselves as a connected sisterhood - a great NoMo Yggdrasil whose branches can reach out and hold us all within our own Tree of Life … or perhaps it’s more a Tree of Stories. Our ancestors don’t need to be purely those tied to us by blood, but can also be the women tied to us by choice and chance - women who have lived the lives that we now live, albeit in whatever different facet of history or culture that they existed in.

In both the acts of writing down and reading the words of such non-mothers, we can bear testimony to each other’s histories - both those we stand with now and those who came before us - and pass on our stories to those who will follow on from us. We can walk in their shoes, follow the path that leads from their place in history to our present and will then move on from us - not via sons and daughters, and for some of us not even via nieces and nephews, but in the traced steps of other non-mothers.

Women without children obviously aren't a monolith and we're not all the same - each of us has a different reason or decision or perspective that brought us to this place. It would be naive to believe that all non-mothers feel a sense of connection and belonging to other women who don’t have children - some of them feel no need to search out each other and all power to them. But for some of us it does matter and there is comfort in seeing how we are entwined within a greater whole - each of us a root or a branch of that great NoMo tree. As whilst we may not share everything in common, we can hear one another's stories and stand alongside each other and root into our own network of support. We are stronger in community.

The NoMo Book Club is a small branch along this interleaving, interweaving story tree – a place that can help to amplify and unify the voices of non-mothers, both past and present. It celebrates both those who see themselves as childless and those who view themselves as childfree, and also includes those who don't want to explicitly identify as either. In all our diversity and individuality, we have so much more to gain from witnessing each other’s stories, in learning from and reflecting upon each other's experiences.

The collection is one of authentic and independent voices, each one reflecting a unique aspect of what it's like to be a woman without children. Stories exploring the lives of women who are partnered but also those who are solo; those who chose not to have children and those who felt that it was no choice; heartfelt explorations of grief but also exuberant declarations of joy; those with established voices and those who are speaking out for the first-time; representing life experiences that intersect with other marginalised identities; and gathering tales from across fiction, memoir or non-fiction.

I hope there is something in my shared readings here on Substack and also my collection of reviews over on Instagram that resonates for you. But, more than this, I hope it helps you to see where you fit within that wider framework of our connected whole. As it is through owning our stories, and in remembering them for each other, that we will give ourselves that sure sense of rootedness and connection through time.