MODERN FAMILY

Women are often told there's only one way to have a fulfilling life: meet someone, get married, have a family. But what happens when your life takes a different path?

- EULOGI RHEEDER

AS a 52-year-old childless woman, I want to say to the people who think that a woman's worth is measured in her baby count... I mean, shoutout to all the amazing mothers, but the childless women have been mothering the world and elevating culture as aunties, godmothers, teachers, mentors, sisters, friends, and the list goes on.' Hearing these words from actress Tracee Ellis Ross - and the crowd's roaring applause that followed on that fateful Friday morning in September of 2024 while scrolling on Instagram, I felt seen and worthy for the first time.

In case you missed it, Tracee's speech, speaking to and about Oprah Winfrey and Kamala Harris and the impact they, as childless women, have had on their communities, was a response to a comment by then-aspiring Republican senator (and now vice-president) JD Vance, who complained on Fox News that America was being run by 'a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too'.

When I was growing up there was a natural progression in life, and it was pretty much set in stone: finish high school, go to college or varsity, meet The One, get married, have kids. It was the right thing to do, and it was what nearly everyone did. I, too, imagined my life as an adult with a husband and two kids, a house in the suburbs, a white picket fence. But that's not how life worked out for me.

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED