Taking Care: A Childfree, Self-Care Manifesto

I originally wrote this to submit to some local zine thing, and it didn’t get picked (hey, taking risks is a good thing, right? hmph). So figured better to post here than for it to be lost in my google drive forever more. Enjoy (or don’t, that’s fine too).

————————

I talk a lot with childfree women, and a theme that usually emerges is how choosing to be childfree is the ultimate form of self care. For me, I never really looked at it that way but now I can’t stop seeing it as an integral part of my daily self care practice.

Sure.… I walk my dogs, try to work out, drink plenty of water and get sunshine on my face. All certainly therapist-approved forms of self care (and I’m a therapist, I should know). But I am terrible at meditating, and can easily fall into society’s trap of thinking that TAKING CARE of yourself is a store bought commodity or experience. 

To me, the truest most radical form of taking care of yourself, self-care, is simply the refusal to abandon yourself.

Choosing to be childfree is that refusal embodied.
It is saying: I am not here to prove my worth through depletion.

Because what if the truest version of care is not what you give away, but what you keep?

There is also, quietly, an extraordinary freedom.
A kind of spaciousness that feels absolutely luxurious… and sometimes terrifying.
Without the gravitational pull of motherhood, time expands differently.
The question becomes not what should I do with my life, but what do I want to experience within it? And the really cool part is that YOU get to choose, live it, and then choose again!

For the childfree woman, this can feel like a vast and uncharted terrain.
At first, she might fill it with more work and productivity– because achievement is a familiar currency. But eventually, if she’s paying attention, she’ll realize the invitation isn’t to do more.
It’s to be more.

To live deeply, not dutifully.
To rest without apology.
To create without justification.
To care without collapse.

When I think about self-care now, I think about boundaries that bloom like wildflowers in unexpected places– like the chicory that pops up in the cracks on the sidewalk by my house.
I think about nervous systems learning rest after years of vigilance and overworking.
I think about women who finally stop negotiating their right to peace, who stop deferring to or answering to anyone else but their inner self. 

There’s a quiet power in saying no to something the world expects of you.
Not a defiant no, not a bitter one– just a grounded, graceful no.
The kind that doesn’t need explanation because it’s rooted in truth.

That’s what choosing to be childfree is, at its core: a full-bodied yes to your own aliveness.

And yes, you will still infuriatingly be asked over and over again how old your kids are when meeting people for the first time…. And maybe you’ll find a better way to respond than my usual sarcastic humblebrag about my freedom and getting to sleep in on weekend mornings.

I wish there was an easier way to convey to the world that you’ve created a life that fits you, that nourishes you, that lets you breathe– and that isn’t a consolation prize.
It’s the whole fucking point.

There is beauty in choosing stillness when the world demands motion.
There is courage in tending to your own soul as if it matters as much as anyone else’s.
There is power in saying, “I am my own legacy.”

And that, perhaps, is the most radical kind of self-care there is.