Message in a bottle

 I've been writing on this blog for over 10 years now.    Sometimes it feels like I am putting messages in a bottle and sending them out to sea!  I'm never sure where the messages in my blog land.  Who is reading? Is it helping people make the decision.  I know that people read it from seeing the statistics of who is reading the blog.   And I'm aware of people who read the blog but need extra help making the decision whether to have kids from readers who contact me to ask for coaching after reading the blog.   But sometimes I wonder whether what I'm writing truly impacts on all the people who are reading it around the world.

Yesterday,  I got an email out of the blue that helps me know that it's all worth it!

'I've been reading your children or not blog for a couple of years now and it has really helped me to articulate my fears both to myself and to my boyfriend. We're both over the moon about this ENORMOUS change and I don't feel like I'm going into it naively. Thank you!' - Blog reader, UK

Wow! I feel so honoured to have been able to have an impact and have helped people like this reader.  I know what a difficult place many of you find yourselves in when you are really struggling to work out whether you want to have children, whether you want to be a parent or whether you want to continue to enjoy and embrace your live without children.   This reader points to one of my most important messages, that  we need to be able to acknowledge and articulate our fears about having and not having children.  Our society doesn't want us to give a voice to these fears and many people feel like they can't say that they are afraid of being a parent... or of not having children.  Once we can do this, we can then address those fears... which is the first step in being able to move on.

Thank you to all my readers over the years.  I shall continue to be writing on the blog, sending my messages off into the sea to wash up where-ever people are in the world who need to read them!