My questions brought me to books like Doctor, Please Help Me Die by retired cardiologist, Tom Preston, which discusses how cultural and professional customs have led many doctors not to help their patients die when it’s time. I have also been drawn to books that tell candid end-of life stories, such as There at the End: Voices from the Final Exit Network. Of late I have been learning about a broader picture of the right to die with dignity for all people from all walks of life. The book, The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels, by Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans opened my eyes wide to the death and burial disparities in our society.

Not long after finishing The Unclaimed, I was contacted by Amy Shea, who has a new book, Too Poor to Die: The Hidden Realities of Dying in the Margins. I took it as a sign to go further into end-of-life realities for all.

Written as creative nonfiction, Shea pulls no punches in illustrating the “raw reality of poverty and homelessness in death” so that we can better understand the inequities and disparities, and inspire change. With heart and detail, she takes us on her journey of first-hand learning about the social and cultural problems associated with who is ‘deserving’ of dignity, close to death and once dead.

She begins with a visit to the potter’s fields, where unclaimed and claimed bodies with no burial funds are cremated and buried in mass burials. Never heard of it? Neither had I. With raw specifics, readers learn how these places reflect a branch of social injustice that rattled her deeply. As she writes:

“[There is such] indignation at how our society treats certain people in death— if you are not economically valuable in life or if you are seen as deviant in some way, then you are not worthy of being treated with value in death either. The injustice of it all is so explicit; these are people forgotten about, discarded, left for the bugs to feast on until the smell of their decaying bodies interrupts the lives of those around them and the county is left to claim them, clean up after them, record and process them, and then file them away. For me, the sadness I experienced from that first viewing grew and morphed into anger.”

Shea discusses the documentary, A Certain Kind of Death, which takes a full look at the potter’s fields and brings home this quote by William Gladstone, “Show me the manner in which a society cares for its dead, and I will measure with mathematical exactness, the tender mercy of its people.”

She also dissects the death positivity movement, and how and why it comes from privileged white class. Seeing the need for it to relate to all, we learn about her organization, the Equitable Disposition Alliance, which has the vision of more equitable and accessible death practices in our capitalist society. Continuing to not being shy about making points readers might feel hard to admit or think about, Shea goes into underlying reasons we don’t have this, and the challenges for creating it, including social and cultural behavior as it relates to the homeless.

In her personal stories, readers learn about Shea’s experience of the death of her own grandmother juxtaposed with the lack of county and state procedures for burial of the poor and unclaimed. From this, we better understand the tragedy of “when someone dies who is homeless, in poverty, disenfranchised from society, or without family or friends, there isn’t necessarily an easy route to resting in peace.”

Societal attitudes, stereotypes and how we want to look away from the homeless stare at us up close and personal in Shea’s narrative. From real stories, readers learn what it’s like to be in the final stages of life when unhoused, ill or with health issues. She shines light on medical respite units which provide homeless a place between the hospital and the street or a shelter, and hospice for the unhoused, of which there are too few. And there is street hospice, which is a service desperately in need of more around the country as well.

The book ends with a creative poem, “Indexing the Life & Death Experience of Homelessness” which brings Shea’s message home that while we all die, “not all deaths are created equal.” Too Poor to Die is for anyone who is interested in social injustices in our society. It is for those who want to explore more deeply why our society has strong assumptions about who is ‘deserving’ of dignity during and at the end of life, and see the humanitarian value of moving past this for all to live and die with respect.

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From the first essay entitled “Famous Last Words” to the last entitled “DINKS on a Plane,” Otherhood: Essays on being childless, childfree and child-adjacent, edited by New Zealanders Alie Benge, Lil O’Brien, and Kathryn Van Beek, gives readers a collection of essays from diverse perspectives of people who are parents, who want to be parents, who are childfree, and everything in between.

Otherhood explores the spectrum of individuals’ relationships with the idea of having, living with, not living with, wanting and not wanting children. In her essay “More Schlongs More Cats,” fantasy author Steff Green provides an interesting perspective on why marriage and babies are often desired in fantasy writing as the end-all-be-all. This was a timely read for me as it parallels my current cringe binge watching Virgin River on Netflix. Not much of a spoiler alert because as early as Season One it’s evident that most of the female characters show desire to be mothers or already are mothers. I appreciate Green‘s perspective that marriage and/or babies do not need to be the “happy ending” for stories to be positively received by the audience. As a childfree woman in her mid-40s, the babies as the “happy ending” of a story does not resonate with me.

The essays in Otherhood span race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and culture. A truncal-hood comic in one of the book’s essays also adds a very important and educational perspective on pondering the desire to have children has a queer, trans person. Childfree readers like my husband and I will enjoy the cis-men’s voices, which also give valuable perspective related to the responsibility of reproduction and parenthood, and navigating this with a partner who may or may not want to have children. I wished for more cis-male voices, including discussions of things like regular microaggressions about not having children and pressures to carry the family name.

The title of this book is not a misnomer; Otherhood will resonate with any reader interested in this topic. It explores a range of views about what it’s like being childless, childfree, and child- adjacent. While the term “child-adjacent” is not blatantly defined in the book, it’s often used as an umbrella term for “otherhood,” and the essays in the book help define and explain. As a professor of human sexuality education, I discuss these terms and the meaning of “family” with my students. It’s important for people to understand the idea of the “nuclear family” – consisting of a heterosexual couple with 2.5 kids – is not the norm. Most of my students do not live in a nuclear family and appreciate being represented in all forms of media – TV, movies, and books like Otherhood. The more we can represent authenticity instead of hiding behind fictional façades of decades ago, the more we will all feel included.

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Thank you, Brandye!

Brandye D. Nobiling, PhD, CHES, CSE is Professor and Director of Public Health at Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland. Dr. Nobiling has nearly 20 years teaching at the post-secondary level, and currently teaches courses such as Chronic and Communicable Disease and Human Sexuality Education. She has presented and published nationally and internationally on reproductive health and historical foundations of health education, and is a Certified Sexuality Educator (CSE) through the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT). In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two pugs, Sunny and Honey.

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A History of Women in 100 Objects starts with a disclaimer:

“Women’s history is multifarious, women’s experiences infinitely varied, too wide-ranging to be summarized by 100 objects. The objects we have included provide a starting point for exploring and discussing women’s past. They provide a sense of the rich heritage of women, stories of how women were encouraged to conform to ideas of femininity and how feminist forebears challenged any such pressures; the objects are indications of women’s oppression, heroism, ingenuity, skill and expertise.” 

With the understanding that the authors set themselves the goal of telling one history of women, not the history of women, I delved into an encyclopedic journey covering many fields. Thanks to Maggie Andrews and Janis Lomas’s seamlessly combined wealth of trivia and photography, all eight parts of this book proved worth reading. The visual and textual samples about each object strike a balance between informative and engaging – they are long enough to inform the origin and importance of each selected piece but not too long to come across as a sluggish History lecture. 

The further I read, the clearer it became how much thought also went into the placement of each object in the overall narration arc:

“Some of the objects could have been placed in a different section; the electric refrigerator, which was invented by New Jersey housewife Florence Parpart in 1914, could have come under “Wives and Homemakers”, but it’s included in the section on “Science, Technology and Medicine” as a reminder that domestic terminology is not something that is invented for women but something that women have taken a role in inventing themselves.” 

Part I, “The Body, Motherhood, and Sexuality,” impressed me the most with its broad scope that features everything from factory-made disposable sanitary towels of the late 1800s (that meant the women who could afford the packets of white absorbent wool would stop using grass, leaves, rabbit skin and cheesecloth as reusable pads to contain their menstruation), to early 20th-century medical vibrators advertised as capable of removing wrinkles and curing nervous headaches, and the first apparatus for obstetric analgesia administered through a face mask to women in labor from the 1950s onwards.

Part II, “Wives and Homemakers,” showcases unsettling objects such as the scold’s bridle, “a heavy iron frame placed over the woman’s head and worn as a collar, with a plate fixed to the front projected into her mouth and immobilizing her tongue, leaving her unable to drink, eat or talk.” The use of this device from the 1500s  punished for “women who exercised unruly speech” was finally removed from the British penal code in 1967. There’s also a photo of the report of a wife sale that illustrates the practice of trading wives by advertising them in newspapers when divorce laws didn’t exist or it was necessary to petition the parliament to dissolve a marriage in the 1800s and 1900s Britain.

Skimming through the corsets, veils and church hats of the “Costumes and Fashion” chapters and moving to “Transportation and Travel”, readers  learn about the early days of ladies’ carriages in trains as a measure to keep them safe from sexual harassment and early critics opposing to it concerned “that women’s bodies were not designed to go at 50 miles an hour as uteruses would fly out of their bodies as they were accelerated to that speed.”

The following sections on “Technology”, “Employment”, “Creativity”, and “Women’s Place in the Public World”, introduce Joan of Arc’s Ring (1400s, France), the first policewomen’s armlet (1915, Britain), Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit jazz and soul music album that gave a voice to black women’s experience (1939, U.S.), the 1000 lira banknote carrying the image of the renowned educator Maria Montessori (1990, Italy) among many other striking objects.

At first sight, in all its height, weight and numerous vibrant images, A History of Women in 100 Objects resembles a coffee table book that risks never being opened. But if you open it, you’ll realize it’s more of a machine with the power to teletransport its readers to one of the best history exhibitions ever created about women. If you see it, be sure to pick it up.

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Thank you, Nicole!

Nicole Louie is a writer and translator based in Ireland. Her essays have appeared in Oh Reader magazine, The Walrus and The Guardian. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram: @bynicolelouie. Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children is her first book.

The post A History of Women in 100 Objects by Maggie Andrews & Janis Lomas appeared first on Laura Carroll.

When I started reading Arrangements in Blue, I couldn’t name a single Joni Mitchell song. By the time I finished, I had become quite familiar with her work, and “River” was one of my new favorite songs.

In her first nonfiction work, poet Amy Key pays tribute to Joni Mitchell’s most acclaimed album, Blue, which she considers the basis for her view on romantic love. Chapter by chapter, Key dissects her life and the album while creating parallels between the two.

It’s remarkable to think that a collection of 240 pages could ask — and sometimes answer — many big questions about a life lived without placing romantic love at its center, but it often did. Guided by Key’s well-captured stream of consciousness, my view on single lives and the status society attributes to couples expanded with passages such as:

“I wonder if we all lose by centering romantic love in our lives. And it does still feel like romantic love is centered. Even as the internet has helped us find our own warm pocket of community within the endless variations of romantic and sexual identity, even though state and church control of who can and cannot be romantically and sexually involved and who can have their romantic relationship recognized has loosened. Nothing has displaced romantic love from its holy status.”

As her story progresses from her twenties to her thirties, Key reflects on how the absence of a partner influences the pace, mood, and direction of her routine. From redefining “a family home” to a house shaped by her needs to appreciating time alone while deriving joy from friendships, she gives us full access to what her days look and feel like as someone who hasn’t been in a long-term relationship for over two decades.

Not everything is positive or upward, though. Sometimes, she talks about being single with deep sorrow and other times with the confidence of not being bothered by it. Her nuanced narrative makes space for confessions of jealousy and regret, as well as questioning the parts of adulthood she would miss if she were to continue to be the sole curator of her life.

As this curator, she has collected special objects from her life experiences as well as those that belonged to loved ones, such as those her grandparents left behind: the cutlery and crockery that enchanted her, the cutglass serving bowls that caught the light, the special spoon for grapefruit and the special spoon to scoop a boiled egg — all of which became a source of tremendous comfort to her. Amy’s ruminations on her acquired and inherited collections are particularly insightful:

“These objects seemed to possess an inscrutable but absolute adulthood. In the accumulation of objects that played very specific roles, I too would attain that quality: the beautiful mystery in command of having an adult place in the world. A relationship to objects that could cause me to collide with lonesomeness, where romantic love could charge the material world with symbols of the presence or absence of someone I loved.”

We are also pulled into thoughts about other aspects of her life that are shaped by her singlehood, such as the absence of children of her own and her mixed feelings about motherhood:

“I held within me a mild, almost comforting channel of neutrality that I could draw on whenever I was confronted with either a direct question about having children or other people’s pain and joy in relation to that same question. I felt lucky to have escaped baby panic; that I’d somehow overrun the settings of my biology, which almost everyone told me I’d be faced with sooner or later. (…) Each time a friend says they don’t plan to have children, I feel a deep relief that someone I’m close to affirms my child ambivalence and will also live alongside the danger of, if only occasional, regret.”

While at times Key’s prose struck me as a bit internally excessive, after giving it some thought and revisiting excerpts I  highlighted in my first reading, I realized I likely felt this way because we are simply not exposed to solo women’s inner lives enough to celebrate their depth and importance. Thankfully, this book is a perfect opportunity to expand our thinking to the shades of lyrical blue Key gives us about her life without a romantic partner.

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Thank you, Nicole, for another great review for the LiveTrue Books collection!

Nicole Louie is a writer and translator based in Ireland. Her essays and poems have appeared in Oh Reader magazine, Loft, What’s the Theme Zine, among others. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram: @bynicolelouie. Her first book, Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children is out in June.

The post Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone by Amy Key appeared first on Laura Carroll.

Lisa Jansen’s memoir, Life Done Differently: One Woman’s Journey on the Road Less Travelled, is a telling of her personal conversion from a safe, secure job and life that was successful but unfulfilling, to an unconventional lifestyle, quitting a corporate job, living in a camper van full time, and travelling extensively. It details her preparation, travels, and adventures in New Zealand, described in amazing detail.  Along the way, she also realized the conventional marriage and children path was not for her.

As Jansen’s journey begins, she was tired of “living up to society’s expectations,” and wanted to  shift her energy from commuting and working to travelling and experiencing life, which was what ultimately made her happy and whole.  She was a planner, and was able to convert her lifestyle to van living permanently.  In her transition, she received much support from family, friends, even her employer, who allowed her to stay on and work remotely and part time.

On the topic of having children, Jansen describes how people so often don’t  admit that having them was a mistake.  But for some reason, people love telling  childfree people how unhappy they will be by not having children.  As she writes, “…it seemed odd people were so concerned those who choose to be childfree might regret it, while you never hear people voice that concern to those who are planning for parenthood.” And further discussing regret, she wisely points out that having children because you think you will regret it if you don’t is not a good reason to have them. She states, “I won’t have kids just because I worry I might not regret it if I don’t…I would much rather regret being childfree than regret being a mom.”

And like me, Jansen often wondered why she never wanted children. Jansen believes that  parenthood is absolutely a career choice — just like being a doctor or lawyer.  One of my favorite of Jansen’s lines is, “The main reason I was committed to a childfree life was that I was confident to be MYSELF.”  It also takes a lot of strength and courage to make a decision that is so opposite of what the majority does.

I recommend the book for several reasons: first, it shows how a person can successfully live an alternative lifestyle to the society’s norms, and be happier and more successful than if you sacrifice your happiness for a conventional lifestyle.  Also, her descriptions of her travels and adventures make me want to travel to New Zealand. And her description of van life is very interesting; it requires a lot of planning, but can be the ultimate freedom for the right people.

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Thank you, Jill!

Jill Kaufman is a 50-year-old, divorced, childfree woman born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She has a BSBA from Bowling Green State University, and is a Business Analyst at a utility.

The post Life Done Differently: One Woman’s Journey on the Road Less Travelled by Lisa Jansen appeared first on Laura Carroll.

In Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine, Olivia Campbell tells the story of three courageous women who fought for their medical education and degrees in the mid-1800s. They are Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake. 

Dedicating herself to years of research in archival collections in the US and UK, Campbell puts together an informative and entertaining book that starts with a brief history of women as healers up to the Victorian era:

“Women have delivered healthcare across the globe for centuries as herbalists, healer-priestesses, shamans, apothecaries, healers, wise women, witch doctors, diviners, surgeons, nurses and midwives. But this rich history is largely overlooked, and very few names have weathered the passing of time.”

The author explains that in the late 19th century, many women were not seeking out medical help because they felt uncomfortable, embarrassed or simply were unable to relay their symptoms to male doctors who failed to acknowledge and treat their pain. It was in this context that the three protagonists decided they would take it upon themselves to provide more compassionate healthcare to women. 

However, the journey ahead would be filled with hurdles that often seemed insurmountable: stereotypes by family and friends who believed that a woman could be a nurse but never a doctor; banning entry at existing universities; threats by male students to abandon the course if women were allowed in; bullying tactics inside the classroom; refusal by professors to provide women with references; difficulty in finding a place to gain clinical practice as most hospitals turned women down; and many more unfair and misogynic barriers placed every step of their way. As Campbell points out:

“These women couldn’t just be students, they also had to be women’s rights activists. If they wished to fully reenter the realm of medicine as doctors, they’d have to put up a hell of a fight. One sought a degree in Scotland with disastrous results. One was forced to travel to France for her degree. One’s college application was considered a practical joke. Each would grapple with defining women’s work and purpose. But even in the early days of their studies, each one recognized their role as trailblazers paving the way for others.”

One of my favorite passages illustrates the importance of having role models and how they can propel us further. It starts in chapter three, where nine years after Blackwell graduated as a doctor in the United States, Anderson, then a twenty-one-year-old in England, 

“…was reading the April 1858 issue of the English Woman’s Journal, where she first encountered the idea of a lady doctor. She read the twenty-page biography of Elizabeth Blackwell with great interest and learned about how this industrious woman, who lacked the wealth or connections she herself possessed, successfully navigated her way through every obstacle to obtain a medical degree and establish a practice helping New York’s poorest women and children out of illness and destitution.”

Equipped with the knowledge that a career as a female doctor was possible, Anderson went on to become an English physician and co-founder of the London School of Medicine for Women, the first medical school in Britain to train women as doctors. 

In 1861, Anderson and Jex-Blake attended a physiology lecture and became friends. Inspired and supported by Blackwell who sent letters from overseas, they continued to fight for women’s access to a university education in Britain. Jex-Blake began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869, became the first practicing female doctor in Scotland and helped found two medical schools for women, one in London and one in Edinburgh. 

While the book reads unevenly at times, alternating between the style of a novel and a biography, overall, Campbell succeeds in telling the personal stories of women who showed a great deal of resilience and forever changed a profession that one and a half centuries later has a very different outlook, as “in 2017, for the first time ever in the US, there were more women medical students than men.”

In my forty years in this world, whenever I needed medical care, a part of me always thought: please let it be a female doctor. After reading Women in White Coats, I appreciate even more the fact that women have conquered access to medical training and the possibility of being treated by them. 

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Thank you, Nicole, for another great review for the LiveTrue Books collection!

Nicole Louie is a writer and translator based in Ireland. Her essays and poems have appeared in Oh Reader magazine, Loft, What’s the Theme Zine, among others. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram: @bynicolelouie. Her first book, Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children is out in June.

The post Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine by Olivia Campbell appeared first on Laura Carroll.

Thirsty for knowledge about women in history, I was drawn to Janice Kaplan’s The Genius of Women. Kaplan’s extensive pursuit to pay tribute to overlooked women spans 352 pages. She starts the book by narrating interviews with academics in various fields to learn  if genius equates to intelligence, and introduces readers to the history of intelligence assessment, which has included skull shape, brain mass measurement, genetics, and IQ tests. Her exploration  leads readers to the alarming realization that so much of what we call intelligence is based on assumptions rarely challenged and often regurgitated until perceived as truth.

Kaplan then ponders over the scarcity of female geniuses:

“In our current era of assumedly aroused consciousness to gender issues, why do both men and women still assume that men’s contributions to society are the ones that really count? We define genius almost exclusively through male achievement. When asked to name a genius, people mention Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and Steve Jobs. As for great women? In one survey, the only female genius anyone listed was Marie Curie.”

In her continuous search for answers, she repeatedly encounters gender bias and explores how this attribution of genius to males is mainly due to the lack of visibility given to women’s lives, abilities and achievements. How can we know about female achievers if their achievements are not recognized or made known? 

Examples of gaps in interest when it comes to registering women’s stories spotlighted in this book are: Guerilla Girls (a group of feminist art activists shaking up the art world since the 1980s) pointing out that less than 5% of the artists in the modern art section of the Met Museum were women; the number of Wikipedia pages about female figures being around 15%; and the obituaries about women in The New York Times making up for only 10% of the diseased people profiled. 

The misogyny in Disney tales, such as the little mermaid who trades her voice for legs so she can conquer a handsome prince, and Princess Elsa’s coercion into believing she must contain the powers rooted in her hands by wearing gloves, is also mentioned as a way of normalizing the silence about women’s skills and legacy. Kaplan affirms that “once we expect to see women’s genius on display, the lack of it seems wrong and inexplicable,” and from that point onwards, she concentrates on filling in some of these gaps. That’s when we reach the peak of her research and learn more about a brilliant cast of women, such as Donna Strickland, Maria Anna Mozart, Fanny Mendelssohn, Ada Lovelace, Diane Arbus, Kathrine Switzer, Jane Goodall, Fei-Fei Li, Mayim Bialik, Frances Arnold and Mileva Marić-Einstein, among others who were not yet given the recognition they deserve or to whom the recognition came only when they were no longer alive.

On those pages, remarkable women from art, science, technology, math, literature and psychology are celebrated not as mothers, wives or assistants of male geniuses but as geniuses in their own right. Readers understand that genius doesn’t equate to intelligence or talent; genius surfaces from a combination of curiosity, determination, confidence, fearlessness, support, encouragement, opportunities, and external acknowledgment of talent.

Although the narrative sometimes centers too much on the author’s personal stories instead of on the women she sought in history and real life, when I finished the book I was left with the importance of  Kaplan’s insightful observation that, “The genius of women might be to recognize the genius of other women. Because if we wait for men to do it, we could be waiting a long time.” Thanks to her book, many women will come to mind the next time I think about geniuses.

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Thank you, Nicole!

Nicole Louie is a writer and translator based in Ireland. Her essays and poems have appeared in Oh Reader magazine, Loft, What’s the Theme Zine, among others. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram: @bynicolelouie. Her first book, Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children is out in June.

The post The Genius of Women: From Overlooked to Changing the World by Janice Kaplan appeared first on Laura Carroll.

The book, Crossroads, is short with only sixty-eight pages. Author P Robertson writes a story of fiction, but it represents the challenges childfree women face to stay true and committed to their values and decision to live a life without children.

Izzy is married to her husband, Luke. They have been a couple for nine years, married for five and decided early on they were not going to have kids. However, Luke had second thoughts and discusses his desire to have a baby with Izzy while they are watching a movie on date night. Izzy was shocked by Luke’s wish to have a baby and becomes defiant in not wanting one.  Luke ends up leaving and staying with friends leaving Izzy distraught.

As the rest of the story progresses, Izzy questions whether her desire not to have children is the right one. Internal conflict erupts within her.

Many couples have the discussion whether or not to children. One half of the couple may want to and the other half may not want to. The disagreement will cause tension within the relationship. The half that doesn’t want to have children will certainly be the most conflicted and not know where to turn.

Fortunately for Izzy, she gets insight and support from her friend, Laura, who is also childfree. Having a solid support network is important for the childfree to remain devoted to their life choices and know they are not alone.  The childfree community has gained acceptance and momentum, but more work remains. By knowing such a community exists and available to support one another, then the childfree can thrive.

For a childfree person, male or female, not wanting kids is just as personal as someone who wants them. Life has to be lived on your terms and not anyone else’s. Not having fear to be your authentic self is the key.

Crossroads is a fine read to understand the thoughts, feelings, and dreams of a childfree woman. The reader will feel Izzy’s passion and cheer for her.

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Thank you, Michael!

Michael Coviello is a paralegal specializing in trusts and estates, corporate law and real estate law in New Windsor, New York. He is an aspiring writer with many interests including history, law and the childfree movement.

The post Crossroads by P Robertson appeared first on Laura Carroll.

Unlike my past books, this one is designed for a young adult audience (and up) and has illustrations by a talented illustrator, Nataliia Tonyeva, who is from Ukraine.

About A Special Sisterhood

2024 Winner, Young Adult Non-Fiction Category!

Women form sisterhood bonds in many special ways—as sisters, friends, or linked by a common interest, passion, or life experience. As women, one of the biggest is motherhood.

But as we know, not all women become mothers. What is not as known? 

Going back in history to today, there are more women than you might think who have lived lives that don’t include motherhood. Countless in fact. We make up a sisterhood that is bonded by not doing something women are historically supposed to do. For some, it is by choice, others not. And for many, many women, and amazing ones a

2024 Finalist, Women’s Issues Category!

t that, their lives have just unfolded such that becoming mothers has not been a part of it.

Designed for young adults (and up), A Special Sisterhood: 100 Fascinating Women From History Who Never Had Children gives engaging

 snapshots and illustrations of women in this sisterhood from the around the world going as far back as 350 AD. Rather than focus on why they did not have children, A Special Sisterhood focuses on the lives they lived. From Women Warriors, High Powered Political Leaders, to Social Changers, Medical Pioneers and more, their stories will inspire you to learn more about them, and find even more women who are alive today carrying on this sisterhood connection.

To young women (and men) out there, A Special Sisterhood gives you a taste of the unlimited and exciting ways life has been fully and remarkably lived by an ever-growing collective of women.

In addition to enjoying themselves, A Special Sisterhood is a fun educational gift for adults to give to the young adults in their lives as examples of the many ways to lead a life that is uniquely one’s own!

Available in paperback and e-book on Amazon and Itunes Books

Check out these reviews!

“Women who aren’t mothers remind us that there’s more than one way to have a life well-lived. The women in A Special Sisterhood show us 100 different ways! Whether by choice, circumstance or some combination thereof, these amazing women took different paths than the ones society laid out for them. How delightful to see them all converging here. I wish I could have met each and every one, but this book is the next best thing.”
Meghan Daum, Creator/Host, The Unspeakable Podcast, Editor of Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers On The Decision Not To Have Kids

“What I loved more than anything about A Special Sisterhood is I had no idea. I made a feature documentary about the childfree decision yet I didn’t know about the empress of Ethiopia or Hawaii, or nearer to home, the first woman to become a British Cabinet Minister. Laura has given us a huge breadth of women who didn’t have children who existed throughout the ages and in so many walks of life. Thank you, Laura, for showing us these examples in such an accessible and fun way. I’m sure it will help many people know they’re not alone and encourage them on their journey.”
Maxine Trump (no relation), Director of the documentary film, To Kid Or Not to Kid

“A Special Sisterhood is a needed book. It’s filled with stories of women who are brave and assertive and focused on living full lives. These are 100 women role models for young adults and adults to read about. In my line of work, helping women decide to live childfree or become parents, they often feel they don’t have enough role models of women who did not become mothers no matter the reason. This book which is beautifully presented gives you a peek inside the lives of many women living rich lives who are not mothers. This book is a gift to girls and boys, to women and men. It helps normalize that lives can be rich even if one does not become a mother or parent.”
Ann Davidman, co-author of Motherhood Is It For Me? Your Step-by-Step Guide to Clarity

“Sometimes books come along that make one think: Why haven’t we seen this before? It’s about time! Laura Carroll’s A Special Sisterhood forYA readers and up is fresh, timely, and fascinating. Her work makes me proud to join that long conga line of fabulous and determined women who know exactly what they want out of their lives—most especially when those lives don’t contain children.”
Dr. Davinia Thornley, Editor, Childfree across the Disciplines: Academic and Activist Perspectives on Not Choosing Children

“In A Special Sisterhood: 100 Fascinating Women From History Who Never Had Children, Laura Carroll continues to exude her unwavering commitment to the recognition and celebration of the diverse sisterhood of women without children, as a leading voice for our community and beyond. Throughout this book, the 100 diverse and expertly curated profiles gave me a heightened sense of visibility and belonging. I experienced resonance at the inclusion women with whom I was familiar, and awe in the discovery of those I had not known. A true gift to the community of women without children, past and present, A Special Sisterhood is a must read for all generations, and is an invaluable opportunity for young readers to learn from and relate to this otherwise missing historical perspective.”
Christine J. Erickson, founder, New Legacy Institute, dedicated to social justice for people without children

“A Special Sisterhood provides a biography of 100 women who do not have children. Throughout history in the world, these women have various demographic and cultural identities, life experiences, have endured a great deal, and have contributed a great deal. As an example of capturing women of different races, ethnicities, cultures, and nations, it is wonderful to read a celebration of African/black women whose works have lasting impacts on African/black justice and human justice. Rather than divide these women based on ‘childfree’ or ‘childless by circumstance,’ Laura Carroll and Nataliia Tonyeva artistically unite women and exemplify a span of womanhood as part of the span of families, collectives, cultures, societies, and the world.”
Kimya Nuru Dennis, Ph.D., childfree sociologist and researcher

“A Special Sisterhood is accessible reading for all ages and provides compelling snapshots of the lives and achievements of some incredible women throughout history. It’s an inspirational reminder of the potential within all of us, when we break free of expectations and oppressive ideas. It is well written, beautifully illustrated and offers just the right amount of information on its featured women to make it an easy and engaging read.” ~Elizabeth Joy, Host, Other Than Motherhood Podcast

The post A Special Sisterhood: 100 Fascinating Women From History Who Never Had Children, by Me! With Illustrator Nataliia Tonyeva appeared first on Laura Carroll.

Originally published in Korean in 2016 and translated into English in 2020, the cover of the book, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 immediately intrigued me. It has a woman’s head with no facial features and inside it only a desert-like landscape. The back matter teases with: 

“Kim Jiyoung has started acting out.” 

“Kim Jiyoung is her own woman.”

“Kim Jiyoung is insane.”

“Kim Jiyoung is sent by her husband to a psychiatrist.”

I brought the faceless woman home and delved into this book to find out why she had started “acting out.” 

Kim Jiyoung is a 33-year-old Korean woman who lives in Seoul with her husband and newborn daughter. Her parents and in-laws live elsewhere, and her husband works until midnight and on weekends. After giving up her career for a life of domesticity, Kim Jiyoung has become the sole carer of her little girl. No matter how much she does, there’s always more to be done. And no matter how hard she tries, she feels her existence is neither satisfactory nor fair. 

In a society that treats motherhood and martyrdom as the same thing, Kim Jiyoung has no one to talk to about how overwhelmed and lost she feels. The accumulation of her repressed thoughts and emotions leads to her breakdown, which manifests in the bizarre channeling of other women in her life, both dead and alive. She starts to talk like them, behave like them, even know things that only they know. But Kim Jiyoung doesn’t see that she is dipping into a kind of psychosis. Her husband doesn’t understand.

It’s easy to think it all started on page 122, in the passage where her husband suggests:

“There is one way to stop my parents’ nagging for good.”

“What?”

“Let’s just have a kid. If we are going to have one eventually anyway, why not avoid the lectures by just having one? We’re not getting any younger.”

But the root cause of her wounds goes back many years: her mother wanted a boy, her school enforced a strict dress code for the girls but not for the boys, her father blamed her when she was stalked by a classmate, she was called “someone else’s chewed gum” ​​after having dated a colleague, she worked harder than everybody else but didn’t get promoted, she got married because she was told there was no reason to wait. Then she did what her husband wanted—she got pregnant to stop her in-laws from bullying her into becoming a mother. 

As the story unfolds, we see that Kim Jiyoung’s trajectory is a personal tale of universal impositions many women worldwide face but with a particular focus on Korean women. In just over 160 pages, the well-thought-out structure has one section for each phase of Kim Jiyoung’s life: childhood, adolescence, early adulthood and marriage. It also illustrates a myriad of disturbing Korean female experiences with a unique combination of the fictional story interspersed with facts and data.  

By citing statistics on education, marriage, abortion and workplace conditions, Cho Nam-Joo turns the discrimination suffered by women in various spheres into a public debate that can no longer be ignored. Here’s one example: 

“In 2005, the year Kim Jiyoung graduated from college, a survey by a job search website found that only 29.6% of new employees at 100 companies were women, and it was even mentioned as a big improvement. Another survey concluded that among managers of fifty large corporations, 44% chose that they ‘would rather hire male to female candidates with equivalent qualifications,’ and none chose ‘would hire women over men.’”

Another data point she shares: 

“According to 2014 data, women working in Korea earn only 63% of what men earn. Korea was also ranked as the worst country in which to be a working woman, receiving the lowest scores among the nations surveyed on the glass-ceiling index by the British magazine The Economist.”

Although the inclusion of dates and statistics felt a bit dry at first, I came to appreciate the author’s dedication and intention to provide her readers with a broader picture of gender inequality in her country. This effective way of interspersing social commentary with relatable anecdotes about a female protagonist turned the book into a symbol of the feminist movement in South Korea and catapulted it into a bestseller that has sold multi-million copies in eighteen languages.  

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 taught me a lot about misogyny, mental health and misdiagnoses in women. Kim Jiyoung’s life and breaking point in her early thirties not only gives readers a look into the Korean woman’s experience but also the experiences of women around the world. 

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Thank you, Nicole!

Nicole Louie is a writer, translator, and content curator based in Ireland. She is dedicated to finding and sharing the stories of amazing women without children both online and in her upcoming non-fiction book on childlessness. She can be found on Twitter and on Instagram: @bynicolelouie.

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