This article, published in the Portsmouth News in July 2019, was commissioned based on a tweet thread about childlessness and loneliness I put together for #LonelinessAwarenessWeek, which ended up going semi-viral. I received hundreds of messages from people who felt the same way, or who changed the way they supported childless-not-by-choice people. You can read it in full by clicking on the excerpt below.

I always wanted to be a mother. I imagined first steps and first words, bedtime stories, first-day-of-school photos and nativity plays. Cheering, freezing, on the edge of sports fields. Teenage tantrums. Prom nights. An empty nest as my children flew off to university, travelling, first homes.