Pip | The Joyful Simplicity of Being Single

SingleChildfree

Jul 15

Written By Population Balance

From a very early age Pip sensed she didn’t want children, and a diagnosis of premature ovarian failure at 15 confirmed that path. As she grew older, Pip found herself desperately searching for the perfect partner to complete her. A chance conversation blew open the door regarding societal expectations around relationships, sex, and conventional measures of success. Childfree, single, and celibate, Pip lives an independent, authentic, and joyful life with her family of two rescue dogs.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Pip (00:00):
I didn't understand why I didn't feel maternal, why I didn't want to pursue what everyone around me was doing. But I also came to the realization that I had never questioned why I was searching for a relationship and I had never looked any deeper than the fact that you get into a relationship and you go on to get married and what have you. And I had this huge revelation of myself that actually I love being on my own. And it led me down this road of what else have I never questioned in my life?
Nandita Bajaj (00:49):
That was today's guest Pip. Hi everyone, and thank you for joining me. My name is Nandita Bajaj and I'm the host of Beyond Pronatalism, Finding Fulfillment With or Without Kids, an interview series in which through intimate conversations with women and men from diverse backgrounds, I explore how they are courageously and creatively navigating pronatalism - the often unspoken pressures to have children, whether from family, friends, or the culture at large. In each episode, I dive into personal stories with people who are forging unconventional pathways to fulfillment, including redefining what family means to them, whether that means being childfree or childless, having biological kids, adopting or fostering children or animals, or creating close-knit communities of friends and loved ones. Hello and welcome, Pip. It is so nice to have you on the podcast.
Pip (01:43):
Hi, Nandita. Thank you so much for having me. Hello.
Nandita Bajaj (01:49):
I am very, very excited about this episode because it's like we're turning the table. And I was recently on your incredible podcast, One Single Woman, and I'm now looking forward to hearing your story.
Pip (02:05):
Oh, thank you so much. And yeah we did, we had an incredible conversation, which has reached a lot of people and I think changed a lot of mindsets out there as well. So yeah, it's wonderful and thank you so much for having me. And I think that Beyond Pronatalism is just such an incredible podcast, and I thank you so much for all the work that you do on this because I think these conversations are so empowering and I think that there's so many people who must really appreciate hearing very similar mindsets to them, and I think it's really wonderful.
Nandita Bajaj (02:37):
Oh, thank you so much, Pip. That means a lot to me. And so Pip, for our listeners, it would be great if you could share a few things about yourself as a way of introduction.
Pip (02:47):
So my name is Pip. I am a 40-year-old woman. I live on the Isle of Wight along the south coast in the UK where I have lived since I was seven months old. I was brought up by my single mother. My parents divorced when I was seven months old, so I was brought up by my mom. My grandparents were very much a part of our lives, my grandparents on my mother's side. I've got a brother who is two years older than me. And so yeah, we were brought up single-handedly by my mom. I worked in the veterinary industry for many years and left my job in '22 and became a self-employed dog walker. So I absolutely love that. It's right where I'm meant to be at the moment. I love spending time on my own and I love being around animals, so it's literally perfect. I'm just very much enjoying my life as a single and childfree woman, and I am enjoying every moment of my life these days.
Nandita Bajaj (03:46):
Well, this is going to be a very exciting conversation. I am a little envious of your self-employed dog walking job. It sounds fabulous. So let's dig deeper into each of those aspects. Let's begin with the early stages of your life. How did pronatalism show up within your family set up and also just within the larger community within which you were growing up?
Pip (04:13):
Yeah, of course. So over here in the UK, so it's very much when you're growing up, I mean, I was very much under the impression of you get married, you have probably a minimum of two children and that is sort of your life trajectory. But as I was growing up, I started my menstrual cycle really early. I was around 11 years old, and I got to the age of 14 and I'd had a lot of problems with my menstrual cycles. And all of a sudden out of nowhere they completely stopped. And after a while my mum sort of dragged me to the doctor. She was very worried about where all these problems had suddenly gone. And we went and I was eventually diagnosed at 15 with premature ovarian failure, which is effectively premature menopause. And I was told at that point that I wouldn't conceive children naturally.
(05:06):
And I remember actually my parents being very shocked. I know that my mum was very upset. And all I could think at the time was that all of those problems that I'd had over those years, just between about 11 and 14, were no longer going to be a problem. And also, I always had a feeling inside of me that I was never going to be a parent, and I can't explain that feeling. It was like I believe I've had a knowing all my life that was not the path for me in life. So I was there with all this relief. And what that led me on to in the form of pronatalism was that I was then throughout my life looking for a partner who didn't want children. I had relationships with men who did want children, and I would make my feelings very clear that I didn't want to pursue IVF or adoption or anything like that.
(06:03):
So it very much affected my life in that way. I think around me, there was definitely no pressure within my family whatsoever. My mum was pleased for me that I had very much decided that that wasn't going to be what I wanted to do in life. I didn't want to be a mother. I didn't want to pursue being a mother. And in fact, it's interesting. My brother is married and they're childfree as well. So our family is effectively going to disappear at some point in the future. So though there was never ever any pressure within my family, I think that as I was getting older and seeing friends and people around me who I'd known, acquaintances getting married and having children, that was where I started to feel a bit of a void in my life, in the way that I couldn't understand why I didn't want children.
(06:51):
It wasn't that I was looking at those situations and thinking that's what I want. It was more I didn't understand why I didn't feel maternal, why I didn't want to pursue what everyone around me was doing. And it wasn't until literally a couple of years ago that I stumbled across the childfree movement and had this enormous realization that not only had I been sort of feeling strange about myself all those years questioning my own thoughts and feelings about motherhood, but I also came to the realization that I had never questioned why I was searching for a relationship. And I had never looked any deeper than the fact that you get into a relationship and you go on to get married and what have you. And I had this huge revelation of myself that actually I love being on my own. I'm a very introverted person, and it led me down this road of what else have I never questioned in my life? And that led me particularly towards the Overpopulation Podcast because the more I was learning, the wider my eyes were being pulled open with things that I was hearing on your podcast, on other podcasts that I had never considered were going on around me because I was in this tunnel vision of looking for a relationship and believing that my life wasn't going to begin until I found that. So to have been snapped out of that and suddenly realize actually that's not even what I want, was absolutely mind blowing to be honest.
Nandita Bajaj (08:35):
Yeah, it just sounds like once you start questioning the dominant narrative, the number of questions that then start being generated from the first few questions, it's quite incredible. It's almost unending, because then you just start thinking, well, what else am I doing that's been programmed into me by societal expectations? How else am I not being authentic? So I really just love the whole trajectory of your life path that you've shared so far. And I'd love to go back to the time of the diagnosis when you first found out at the age of 15 that you had hit early menopause, and you talked about how you kind of just knew that you weren't going to have children and you were quite okay with that. What was the conversation like with the physicians?
Pip (09:24):
Yeah, the initial conversation, to be honest, was absolutely diabolical. I was told by a lady, just literally came into the room, sat down, said this is the case and you are not going to be able to have children naturally. And I know that this was on the initial diagnosis, and I know that my mum was fuming because of the way that it had been approached because obviously she was very shocked. I was shocked in the form of I didn't really see that coming at the time. My auntie was a consultant in London and she was able to put us in touch with a pediatric consultant who was able to break it down better for us because obviously it does come with other side effects of I've just moved into the bracket of having osteoporosis now at 40 years old, whereas obviously it would be earlier even at this age for me to be in menopause.
(10:15):
So there's things like bone scans, there's certain supplements I have to take, but with regards to the feeling, I think that when I was younger, it was always animals with me from the word go. I was very much into cuddly toys that were dogs, and I remember these things called pound puppies, and I had a load of them and I had all these dogs everywhere, and I just feel that it was something that was in me from my birth. And what you were saying about how my life has unfolded from that point is that I feel it gave me this opportunity if you like, to explore life from a different angle. Because had I been able to have children, I have thought several times would I have done that? Because I was desperately looking for a relationship which I now at this age realize I didn't want.
(11:09):
So would I have had children? And having stumbled across a lot of people in life who have made that decision and have gone on to regret that decision, I believe knowing who I am now, I believe I would've been one of those people. And that's something I'm sort of trying to talk about is that I think that from the word go from childhood, when we're at school, we are all taught to conform and do what everyone else around us is doing. And you do that without questioning. And the more I've learned, the more I can see so clearly that we sort of live inside our ego and our ego attaches itself to social norms. And so we follow what our ego is telling us, which is to join in and to have everything the way that we're quote meant to live our lives. And actually, when you take a huge step back from your life and you look at everything, that's when it all unfolds. And that's when you start to realize there's a lot more to life than just following what we're taught to follow.
Nandita Bajaj (12:21):
Yeah, so well said. And just through this podcast and just through the work that I do, I meet so many people who share the same sentiment that you just shared about how if life hadn't thrown a "wrench" into your preset path, you would've just as I would've followed that path of having children most likely. And I find those stories to be extremely fascinating because I think it illuminates for us the amount of times and the number of people who have walked into that path without questioning it. And for you, it was this early onset of menopause, which kind of threw you into a mode of starting to question things. When you were in your teens and in your twenties, would you openly tell people that you had this condition and that you weren't going to have children biologically? And if so, what were the kinds of responses you were getting from people?
Pip (13:26):
I mainly kept it to myself apart from I would tell close friends and obviously any relationships that I got into, I would obviously bring that up very quickly because that was going to be a massive thing within a relationship. I think mainly the response was always pity. And then it would be me that said like, no, no, no, no, no. I am so pleased about this. And when I say pity, I don't mean that in a nasty way. I mean, as in they were showing me concern. So it was me just correcting them and saying, I don't want to have children. But I think that that very much still is such a huge thing in society is that women who don't have children are seen as having less opportunity in life or less fulfillment in life because of this overwhelming narrative that we should all be doing.
(14:17):
And like you said, Nandita, the way I see things now is I think that there are people in the world who were born to have children and to raise children and to totally fulfill that life path just as much as you and I don't want to. They've got that passion just as strong the other way to do that, and I feel so strongly that by uncovering this world as childfree in all these conversations that does open up that path to other women to just hear that side of it which is that there's other ways that you can have the most incredible life, which doesn't involve procreation. And it's something I feel so passionately about talking about because like I said, the amount of people that I've spoken to, the amount of women who have come into my life, all of whom said exactly like us, that we had never heard of the word childfree. And so it wasn't a part of our upbringing. So it means that you are either desperately following that path, and that's what you either want to do or you think you want to do, or if you don't want to do it, you are left feeling there's something wrong with you.
Nandita Bajaj (15:27):
Exactly. And let's go into the second thread of this very conversation that you're getting at is you knew that being a mother was not in the cards for you. In fact, you said it was almost like a gift that this biological childlessness offered you, where it was just like the decision was made for you, and you seem to have embraced that decision. But you also talked about how even though you woke up to the fact that being a mother was not for you, you still pursued very passionately wanting to get into a relationship and you now are a passionately single woman, and you wear that on your sleeves and you run a podcast about it. I would love to unpack the journey of arriving at this really liberated place of singledom.
Pip (16:22):
So this all came about in April '23. I had taken a week off work and I went out, put the dogs in the car, went to go for a long walk, and I was in one of my usual sort of mindsets of feeling down about myself because I just never ever met the right person. It never worked out. And I just felt like I'm never ever going to meet this man that I want to be with. And this one particular morning, so took the dogs out and I stumbled across a podcast called Spinsterhood Reimagined, which was Lucy Meggeson's podcast at the time. It's now Thrive Solo. And I started listening to Lucy and I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. I was hearing a woman talking about how wonderful it is to be single and not have children. Now, however much I had desperately wanted this relationship that I was after, whenever I came out of any of my relationships, I'd always felt this massive sense of relief.
(17:26):
It was like, oh, I'm back to being myself again. And then I'd enjoy that for a little while, and then I'd get back on this hunt like, where is this man? Where is this man? And it was listening to Lucy that made me realize that that feeling of relief that I was feeling when I was coming out of these relationships, I mean, they weren't bad relationships, not at all, but it was just a feeling that they weren't the right person for me, that feeling that I'd had. I started to explore that, and I was listening to her interviewing all of these women who were all saying roughly the same thing in a different way. And I thought, that's me. That is how I feel. But the thing was, it was like validation to say, you don't have to be with somebody. And it changed my life, to a point I remember I got home that day and I was dancing around my house because I couldn't...I love to do that anyway.
(18:22):
I was dancing around the house thinking, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I just couldn't believe it because obviously, generally if you look up a single podcast, they're talking about dating. They're talking about how to date, how to find the right person, what to do, how to respond to messages, what you do on dating apps, all of this. There's never talk of actually, just don't do it.
Nandita Bajaj (18:42):
Yeah, never.
(18:44):
No, never. And so it was truly incredible and it just led me on this path of, I mean, when I first started my podcast, I was still very much talking about, oh, I might meet the right man one day. I am still very open to it, but actually another sort of year down the line. And I'm now at a point that I actually feel quite strongly that I don't think I want a relationship full stop, as in I truly, truly adore this life.
(19:11):
I love solitude. I love the fact that I've got freedom. I've got mental freedom from a relationship. I've got emotional stability in my life. I've got all this freedom to actually be who I am and not compromise myself in any way. And it can come across as sounding sort of self-indulgent. But I think that when you put yourself first, and when I say that, I don't mean that in the way of, in a selfish way, I mean it in the form of putting yourself first to the degree of making sure that you are okay. Because I believe that when you are in the right mental state, that's when you can do good in the world. Whereas when you are compromising or when you are in a bad situation with somebody, you are very much entwined in that. So there's not much scope outside to help other people or to open up to other things because you're dealing with issues within your own life. But yeah, it's something that absolutely changed my life and took away the most enormous amount of pressure for me that I could ever have imagined, because once I removed that wanting of a relationship, it removed so many things in my life. I'm talking a problem with my body image. Everything suddenly just changed because I wasn't in that mindset of my life being about finding the right person and that it wouldn't begin until that happened.
(20:36):
That all sounds so liberating, and it's almost as if Lucy and the conversations that she was having with all these people, it gave you permission to break away from the societal construct that had been created for you, that you were incomplete until you were in a relationship. And I must confess, when I first woke up to pronatalism, it was an equally liberating experience of just recognizing I never really wanted to have children, but I didn't even know it, and I was going to go have children had I not had this awakening conversation with my partner. But even many years after that, while I was exploring what pronatalism was and that not having children is just as natural as having children, I still held onto this idea that, of course, everybody wants to be with somebody, right? This idea that someone who is single is involuntarily single or all of these cliches that you hear in movies and in culture, well, there's somebody out there for everyone, or you definitely will meet somebody.
(21:48):
How could somebody not want to be with you? And so I totally played into that construct for so many years, and it was only when I was creating my course and I was delving deeply into some of the different aspects of pronatalism around the world that I came across the work of Bella DePaulo talking about being single at heart. It wasn't that she was being okay with not having found somebody, that she was surrendering to that reality. It was that she was actually embracing that as a chosen pathway. And I found that it broke away another layer.
Pip (22:29):
Absolutely. And actually, Nandita, you said about your prejudice within that, and that was up until that moment when I heard Lucy, I would've been saying to my friends, have you met anyone yet? And I would never have thought, oh, is it okay to just be on your own? It didn't really enter my mind because with the children thing you saying about you waking up to the pronatalism, it was still a part of my life that I just assumed I was going to meet somebody because I'd never heard another side of it, even though weirdly, I was brought up by a single mom who had chosen to stay on her own. So bizarrely, I still didn't even pick it up from there. But another sort of part of what you were saying is, I mean, Bella DePaulo has made the most groundbreaking waves with all of this. And yeah, this is not an acceptance that you are not going to find the right person, and you live with it.
(23:21):
It's actually actively saying, this is how I want to live my life. And it's amazing because there's so many people out there, I mean, I've met so many people through this who feel exactly the same. And I think a lot of it comes down to introversion and people liking solitude. And I think that does seem to be a common theme within it. But I mean, something else that I'm talking about a bit more at the moment is also celibacy and voluntary celibacy. And I think yet again, it's another pressure within society that people feel that they should be in sexual relationships, whether you are single or you are not, there's that pressure to be having a sexual relationship. And I sort of recently released an episode where I was talking about this, and this is something else that's hit me quite recently, is that I feel like I've never, ever met somebody who I felt a true deep emotional connection with that I would need now in order to break the celibacy.
(24:24):
Because the way that I feel about my life, the way I feel about the world, the way I feel about everything now, celibacy is almost part of it. I find that empowering - that I'm choosing to be on my own, live my life on my own, and that includes my body as well as my mind and my emotions. And that's something else that I'm just sort of trying to talk about a bit more because I think there is so much shame attached to it and so many people feeling this pressure within society. And actually, it's another thing where if you take a good hard look at everything, we don't need to all be in sexual relationships all the time in your life.
Nandita Bajaj (25:08):
Yes, that is such a powerful point, and that's another really highly stigmatized aspect of culture. There is just so much emphasis, like a disgusting degree of emphasis on sex. It either goes from being highly sexualized to being highly repressed in terms of how sexuality is expressed in different cultures. On both ends of the spectrum the idea still is very much that sex is a necessary aspect of everyone's life, just like being in a relationship, having children, and to be voluntarily celibate, to be enjoying that life, I can only imagine the layers of freedom you would feel from not having to live up to all of these expectations that are placed on us.
Pip (26:01):
And another thing that I've realized over the last couple of years, and what I'm realizing more and more is that the things that I used to want in my life, the things that I felt that I had to have in my life, the things that we are taught that we need in our life, all the sort of stereotypical things of the house, the car, the relationship, children, money, everything. What I've realized from discovering who I am as a person or the road that I'm on in discovering more and more about who that person is, is actually how unimportant so many of those things are, and that there's so much more to life than this tick box system and possessions. And being this and wanting that and having this and having that has again changed my life in such a positive manner. And also going back to something that you mentioned earlier, which was the stereotypical comments about being single, and it's definitely the stereotype of a half, and it's my true belief that I am a whole person.
(26:59):
I do not need another half. It's something that I feel so strongly about is that particular phrase. And I think that if we were to self-actualize, if we were encouraged to do that from the word go, I feel so strongly that the world would be in a completely different state. Because when people follow the authentic path as opposed to all being told to do this, that and the other, and it's not for everybody because we are all so completely unique, and not everybody is going to want to have children. Not everybody's going to want to have dogs, or not everyone's going to want to do a certain job, but it seems to be that marriage and children is this path that we will all definitely want to go down. And when you realize that you are a whole person on your own, it's truly liberating.
Nandita Bajaj (27:51):
I agree. And then from that place of being whole, and then you start to ask the bigger questions is, do I want to be in a partnership with someone, whether it's a sexually intimate relationship or whether it's a friendship? Do I want to bring a child into this world? The responses to those questions take on a different meaning when you're coming from a place of wholeness, when you're not trying to fill a void in your life. Right?
Pip (28:16):
Yeah, a hundred percent, yeah. And it stands to reason that when you are being authentic as a person, and yes, you did go on to have children, that's going to go down through into them. And how incredible to be brought up in that manner, to be encouraged to be who we are as toddlers even. When we're little tiny kids, we're throwing ourselves around and dancing and singing, and we lose it all. It all goes, and it's so, so sad because we contort ourselves into what we feel we should be.
Nandita Bajaj (28:45):
Well said. So Pip, you've said a number of times today that you find yourself in a deeply fulfilled, very intentionally chosen path, and that you're loving it. I'd love for you to wrap this conversation up by sharing what does it look like today?
Pip (29:03):
Yeah, so my family is myself and my two rescue dogs, and that was something else that I found very early on in my life was I had a very passionate feeling about animals in the world as well. And I did a lot of work in dog rescue. I did some work in Spain and the UK with trying to help the dog crisis and the companion animals in general. There's so many. So I'm living with my two rescue dogs. That's my family. My mom is in the same village as me, and I'm very, very close to my mom. And I am working really hard to expose certain things that I have learned on this journey, things that I didn't know about - things about overpopulation, talking about relationships and mindsets. And at the moment, I just feel like I'm exactly where I'm meant to be. I am a whole person just as I am. I'm not looking for a relationship. I'm cultivating wonderful friendships around me, and I do all of that with my two lovely rescue dogs by my side, who just, they're my life.
Nandita Bajaj (30:16):
Oh, this is just an incredibly powerful conversation, Pip. You've opened the door to yet a few other underrepresented narratives and stories that are totally, totally absent in culture, and you are such an incredible example of living that fulfilled life and continuing to question these really restrictive stereotypes that keep us from finding ourselves. Thank you so much for bringing such wonderful insights into this podcast and for sharing your story with me.
Pip (30:53):
And you, Nandita, thank you so much for having me.
Nandita Bajaj (30:56):
That's all for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. What did you think of this episode? Do you have your own story you'd like to share? Check out the show notes to see how you can get in touch with me. Whether you'd like to share feedback about the show or a particular episode, or whether you'd like to join me on the show to share your own story, I'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much again for joining me today, as we collectively discover and celebrate the many different pathways to fulfillment beyond pronatalism. Beyond Pronatalism is brought to you by Population Balance, the only nonprofit organization advancing ecological and reproductive justice by confronting pronatalism. This podcast is produced and hosted by me, Nandita Bajaj, with the support of my production team, Josh Wild and Alan Ware.