Here’s a little more information ….
I always knew that I wanted to be a writer. I “wrote” my first book before I was five. “The Adventures of PigDog” have been lost to the annals time: yet my siblings still say “and PigDog said ….” whenever one of us starts waffling badly. In fact writing is so much a part of my being that if I were a stick of Seaside Rock the word “writer” would be printed through my core. Writing a couple of books, starting “The Childless Not By Choice Magazine” and now writing this blog is the fulfilment of several life-long dreams. In fact inventing a new word is also another long term goal. I invented a new word way back in the 1980s and it was very exciting to see people within that community start using “grotographic”. It will be even more exciting to see what happens with CANBACE as it has the potential of having a far bigger impact on a much larger group of people.
Although I am/we are not 100% “there yet” it does feel great to have found a more positive mindset and attitude towards our situation. Inventing CANBACE has been a huge “game changer” for us in terms of how we identify ourselves and the way we interact with the “rest of the world”. We now longer hang our head in “childLESS” shame: we hold our CANBACE heads high knowing that we have a lot to give the world. We hope that embracing the idea of CANBACE will have a huge positive impact on your lives too.
In terms of how we got here, I imagine that my/our CANBACE story will be drip-fed through “The Canbace Dairies” over the coming months: however, in a nutshell, very late diagnosis of Stage Four Endometriosis caused my infertility. Andrew and I went on to have one self-funded cycle of IVF. This was such a disaster it was over before it began: 8 eggs retrieved and none fertilised. This led to years of struggling to accept the unacceptable.
When we are not working on the magazine, and other initiatives in the “Niccisphere” we spend a lot of our time renovating our Girondine style farmhouse. That the renovations are complete and we are now working on the garden and clearing the “blackhole” of a barn. Once we’ve made significant progress on those the house will be put on the market so that we can take the next step in our CANBACE reinvention and move to The Bahamas where we have a plot of land waiting for us to build our dream house. The pups (Bailey, Cattier, and Duval) have packed their suitcases and dogs beds in preparation for their move to Exuma where we fully intend to put the finishing touches to our canbacing as we relaxing into island life and explore our new playground called Elizabeth Harbour.
