21. Childfree & AuDHD
I was in my late thirties, recovering from a major AuDHD burnout. And in the final reckoning with the question I'd labored over for a decade: Was I going to have kids?
I didn't trust my capacity. I didn't know if someone with my sensory sensitivities and need for alone time could be a healthy, present parent.
Then I found the childfree elders. And everything shifted.
What if being childfree isn't opting out of legacy or lineage?
What if it’s not selfish or lazy or any other adjective? What if it's simply a different choice—freeing up capacity to show up as the auntie, the wise woman, the ancestor your lineage needs?
In This Episode:
The AuDHD nervous system has specific needs that constant parenting demands can override
Being childfree is an ancestral role—the aunties have always existed on the horizontal lines of the family tree
You can honor lineage without being a parent—auntie work is ancestor work too
Claiming this path requires recognizing it as legitimate, not selfish or lazy
The village needs both mothers and aunties—both are essential, both are beautiful
Connect With Me:
Get the free Unmasking Menu
THE NERVOUS SYSTEM REALITY
Parenting demands constant sensory input. Noise. Touch. Needs. All day, all night. Someone else's nervous system regulating through yours.
Executive function on expert mode—managing appointments, schedules, food, development milestones, emotional regulation support. It never stops.
Very little autonomy. Your time isn't yours. Your body isn't fully yours. Your space isn't yours. Even your thoughts get interrupted constantly.
The Pattern That's Always Been True
For some AuDHD women, the need for solo time, for quiet, for space that's just ours—those are needs that have been present since our own childhood.
The awkwardness around young children. The preference for adult conversation. The way some of us needed our bedroom door closed as kids, needed to disappear into books on family road trips, needed wind-down time protected and regulation rituals honored.
When you combine the autistic need for alone time with sensory sensitivities to noise and touch, plus how easily many AuDHD nervous systems get overstimulated and overwhelmed—constant parenting can feel like scraping your nervous system raw.
It's a Valid Choice
Plenty of AuDHD women parent. Many figure out neurodivergent-affirming ways to do it beautifully and differently. That's a valid path.
But so is looking at what parenting requires and saying: "That sounds too hard. That sounds like it would cost me more than I want to give. That's not the life I want to design."
And for that choice to be legitimate. Not selfish. Not immature. Just a different path.
THE AUNTIES ARE EVERYWHERE
When you start tracing family trees, you notice something: the aunties are everywhere. You just have to look to the edges.
We're taught to look at the vertical lines—parents to children to grandchildren. The descent. The passing down of name and blood.
But the aunties? We're the horizontal lines. The sisters and cousins and great-aunts who held the family differently. Who had capacity BECAUSE we weren't in the vertical line of constant caregiving.
The Village Edge Roles
Throughout history, certain women lived at the village edges and held specific roles: the healers, the midwives, the wise women.
Were all of them mothers? Probably not.
Because when you're the person the whole village comes to—when you're holding space for people who are sick or scared or birthing or dying—you need nervous system capacity that isn't already depleted by the constant demands of your own children.
You need autonomy. You need quiet to restore. You need space to hold what the community brings to you.
The aunties weren't failing at being mothers. We were succeeding at being aunties.
It's a different role. An essential one. Just invisible in how we typically tell family stories.
WHAT IT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
Living this way isn't some idealized version where you're the calm, present auntie all the time. It's messy. Real. Still requires figuring things out.
For context: I live intergenerationally with my parents—separate wing, our own space, but same property. My sister and her two young boys are over for dinner multiple nights a week. My mom watches my two-year-old nephew at the house two days a week.
Which means lots of exposure. Lots of doses of kid noise and chaos and attention needs.
And I still get dysregulated by it sometimes. The overwhelm. The sensory demands.
The Boundaries That Work
Friday night pizza—everyone assembling their own on the kitchen island, all the toppings lined up. Family togetherness, laughter, connection.
Then my husband and I retreat to our part of the house for wind-down time. Our show. Our quiet. Our nervous system regulation.
We get to participate in the family dinner AND protect our evening regulation. That's the kind of boundary that's possible as an auntie but would be impossible as a parent.
In the swim spa with my six-year-old nephew, we make up weird words together. Build entire imaginary worlds out of nonsense. Play "what if" games like ‘what if the spa is a giant monster and we're floating on its back?’.
My brain flows that way too—unstructured, imaginative, following wherever the spark goes. I don't really get to do that in normal adult life. But with him? We're a match.
I have capacity for that BECAUSE there's a quiet space to retreat to afterward.
The Legacy Work
When my sister is spiraling over big parenting decisions—schools, developmental milestones, the sheer weight of being responsible for these tiny humans—I have spoons to talk through it with her. To help her regulate. To help her feel grounded.
Not because I'm some perfectly calm person. But because those spoons aren't already spoken for by my own children.
And there's other legacy work too: The AuDHD women I coach. The podcast listeners who hear these words and feel less alone. The people whose nervous systems I help honor instead of override.
That's ancestor work too.
THE LINEAGE OF AUNTIES
Rachel Cargle (writer, activist, podcast host) calls this role Rich Auntie Supreme. Not rich in money necessarily—though it's true it's easier to be financially stable without raising kids. But rich in capacity. Rich in resources to share. Rich in availability.
When Ruby Warrington published her book "Women Without Kids," she wasn't writing about lack. She was writing about fullness. About lives that overflow differently.
The Recognition Moment
I was in a business mastermind. Ritual-based, capitalism-critical, warm. One of the women was in her sixties, married, no kids. Something about how she showed up made me realize: Oh. She's a childfree elder.
I reached out to her in our group chat, told her I was exploring this choice and would love to hear her experience.
Half our circle chimed in. They were childfree too, or deeply in that same question. We started a separate thread. Got on a call together. Everyone shared their stories.
Something in me shifted. From "childless"—heavy with lack—to "childfree." Like maybe this wasn't a loss. Maybe it could be beautiful.
A few months later, Ruby Warrington and Rachel Cargle hosted their first Zoom gathering for childfree women. The chat exploded—dozens of women, all typing at once. Sharing their stories, their relief, their grief, their choice.
Watching that flood of comments scroll by, I felt it: I'm not alone. This isn't shameful. This is just a path.
We're not isolated outliers making a weird choice. We're a lineage. The aunties have always been here.
BOTH ROLES ARE ESSENTIAL
The village needs mothers. Deeply. Absolutely.
And the village needs aunties too.
Both are ancestral roles. Both are essential. Both are ways of honoring lineage.
You just get to choose which one actually fits the nervous system you were given.
THE KEY INSIGHT
Being childfree isn't opting out of responsibility or legacy or lineage. It's taking responsibility for designing a life your nervous system can sustain.
And that freed capacity? That's exactly what allows you to show up as the auntie, the elder, the wise woman your lineage needs.
That is legitimate. That is enough. That is beautiful.