Meet Our Facilitators
Karin Enfield-de Vries
Hello, my name is Karin Enfield-de Vries, born in The Netherlands in 1978, living in Belgium with my British husband. I have been childless not by choice since 2012 due to cervical cancer.
After having built my career in International Business Transformation and Organisational Change Management and through my own lived experience of change and adversity, I made the switch from the corporate world to a global not-for-profit organisation supporting women who are childless not by choice and trained to become a grief and loss counsellor.
I started Pure Transformations in 2022, through which I offer my support (online and in person) in both English and Dutch to the Childless Community. Central to my work are the concepts of truth and choice, and through counselling and coaching I help enable people to live the life they want, rather than the life they think they should or have somehow ended up living.
“Grief has been my companion for over a decade, a silent witness to my struggles and triumphs. It has shaped me, teaching me resilience and compassion, not only for myself but for others walking similar paths.”
Sarah Lawrence
Hello, my name is Sarah Lawrence, and I’m a childless woman due to infertility. I was initially told I’d be childless in 2014 due to endometriosis (stage 4), but I then needed a hysterectomy in 2018 due to adenomyosis.
I founded After the Storm, following my qualification as a counsellor in 2020. I’m passionate about providing a safe, trigger-free space in which people can heal, having been unable to find a counsellor myself, who could really sit with my childlessness. My qualification in trauma-informed counselling has helped me take this a step further by offering healing to people with unresolved trauma, as many aspects of childless stories, not just childlessness, can carry unresolved trauma.
I am also a co-director, co-presenter and co-founder of the award-winning Full Stop which is a childless podcast supported by an online community, offering an exclusive space for the childless community to connect and share their voices.
I am also proud to be a facilitator for the Gateway Women Reignite weekends, providing women with a safe environment to process and work through their grief around their childlessness.
“I don’t think I’m the only one to experience a mental and physical gagging. I see it time and time again, where people seem unable to adequately express the hurt and pain they are experiencing ”
Yvonne John
Hello, my name is Yvonne John. I grew up in a Caribbean household where there was the expectation that I would get a good job, get married and have children, in that order.
As a public speaker, I have appeared on numerous radio and television programmes, including BBC Radio 4s ‘Woman's Hour’ and the Myleene: Miscarriage and Me documentary, to talk about my experience of recovering from the devastating grief of involuntary childlessness.
And I feel honoured to be a facilitator for the Gateway Women Reignite Weekends, where I have the opportunity to create a nurturing and supportive space for women to navigate and process their grief around childlessness.
I am an activist for the childless women of colour and, in my 50s, I am unashamedly living the life that my younger self dreamed of.
“Only when we grieve our past does self-care become fully possible. We can finally stop abandoning ourselves and slowly begin the process of learning how to love ourselves. Warts and all.”
