Sarah Dao was born and raised in Berlin, Germany. Her father is from Vietnam, her mother is German. Sarah started climbing at the age of fourteen and since then has only taken two non-climbing vacations. She has the luxury of working remotely for a software tech company as a consultant and lives with her partner Manu, who is from Argentina, half of the year in Berlin and spends the other six months in Cornudella de Montsant, Spain, where I met her. In Berlin she enjoys her family and friends and is a fanatic Elbsandstein climber. We have been friends for almost eight years and Sarah has made my experience of living in Cornudella very special. There is something to be said about having another person live in this village who understands my background, speaks my mother tongue and also shares that dry German humor. Sarah and I have spent many years contemplating the baby topic as we, until this day, both share the same sentiment: We don’t have the desire to have children. Starting in her early thirties, this feeling tormented her for many years. In Sarah’s own words, she felt like she was on a ridge, one steep slope symbolizing the fear of pregnancy and sacrificing her life for children, the other side of the ridge representing the decision not to have children, but regretting it later in life. She took the decision very seriously and started reading books, doing research and talking to those around her who were deciding to have a family. Today Sarah is forty-one years old and feels at peace with the decision not to have children. In our conversation she tells us the story of her long and involved journey of coming to terms with her initial intuition that she felt from the beginning. I appreciate Sarah’s raw and sometimes outrageous approach to her decision making process and the ‘pro and con list’ she came up with. Though her comments on the disadvantages of having children can seem harsh, I value her rational and honest approach. The intention of this episode is not to offend those who have decided to have children, but rather support the women who perhaps do not have the desire or simply feel lost, insecure and alone in their own decision making process. I would like to remind them that they are not alone and encourage them to listen deep inside while making one of the most important decisions in their lives.
Sarah Dao was born and raised in Berlin, Germany. Her father is from Vietnam, her mother is German. Sarah started climbing at the age of fourteen and since then has only taken two non-climbing vacations. She has the luxury of working remotely for a software tech company as a consultant and lives with her partner Manu, who is from Argentina, half of the year in Berlin and spends the other six months in Cornudella de Montsant, Spain, where I met her. In Berlin she enjoys her family and friends and is a fanatic Elbsandstein climber. We have been friends for almost eight years and Sarah has made my experience of living in Cornudella very special. There is something to be said about having another person live in this village who understands my background, speaks my mother tongue and also shares that dry German humor.
Sarah and I have spent many years contemplating the baby topic as we, until this day, both share the same sentiment: We don’t have the desire to have children. Starting in her early thirties, this feeling tormented her for many years. In Sarah’s own words, she felt like she was on a ridge, one steep slope symbolizing the fear of pregnancy and sacrificing her life for children, the other side of the ridge representing the decision not to have children, but regretting it later in life. She took the decision very seriously and started reading books, doing research and talking to those around her who were deciding to have a family. Today Sarah is forty-one years old and feels at peace with the decision not to have children.
In our conversation she tells us the story of her long and involved journey of coming to terms with her initial intuition that she felt from the beginning. I appreciate Sarah’s raw and sometimes outrageous approach to her decision making process and the ‘pro and con list’ she came up with. Though her comments on the disadvantages of having children can seem harsh, I value her rational and honest approach. The intention of this episode is not to offend those who have decided to have children, but rather support the women who perhaps do not have the desire or simply feel lost, insecure and alone in their own decision making process. I would like to remind them that they are not alone and encourage them to listen deep inside while making one of the most important decisions in their lives.