A strange and peculiar thing happened to me.
I was dining out at a particularly beautiful restaurant overlooking the ocean, champagne glass in hand. Keen to capture the moment, I passed my phone to a friend and said, 'Can you film me sipping this champagne? I've got a funny caption to go with it'.
It took all of 10 seconds, and within a minute, it was up on my Instagram.
A simple reel of me sipping some bubbly, looking out at the ocean, with a caption that said: 'This and never knowing what it feels like to be 10cm dilated.'
I wrote underneath it: childfree by choice.
That was it.
I thought it was funny, and I thought a few other child-free friends would agree. Then I got back to my lunch.
But what happened over the next minutes, hours and days was something I wasn't prepared for...
'I thought it was funny, and I thought a few other child-free friends would agree. Then I got back to my lunch. But what happened over the next minutes, hours and days was something I wasn't prepared for...' writes Daily Mail columnist Jana Hocking (pictured)
My reel went viral. Super viral.
As I write this, it's been viewed well over a million times, has over 50,000 likes, 611 comments, 1,900 saves, 37,000 shares... and yes, multiple people have been added to my block list.
You might assume the parents came for me - and, in a small (and soon-to-be-revealed, wild) way, you'd be right. But we'll get to that...
For the record, at least 90 per cent of those who engaged with my reel were absolutely positive.
Single, childfree women cheered, 'I've found my people!', many mums admitted they'd endured the nightmare of 10cm dilation and wholeheartedly supported my choice (side note: how good are women who lift up other women?), while most viewers simply had a good laugh.
One woman wrote, 'As someone who has done it, get it girl! Believe it or not, mums, it doesn't impact us if others don't choose the same life. If it does, maybe you're not that happy after all? I'm certainly fine with it.'
She even added a love heart emoji at the end. It's since picked up another 81 likes.
My inbox was also inundated with women in their 30s and 40s who were in the same boat. They either, like me, never quite felt the maternal instinct, or they were weighing up the financial reality of having children in this economy. Others simply hadn't met someone they'd want to have kids with.
There were countless reasons. All relatable. And I adored their honesty.
Sometimes, you just need one person to say out loud, 'Yeah, kids. I don't think they're for me,' and suddenly thousands feel a little braver to admit they feel the same.
And this simple 12-word caption did exactly that.
I was chuffed.
Now, I would love to say that was the entire experience of my Instagram reel going viral, but of course, a few trolls grabbed their pitchforks and came running.
Most were the usual misspelled nonsense like, 'You'll regret not having kids,' or 'Have fun dying alone with cats.' Yeah, yeah. Heard it all before.
Snore.
But two comments in particular stopped me in my tracks.
The first was from a man who simply wrote: 'So amazing to have failed at being a woman in the most fundamental way.'
Now, grammatical errors aside, this man, who appeared to be sitting rather haphazardly on a pony in his profile picture, was stating one very simple, very old-fashioned belief: that women were put on this earth to have babies. That was my great failure.
He was brave enough to write it from his very real Instagram account, so I thought... why not give him the platform he so clearly wanted?
I screenshotted his comment, then his profile picture, and reshared it on my stories, tagging him with the caption: 'Oh noooooo! I missed the 'must have child to qualify as a woman' memo.' Followed by, 'Back on your horse, buddy.'
Well. Didn't his bravado dry up quickly.
He blocked me almost instantly. But his comment was still there for the world to see.
And what happened next genuinely made me giddy. More than 90 people jumped into the comments to defend me. Women, and surprisingly, quite a few men too.
Some were brilliantly funny.
One woman wrote, 'Please hold: all our childfree women are busy right now, but your disappointment is important to us.'
Another simply said, 'I smell an incel.'
But the best response came from a queen by the username @captivatingcam, who absolutely ate him up. No crumbs left.
She wrote: 'Y'all move, I got it. Florence Nightingale, child-free. Rosa Parks, child-free. Susan B Anthony, child-free. Jane Goodall, child-free. Clara Barton, child-free. Coco Chanel, child-free. If childfree women are failures, I guess I am in excellent company.'
I love this woman.
But what shocked me most wasn't the comments from men.
It was a particularly cutting one from a very angry mum.
First of all, she reshared my reel. Great, we love engagement. But it was her caption that made me stop and go... wait, what?
She wrote, and I quote: 'Ya totally slay and all that. But I mean I did the 10cm thing twice and my vacations are still nicer than yours so... idk if this is flexing but you’re gonna have to try harder. Lots of rich people have kids.
‘Also you seem poor and kinda bloated to be honest. Like at least a Zimmermann size 2 (4-6 standard sizing) couldn’t be me. Waaay too big for my post-baby frame. But ya cheers to w/e we’re supposed to be jealous of. Us “10cm people” also don’t sleep alone so there’s that.’
I immediately went to her Instagram page. I had to know more.
Who was this Zimmermann-clad, 10cm-dilating, tiny-framed, standard-size-obsessed rich woman... and was she OK?
And wouldn't you know it... story after story of her complaining that her kids and husband had ruined her Easter photo plans.
Hang on.
Weren’t you just telling me off for not having kids? While body-shaming me, financially shaming me, and flexing your holidays and your figure (girlfriend, packed a lot into that one caption!)... only to turn around and complain about the very life you’re defending?
The irony was almost too much.
What I learnt from the people who were horrified by my choice not to have kids is that, for some reason, it triggered them. And I quickly realised why.
When someone reacts that strongly to a life choice that has absolutely nothing to do with them, it’s rarely about you. It’s about what your choice represents.
Because choosing not to have children challenges a deeply ingrained belief system. The one that says this is the path: you grow up, you couple up, you have kids, and that’s what fulfilment looks like.
So when someone - aka me, and what feels like half the female race at the moment - steps outside of that and says, ‘Actually, no thanks,’ it can feel confronting.
Not because it’s wrong, but because it forces people to question whether they ever truly chose their own path... or simply followed the one laid out for them.
Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance. That uncomfortable feeling when someone else’s choices don’t align with your own. And instead of sitting with that discomfort, it’s far easier to criticise the person holding up the mirror.
And that’s exactly what this felt like.
Because if you are genuinely happy with your life choices, someone else doing things differently doesn’t threaten you. It doesn’t anger you. It doesn’t send you into a spiral in the comment section.
You simply shrug and get on with your day.
So if a reel of me sipping champagne and making a tongue-in-cheek joke about childbirth genuinely rattled you...
I don’t think I’m the one you’re upset with.
And maybe, just maybe, it’s worth asking yourself why.