Thanks to everyone who has contacted me with Whiny Wednesday post ideas. I have a good list now, but keep them coming. You can send topic ideas through the Contact page.
This week’s topic is another tender subject:
The constant struggle of feeling my life is imperfect because of not having children.
How do you feel about this? Has that feeling changed with the passing of time?
As always, the floor is open for any other whines and rants you need to get off your chest.
Great topic! Most of the time when I am focused on myself and living my life, I don’t feel imperfect. It is times when I compare my life to other who have families then I want to feel like I’m wrong! Or imperfect. At times I think my life is different, but not imperfect. At work one of my coworkers was talking about her college age kids, and saying how ungrateful they are. Now this I can’t stand, you are so lucky that you don’t have kids! I really would like to come back with something snappy, to put people in their place about this,and usually I’m pretty witty , but I m not sure I have the nerve to say something. I’m open to suggestions for
Responses. Anyways we were out last night for dinner, and I saw an infant, and right away it took me back to the infant we had for a brief time, and I could not help but think about him and miss him. The triggers at times are still there. But I was talking to another coworker who’s Mom died and it’s almost a year, and we had a great talk about sharing our grief and with whom.and when. It was nice to talk with someone for real who could understand the pain of grief. Thanks for topic, it’s always thought provoking and usually timely! Hugs! Supersassy!
I keep struggling with this; it ebbs and flows, but continues to re-emerge whenever I think it might have gone away for good. My greatest joy has always been children and animals; I love caretaking, guiding, and emotionally nurturing…but only within the private context of family life (not as a teacher, for example). I was always told I’d make a wonderful mother, etc. As a childless/childree person, I frequently feel out-of-sinc with myself and with the rhythms of culture and other peoples’ realities. For most women I know, motherhood is the heart and soul of their existence. At the same time, I feel impatient with myself. I’m eager to get on with my healing process!
I CONSTANTLY feel if I just had a child my life would be damn near perfect. I fear this nagging feeling will never go away, and this makes me more depressed than anything.
And to top it off, my new co-worker said she got pregnant at 39 without medical assistance!!
Please shot me now! We tried it all and came away empty handed; I just don’t understand.
I feel more like I have to justify my existence and worth to the world for my childfree life. I get tired of that.
As far as an imperfect life, I have everything I want but one thing — a baby. And somehow I let that one thing become such a drag on everything that is good.
I too have everything that I want…but a child. I don’t feel that my life is imperfect, just incomplete.
I don’t think any life is perfect, but I do think that it’s easy to see people’s portrayal of perfect I’m casual conversations and Facebook.
Personally, feeling imperfect hits me the most when I am the only person in a group who hasn’t had children. Thenbi not only feel imperfect, but defective. I guess that might be the same thing.
Yes agree with all of these – its like a cake – my cake is good and i’m grateful, but I will never have the icing, not ever. Some people have icing and don’t like it or appreciate it. Some have it all but possibly don’t like everything about their cake. I like everything about my cake and concentrate on that as much as possible – not sure this is helping anyone else but its helping me a little, looking at it like this! 🙂
Its trully difficult – the triggers are everywhere everyday and changing how we react to them even harder – I think gradually working on this is making a small difference.
Jane P – I get the cake analogy .
I have a great life – I’m very lucky to have it, but I have a child-shaped hole that nothing else will fill. The hole can be ignored for a while but something always brings me back to said hole.
Today it was while out running. Someone cycling with their child on the back chatting away…and then they came down a slope towards me both shouting ‘whhheeeeee’ at the top of their voices together with huge smiles. It totally choked me up! I’ll never have a little mirror image of me and my husband to enjoy the little things with.
The feeling is changing and the things that choke my up are becoming fewer in number, but I can still be surprised when I get that sucker punch.
For me, it’s not that I feel the need to have kids to have a perfect life. It’s that, like being single, I feel judged and found wanting by those who are married with children. Like they won’t include me or think I can have a good life since I’m single and childless.
Sophie, I agree with you completely. It’s not about perfection. I have certainly never thought that a child would make my life perfect – a child would bring its own joys, stresses and worries. I actually don’t believe in such thing as a perfect life. I do however feel that as a single, childless woman i also feel judged and found wanting. It’s as though I couldn’t possibly be happy or complete without a husband and baby.
For me having a partner and a baby was about my own hopes and dreams and not a search for ‘perfection’.
I’m now at the point where I would love just one area of my life to be working well. One area where I could like my cake (Great analogy Jane P), even if it was only a little friand!
Like you say, Barbara, I feel that my life is incomplete without a child.
I assume others feel sorry for me, knowing that I wanted a child and never had one. I don’t know if others judge me, but I know I judge myself and find myself wanting – I feel that there is something wrong with me/lacking in me that I haven’t had a child.
I struggle with jealousy. I see so many parents that appear to have many circumstances to have them struggle as good parents… Emotionally void, financially or just void of caring. I think “why do they get to have success and here I sit alone forever.” I struggle daily to understand why I have been kept out of parenthood (as do us all) when so many others fall into parenthood who really shouldn’t. Just look at all the stories of “forgotten” children in hot cars. Who does that?