“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves;
we must die to one life before we can enter another.”
I saw this quote in a book about writing, but it struck a chord with me. It relates to so many things in life, including making peace with a life with out children.
One of the hardest stretches of my journey was the space between realizing that our options for building a family were running out, and the point where we made the decision to stop trying. I knew there were options still open, but they were beyond the scope of what Mr. Fab and I were willing to do. At some point we had to make a decision that we would not have children and that we would find a way to be okay with that. It was one of the hardest (and perhaps longest) decisions I’ve ever had to make.
I’m sure you’ve found yourself in this kind of situation in other areas of life, too. You know that you have to take a new direction, that ultimately it will be the right decision, but as France says, in order to do that, we have to leave a part of ourselves behind. Sometime the hardest part is listening to ourselves and not being afraid to make the wrong choice.
My first career was in engineering. I’ve made several career changes since then, trying to find the place in the world where I’d be happy. I’ve found it in writing, but it took me a long time to get here.
Many people can’t understand why, after all those years of college and graduate school, I would abandon a perfectly good and respectable career. I’ll be the first to admit that if I’d just stuck to engineering, I would probably have been more “successful” and definitely would be making more money, maybe own a home and live comfortably, but I know I wouldn’t have been happy. I might have been successful by the conventional definition, but the cost of sticking to a career that didn’t make me happy, just because it’s what was expected of me, didn’t make any sense. But it wasn’t easy to let go of that life and take a risk of finding happiness in another life.
Part of finding happiness is letting go of that which doesn’t make us happy. Although I believed that having children would make me happy, I was miserably unhappy running in circles trying to produce a baby that my body had no interest in creating. I could have gone on trying forever, but the cost to my mental and physical wellbeing would have been enormous. Letting go of that part of my life enabled me to find peace with my new life, even if it’s a life I wasn’t sure I wanted.
Kelly says
The quote is right, a part of me died. I had to embrace whatever was left and make a life out of that. It wasn’t the life I wanted, but it’s 10 years down the road now and I’m enjoying this life. I’m happy. I have friends and make sure I smell the roses. The dead part of me has shriveled a bit, it’s lighter to carry as I go on. That part of my heart and soul will always be with me. I take care of it. But I want to embrace what life is left. I want to enjoy it.
Marci says
This is a bit selfish, but if you had stayed with engineering, you probably would not have started this site and it was about 5-6 years ago that I found it at a point where I was pretty low. Rather than getting stuck in solely dwelling on the loss, it helped me to acknowledge the loss, find a way to grieve and move forward so I thank you for that! Plus, I am much more confident in speaking up for myself! A good role model.