filling the silence in the motherhood discussion
In honor of Thanksgiving, we’re mixing it up a bit. Instead of the usual Whiny Wednesday, I want to ask you this:
What are you grateful for?
Often when we’re in the thick of grief it’s hard to find anything positive, but my Thanksgiving wish for you is to find a patch of sunshine this week.
Next week we’ll get back to whining. 😉
By Lisa Manterfield
This week we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the U.S. and, for the first time in a long time, I am looking forward to it. We are bucking tradition this year and spending the day with good friends, including another childfree couple. Mr. Fab is cooking a decidedly nontraditional Thanksgiving dinner, so all I’ll have to do, aside from a few sous chef duties, is show up and have a good time.
I know for many of you, Thanksgiving might not be such a fun time. Traditionally, it’s a holiday when families gather, which might mean facing insensitive relatives and prying questions about children. It also marks the beginning of what can often be the most difficult time of the year, with social gatherings, kid-oriented activities, and constant reminders of the many ways we don’t get to celebrate the holidays.
I love that this community includes new readers and seasoned pros, so let’s help one another out this year by sharing ideas on getting through the season with our hearts intact.
What are some of the issues you know you’ll face this holiday season? What events are you dreading? What’s going to be hardest for you?
And perhaps most important of all, how to do plan to get through the season with minimum emotional damage?
For more tips, inspiration, and support, check out the Life Without Baby Holiday Companion, available now at Amazon.com and in PDF format at Gumroad.
As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods
Like many of us, Charmaine envisioned her future children and picked out their names. She was confident she would become a mother “at the right time,” so getting the news that her husband couldn’t have children was devastating. Would she stay in her marriage, or would she go in search of a partner who could (maybe) give her a family? What would you do if you were in her shoes? (And if you are in her shoes, I hope you’ll share some of your journey in the Comments.)
Now 37, Charmaine is still wrestling with the mix of emotions that comes as a result of her choices. Read on to see how she is continuing to learn and grow and create a meaningful life without children.
LWB: Briefly describe your dream of motherhood.
Charmaine: I dreamed of the life we would have as a family. I dreamed that I would do my best to raise my children in ways that were different from how I’d been raised—more compassionate, empathetic, and understanding. I read every baby book I could get my hands on, charted my fertility cycles, and dreamed and dreamed.
LWB: Are you childfree by choice, chance, or circumstance?
Charmaine: I call myself childfree by circumstance. My husband can’t have children, but it is a choice not to pursue alternative options such as fostering or adoption. It’s been a long, excruciating journey to making that choice, but here we are.
LWB: What was the turning point for you?
Charmaine: When I seriously considered breaking my “for better or for worse” marriage vows and leaving my husband. My choice was to leave him and (maybe) find someone else to love and have a child with, or stay. I stayed. I can’t imagine loving anyone but him, and for me, betraying someone whom I love and who loves me would break my soul. Deciding not to have children broke my heart, but my soul is intact.
LWB: Where are you on your journey now?
Charmaine: Sometimes I hope for a miracle, but in reality, I’ll be 40 in a couple of years and I’m creating plan B. It’s time to look toward the future and what kind of life I want to live. I want to be happy, so while I am still sad at times, I’m working toward being the kind of person I want to be and living my life the way I want to live it.
LWB: What are the hardest parts for you about not having children?
Charmaine: Losing the majority of my friends who have entered that part of their lives. It’s also difficult to accept the jealousy and anger I still sometimes feel toward people with children. Another is that people just don’t understand why we don’t have kids. Their opinion is that we should move heaven and earth to have kids no matter the emotional, physical, or financial tolls it might take. Feeling like my husband and I are not a “true family” without children is a hard one to get over as well.
LWB: What’s your Plan B?
Charmaine: To become successful in my Grief Recovery and Life Coaching business. I also want to seek out others who are childless by circumstance and give them the support I never had…because I didn’t know it existed. I couldn’t find anyone else who wasn’t actively TTC [trying to conceive], taking fertility treatments, or adopting. I have become passionate about finding and supporting women (and men) who have made the choice (or have had the choice made for them) to live without children.
LWB: What is your hope for yourself this coming year?
Charmaine: I hope that I can continue to learn and grow and let go of my loss. That the bitterness fades even more, and that I can fully and completely accept that my purpose in life is what I make it, not what society says it should be.
Although each of our stories is unique, you can find support from LWB readers who have traveled similar paths in the Community Forums and in Our Stories and the Comments. Then, when you’re ready, I hope you’ll share your story with us. Go to the Our Stories page to get more information and the questionnaire.
Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.
This week’s topic is for those of you who arrived here via the infertility route.
Do you feel you were left hanging by the fertility industry?
Okay, I know that’s a loaded question, so if you don’t feel like jumping in on this topic, or if it doesn’t apply to you, feel free to bring your own whine to the party this week.
By Lisa Manterfield
This week marks the six-year anniversary of the publication of my first book, I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home: How One Woman Dared to Say No to Motherhood. Aside from being stunned at how quickly six years have passed, I’m also struck by how intertwined my writing and life have become.
I never set out to write a book about being unable to have children; my plan had always been to write fiction. But as is often the way, my personal infertility story began creeping into writing exercises as I struggled to put my experience into words and be heard. Then, in a weekend writing workshop, our very astute teacher, Amy, asked the question, “What’s the thing you don’t want to write about?” Our assignment was to write down our answers before going to bed that night. I wrote down that I didn’t want to write about my infertility. I expected there would be a follow up assignment the next morning, but Amy never mentioned it again.
Time passed as this idea of writing my story began to worm its way into my brain and suddenly I realized I’d written several chapters about the thing I swore I didn’t want to write about. The next thing I knew I was committing to writing a book.
The trouble was, my story didn’t have an ending yet. Mr. Fab and I were still working through fertility treatments and adoption, and I was far from ready to give up. The ending of my book would obviously be the scene where I learn that I am pregnant and we laugh joyously at all we’ve been through. So I kept writing until that ending came.
During this process of creating a book, I began to look at my story through an editor’s eyes and it gave me some distance from my experience. I began to gain perspective about my own crazy journey and at some point, I realized what the ending of the book—and the ending of my story—had to be. It had to be the point that Mr. Fab and I decide to let go of our plans to have a baby and take our lives in a new direction. That’s what we did and the rest, as they say is history. I rewrote the book entirely, with this new ending in mind and then I went off to figure out how the heck I was ever going to stop crying about this cruel blow I’d been dealt.
I started this blog to promote the book. I created a website and began writing my way through the mess of trying to come to terms with my decision. I felt like a very unwilling pioneer, like I was the only person in the world talking about this awful situation. But then readers began to find the blog and I learned that I was far from alone. I found other bloggers sharing their stories and, bit-by-bit, I began to heal. I stopped crying and started being angry instead. And after a while I stopped being so angry and started being…happy! Happily childless! I could never have imagined it.
So, last year I began collecting everything I’d learned since that moment of realization that I wouldn’t be a mother. I’ll admit that I gained most of this knowledge in hindsight after struggling through the mess of emotions and then realizing how I could have done it better. I also learned so much from you, dear, dear readers, sharing your experiences and hard-won lessons. I put everything I learned together in a series of e-books and next year I’ll put them out as a complete book. And once again, as I read through the words I wrote, I’m learning more about myself. Life, art, and infertility inextricably intertwined.
So here I am standing in this odd place, not at the end of my journey (because I don’t think this will be a journey with a finite ending) but at a place so far distant from where I began that I can barely recognize myself anymore.
And the good news I have to report from this strange land is that I’m okay. I didn’t get the thing I once wanted more than anything in the world, but actually, life is pretty great. That’s an ending to the story I would never have predicted.
To celebrate this pretty special week, I’m offering free copies of Workbook 1: Letting Go of the Dream of Motherhood. You can get your free download today and tomorrow only (November 16 and 17) from Amazon. It’s available for all devices (Kindle, iPad, Kobo, etc.) or you can download a free e-reader here to read the book on your computer.
By Kathleen Guthrie Woods
I grew up in a Norman Rockwell painting. White, upper-middle-class, staunchly Republican. Parents still married to each other (for more than 50 years). Dad worked for the same company for 47 years; Mom stayed home to raise three all-American kids. Look at a snapshot of any holiday celebration, and you’ll see us gathered around the dining room table, with flowers from Mom’s garden in the centerpiece, a golden turkey nesting in a great-grandmother’s platter, and everyone dressed with a smile. Picture-perfect.
The flowers, turkey, and smiles are the same in contemporary photos, but we’ve added a few new players. My brother married his college sweetheart and they introduced four beautiful daughters. My sister went off to college and came home a Democrat. Then she went off to graduate school and finally figured out she was a lesbian. A few years later, she joined her partner in a commitment ceremony, and they welcomed two boys with contributions from a sperm donor, a “donor daddy.” I was the lone ranger for many years, the only single person at the table, till I met and married my husband in my mid-40s. He is African-American, and we are childfree.
While growing up and well into adulthood, I never imagined there was any other kind of family for me outside of the traditional model that raised me. I had every expectation that I would follow in my mother’s footsteps and create a home and family in her image. I held tightly to that illusion, through many unfulfilling relationships and socially awkward encounters (“Why aren’t you married?” “Don’t you like children?”). I think it’s a miracle that my “right” family was revealed to me and that I am able to embrace it.
I would argue that our society’s definition of a “traditional” family is flawed. Certainly census statistics show that single-parent homes, adults living alone, and mixed-race families are more the norm than marketing directors would have us believe. I look down our street here in San Francisco (and, admittedly, we are a liberal and open community), and I see this reflected back to me through our neighbors’ homes where multiple generations, languages, races, and genders commingle without special notice.
Here in the childfree community, we’re often made to feel that our families are “nontraditional,” which translates to “less than” or “incomplete.” This way of thinking is so judgmental, so hurtful, and so unnecessary. If you’re single, you can create your own family among close and supportive friends. If you’re married or in a committed relationship, you know that it takes only two to make your family. Other people expand their families to include caretaking of nieces and nephews, elderly relatives and friends, or beloved pets.
The “nontraditional” extended family I am part of today is a beautiful thing, defined by love, acceptance, and respect. In my own home, I feel blessed to be one of a family of two, which we augment by sharing our table with friends who have become family. This is my family, this is my new traditional, and I think it’s perfect.
Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.
When a reader suggested this week’s topic, I spotted myself immediately. The topic is:
Staying busy to fill the hole of being childless
Work, hobbies, school, projects, friends in need, volunteering: Have you packed your life with busyness in order to fill a gap?
It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s on your mind today?
By Katrina Blaydon
I’m in my mid-30s and my husband of 3 years and I have been trying to have a baby for the past year and a half. I have PCOS and do not ovulate. He, however, is just fine. So, if I take a course of fertility drugs every month on particular dates, I ovulate. Problem solved. So, it was a very frustrating process to learn that every four weeks, we would face another heartbreak, despite physically being “able.” And it was less than comforting, when our wonderful doctor, whom we trust, said point blank, “I’m sorry you aren’t pregnant yet. I’m frustrated about this too, and I can’t explain it.”
Every month, we would anxiously and silently go out of our minds with a mix of excitement and sorrow, hope and heartbreak. Then one day, as I got teary eyed by myself at work in the bathroom stall discovering once again that I was not to be a mother, I decided that I could not do it one more time. I spoke with my husband, who is wonderful, who loves me and wants me to be happy, but who also wants to a father. We decided together, for our sanity and health, we needed to consider a way for us to “move on” and pursue other plans.
That entire time of hope and heartache, I had to live in a state of “maybe” and “what if.” Could I take Advil for a headache if I’m possibly pregnant? I had a cold this past winter, and I couldn’t take Dayquil, in case “maybe” I was pregnant. I couldn’t plan a beach trip with my girlfriends because maybe I would be pregnant by then and wanted to save my time off for maternity leave. I couldn’t plan my life; I couldn’t even cure a headache… That’s when I realized: I need to learn to move past “the maybe” of it.
It was a feeling of pure anger and fury over the situation. I likened it to seeing myself as a child stomping my feet and pumping my fists at God, saying, “I want this and you won’t give it to me!” And to be honest, those feelings were worse than feeling sad every four weeks because after that sadness, I could find hope again. But knowing that, after this anger would come bitterness for friends and coworkers who announced joyfully planned pregnancies, wasn’t easy to grasp.
As with anything, it got worse before it got better, and it took a few months to reach a point of not feeling red hot at the thought of it. I started attending church after months away, as if I were being the stubborn child who rebelled, saying, “I’ll show Him!” The truth was, I was too angry and too bitter to pray. I couldn’t praise a God who decided that a homeless teenager, or a crack addict, or a single mom who couldn’t feed the six children she already had, was destined to be a parent, instead of us. I couldn’t understand that, and I still don’t. I still get red cheeked when I think about that, but it’s not 24 hours a day anymore of anger. It’s not a sleepless night every single evening of the week anymore, and it’s not a daily breakdown in tears anymore. I’ve made great progress.
Learning to move past the state of maybe, was the only way I could allow myself any peace. I am not going to lie and say that I don’t feel those same feelings when I get invited to a first birthday party or the worst of them all, the baby shower. And yes, something like a bomb explodes in my chest when someone unknowingly asks me, “Are you two going to be next?” or “So, when are you two going to start a family?” And yes, I still cry sometimes, just because I feel sad about it. But, overall, my general day to day life is not consumed by it.
By working to accept a childless status, it’s brought me peace and a feeling of knowing the pressure is off. I can make other plans. I’m finally able to let go and feel “lighter” somehow without this unfinished agenda constantly in the back of my head. I try to be thankful for a good night’s sleep, or to have a free weekend to get away with my husband, or spend Saturday mornings gardening instead of dashing to and from soccer fields. We enjoy a spontaneous date night on a Wednesday without worrying about a sitter and bath time routines. We are thankful to have time to enjoy our friends. I enjoy quiet time for myself and yet, I still cry about all the silence in our house. But learning to move past “maybe” has let my heart rest and it’s let my mind relax, and it allowed me to pursue a greater health and wellness plan for my body. Maybe that’s when it’s time to move past the maybe and learn to consciously enjoy the life you are living. After all, the “maybe” will be there whether you are planning on it or not. And as one of my most encouraging friends told me, “Plans can be changed.” Yet another thing for which this infertile woman is thankful.
Katrina has her B.A. from Penn State University. She lives in central PA with her husband of three years.
Tomorrow is Bonfire Night in the U.K. As a child, it was one of my favorite nights of the year, second only to Christmas Eve.
We’d have a bonfire in the backyard, and my dad would bring home a box of fireworks to set off and a couple of packets of sparklers. We’d have baked potatoes and roast chestnuts, and my mum would make parkin and gooey, delicious bonfire toffee. It was an evening spent outdoors, clustered around the fire. It was about friends and food and a little bit of danger.
It’s one of the many things I miss about my homeland, and it’s one of the traditions I would have enjoyed sharing with my children. And that’s the topic for this week’s Whiny Wednesday:
Traditions you won’t get to share with your children
Happy Bonfire Night and happy whining.
By Lisa Manterfield
I’ve been writing and talking a lot about grief lately—here on the blog, in my fiction, in my personal life, in the novels I’m reading, and for the Life Without Baby book I’m working on. Even when I got chatting to a stranger on a train, the conversation turned to the topic of grief.
Over paper cups of tea, this woman—who had lost her brother to suicide—and I talked about how grief stays with us long after we’re “over it”, how the shape of grief changes with time, how it can change us, and how everyone carries around their own personal grief.
My only regret in the discussion is that it didn’t begin sooner on our journey, because I would have liked to hear more about what she had to say on the subject. But eventually we parted ways, she to her office and I to airport, and I didn’t have the opportunity to ask her more about her grief.
So, I’d like to ask you instead.
As a society, I don’t believe the topic of grief gets enough attention. We’re uncomfortable with grieving people, no matter what type of loss they’ve suffered, but it’s especially true when the loss isn’t understood.
So let’s start the conversation now. Let’s talk about this grief. I’d love to hear what you have to say.
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