Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Whiny Wednesday: Don’t Pity Me

A while ago, I asked you to share topic ideas for Whiny Wednesday. Quite a few of you were glad to oblige. Thanks for the great ideas. If you’d like to suggest a topic, please leave it in the comments below.

This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic is this:

Other People’s Pity

As always, you’re free to vent on your own topic, too.

Whiny Wednesday: Baby Names You Never Got to Use

This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic is a tough one.

Baby names you never got to use

As always, you’re free to vent on your own topic, too.

Whiny Wednesday: Don’t Pity Me

A while ago, I asked you to share topic ideas for Whiny Wednesday. Quite a few of you were glad to oblige. Thanks for the great ideas. If you’d like to suggest a topic, please leave it in the comments below.

This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic is this:

Other People’s Pity

As always, you’re free to vent on your own topic, too.

It Got Me Thinking…About Pity vs Empathy

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

I was in a really good place. That particular day, I had been feeling optimistic about my future, about my Plan B, about my life without babies. Then someone asked me “Do you have kids?”, and I said “No,” and I got The Pity Face.

You know what I’m talking about. That look that says, “Oh you poor, pathetic loser of a lesser human.” And it really pissed me off.

Certainly I want people to understand my pain and losses, and I want to feel supported, but not at the cost of condensation and humiliation. So when I received a note from LWBer Jane about the difference between sympathy and empathy, it struck a deep chord.

“I was surprised to read the real difference and found it helped me understand why I became isolated and distanced from friends and family,” she wrote. She shared with me this powerful article, “Sympathy and Empathy—Do You Know the Difference?” on Harley Therapy’s Counselling Blog.

The authors look at historical meanings as well as contemporary usage. I hope you’ll take the time to read it through. For now, I’ll summarize it with “empathy is empowering.”

Although intended to be compassionate, “sympathy too often comes in its lower form—thinly disguised as pity,” says the authors. “Empathy, on the other hand, involves trying with great sincerity to understand what the other person is going through.”

That sounds like what I want. I don’t yet know how to ask for it, or how to educate people on this (without coming across as a crazy woman), but what I can do is practice it. (There are tips in the article.) For there is a possible hidden gift for offering empathy, for really listening to another person who is going through a tough time, says the authors. “We…might even end up being in awe of their personal strength.”

 

Whiny Wednesday: Baby Names You Never Got to Use

This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic is a tough one.

Baby names you never got to use

As always, you’re free to vent on your own topic, too.

Whiny Wednesday: Don’t Pity Me

A while ago, I asked you to share topic ideas for Whiny Wednesday. Quite a few of you were glad to oblige. Thanks for the great ideas. If you’d like to suggest a topic, please leave it in the comments below.

This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic is this:

Other People’s Pity

As always, you’re free to vent on your own topic, too.

Childless and Invisible

By Lisa Manterfield

Have you ever been around people who behave as if you can’t possibly know anything about life because you don’t have children?

I’m sure that all of us have heard the old chestnuts, “You wouldn’t understand; you don’t have kids” or “I didn’t understand until I became a mother” (which implies the same thing) or even “Only a parent could know how this feels,” as if being childless strips away all capability of empathy.

And then there are those situations where you just feel invisible, when the conversation about children and parenting is swirling around you and no one even bothers to make eye contact with you because what could you possibly contribute?

These instances make me think of the wonderful “Mr. Cellophane” number from the musical “Chicago.”

And even without clucking like a hen,

Everyone gets noticed now and then,

Unless, of course, that person it should be,

Invisible, inconsequential me.

Personally, I’m done with feeling insignificant because I don’t have kids. It took me a long time to get to this point, but now I hold my ground in conversation. I contribute when I can and simply listen and nod when I can’t, just as I would if I found myself in a conversation on any other topic on which I’m not an expert.

I also keep a list of amazing childless women in case I ever need to remind myself that we don’t need to be parents to make a difference. On my personal list is Amelia Earhart, Dian Fossey, Julia Child, and Juliet Gordon Low, who started the Girl Scout movement. If you need your own role models, Jody Day has put together an outstanding collection on Pinterest.

You’d be hard-pressed to call any of these women insignificant. I remind myself of this when I find myself allowing others to make me feel like less than who I am.

So what do you do when you start to feel like a Ms. Cellophane? Do you feign boredom, try to hop in with an intelligent anecdote, change the subject, or do you slip away and hope no one notices you’ve left?