Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Moving on from Infertility

People come and go from this site all the time. Some people observe for a long time before quietly slipping into the conversation. Some actively engage when they need help and stick around to help others. Others come for a while and slip away unannounced when they’ve got what they needed. I’m glad for all these people.

I don’t always hear the reason why someone decides to move on, and that’s okay. When someone leaves, I wish her a silent farewell and good luck.

Recently, though, one member left and gave this wonderful reason:

“I am moving on from my identity as a childless woman.”

I wanted to throw her a party. She’s not leaving because she’s no longer a childless woman; she’s leaving because she no longer wants to carry around that label and all the stigma and resentment that can come along with it. She’s moving on, I assume, to embrace her life as a woman, with all its facets.

We play many roles in our lives and carry an assortment of identities. Sometimes those identities no longer suit us and we have to let them go. And while I’m sorry to lose a reader, I truly wish her nothing but a wonderful life.

And so this feels like a good segue into something I need to do, which is to say good bye and slip into my own new identity.

Back in March, I wrote that I would be posting a last post and leaving the site up for people to find the posts they need. Then the pandemic hit and it felt like the wrong time to leave. But now it’s time for me to throw my own moving on party.

I have loved running this site for the past decade. I’m honored to have had you in my own support circle. I’m grateful that I even got to meet some of you in person over the years, or at least got to know you virtually. Now I need to step into my own identity.

I am a childless woman and I am at peace with that now. I am an author of novels with big plans for my career. I am the wife of a recently-retired man whose company I want to enjoy. I am a gardener, a cat lover, a daughter, a runner, a foodie, a reader. I am many things and these other identities need my attention.

I hope you’ll continue to find solace and belonging among the many (almost 1,700!) posts on this site. I hope you’ll seek out the books I wrote to help you work through this journey. I hope you’ll stay in touch through my other channels (see below). But most of all, I hope you’ll find your own way to peace and acceptance of this life that none of us chose. 

Until we meet again, stay safe, be well, and remember: You are not alone.

***

If you’d like to stay connected you can find me at LisaManterfield.com and on my social media: Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. I hope to meet you again there. -x-

How Not to Say the Wrong Thing to Someone in Crisis

I have posted this article by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman in the past and it always seems to resonate with people, so I think it’s worth re-running. It’s a good reminder about how not to say the wrong thing to someone in crisis. I wish it was mandatory reading for everyone, and I especially wish it came with a note explaining that it applies when talking to infertiles and the childless-not-by-choice.

The gist of their Ring Theory is that the person in crisis is at the center of the ring and those next closest to the person occupy subsequent rings. In the case of someone coming to terms with not having children, she would be at the center, her spouse or partner on the next ring, perhaps closest family and friends on the next, and more distant family, coworkers, and acquaintances beyond that.

The rule is that that if people have something mean or insensitive or opinionated to say, they say it to someone on a bigger ring. When speaking to someone on a smaller ring, they can only listen or—if they must say something—offer help, support, or comfort. No advice, no miracle stories, no blame or shame. No offering of their kids, no suggestions to adopt. “I’m sorry” is all that needs to be said. If they want to dump, dump outwards, not inwards.

I wish people would understand that someone who has just acknowledged she won’t ever have children is in crisis, and what she needs more than judgment and unhelpful help is for people to say to the right thing.

Owning Your Childlessness

I like to tell this story about a conversation I once had with a group of people I had recently met. I remember one of the women was telling a story and tossed out that she was unable to have children.

Then she went right on with her story.

She didn’t pause for people to give her sympathetic looks, she didn’t elaborate on why she couldn’t have children, and she didn’t explain that she’d wanted to have them or tried to. She said it matter-of-factly, as if she’d been telling us she didn’t care for the taste of liver and onions.

I was in awe.

Later that day, we were talking about confidence and she told me that it has taken her a long time (she’s in her 50s) to own who she is. “You just can’t entertain that voice that tells you that you’re less than or not good enough,” she said.

How many of us hear that voice and how many us pay attention to what it tells us?

What if we stopped apologizing for who we are? I think we could be very powerful.

Do you have a voice that tells you you’re less than? Do you listen to it? How do you shut it up and own who you are?

Childless Men on Father’s Day


Mother’s Day is pretty much the worst day of the year for those of us who didn’t get to be moms. But what about Father’s Day and the men in our lives? Do they feel the loss of fatherhood in the same way we feel it for motherhood?

Some of you have expressed frustration with partners who don’t want to talk about the loss and grief we women go through, or who seem to have accepted a life without children much quicker than we have. I know I saw a difference in the way Mr. Fab and I dealt with grief (or appeared to not deal with it at all) so I thought I’d do a little research on the topic of men and grief to see what I could learn.

Turns out that, when it comes to grief, men really are from Mars, as opposed to our home planet of Venus. They’ve often been taught to keep their emotions in check and brush grief under the rug in the hopes that it will just go away (which, of course, it doesn’t.) As a result, we tend to interpret their reluctance to grieve openly as a lack of feeling. But that doesn’t mean they don’t feel the loss just as keenly as we do.

Here’s what I learned about how men grieve:

  • Men often prefer to grieve alone, rather than openly, in a support group setting, or even with a partner.
  • Men are more likely to withdraw and to be introspective than to do “grief work.”
  • Men are more likely to express grief physically with actions or activities.
  • Men sometimes deal with grief by planning for the future rather than dealing with the present situation or looking back at the past.
  • Men sometimes let grief out in the form of irritability or anger.

In other words, just because your partner isn’t hanging out with other men in online support groups, sharing stories, and lending an empathetic ear to other men, it doesn’t mean he isn’t grieving the loss of fatherhood in his own way.

I’d be interested to hear how your partner has dealt with his grief. And if you’re a grieving man reading this, we’d love to hear your point-of-view.

Talking About the Grief of Childlessness

I’ve been writing and talking a lot about grief—here on the blog, in my fiction, in my personal life, in the novels I’m reading, and in the Life Without Baby book. Even when I got chatting to a stranger on a plane, 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 catch another flight, and I didn’t have the opportunity to ask her more about her grief.

So, I’d like to ask you instead.

  • How has your grief changed over time?
  • How has your loss changed you?
  • In what ways has your grief crept out, even when you’ve tried to keep it under wraps?

As a society, we don’t give the topic of grief 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.

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: Mother’s Day Aftermath

Mother’s Day was strange this year. Being on lockdown meant not having to navigate many of the usual landmines, but I know that probably did little to make the day easier for you. I hope you made it through the weekend relatively unscathed. So, do tell:

How did Mother’s Day go for you?

How did you handle it? How did it go? What went well? What didn’t? Let us know the good, the bad, and the flat-out ugly.

How to be Childless and Happy in 10,000 Easy Steps

There are two questions I get asked frequently: How did you come to terms with not having children, and how long did it take?

The answer is something akin to “how long is a piece of string and how many knots can you tie in it?”

If I could write down ten easy steps to making peace with being childless-not-by-choice, I’d do it, but the answer isn’t that simple. Yes, there were many things that happened along the way that helped me make some peace, but it took closer to 10,000 steps than ten.

Writing down my story was hugely cathartic, venting about the injustices on this blog helped, too. Realizing I wasn’t alone in this and that people like you were out there wanting to talk through the minefield has helped immeasurably. Drawing a line in the sand and saying, “This is where that chapter of my life ends and this is where I start healing” also helped. And frankly, telling myself a big fat lie that I was better off not being a mother actually helped me to realize that in many ways I was. Setting new goals, appreciating the benefits of not having kids, and allowing myself to feel bitter and badly treated when I needed to. All these things helped.

I don’t think there’s a formula for working your way through this, and it’s definitely a journey of making forward process and dealing with inevitable setbacks.

As for how long the process takes? How long is that piece of string? It’s been three years for me and I consider myself largely at peace with my situation. I have closed the door on the idea that I will have children someday and most days I’m good with it. Everyday it gets a little better and a little easier. Some days there will be reminders of what I’ve lost and sometimes a flicker of a thought of “what if…”

The truth is, in many ways, I expect this piece of string to go on forever. The experience of infertility has changed me. It is one of the most significant and life-changing events of my life, and I don’t think the repercussions of that will ever stop reverberating. It doesn’t mean I won’t find harmony and even happiness in this new life – I already have – but I don’t expect this journey of coming-to-terms to ever fully end.

Creating an Ending After Infertility


Some time ago, a reader commented that she’d had an idea to write a letter to the child she never had, and she asked if I thought it was crazy.

Here’s what I told her (edited slightly to maintain her anonymity):

“Writing a letter isn’t crazy at all. One of the things that makes infertility grief so unique is that there is seldom a finite end to the journey. There’s almost always some option still open and the loss is more of a gradual moving away from the dream, rather than a sudden end. It makes it really hard to acknowledge the end and grieve that loss.

Doing something tangible, such as writing a letter, creates a kind of marker that says, “this is the end.” And the other ladies [in the program] are absolutely right about not being silent. If you need to find a time to be alone, close the door to your room, and just let it all out, do it. It’s exhausting, but it’s amazing how much grief you can purge with a good cry.”

I told her I would write a post on this topic so that you could share your experiences with creating an ending to something that has none. So here it is.

In order to start moving on with your healing process, did you need to create an ending with something symbolic and meaningful to you? Please share any “crazy” ideas that helped you find a stopping place and begin coming to terms with your life without children.