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?
I”m a Zumba instructor… Not instructing at this time -( quit during my last failed IVF attempt.) so now I will soon be looking for another job – but that takes up a good deal of time. Between finding new music and choreographing new songs I find I stay busy.
Kristine
Yes I started by making quilts for my sisters kids, and now I am trying to sell quilts and custom made bags. Being just slightly creative and able to sew in a straight line I have been able to create these kids of my own that I can then share with others who will love them and use them well.
I scrapbook, make cards and home decor. I also volunteer with animal rescue. I do find it hard to be a member of scrapbook message boards since there is always so much baby and pregnancy talk on them,
I’ve seen a lot of women panic. “What am I going to do if I don’t have children?” they ask. And a few years later, they realise that they might not have come up with something big to replace the children they don’t have, but that their lives are full and busy nonetheless. I have loved having the time to contemplate, to blog, to volunteer, and to travel. I don’t think I have specifically looked for something to fill the hole … or maybe I have … and that’s a blogpost I’ve been thinking about writing for a while. Hmmmm … you got me thinking …
I started a new job, and I am sooooooo busy that I find myself wondering how I could ever manage doing what I do with small children to care for.
I’m just beginning the whole transition/realization that we will, in fact, be living a childless life…so I’m kind of lost as to how to fill my time. I was a preschool teacher, but gave it up last summer. Maybe a career change? Volunteer work at nursing home? Especially since my husband and I will be alone when we are old….
In the past, I did feel a HUGE pressure to fill the hole that childlessness left me with something big and noble. I think I felt that pressure because many people suggested adoption when they found out about our problems in getting pregnant. As if I ought to try to be like Mother Teresa or something if I can’t have my own children. But for the life of me, I couldn’t find any single one big thing to fill up the hole. So I put that on hold and shut up those voices as I started walking along my very bumpy healing journey.
As time went by, bit by bit I started finding more joys in my life again after all the grief/pain of not having our own children. First I focused on small things in life and then I try to incorporate other fun things that I didn’t do much before (like making snowmen in winter and taking more nature photos) and I went back to reclaiming the things I used to enjoy before TTC and infertility, joining a childless-not-by-choice forum and a writing/photography challenge group.
Nowadays I think I feel I have nothing to prove to anyone. If they think I have so much time in my life and my life is simpler than theirs, so be it. If they think my life is missing something, so be it. I feel content with our life as two. The hole is still there, but the distance between myself and the pain is now quite far that the hole and the thought of the hole’s existence doesn’t consume me like it did in the past. I like having the chance to find balance in my life so that I have time for myself, time for others, time to travel and time to blog and connect with other people, time to learn whatever I want to learn without feeling any pressure.
Amel, you said it all, thank you for that wonerful post. I have read it several times, I so agree with you!