Seven years ago, when I started this blog, I was a desolate mess. I’d made plans to build my dream life and, bit by bit, those plans were crumbling beyond my control.
I’d quit my corporate job to become a writer. My plan was to make a living writing articles for magazines, which would allow me time to write my novel. Then, when my children were born, I’d be able to work from home and be there to take care of them. It was a perfect scenario.
Except, the children didn’t come and magazines started to go out of business and my novel wouldn’t sell. My dream quickly began to fall apart. I felt alone, despite being surrounded by people who loved me, and my life felt hopeless and utterly out of control.
And once things fell apart, it seemed like so many areas of my life suffered too. I felt challenged in my career, finances, marriage, health, family, all while trying to navigate grief. I had already hit my rock bottom when I decided to start this blog. It was a first step in starting my climb back up.
All of us hit our rock bottom at some point and each of us has to make our own way back to the surface. I hope this site and this community have served as a small step up for you.
So today, I’d like to share some stories of other women from our community. I met most of them through their blogs, when they were already on their way back up from their lowest points. These women have incredible success stories, but I know that, at some point, they each felt out of control and hopeless. They suffered through depression, failed marriages, health crises, and deep grief. I hope that sharing their successes will inspire you to keep moving forward and keep believing that things will get better.
Last week, Jody Day presented her first TED talk, “The Lost Tribe of Childless Women”. She has become a powerful advocate for women aging without children.
Melanie Notkin of has also done TED talk and has shone a new light on “Otherhood” and the value of childless aunts.
Tomorrow, Tracey Cleantis launches her second book, An Invitation to Self-Care, hot on the success of her infertility-based debut book The Next Happy.
Also preparing to launch her second book, The Mother of Second Chances, Justine Froelker is coordinating a tour of 21 infertility blogs leading up to National Infertility Awareness Week.
Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos was the first blogger I found when I started to reach out for my tribe. She is continuing to blaze trails with investigative journalism and advocacy work around the fertility industry.
Lesley Pyne is hard at work on a book that has come from her wonderful world coaching women through grief after infertility. I hope to share news on that later this year.
And our own Kathleen Guthrie Woods is in the revision of her story, The Mother of All Dilemmas, early drafts of which I have been privileged to read. More to come on this soon, too.
As for me, I’m doing all right. My plans are working out too, even if not quite as I’d first envisioned them. Tomorrow, my debut novel, A Strange Companion (the one that couldn’t get a sniff) will be published. I am enjoying a relationship with Mr. Fab’s grandchildren, something that would have been too hard to navigate seven years ago. And, I never believed I would say this, I’m happy. My life is good.
Today, my rock bottom feels a long way behind me. I hope that yours will someday, too.
Thank you.
I have not completely hit bottom yet. My understanding is that my situation is called situational childless. My efforts to get pregnant was a miscarriage before i even had a chance to realize I was pregnant. A marriage ended after being told he was gay.
Now at 41, an only child and my mother recently diagnoised with a progressive illness any possiblities of parenthood are now forever gone.
My boyfriend and I are currently in the middle of purchasing a home. We had discussed becoming foster parents. I have told him my decision. I feel he will agree with me. But saying the words outloud to him will be devastating.
Lisa – I’ve followed your blog, and many of the others you list, for several years and applaud your collective work. It has helped. What I continue to struggle with is the notion that within each of lies an “incredible success story”, as if we all have the ability to turn our disenfranchised grief into something extraordinary.
For me, as I suspect for many others, life is still a question of daily survival, some five years after social infertility coupled with failed DI attempts, robbed my hopes for motherhood. The pressure to do and be something great in the aftermath seems to me to be as strongly perpetuated as the myths of the greatness of motherhood. Mothers are exalted in our culture, as are women who are successful in other realms of their lives. Where is the space to celebrate those of us for whom daily survival, and mediocrity even, is an achievement?
Thank you Louise – your post really struck a chord with me. I am truly grateful to LWB and all the great women who have shown me that a life without children can be good. However, I have always felt that I need to do something wonderful – over the years I have retrained as a personal trainer, a teacher and I had thoughts of pursuing a financial accountant career. My teaching career lasted only 2 years and my personal training career (after an intense 3 month training course) lasted only 8 weeks! What I have come to realise is – I am content now with daily survival and I am thriving on mediocrity! It was good to notice this today – thank you.
thank you Louise! I felt the same, didn’t find any friendly way to express it. Lisa’s website and blog are extremely helpful and important to me, but I feel the same – not all of us can be successful bloggers and authors, so we end up with endless desperate attempts at achieving something “greater”…
I am 43 and childless after several failed IVF attempts. My husband has MS and is no longer able to work. I am a Type 1 diabetic. We sold our beautuful home that we had lovingly made in to our dream home but could no longer afford and moved abroad for 12 months. We’re back in the UK and living by the sea which is a dream of mine!! Some days I feel so proud of what we have achieved and how far we have come despite all the pain but some days are sad and dark and painful. I will never give up I will never let the dark days win. I love reading about other women who have come through the pain. It helps me lots. Thank you to all of you for sharing.
I do not know where I am. I do know that I have a deep depression inside and it is killing me day by day. I started my life out by not wanting kids, now I am 43 I want kids and I don’t think I can ever have them. Maybe I knew inside that I never could. Please help me out of this dark place.
Indeed, these women are often mourning the loss of an identity – that of a mother or grandmother – just as they hit an age where they become almost invisible to our youth-obsessed society.
Indeed, these women are often mourning the loss of an identity – that of a mother or grandmother – just as they hit an age where they become almost invisible to our youth-obsessed society.