“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves;
we must die to one life before we can enter another.”
I saw this quote in a book about writing, but it struck a chord with me. It relates to so many things in life, including making peace with a life with out children.
One of the hardest stretches of my journey was the space between realizing that our options for building a family were running out, and the point where we made the decision to stop trying. I knew there were options still open, but they were beyond the scope of what Mr. Fab and I were willing to do. At some point we had to make a decision that we would not have children and that we would find a way to be okay with that. It was one of the hardest (and perhaps longest) decisions I’ve ever had to make.
I’m sure you’ve found yourself in this kind of situation in other areas of life, too. You know that you have to take a new direction, that ultimately it will be the right decision, but as France says, in order to do that, we have to leave a part of ourselves behind. Sometime the hardest part is listening to ourselves and not being afraid to make the wrong choice.
My first career was in engineering. I’ve made several career changes since then, trying to find the place in the world where I’d be happy. I’ve found it in writing, but it took me a long time to get here.
Many people can’t understand why, after all those years of college and graduate school, I would abandon a perfectly good and respectable career. I’ll be the first to admit that if I’d just stuck to engineering, I would probably have been more “successful” and definitely would be making more money, maybe own a home and live comfortably, but I know I wouldn’t have been happy. I might have been successful by the conventional definition, but the cost of sticking to a career that didn’t make me happy, just because it’s what was expected of me, didn’t make any sense. But it wasn’t easy to let go of that life and take a risk of finding happiness in another life.
Part of finding happiness is letting go of that which doesn’t make us happy. Although I believed that having children would make me happy, I was miserably unhappy running in circles trying to produce a baby that my body had no interest in creating. I could have gone on trying forever, but the cost to my mental and physical wellbeing would have been enormous. Letting go of that part of my life enabled me to find peace with my new life, even if it’s a life I wasn’t sure I wanted.
“I was miserably unhappy running in circles trying to produce a baby that my body had no interest in creating. I could have gone on trying forever, but the cost to my mental and physical wellbeing would have been enormous.” yes this is so true! I could have gone on to this one particular option but i know it would be a disaster for me emotionally, financially .. one day i will find the strength to live the life that was meant for me .. and not have to answer to others .. we tried so hard ..
This is so true. I’ve felt it in career terms too – though I’m still looking for the thing that’s right for me! I knew that the diplomatic/corporate careers I thought I wanted wouldn’t make me happy, because their environments/people/cultures didn’t make me happy. It was a relief when I finally let go.
Likewise with the baby-making efforts. I guess we had to try, but ultimately, letting go was the right thing to do, whether or not we had any choice in it.
That point between knowing you should stop and stopping is the longest road. At the time I was in the middle of the some big things happened…
– mom had a heart attack (she lived but her health hasn’t been the same since)
– my husband hurt his knee twice and had to have reconstructive knee surgery – for 6 months my days and nights where filled with doing what it took to getting him back on his feet.
– I had a major crises of my faith
I still want my baby but I knew for my health and sanity I needed to end that journey.
Yes to this: “It was one of the hardest (and perhaps longest) decisions I’ve ever had to make.” Our decision to let go of the adoption process after having already let go of treatment probably had its seeds almost a year before it came to pass, and the actual finality of the decision took months. It is raw for me, but so much more peaceful than living in the horrors of limbo and always feeling on the wrong side of whatever statistics. The idea of finding peace with the new life, the one without trying to make something happen that has a terrific personal cost… that sounds lovely.
“We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” — Joseph Campbell (a favourite quote that’s on the sidebar of my blog)