Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

My Big (Unconventional) Mother’s Day Plans

Image courtesy TSNY/Bob Holzman

Image courtesy TSNY/Bob Holzman

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month and haven’t turned on the TV, logged onto Facebook, been to a grocery, drug, or card store, or checked your mail or your email box, you’re probably already aware that Mother’s Day is upon us. In my book this day easily trumps Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day combined for the worst day of the year to not have children.

I’ve written about Mother’s Day woes in the past (see below for some reruns), but this year I’m taking back the day.

Two years ago my friend and I bought Groupons for trapeze lessons. We somehow never managed to organize a date to go and last month we realized our passes would expire on May 14. We quickly scrambled our calendars and found a day we were both free. Sunday May 11 was the only option. I mean, what else would two childless women with British mothers have to do that day?

So, that’s it. We’re going. And honestly, I can’t think of a more fitting way to take back what was once the saddest day of my year than by flying through the air with the greatest of ease, as a magnificent non-mom on my flying trapeze!

***

If you’re struggling with Mother’s Day, here are a few past posts and encouraging comments that I hope will help.

My Bah Humbug to Mother’s Day, But Not to Mother (May, 2010)

Breaking Up with Mother’s Day (May 2011)

It Got Me Thinking…About Nurturers (May 2012)

Preparedness (May 2012)

Duck, Weave, or Cover? (May 2012)

Mother’s Day (May 2013)

It Got Me Thinking…About Going Mainstream

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Girl ThinkingAll of a sudden, and maybe for the first and only time in my life, I’m feeling like a trendsetter! As proof, check out this article about celebrities—women and men—who have chosen to not have children.

Their reasons vary. Some I can relate to, others not so much. What I appreciate the most is that this choice is presented as a positive decision. The fact that an article about people who are childfree has even made it into the press—alongside reports of suspected baby bumps, ultralux showers, births, and mommy woes—confirms for me that we’ve made huge strides in the last few years.

This is good news!

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.

Living Childfree With No Regrets

A few weeks ago, I spoke at Fertility Planit on the topic of Living Childfree with No Regrets. I was honored to share the stage with Tracey Cleantis and Lynn Newman Zavaro, both of whom shared their infertility stories in a very frank and open conversation.

If you’d like to join the conversation, make yourself a cup of tea and cozy up to the video below. I hope you enjoy it.

 

If you’re not able to see the embedded video above, you can also download it to watch here.

Our Stories: Louisa

As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Our StoriesForty-four and single, Louisa* never really had a “goal” to have children, she simply thought “life would just happen.” There is some sadness as she reflects on not getting to have children of her own, but when I asked what she would want other people (such as moms, younger women, or strangers) to know about her being childfree, she answered with enthusiasm, “That it is okay!” I love her positive attitude. Here’s more of her story.

LWB: Are you childfree by choice, chance, or circumstance?

Louisa: I guess childfree by chance, and a little by choice (because most of the time I say I didn’t want children). I had friends who wanted to be married by a certain age, and then have children by a certain age; it just didn’t happen for me. I have never been married, and never really met anyone who I thought I wanted to have children with.

 

LWB: Where are you on your journey now?

Louisa: Once in a while wishing I could have had a child, wishing I could have experienced a baby of my own. But then accepting that I’m past the age of having children. I am trying to love and accept myself as life goes on.

 

LWB: What’s the hardest part for you about not having children?

Louisa: Seeing a cute baby or child, and seeing the glorious expressions on its face as it learns the world and experiences the love it feels. [Sometimes it’s hard] when I’m holding a friend’s baby and it looks at me with innocence, love, and a smile!

 

LWB: What’s the best part about not having children?

Louisa: I know I would be a very over-protective parent and I would worry tremendously!

 

LWB: What have you learned about yourself?

Louisa: That it’s important to take advantage of time with family and friends. Love them, and always keep them in my heart.

 

LWB: What advice would you like to give to your younger self?

Louisa: Maybe to take a bit more control of your life and try not to be a late bloomer.

 

LWB: What do you look forward to now?

Louisa: I want a good year! I want to get my ducks in a row, create a secure future, feel secure in my life and decisions. I look forward to loving my dog and taking care of her, and living life!

*Not her real name. We allow each respondent to use a fictitious name for her profile, if she chooses.

 

Won’t you share your story with us? Go to the Our Stories page to get more information and the questionnaire.

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.

Tree Planting for Non-Motherhood

By Paula Coston

Tree planting 22 March 14 025In Jewish culture, it’s an ancient tradition to plant a tree on the birth of a child: a cedar for a boy, a cypress for a girl. The child would then care for the tree; when she or he married, they would stand under a canopy made of its branches. There’s a Jewish text: ‘A person’s life is sustained by trees. Just as others planted for you, plant for the sake of your children.’ (Midrash Tanchuma Kedoshim 8)

I live in the UK, and in our country of Wales, over the last two years, hundreds of thousands of trees have been planted as part of a project to grow a sapling for every new baby born or adopted in the region.
But childless women like us have no upcoming generations. So my thoughts have returned recently to an inspirational woman in her late eighties. I already shared in a personal post here the wonderful gesture made by  Salumarada Thimmakka, who lives in rural India. Teased and despised in her village community as a young wife without children, despite her gruelling job in a quarry she began to plant saplings, treating them lovingly every day as her own ‘offspring’. Gradually they grew into a stately, shady avenue of 284 banyan trees, now worth millions of dollars.Meanwhile, the U.S. has a time-honoured tradition of mass tree planting, with a dedicated day, Arbor Day, for which the commonest date amongst the various states is the last Friday in April. People, young and old, take part. The day’s founder, J. Sterling Morton, declared 140 years ago, “Each generation takes the earth as trustees”, again linking this activity to the upcoming generations.

Why not, like her, plant trees for the children we never had?

Tree planting 22 March 14 022

A few weeks ago, I discovered that the council in my pretty little Cotswold town in England was funding a new tree planting scheme along the banks of our renovated canal and fringing the ridges of my local park, overlooking a lake and weir: silver birches, rowans, oaks, maples. I saw a chance, and invited a childless friend and neighbour along.

On Saturday March 22, we found ourselves under a spring sun flitting behind black clouds and threatening rainbows over the hills and valleys while we helped to dig holes, scoop moist earth round young roots, funnel weather guards over the saplings’ baby heads and drive in stakes to support them. I found myself asking the name of each plant, in some weird sense bonding with it, and even – unashamedly – talking to it as if it was a child. Kneeling beside the bed of each root ball, teasing out those little water-seeking veins, taking a moment to think about what I’d lost but what I was now giving to something living, was surprisingly moving and reviving.

Tree planting 22 March 14 037

My neighbour finds it hard to talk about her loss of children, but somehow, too busy digging to feel self-conscious, backs turned on each other, we began telling our personal stories of childlessness to each other.

On an impulse, I took out some postcards I was carrying in my backpack. For each young, vital thing I planted, I wrote a message to a child I never had and posted it into the tree’s new resting place among the soil. It didn’t cure my pain, but it felt like part of an answer.

I discovered something simple: that gardening, nurturing something other than a child, is great therapy for childlessness.

Paula Coston writes on childlessness, the older woman and singledom at her blog, http://boywoman.wordpress.com. Her novel, On the Far Side, There’s a Boy, comes out in June. It’s about an Englishwoman from the 1980s to now and her gradual discovery, through a link with a little boy in Sri Lanka, that she will never have a partner or children.

Our Stories: Ann

As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Our Stories“For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a mother,” Ann writes. “I could picture the children more clearly than I could picture any partner.” Now 49 and divorced, Ann still wonders if there is a way for her to become a mother. Here’s what she has to say.

LWB: Are you childfree by choice, chance, or circumstance?

Ann: I am childfree because my ex-husband and I had three traumatic pregnancy losses—a full-term stillbirth, a termination due to chromosomal abnormalities, and a miscarriage. We were diagnosed with infertility and found ourselves in a vulnerable enough state in our marriage that it didn’t seem right to adopt.

 

LWB: Where are you on your journey now?

Ann: I am amicably divorced. I am mostly at peace with my childless state, though I still have times when I think of adopting.

 

LWB: What was the turning point for you?

Ann: The turning point for me—and it took a long, tangled while—was realizing that my marriage and my desire to be a parent were separate. I needed to address the state of my (unhappy) marriage before I could address the idea of becoming a parent. I have never wanted to go into parenthood as a single parent, and this still mostly holds true now that I’m divorced.

 

LWB: What’s the hardest part for you about not having children?

Ann: The hardest part about not having children is that I feel as if my natural state is to be a mother, and I’m not (except to my dog and very occasionally to my nieces, nephews, and friends’ kids). This is confusing and makes me feel as if I’m denying who I really am. Then I get all worked up about why I don’t have children. My decision to not be a parent has more logical reasoning behind it than maybe it should.

 

LWB: What’s one thing you want other people (moms, younger women, men, grandmothers, teachers, strangers) to know about your being childfree?

Ann: I used to view people who were childless as kind of limited and selfish. I want the world to understand that being childfree for many of us is not by choice.  Even though we live in a world where we have a lot of choices, there are many very legitimate reasons why we remain childless. This does not mean we do not care about children as much as the next person. This does not mean we don’t or can’t understand love. I hate it when people say they didn’t understand what love was until they had children, as if those of us who don’t have children don’t know what love is. I hate hearing about groups such as Moms For or Against…whatever the cause is. Why can’t they be People For or Against…. I hate it when parenting queries are addressed only to parents, as if all the time I have spent around kids doesn’t count. I also hate the doubting part of me that worries that I am limited and selfish by not doing all I can to have kids.

 

LWB: How do you answer “Do you have kids?”

Ann: Mostly I answer “No.”  Sometimes, depending on the context and the company, I answer “None living.”

 

LWB: What is the best advice you’d offer someone else like you? (or What advice would you like to give to your younger self?)

Ann: The best advice I’d offer someone like me now is not to be too hard on yourself and to find ways to make yourself happy. It is hard to live a different life than you envisioned yourself living. Give yourself time to sort it out. There are many ways to positively influence kids without being their parent. The world needs us all—parents and non-parents.

The advice I would give my younger self is different. I would encourage my younger self to get started on the parenthood quest sooner. My older sister had a life plan: She wanted her first child by 30. I had no such plan. Perhaps if I had, my life would be different now.

Won’t you share your story with us? Go to the Our Stories page to get more information and the questionnaire.

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.

Why You Need An Emotional Emergency Response Plan

By Paulina Grace Hay

MP9003210718 years ago, a few weeks before my 30th birthday, I had my second miscarriage and a D&C.  Physically, I recovered very quickly.  Emotionally, I was in a tailspin that left me and my marriage in a pile of rubble.  It looked like there would be no survivors.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to survive.

There’s no handbook for moments like this and no one size fits all plan.  It reminds me of the magic trick where they pull the tablecloth out from all the place settings.  Everything rattles for a moment but quickly settles and looks untouched.  To everyone else, it looks the same.  To you, the foundation is gone in the blink of an eye.  You can barely process what has happened to you, let alone explain what’s happened to your spouse or partner, your best friend and loved ones.

I read books like Welcome to Your Crisis.  I went to therapy once and thought that was all I needed.  I shut a lot of people out.  That move cost me my best friend and almost my husband.  I was back at therapy months later even though I thought I should be stronger than to need help.  (I still struggle with that one.)  I attended a Resolve group to meet other women like me.  I tried a few infertility treatments and came to the gut wrenching but weight lifting decision to stop trying to have a child and re-embrace my life.  I was 32.

In a couple of weeks, it will be my 38th birthday.  I’m not one to dwell on numbers and usually being the youngest by far, I welcome a chance to be considered one of the “big kids”.  Yet I’d been in a deep funk recently.  I couldn’t shake it, I felt my anxiety escalating beyond my control.  I decided to make an appointment with my therapist.  I almost cancelled it.

He’s the one that said things to me like, “You have a birthday coming up.” and

“I feel like you’re not letting yourself feel some pain.”  I was practically rolling my eyes and thinking, “Are you kidding me? Am I still here after all this time?”  However, I trust this man so we went on.  (The other interesting note is this is not the therapist who helped me through my infertility crisis. I’ve learned therapists help me with perspective and can give me emotional strength when I don’t have it.  Bless the good therapists of this world.)  We’ve never discussed my miscarriage or my marriage, as those aren’t the areas I felt I needed help with right now.  I felt better when I left.  I proceeded to start a fight with my husband when I got home.

The next day I was working from home alone and my husband was out of the home office for the day.  I was doing the everyday task of cleaning the kitchen. My mind was wandering.  I remembered my nephew’s birthday was coming up and I’d had the date wrong in my mind.  It was later in the month than I realized.  Then the trigger came like a bolt of emotional lightning.  I’d had my D&C the day before his 2nd birthday and we drove to their house the next morning.  I didn’t mention it to my family.  A few weeks later everyone came to my house for my 30th birthday.  We took a full family portrait.  My one sister-in-law was already pregnant.  My other sister-in-law was newly pregnant.  I was in denial.

I started to cry.  I hate to cry.  I started to fight the tears.  Without realizing it, I started to engage my Emotional Emergency Plan.

 

Let Yourself Feel The Pain

I remembered listening to Dr. Brene Brown talk about how she processes shame.  One of the things she has to do is cry, even though she hates it, too.  I let myself sink in the corner of the kitchen and sob.  I wailed at my own pain.

 

Shame Can’t Survive Being Spoken

My first inclination was to process all of this alone, as I’d done many times before hiding in a closet or a bathroom.  It would be perfect, no one had to know.  I remembered Brene saying that shame can’t survive being spoken.  I scrolled my emotional Rolodex.  It’s uncanny how often you pick the worst person ever for support and end up feeling worse.  For me, that would be my mom.  I almost called her and thought better.  (Thank you Martha Beck for that insight. )

 

Know What You Need and Ask For It, Even If You Don’t Get It

I wanted a friend.  Not any friend.  An old friend, someone who is like a sister.  One who knew me before miscarriages and failures.  One who told me when she couldn’t take it anymore hearing awful infertility stories because it made her feel guilty.  One who had her own issues, even if she had 2 beautiful children of her own.  I sent her a detailed text (thank you again Brene for reminding me to be clear on what’s going on so they understand I need their full attention) and finished it with, “I’m having a really hard time. Can you please call me?”  I let her hear me cry and sob.  I know it broke her heart.  She wanted to fix it.  It kind of irritated me but I know she just felt helpless.  Then the best part of an old friend kicked in.  We got through it and talked about a hundred other things.  She can follow me from deep to frivolity without missing a beat.

 

Know What You Need and Ask For It, Part 2

I also wanted a friend who wouldn’t feel sorry for me, fix me or try to convince me that maybe I do want to have a baby.  I texted an online friend who has also made the choice not to have children.  Again, I told her exactly what was going on.  She cleared some time for me and said, “It sounds perfectly normal to me.”  A weight lifted.  This is normal.  It will pass.  We talked about the grief of passing the fertile years of your life.  She shared insights about leaving a sliver of hope in your heart.  Yes, so true.  We talked about other layers of life from aging parents, being entrepreneurs, friendships and life journeys.  We’re so much more than our infertility.  I told her of the good things in my life and she reminded me to keep following that trail.

 

Share With Your Partner

When my husband got home, I told him what happened.  I didn’t text him.  I told him face to face.  I let him hug me when again, I’d prefer to hide and be alone.  He has learned to just be with me and not try to fix it.

I still have more to share with him.  It might just come through letting him read this post.

That night I had dinner plans with my husband’s family and then to see a niece’s play.  She was one of many pregnancies that surprised and haunted me during that time.  At dinner someone announced a pregnancy.  On any other day, it wouldn’t have bothered me.  However, without my preparedness plan engaged, I might have completely lost it at the table.  I might have left that play heartbroken.  But I was happy and so proud of my niece.  I remembered how much I love my life.  The storm had passed.

Is that the end of the story? No, but in an emergency you do what you can to get the wounds under control and then get more help.  In an emotional emergency, calling in reinforcements is so key.  Don’t go it alone and find a way to let it out, even if it’s on a piece of paper.  Or a blog post.  I’d love to hear how you handle an emotional emergency, too.

Paulina Grace walked away from the infertility roller coaster 6 years ago. She hopes to help other women let themselves grieve and then let themselves live. Outside of running her own business, Paulina fulfills her need to nurture by being an involved aunt and caring for her aging parents.