Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

It Got Me Thinking…About Parental Complaints

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

“I have to spend all day Saturday at soccer games. Gag!”

“I hate wasting weekends at my kid’s swim meets.”

“Wanna trade places with me?”

I’ve heard every variation of the above from friends who for whatever reason think it’s okay to complain to me about the “burdens” of being a parent. My responses have ranged from “Sounds like fun to me!” to “Dogs are so the way to go.” to “I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat.”

I don’t use that last one very often because it pretty much shuts down the conversation, but when I do, I hope it makes them think. It’s bad enough that this person is complaining about something s/he had to know about before signing up for the whole parental gig, and don’t even get me started if this ding-dong complains in front of their sweet child. Most of all, I wish they’d think for a moment about their chosen audience: childfree-not-by-choice woman who loves kids.

I loved playing sports as a kid, I was thrilled when my parents were on the sidelines cheering me on, I have great memories of those years, and I looked forward to the day when I could create similar memories with children of my own. Girl Scout leader, Team Mom, 3rd base coach—I woulda been all over it!

Maybe I don’t understand because I’m not a busy mom, but I do understand how much it hurts to be on the receiving end of a busy mom’s thoughtless complaints.

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

Meeting People Locally

world handsAfter my recent post about finding help, Maria asked about meeting people locally, and how to find other LWB readers who live close by.

She mentioned regional groups on the community forums, which reminded me to remind you that if you’re looking for people in your region, that’s a good place to start.

In case you’re not familiar with the private community, you can find Groups on the drop-down menu or here. The community is password-protected, so it’s a safe place to share information about where you live and you can also “friend” people to exchange messages.

There are already groups formed by readers in Canada, Austin, TX, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., Washington State, San Francisco, Southern California, and Australia. If you’d like to find people in your region, feel free to create a group of your own.  You can do that by clicking the Add Group button at the top right.

I’ve had the good fortune to meet face-to-face with several people that I’ve got to know through this site, and there’s much to be said for chatting in person over coffee or wine. Please report back if you do manage to connect with someone near you.

“Perfect Red”: A Valentine’s Day Interview with Author Jennie Nash

Jennie Nash bookIt’s Valentine’s Day and what better day to talk about the topic of passion—not necessarily the romantic kind, but the “courage to follow your dreams” variety.

I had the opportunity to talk with my good friend, author Jennie Nash about her new novel Perfect Red and about her passion for encouraging dreamers and creative types. And by the way, she was instrumental in prodding me to follow my own passion, to write my book and create this site!

You can see the interview below and read Chapter 1 of Perfect Red here.

Jennie NashI have my own copy of Perfect Red, and if you’d like one too, Jennie has generously offered to give away three signed copies. All you have to do is email her and on Sunday February 17th she’ll select three winners at random.

You can reach her at: jennie.nash [at] gmail [dot] com.

Whiny Wednesday: Information Overload

Whiny_WednesdayI am on information overload. Between my email, my phone, the Internet, the news, the constant chatter, chatter, chatter of 21st century life, I feel as if my head is going to explode.

Oh, how I would love to unplug and sit in silence for a week. But the truth is, I don’t know if I could do it.

It’s Whiny Wednesday. What would love to unplug from for a week?

 

My Inner Cranky Old Lady

Furious womanIt’s Valentine’s Week (because no commercially-driven holiday ever lasts for just a day anymore) and my inner Cranky Old Lady and I are having words again. As you can probably tell just from my opening sentence, she is already getting the better of me.

My Cranky Old Lady doesn’t like Valentine’s Day. It’s too commercialized, too many expectations on people to impress and throw around good money on overpriced roses and dinners. It snubs people who don’t have a special Valentine in their lives, and it points a rude finger at their singledom. What’s more, it’s yet another holiday, originally intended for adult lovers, that’s been hijacked by kids and their cute “I love you Mommy” Valentine’s cards. Nope, my inner Cranky Old Lady abhors Valentine’s Day.

But I kinda like it. Oh, yes, it’s all those things my Cranky Old Lady says it is, but I don’t want to hate it. My Cranky Old Lady has taken over too many holidays from me over the past years and I’m ready to take them back.

In her defense, I know she did me a favor by keeping me away from the Hallmark holidays and protecting my tender interior. She talked me out of Halloween, Christmas, even July 4th, to keep me from the hurt I was feeling about not having children for those holidays. She did the right thing by me, and I appreciate that, but I’m ready to come out and play again.

Part of the silver lining of not having children is that I’m not bound to anyone else’s expectations of how holidays should be celebrated. If I want to celebrate Valentine’s Day, I can. If I don’t want to, I don’t have to. And this year I choose to lock up my Cranky Old Lady and embrace the silliness and blatant commercialism of the day. Who knows, I might even break my Crank Old Lady rule and wear something red!

Do you have an inner Cranky Old Lady? When do you let her out and when do you put up a fight?

 

Follow Friday Comes to the Blog World

hashtags1If you’re a Twitter user, you’ll probably know about Follow Friday. Follow Friday is a chance to give a shout out to tweeps you follow and spread the word about what others are doing.

I always seem to forget about Follow Friday, so this week I thought I’d bring it to the blog and share the happenings of some of my fellow bloggies.

On The Road Less Travelled, loribeth hits on a topic I’ve been trying to articulate lately—the obsession we have with the life we didn’t get to live and how easily that story can come to define us.

Jody Day at Gateway Women is taking that same topic and shaking it up with her upcoming book, “Rocking the Life Unexpected: 12-Weeks to Your Plan for a Meaningful & Fulfilling Life without Children.” She’s crowd funding to get the book published, so if you’d like to help her, you can find out more here.

Over at Silent Sorority, Pamela is celebrating her six-year Blogaversary and reminiscing about the Bad Old Days when the blogosphere was all but silent on the topic of living childfree after infertility.

La Belette Rouge has a word or two to say, most eloquently, on the topic of bitterness.

And at No Kidding in NZ, Mali makes a case that not having kids keeps you young.

Please check out these blogs, if you haven’t already. And in case you are a Twitterer, you can find Life Without Baby tweeting and twittering at @lifewithoutbaby.

Guest Post: Un Blog en français (A Blog in French)

journalingBy Catherine-Emmanuelle Delisle 

Je m’appelle Catherine-Emmanuelle Delisle et je suis une femme infertile de 36 ans. Je réside au Québec,  province du Canada à majorité francophone.

Depuis quelques mois, j’ai entrepris une démarche personnelle de deuil dans le but d’accepter mon infertilité.

Si vous êtes un jour confronté comme moi à l’impossibilité d’avoir des enfants de manière naturelle, vous constaterez qu’il existe à ce jour très peu de ressources littéraires et virtuelles en français. Sans compter la quasi absence de groupes de soutien.

Heureusement, quelques cliniques de fertilité québécoises offrent de l’aide psychologique afin de soutenir leur patientes et patients. Qu’en est-il ailleurs dans le monde ?

Donc, à qui peuvent s’adresser les femmes ayant décidé simplement de tirer un trait sur la maternité pour diverses raisons ( médicales ou personnelles).

Comment ces femmes peuvent-elles arriver à faire le deuil de la maternité sans être isolées? Comment peuvent –elles échanger avec d’autres femmes vivant la même situation ? Et que dire des hommes ?

Voilà pourquoi j’ai créé un blog en français pour partager avec vous les ressources, livres, sites, groupes d’entraide, interviews que j’ai pu trouver sur la toile pour m’aider dans ma démarche.

J’espère que ces ressources serviront à aider d’autres personnes désireuses d’arriver à vivre une existence satisfaisante sans enfant.

Au plaisir d’échanger avec vous!

Catherine-Emmanuelle Delisle

 

My name is Catherine-Emmanuelle Delisle. I’m a 36 year-old infertile woman and I live in Quebec, a province of Canada where the majority of the population speaks French.

A couple of months ago, I decided to undertake a process of grieving to accept my infertility.

If, like me, you have to face your own infertility, you will soon discover that there are very few resources (books or web sites) in French. Support groups addressing these issues are also very rare, especially away from the big cities.

Thankfully, in Quebec, a few fertility clinics offer psychological support to their patients. But what about the situation in the rest of the world?

Where can women who decide to come to terms with their absence of maternity (for medical or personal reasons) turn to?

How is it possible to accept your infertility when you feel so different and isolated form other women? How is it possible to exchange thoughts and information with other women who feel the same as you do? And what about the situation for men facing infertility?

That is why I decided to create a French blog to share the resources, the books , the web sites, the support groups, and the interviews that I have found on the net or elsewhere.

I hope that this information will help other people like me who want to learn how to live a great life without having kids.

Catherine-Emmanuelle Delisle lives in the region of Montréal in Québec, Canada. She shares her stories and resources at “Être femme sans enfant.”

 

Whiny Wednesday: Facebook Vacation

Whiny_WednesdayI’ve been on a Facebook vacation since the beginning of the year. There were a number of factors that played into my decision, including the amount of mindless time I was frittering away, a sudden surge in baby news, and an alarming surge in banal twaddle from people I wasn’t interested in hearing about.

I also realized that I was walking around talking to myself in third person status updates: Lisa Manterfield is doing dishes and wondering why she moved into a house with no a dishwasher. Lisa Manterfield is in a bad mood today and wishes today was Whiny Wednesday.

I don’t know when I’ll be back from my FB vacation, but I can’t say I’m missing it at all.

As it turns out, it IS Whiny Wednesday. What do you wish you could take a vacation from this week?

Asking for the Help You Really Need

holding handsLast week I wrote about learning to ask for help and I’ve been thinking a lot about that topic since. Why is it so difficult for so many of us to ask for help?

Mali made a great point in her comment:

“I used to think asking for help was a weakness. Now I realize that asking for help is often the hardest thing, and requires real strength and honesty and courage.”

It does take a lot of courage to ask for help, especially from people we care about or who know us as strong, independent women. I also think that often we know we need help, we just have no idea what we need and who to ask for it.

When I need help, I’m fortunate enough to have some true friends and understanding family members I can turn to. My friend C is a wizard at research. If I need informational support, I go to her. My friend K is an ace networker, so if I need to find someone who’s shared my experience, she would know someone who knows someone. If I need someone to be pragmatic, I call M. If I need someone to call me out on my BS, I plan lunch with SC. If I need a friend who’ll say nothing, but just give me a hug, J or C will do that, and if I need someone to commiserate on the injustices of life, SR is my go-to girl.

Mr. Fab is a fixer. If I tell him a problem, he’ll instantly go to work on a solution. But sometimes it’s not what I need. Sometimes I just want to talk and know that someone has heard me. Sometimes I just want someone to listen and say. “Aw, that sucks!”

For several years I would ask him for help and then get frustrated when he didn’t offer the kind of help I really wanted. Finally, I figured out that I needed to be specific. “I don’t need you to fix this; I just need to talk about it,” I told him. Even as I saw him register my request, I could sense that not trying to fix my problem went against his instinct. But when he saw that simply listening helped me to talk my way to my own solution, we both ended up getting what we needed.

Now, when I need to ask for someone’s help, I also try to be specific about exactly the kind of help I need, whether that’s feedback, a solution, or just someone to hand me Kleenex while I pour my heart out.

What have you learned about asking for help?

Finding support and learning to ask for help are just two of the topics covered in the new Road Map to Healing course. I’m sharing a little love right now and offering this course at a special “new program” rate until Valentine’s Day. If you’re looking for help in coming-to-terms with a “life without baby,” please consider joining me.

Where Do You Turn for Help?

Last week I wrote about learning to ask for help and several of you commented that you’d had the good sense to seek professional help when you needed it.

thinkingOne of the things I’m aiming to do on this site is to provide information about resources and support, and this is where I need your help.

On the Learn page you’ll see a section call Therapist Directory. You’ll also see a big blank space and “Coming Soon!” I need your help filling in those blanks.

Have you worked with a therapist or counselor who really understood the special issues of dealing with unplanned childlessness or infertility?

Do you know of support groups in your area that help women come-to-terms with being unable to have children?

Do you have a resource for grief support?

If you have kind of resource that might benefit others, please share it here. You can add it to the comments on this post, or if you’d prefer, you can contact me privately through the Contact page.

When you’re facing a life without children, sometimes it’s impossible to know where to turn. We can all help one another by sharing whatever resources we find.