Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

You’re such a mom

Last week I was grumbling to a friend about how much time I spend looking for my glasses. Seriously, it’s ridiculous. I can never find them and without them, I can’t see clearly enough to find them. I have a list of places I look first – desk, nightstand, purse, bathroom – but it’s not uncommon for me to find them on the stove, on top of the trashcan, on the floor, or in the bed.

 

“You need to have a place you always put them,” suggested my friend.

 

I’ve heard the exact thing from my mother for decades, but clearly it hasn’t done me a bit of good. I take my glasses off when I don’t need them and I put them wherever I am at the time.

 

I rolled my eyes at my friend. “You’re such a mom,” I told her.

 

Driving home later that day, I reran the conversation in my head and I cringed at the emphasis I’d put on the word mom. I’d used a disparaging tone, suggesting that my friend’s tendency to want to help was something negative.

 

I thought about the discussions we’ve had here about offhand comments people have made to us that have been so hurtful, and I realized I’d just done the same thing. What if my friend, with a daughter just graduated from high school and preparing to move out into the world, was feeling the pangs of her future empty nest and having a crisis of confidence now that her motherhood services were no longer needed? What if her daughter had said the same thing recently and she’d been stung? What if my offhand comment had really hurt?

 

We can’t censor everything we say on the off-chance we inadvertently hurt someone’s feelings, or there would be no room for humor in the world, but this incident reminded me that everyone brings their own filters to a conversation and what might be an offhand remark for one person could be hurtful to another.

 

The same rules apply to us, the other way round. Because of our filters regarding childlessness, infertility, or our choice to be childfree, what feels like a hurtful barb could just be intended as a meaningless throwaway comment. If we can’t censor the world, then maybe we just need to adjust our filters.

It Got Me Thinking…About Pot

By Kathleen Guthrie

Down the street and around the corner from my home is a medical marijuana dispensary—one of two in our neighborhood. I am 100% in support of pot being used to ease the side effects of chemotherapy and other excruciating conditions, but I get really irritated when carloads of 20-something guys swing by on Thursday afternoons for their weekend party supplies.

 

I’m reminded of why I never tried it. Twenty or so years ago, I read something that said when you smoked marijuana, elements from the drug could settle into your fat cells. Specifically in women, it could lie dormant in your eggs and eventually result in birth defects in your future children. That was enough for me. I politely declined to join my friends when joints got passed around, and frankly, felt a little smug about my decision to be drug-free. In the end, it would pay off with happy, healthy children, right?

 

Fast-forward and I’m now at the time in my life when it’s clear I won’t be having kids. And, you know what, I’m a little pissed. All those years I spent exercising, eating right, not drinking, not smoking, not doing drugs so that my body would support a pregnancy—all for squat!

 

So I think it’s time I start making up for my unnecessary sacrifices. I’m too afraid of jail to experiment with illegal substances (much to the relief of my fiancé, who is in law enforcement), but I am thinking a gluttonous feast of sushi, Lemon Drop martinis, and chocolate, chocolate, chocolate is in order.

 

 

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She believes “Life is what happens when you’ve made other plans.”

Healing Through Creativity Workshops

This fall I will once again be partnering with my good friend, Shannon Calder to host a weekend of Healing Through Creativity Workshops. This time we’re offering two days of seminars with an option to join one or both days.

 

On Saturday, we will be offering Honoring Grief, Loss, and Transition with Word and Image. This is Shannon’s area of expertise and she’ll be teaching a series of creative exercises to work through issues of loss and grief, as well as gathering tools to use going forward. Shannon is a wonderful teacher who has a perfect combination of gentle empathy and no nonsense. This workshop will be very hands on and suitable if you’re still trying to come to terms with being childfree and are wrestling with issues of loss.

 

Sunday’s workshop will be Finding Your Identity After Infertility, a subject that is very dear to my heart right now. In this workshop we’ll again be using creative techniques and writing exercises to uncover who we really are and discover who we’re going to be now that motherhood is no longer on the cards. I’m very excited about this.

 

So, the workshops will be run here in Los Angeles on the weekend of November 12 and 13. All the information is available on the website.

 

We’re running a wahoo, super-duper half-price early bird special right now. If you sign up before August 31, registration is only $99 for one day or $175 for the full weekend.

 

Please check out the website for all the info and I hope to get the chance to meet some of you here in L.A.

Nieces and nephews

I have just booked my flight to go home to England to see my family. I am counting down the days. I am long overdue for some time off, but more than that, I want to see my nieces and nephews.

I’ve been writing on this blog lately about the role we can play in the lives of other people’s children and how valuable that can be for us and them. The problem is that I’ve lived away from my family for 20 years. I have a niece and a nephew already out in the workforce, three more in college and another three growing up way too fast. My circle of influence over them, or even my participation in their lives at all, feels so insignificant.

Now I don’t have children of my own, I wish that I could have played a bigger role in their lives. But that’s all water under the bridge, as they say, so all I can do now is make an effort to spend some time with them, which is exactly what I plan to do. Soon.

Pay it forward for Annabelle

I know it’s Whiny Wednesday today, but sometimes something crosses your radar that puts your life into perspective.

Rebecca Abreu is celebrating what would have been the 1st birthday of her daughter today. Annabelle Angel was stillborn at 31 weeks on August 3rd last year.

Rebecca has created the Pay it Forward Project in honor of Annabelle and asks that today you help celebrate by committing a random act of kindness.

Rebecca says: “Something that I have learned this year is the enthusiasm and optimism felt when paying it forward. I have sent out care packages to many bereaved parents and with each care package sent out, each word of support shared through our pages, a beautiful light erupts in my soul and for that brief moment I feel unbroken. I feel like each of us truly have the power to change someone’s life for the better.”

Here are some “random act of kindness” suggestions:

  • Pay for the person behind you in the drive-through
  • Buy a meal for the homeless
  • Clean up graffiti
  • Pick up trash
  • Play music for the elderly
  • Water dry plants at a cemetery
  • Let someone cut in line in front of you
  • Smile to everyone on the street
  • Return a shopping cart
  • Write and mail a letter to someone who made a difference in your life!

Rebecca is collecting a scrapbook of acts. For more information, visit the Pay It Forward Project website or Facebook page.

Friends, neighbors, and community

My neighbor is sick. She hasn’t come out and said the words, but she’s hinted at breast cancer. It’s not the first time for her; she knows what to do.

I don’t know what her prognosis is; we haven’t talked about it, but I do know that her relatives all live several states away and that she’s a quiet person who has just a small group of friends. She’s never been married and she doesn’t have children, so I’m wondering: who’s going to take care of her if she gets really sick?

We live in a small compound (although that’s not quite the right word) with five little beach cottages on a lot. Mr. Fab and I live in the front house and the other four are all occupied by single women. One has grown kids and grandkids, but the others are childfree, like me. So, I wonder, if my friend needs care, will it come from us, her neighbors?

Maybe she has a plan figured out that doesn’t include us, but if my friend needed help, I’d be there for her and I’m encouraged to realize that, even though I don’t have children to care for me when I’m older, I do have friends, and I’m willing to be that those friends would be there for me, too, if I needed that. That thought alone makes me optimistic for the future and how this whole thing will work out.

It Got Me Thinking…About Gertrude Ederle

By Kathleen Guthrie

Gertrude Ederle was a champion, a trailblazer, a celebrity, and a “chero,” a hero who happened to be childfree. Saturday marks the 85th anniversary of her historic swim across the English Channel.

Gertrude was born in 1905 in New York and became a competitive swimmer at a young age. At just 13, she joined and began training at the Women’s Swimming Association (WSA), and soon she had broken and established more amateur records than any other woman around the world.

In 1924, she won a gold medal with the 400-meter freestyle relay team, and bronze medals for the 100-meter and 400-meter freestyle events at the Olympics in Paris, France. She was disappointed by her third-place wins, since she was favored to win gold in all events, so she looked for new challenges. In 1925, she crossed the Lower New York Bay in just over seven hours, a distance of 21 miles. Then, later in the year, she made her first attempt to swim the English Channel, but her trainer pulled her out before she could finish.

Undaunted, she made her next attempt starting from France on the morning of August 6, 1926. Sometime around hour 12, someone on one of the tugboats following her became concerned about the weather and choppy waves and shouted to her, “Gertie, you must come out!” She replied, “What for?” She stepped onto the English shore 22.5 miles and 14 hours and 39 minutes after her first stroke, beating the men’s record by nearly two hours. Her record held until 1950. At 21, she had become the first woman to swim the English Channel.

Back home in New York City, Gertrude was celebrated with a ticker-tape parade. “Queen of the Waves,” the press called her. She had brief career in entertainment, including playing herself in the 1927 movie Swim Girl, Swim. After the hoopla quieted, she devoted herself to teaching deaf children how to swim. She herself had suffered from hearing problems due to a childhood bout with measles, which left her completely deaf by 1940. She passed away at 98 in 2003.

“People said women couldn’t swim the Channel,” Gertrude said in 1930, “but I proved they could.”

Indeed she did.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She continues to find inspiration in the stories of many of our “cheroes” (heroes who are childfree).

Free to be Happy

It came as no great surprise when friends announced recently that they were getting a divorce. They’d been emotionally separated for years and a new job for one had made them physically separated, too. It was hard to see why they’d ever gotten together in the first place, as they always seemed mismatched. But they had kids, and the kids were the reason they’d stayed together.

Fifteen years ago, when I told friends I was leaving my first husband, no one was surprised, and more than one said, “Thank goodness you didn’t have kids together.”

Even now I’m unable to have children with Mr. Fab, I’m still grateful that I didn’t have to drag kids through what would have been a much messier divorce than it was. But how many people do you know who’ve stayed in unhappy marriages because of the kids?

I’m not suggesting being childfree makes it easy to flit around relationships without having to commit, but not having the responsibility for other young lives offers a kind of freedom to find happiness for ourselves.

It Takes a Village

There’s an old African proverb that says: “It takes a village to raise a child.” But these days, families often live in isolation and there is no village to raise the children.

But what about teachers, neighbors, aunties, caretakers, volunteers, nannies, nurses? These people play a critical role in the raising of a child.

So, I’m wondering, do you play one of these roles in the lives of other people’s children? Do you volunteer, donate to a charity, work with children, or give your time to help raise someone else’s children?

What does it mean to you? How do you see your role in these children’s lives? I’d love to hear how you see yourself and how you think others see you.

It Got Me Thinking…About Gallbladders

By Kathleen Guthrie

I was in my 20s when my favorite aunt had her gallbladder removed. As I recall, she told me it was due to pressure from when she was pregnant, and any woman who had more than two babies would have to have the same surgery. My mom, a mother of three, provided further proof when she had a cholecystectomy, as did many of her childbearing friends. So, naturally, I assumed some day, after I was done having babies, I’d lose mine.

Now, as a childfree woman, I look back and wonder if that was all a bunch of old wives hooey. And you know what, it’s not! According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, “Pregnancy increases the risk for gallstones, and pregnant women with stones are more likely to have symptoms than nonpregnant women.”

And I think, “HA!” Not only do I get to skip the wretchedness of morning sickness and the flesh-ripping pains of childbirth, but I get to keep my gallbladder too. Score another point for the joys of being childfree!

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer and a regular contributor to LifeWithoutBaby. She’s starting to see the upside of being childfree.