Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

It Got Me Thinking…About the Story Time

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

I am going to be a “mystery reader”! This is nothing like a mystery shopper, someone who goes into a store, shops a bit, then rates the service. Instead, I am the mystery. On a given day, after tantalizing clues about my identity have been revealed, I will surprise my 6-year-old nephew when I show up to read a story to him and his fellow first-graders.

I about leapt out of my chair when I read the invitation my sister forwarded from the teacher to aunts and uncles, grandparents, and special friends. “I AM SO IN!!!!” I replied. I love reading to my nieces and nephews. Bedtime stories with friendly monsters, fairytales with happy endings, wild yarns that tickle the imagination; hand me any book and we’ll read it together. Before I moved closer to them, I even checked out books from the children’s section of the library, made up silly voices for each of the characters, and read to them over the phone.

My date isn’t until after the new year, but I immediately started thinking about my selection. Make Way for Ducklings is a personal favorite from my childhood. I regularly give Mo Willems’ Knuffle Bunny and Knuffle Bunny Too as shower and first birthday gifts. Dr. Seuss, wild rumpusses, Shel Silverstein, the many adventures of Winnie the Pooh…and then it hit me. I’ve been giving these beloved books as gifts for years, but I don’t have any of them on my own shelves.

Dangitall! I always assumed I’d have a shelf full of children’s storybooks, and I imagined how I would teach little ones how to read then sit in awe as they discovered the joys of reading for themselves. I looked forward to becoming reacquainted with my favorite characters, experiencing precious stories through a grown-up perspective, and appreciating anew the artistry that goes into creating them. I’ve been making such good progress in coming-to-terms with my childfree status that I didn’t see this left hook coming. Like with so many of our experiences as childfree women, something that made me so happy also makes me so very sad.

I will pick myself up, dust myself off, and pick a story that I think will be fun for everyone. It’s no mystery that I’m going to savor every moment I have with my wee audience. Meanwhile, I tip my hat to the thoughtful teacher who came up with the mystery reader program and is giving me the opportunity, just for one morning, to live in my fantasy world.

Whiny Wednesday: When We Were Kids

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A college friend just posted a photo of her son at his high school graduation.

It got my attention because the “kids” weren’t much younger than my friend and her now-husband were when I first met them, and, as the boy looks like his father, the photo reminded me of them and how flipping long it’s been since I was in school.

It also caused a pang of sadness for another experience I won’t get to have. I won’t get to send my teen off to college or take a photo of him and realize he’s a carbon copy of his dad.

It’s Whiny Wednesday, and today I’m feeling whiny about how unfair life can be.

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

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.

That day, 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.

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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.

It Got Me Thinking…About Greener Grass

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

It was early in the morning on a national holiday. I was walking to our gym when I passed one of our neighbors as she loaded kids and gear into a minivan.

“Off to the gym?” she asked, grunting as she hoisted a toddler into his car seat.

“Yup.”

“I would give anything to trade places with you.”

For a split second I paused, then replied with the only response that seemed appropriate. “I’m sorry.”

As I continued down the street, it dawned on me that for the first time in years I wasn’t feeling (a) judgmental (she was, after all, dissing her kids) or (b) wistful. So often in the past I would have thought how I would have traded anything to have precious kids of my own, but now, not so much. I was pretty happy with the prospect of spending my holiday taking care of myself, maybe even reading a book or taking a nap instead of having to read a book to someone else hoping he would settle down for a nap.  I didn’t feel sorry for or envious of my neighbor, and I didn’t want to trade my grass for her grass. The grass was perfectly green on my side of the street.

Me thinks the healing process has begun.

It Got Me Thinking…About Nurturers

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

I can bitch with the best about how much I loathe the holiday that’s coming up this Sunday. I’ve spent past years avoiding church, restaurants, flower shops, TV ads, and, well, people who brightly wished me “HAPPY (you-know-who’s) DAY!” It was easier to hibernate than face painful reminders of what I am not.

But this year is different. This year I am embracing the second Sunday in May because a wise friend has transformed it for me. This year I am pulling out all the stops and celebrating because I am…drumroll, please…a Nurturer!

Here’s the message my friend sent out last May, and it is my message to you.

To the nurturers in us all: For helping friends in need, for compassion for strangers in pain, for helping children to learn, and for being good stewards of our world…Happy Nurturer’s Day!

If you are an aunt, a sister, a daughter, a friend, a coworker, a coach, or a listener. If you’ve comforted another person, if you’ve offered support or encouragement, or if you’ve shared a hug. If you’ve read something on this site and responded with kind words or sent up a prayer for a sister in need. If you’ve been any or all of these things, then it’s time you acknowledge yourself.

You’ve been there for me, in our forums, in your comments, in your presence here with us on this site. For that I say, Thank you! and Happy Nurturer’s Day!

Our Stories: Kara

As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Our StoriesKara, 34, was one of those little girls who mothered her baby dolls and younger siblings. “I always knew I was going to be a mom with a lot of kids,” she says, but circumstances led her down a different path. These days she experiences the all-too-familiar cocktail of grief, guilt, and anger, with hints of acceptance, as she and her husband pursue their Plan B. Here’s what she has to share about her journey.

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

Kara: Childfree by circumstance. After trying for 10 months, my OB/GYN thought it was because my cycle wasn’t regular. After we “fixed” me and I still wasn’t pregnant, my husband was tested. His sperm count came back zero and he was diagnosed with no vas deferens [a congenital condition in which the tubes that carry sperm fail to fully develop].

After doing our own research, we talked our primary care doctor into having my husband tested for Cystic Fibrosis (CF). He was diagnosed with CF, but in what is called a “mild” case. Mild cases are where the mucus builds up somewhere other than the lungs, usually either the sinuses (my husband’s case) or digestive tract. Because of his having CF, I had to be tested before a fertility clinic would see us. I don’t have CF, but I have 5T Polymorphism. For me that means nothing, that is just how my DNA is “strung” together. But 5T doesn’t “play” well with CF, and we would have a 50% chance of having a child with a classic CF case (in the lungs). That was something we didn’t want to do to a child just to be parents. We stopped the journey after only four years, and we already knew adoption wasn’t a calling we felt was for us.

LWB: Where are you on your journey now?

Kara: I still go through the stages of grief, usually skipping denial and spending more time than I should in the angry stage. We’ve moved on to Plan B, but sometimes I feel guilty being there.

LWB: What was the turning point for you?

Kara: After meeting with the fertility doctor and seeing how all they wanted was my money and not caring how the process was difficult for my husband, we just stopped cold. They didn’t care that my husband was the one with the issues. We could get donor sperm and that would make a baby. I didn’t want any baby, I wanted my husband’s baby. After much prayer and talking, we decided it was healthier to stop.

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

Kara: Seeing others mistreat their children. Or parents complaining about their kids for selfish reasons.

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

Kara: Being able to do Plan B: travel around the world. Sometimes, when I’m in the angry grief stage and a mom complains to me about my travels, the best part is saying, “You got to multiply and replenish the earth…I get to travel the earth.” (Sometimes being the big B word is mentally healthy for me.)

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

Kara: It usually starts with a quick no. How sarcastic my answer is depends on who is asking and what stage of grief I am in that day.

LWB: How has LWB helped you on your journey?

Kara: It gives me a place to read about and to vent to others who know how it feels to go through life without children.

 

If you’ve been feeling that you’re all alone on this journey, I encourage you to read other members’ stories here. There is a lot of wisdom and support in the stories themselves and in the comments. Then, when you’re ready, I hope you’ll share your story with us. Like Kara, you’ll find a safe place to “vent to others who know how it feels to go through life without children.” 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.

Whiny Wednesday

Whiny_WednesdayBitter. Desperate. Pathetic, sad, and lonely. That’s Hollywood’s typical childfree woman.

But don’t worry, in the end she’ll get her man and, of course, she’ll get her baby.

This week’s topic:

The way the media portrays childless women

Happy whining, my friends!

Marking Anniversaries…The Happy and the Sad

By Lisa Manterfield

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March is a funny old month for me. It’s filled with all kinds of anniversaries, both happy and sad.

March is the month I lost my dad (sad) and, later, my stepdad (also sad).

March is also the month I married Mr. Fab (happy). We celebrate 11 years this year (very happy).

March is the month Mr. Fab’s granddaughter was born (happy and sad) and quickly became the month we decided to stop the quest for a child of our own (very, very sad).

It’s also the month I wrote my very first post on this blog (sad at the time, but very happy now).

So you can see, checking off the days on the March calendar can be a bit of an emotional ride.

What I notice, though, is that with each passing year, I’m less sad about the sad anniversaries and more happy about the happy ones. Even though “time heals all wounds” can ring hollow in a time of sadness, I’ve come to learn that it’s actually true.

Five years ago, when I wrote my first post, I couldn’t imagine that life could be happy without children. Oh sure, I knew I’d “get over it” eventually, but I never expected to move beyond the sadness.

What I’ve learned from all my sad anniversaries is that the sadness gets smaller every year, just a little at first, sometimes so little that you barely notice, until one day you can talk about the thing you’ve lost without choking on the sadness.

The sadness doesn’t completely go away, but most days it’s so small I barely notice it.

 

What’s next?

Anniversaries of all kinds are a good time to step back, reevaluate, and look back at how far we’ve come.

When I look back at some of my early posts on this blog, I see a woman who was angry and lost, but also skirting the deeper emotional truths about what she was going through. And she was still hiding in shame.

Later, I found a way to write more openly about how I felt, and eventually I was able to gain insight into the effects of my loss and how I might have better handled my grief.

These days, I’ll admit that I don’t have much new to say. I’m still learning, of course, but much I’ve what I’ve learned on my journey has been channeled into the ebook series, which I hope will continue to help other women stepping onto this path.

Those of you who’ve been long-time readers (and thank you for your support over the years) will no doubt understand how something that once consumed every waking moment can become something you think about only once in a while.

I also know that new readers are experiencing this for the first time, and I want to maintain this community, because I know it’s one of the few places to find true support and to be able to voice what our friends and family often don’t understand.

Over the coming year, I plan to rerun some of the more helpful posts from the past five years, as well as new ones as they come up. There’ll be posts from Kathleen and me, and of course, I wouldn’t dare take away Whiny Wednesday. If you’ve been a reader for a while, it’s a good way to see how far you’ve come over the years. If you’re a new reader, I hope you’ll find these posts resonate with you.

And what will I be doing with all my spare time if I’m not writing new posts? I’ll be working on the final book in the series, due out in June. I’m also working like crazy on a new novel that I hope to be able to tell you more about soon.

 

And there are presents!

As this is a celebration, of course there are presents. Several people have asked me if the ebook series will be available in format other than for e-readers. The ultimate goal is to put all four ebooks together as a print book later this year, but in the meantime, I’ve created downloadable PDFs of the books.

In honor of our five years together, you can grab yourself a free copy of the first book in the series. It will be available until the end of March, and can you get your copy by using this special link.

Get your free ebook

The other two books are also now available in this format here:

Workbook 2: Getting Through the Grief of Childlessness

Workbook 3: Dealing With the Day-to-Day Challenges

Workbook 4: Thriving in a New Happily Ever After (Out June 2014. Available for pre-order)

So, all that’s left is to say thank you for your ongoing support, for showing up here and reminding me that I’m not alone, and for continuing to support and help one another on this journey. I’m very honored to share this space with you.

~Lisa

Creating an Ending

By Lisa Manterfield

releaseRecently, a reader said she’d had an idea to write a letter to the child she never had, and she asked if I thought it was crazy.

Here’s what I told her (edited slightly to maintain her anonymity):

“Writing a letter isn’t crazy at all. One of the things that makes our grief so unique is that there is seldom a finite end to the journey. There’s almost always some option still open, and the loss is more of a gradual moving away from the dream, rather than a sudden end. It makes it really hard to acknowledge the end and grieve that loss.

“Doing something tangible, such as writing a letter, creates a kind of marker that says, ‘this is the end.’ And the other ladies [in the group] are absolutely right about not holding in your grief. If you need to find a time to be alone, close the door to your room, and just let it all out, do it. It’s exhausting, but it’s amazing how much grief you can purge with a good cry.”

I told her I would write a post on this topic so that you could share your experiences with creating an end to something that has none. So here it is.

In order to start moving on with your healing process, did you need to create an ending with something symbolic and meaningful to you? Please share any “crazy” ideas that helped you find a stopping place and begin coming to terms with your life without children.

It Got Me Thinking…About World Travelers

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

IGMTSo often when we talk about the benefits of being childfree, people bring up traveling. “You’re so lucky you don’t have the responsibilities of having to raise kids, so you can travel anytime.” “You’re so lucky you don’t have to pay for private school and sports and music lessons, so you have all that extra money to travel.”

Well, yes, and not really. While it’s true that my husband and I can take advantage of the off-seasons (vs. visiting the sites with the crowds of families who are off during school holidays), we are both committed to our careers. Taking time off isn’t a sure thing when we need to meet commitments to clients and colleagues. Also, we aren’t super-rich. We live a modest life, certainly one with many advantages, but if we had kids, we wouldn’t be spending our spare cash, we’d probably just have more debt.

That being said, if we really wanted to travel—or pursue any big dream—we could make it work. It’s just the two of us, and if we decided to chuck everything, buy a couple of backpacks, and hit the road, we could.

I’ve been inspired by a series of articles I stumbled upon on the BBC’s website, under the heading of “How I Quit My Job to Travel.” This article is written by a married couple who has been traveling together for eight years, and this article is by a single gal who ditched her “great job” in a “good career” to embark on her adventures. In each, they share the choices, compromises, and opportunities they embraced to turn their dreams into real life.

As I continue to wrestle with what I lost by not getting to be a mommy, I am nudging myself to seek what I might gain. Articles like the ones linked above offer encouragement and creative ideas on how we can open new avenues for ourselves, whether that’s learning a new skill, acquiring season tickets to the opera, building stronger connections in the community, or traveling to exotic locales.

What do you dream about? Can you take one small step today toward making it happen?

 

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