filling the silence in the motherhood discussion
It’s Whiny Wednesday, your chance to gripe about the issues you’re dealing with this week. This week’s suggested topic is one we’ve all had to deal with:
An over-abundance of work pregnancies
I can relate to this one. When I was trying to conceive, I managed a small department of about eight people. One year we had three simultaneous pregnancies…and none of them was mine.
Whine away!
By Sheridan Voysey
Childlessness isn’t just a “female thing.” It cuts a man up too.
I know. I’ve felt it—felt each stinging cut.
For ten years my wife, Merryn, and I dreamed of starting a family. Our journey in pursuit of that dream included special diets, courses of fertility-boosting supplements, healing prayer, and chiropractic sessions (yes, chiropractic sessions—you’ll try anything). The journey included numerous rounds of costly IVF treatment, and a year of assessment as potential adoptive parents followed by an agonising two-year wait for our hoped-for adoptive child.
We pursued our dream with all the energy we had. But our dream never eventuated.
Exhausted from a decade in the wilderness of infertility, we brought our dream of a baby to an end on Christmas Day, 2010, after doctors had told us, just days before, that our final IVF round had been successful. They’d been wrong.
I feel the loss of that hoped-for child today. I feel it when I see a father tickling his giggling daughter, or as I watch a family celebrate the birthday of their teenage son, or as I see a proud father walk his radiant, veiled daughter down the aisle. I hear a little voice at these moments that says, “You’ll never have that,” followed by a jolting sense of injustice. “It’s just not fair,” the voice says, “when we tried so hard to have a child.”
Yes, infertility can cut a man up.
It cuts a man up in more ways than the loss of fatherhood, though. Having written a book about Merryn’s and my experience of starting again after infertility, and sharing our story through speaking, I regularly have men confidentially email or pull me aside at conferences to share feelings they rarely share. “I can’t talk about this to my friends,” one guy told me. “I have low sperm count. I can’t father a child. That’ll hardly impress my football buddies.” For many men this threatened masculinity is the most difficult aspect of infertility.
The lost opportunity of fatherhood. Threatened masculinity. Infertility can bring a third kind of pain to a man too—a pain born of empathy.
Try watching your wife’s bottom lip quiver as the doctor delivers the results of those first fertility tests. Watch the sadness grow in her eyes—a sadness that may last for years.
Watch your wife’s face contort in pain as the needle extracting the eggs for your first IVF round goes in. Watch as she later recovers from the trauma in shocked silence.
Watch your wife wait in hope for the results of the blood test—for the phone call with the good news that you pray for. Watch time and again as her hope falls to the floor.
Watch as she waits, and waits, and waits for the phone call from the adoption agency. Any day now it could come—the call to collect our child. But the call never comes.
Watch as she sits on the bed, a circle of tissues around her and her eyes rubbed red. Watch as she cries night after night. Feel her body shake as you hold her.
Watch as she enters an identity crisis, wondering if she’ll ever become the person—the mother—she longs to be.
And watch as she struggles with the faith that once sustained her. Watch as she wonders if the God she prays to cares. If he cared, surely he’d give her a family.
Watch all this—watch and try not to be cut up. When the one you love most suffers so much, how can your soul not be ripped to shreds?
Over three years have passed since my wife and I brought our quest for a child to an end. We’re in a different place now—we’ve started life again. And our story is helping others who need their own new beginning after a broken dream.
But please know this: childlessness isn’t just a “female thing.” Infertility cuts a man up too. In more ways than you may know.
Sheridan Voysey is a UK-based writer, speaker, and broadcaster. His latest book, Resurrection Year: Turning Broken Dreams into New Beginnings, chronicles his and his wife’s journey to start life afresh after ten years of infertility. Follow him on Twitter @sheridanvoysey, Facebook, and get his articles and podcasts at www.sheridanvoysey.com.
When a reader suggested this week’s topic, I spotted myself immediately. The topic is:
Staying busy to fill the hole of being childless
Work, hobbies, school, projects, friends in need, volunteering: Have you packed your life with busyness in order to fill a gap?
It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s on your mind today?
By Lisa Manterfield
Exiting news! The first book in the Life Without Baby ebook series is out today. Workbook 1: Letting Go of the Dream of Motherhood is available on Amazon now and will be showing up at other online retailers over the coming weeks.
It’s been an interesting process to gather all that I’ve learned about this strange journey over the past years. I wish I’d known five years ago (or maybe even before then) that it was okay to let go of my quest. I wish I’d understood that the loss of my dream meant more than simply not having children and that it would affect the foundation of my identity, my relationships, and all my plans for the future. And I wish I’d known to give myself permission to grieve, instead of putting on a brave face and pretending everything was okay. At least I know that now.
I’ve learned so much from all of you as I’ve voiced my difficulties here and heard about yours. You have taught me so much about this issue and about myself. For that, I am very grateful.
I’m also enormously grateful to Kathleen for her help in crafting the book and then her brilliant work editing and proofreading the final manuscript. There’s so much that happens behind the scenes of this site that couldn’t happen without her.
So, please, grab yourself a copy of the book. It’s affordably priced at $2.99. Your support of these projects enables me to keep this site running without ads or fees. Don’t worry if you don’t have an e-reader. You can download a free App so you can read the book on your computer, phone, tablet, or maybe even your watch!
You can find Workbook 1 here. And if you can’t get enough, you can even pre-order Workbook 2. I’d love to get your feedback if you find them helpful.
By Lisa Manterfield
I absolutely love this article by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman about how not to say the wrong thing to someone in crisis. I wish it was mandatory reading for everyone, and I especially wish it came with a note explaining that it applies when talking to infertiles and the childless-not-by-choice.
The gist of their Ring Theory is that the person in crisis is at the center of the ring and those next closest to the person occupy subsequent rings. In the case of someone coming to terms with not having children, she would be at the center, her spouse or partner on the next ring, perhaps closest family and friends on the next, and more distant family, coworkers, and acquaintances beyond that.
The rule is that that if people have something mean or insensitive or opinionated to say, they say it to someone on a bigger ring. When speaking to someone on a smaller ring, they can only listen or—if they must say something—offer help, support, or comfort. No advice, no miracle stories, no blame or shame. No offering of their kids, no suggestions to adopt. “I’m sorry” is all that needs to be said. If they want to dump, dump outwards, not inwards.
I wish people would understand that someone who has just acknowledged she won’t ever have children is in crisis, and what she needs more than judgment and unhelpful help is for people to say to the right thing.
The other day I spoke to a friend who had just been sideswiped. Like me, she’s been off the “baby train” for several years and has truly come to terms with the fact that she won’t have children.
Then she had a birthday and found herself totally sideswiped, caught off-guard by her grief, and in the kitchen having a meltdown.
What happened?
She’s not sure and neither was I. Maybe her birthday signified moving one step closer to menopause and the final loss of the possibility of motherhood. Maybe spending time with a friend’s son reminded her of the missing part of her life. Maybe she was feeling alone in her family-oriented community.
The point is that sometimes, even when we’re sure we have it together, even when we’ve done the grief work, even when we’ve cried an ocean and think there’s nothing left to resolve, sometimes we just get sideswiped.
Has this happened to you? What unexpected trigger has caught you off-guard?
As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods
I am so grateful to Michele for sharing her story. The events that led to her being childfree are devastating, yet at 39, she has such a grounded perspective about everything that has happened to her. When I asked “How do you respond when people ask if you have children?”, she replied, “Honestly, with my shoulders down and head high.”
I invite you to make yourself a nice cup of tea and settle in to discover how she has made peace with her “choices,” and I hope you will find some peace and encouragement for your journey too.
LWB: Please briefly describe your dream of motherhood.
Michele: I don’t know that I had a dream of motherhood per se. It was more that it was a built-in assumption that I would have a child some day, an assumption that I’ve always embraced.
LWB: Are you childfree by choice, chance, or circumstance?
Michele: Circumstance and choice. Six years ago I had two heart attacks in one week. The cause, a Spontaneous Coronary Arterial Dissection (SCAD), is rare and little understood. What is “known,” at least to the extent the medical community can say with some degree of empirical evidence, is that when they see this, it is often in women who are either postpartum or pregnant. The fact that I was neither made my situation that much more unusual. So without certainty, the best they could tell me was that I “shouldn’t” get pregnant, because the chance of another dissection happening was “astronomically high,” and likely “life-changing, life-ending.” Biologically, I can have children; the decision not to do so sadly had to be based on imperfect, incomplete information, but it was all I had to go on, so I did. In this sense, it was also a choice: the prospect of life versus the likelihood of death.
LWB: Where are you on your journey now?
Michele: Reconciled. When they told me I shouldn’t get pregnant, I had been only recently released from the ICU, after having had my first heart attack. I was 33 years old, a runner, a person who ate well, never did drugs or smoked, had low blood pressure, low cholesterol, and, barring a kidney stone a few years ago and salmonella when I was seven, all in all I was in good health. No one can imagine being told that you “shouldn’t” get pregnant, especially in that moment, especially when you had recently bought a house with your husband of 10 years with the intention of doing just this. It was a second level of shock. I’m not usually one for denial or distraction, but in truth the adjustment to life after a heart attack trumped the sudden reality of no pregnancy. It helped assuage the grief. It’s taken time to allow the situation to sink in, and to make peace with my decision to have a life without children, but as I have found, there are many ways to “birth” things in life. I’m a writer in my heart and vocation; as Jane Austen put it, my characters are my children.
LWB: What was the turning point for you?
Michele: When, a year to the month of the first anniversary of my heart attacks, I found out I was—despite every effort to the contrary—pregnant. I was carrying the child I had always anticipated, fathered by someone I loved, with a doomed destiny: the doctors told me the likelihood of a fetus surviving was less than mine. I had looked death in the eyes twice in the last year, and now I had to face it again, and this time, not mine alone. I sought out the opinions of high-risk OB/GYNs—the best of the best—and had them team up with my cardiologists—also the best of the best—to assess the risk. When the verdict came in nothing had changed, and, in fact, was hammered home that much more. “We will, of course, go along with whatever you choose, but our joint recommendation remains the same: do this and you’ll likely die.” So I chose life, the only choice I could.
LWB: What’s the best advice you’ve received?
Michele: On coping with not having children? None. The best I’ve gotten is a bumbling mess of clichés, which, after six years, I’ve learned to smile at because they speak to a certain truth about the fraught relationship between reality and subjective discomfort.
LWB: What have you learned about yourself?
Michele: That procreation sustains our collective existence, but doesn’t necessarily define a life well-lived. Just as I was forced to choose life in one less-than-pleasant way, I also now have the opportunity—and freedom—to choose it in another.
LWB: What is the best advice you’d offer someone else like you?
Michele: Don’t fight what you can’t change. Seize the forces of what you do have.
Michele is trained as a therapist, ethicist, and mediator, with a focus on transitions and meaning systems, and works as a practitioner and freelance writer. She has written several books on emotional health and healing, all available on Amazon. She also has a new novel coming soon! Visit her website, www.micheledemarco.com, for information and updates.
Every time I read new responses to the Our Stories questionnaire, I overflow with admiration and respect for the woman who shared them. What an extraordinary community of women we have at Life Without Baby! I am in awe of your honesty, bravery, and compassion.
Did you notice I said “your”? That’s right, I include you in this group because I know your story matters too, and I hope you will accept my invitation to download the questions and share your perspective. It’s a quick and easy process, one that I believe will help you gain new insights into your own healing. Plus, I think there will be at least one woman out there who will read it and see herself in your story, who will take another step on her journey toward healing because she will finally know she is not alone.
Click here to learn more about the process and to download the Our Stories questionnaire.
I can’t wait to hear from you!
~Kathleen
Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.
As I continue on my own journey of healing, I find it hard sometimes to write about the issues that used to cause me such discomfort. It’s amazing how the human brain can dull past pain. So I appreciate when readers contact me with ideas for topics they’d like to see discussed.
Recently, Jennifer sent me this question about jealousy within families:
“I see a lot of people post about the joy of having nieces and nephews. Well, my brother’s wife is pregnant and I’m feeling completely pushed of out the picture. It may be because I reacted with shock and sadness over their first pregnancy. But I did write a lengthy, heartfelt apology and when that resulted in a miscarriage, my husband and I were the first to make it to the hospital and we stayed 11 hours with them. Now, my sister-in-law is being really removed from me.
I really want to have the connection with my niece or nephew, but I’m afraid I won’t. And honestly, I’m jealous.
I wonder if others have similar experiences?”
A new baby in the family is a really difficult situation to navigate. There’s such a mixed bag of emotions involved. You’re trying to deal with your own grief, while also feeling alone because others don’t understand what you’re going through. Then a cause for celebration gets thrown in on top of that and, as much as you know you’re supposed to be happy for the new parents, all you can feel is resentment and jealousy that it’s not you. So, guilt and shame for being a bad sport get piled on top of that.
I also know that other people don’t know how to handle us when they have good news. I recall a friend being extremely uncomfortable about telling me she was pregnant. She dealt with it by sitting down, explaining that she knew this was difficult for me, and asking me how much or how little I wanted to know or be involved. I really appreciated her being open and it allowed me to be honest with her about how I felt. I’ve also had the experience of a friend saying, “Guess what?!” and then launching into every detail of how she found out and how it feels to be pregnant, while I sat and squirmed. Often people don’t know what to say or how best to handle us “volatile” folks, so they pull away and say nothing.
How about you? Have you experienced jealousy over new babies in the family? How have you dealt with it? Have you had a good experience with a friend or family member handling their news with aplomb?
If you have a topic or question you’d like to see discussed on the blog, please drop me a line. You can email me at lisa [at] lisamanterfield [dot] com or go through the Contact page.
By Lorraine Ash, M.A.
©Dave Bredeson | Dreamstime.com
After my daughter, Victoria Helen, was stillborn at full term, I received a strange message from many people, all carrying a theme: I was incomplete.
I wrote a memoir about surviving the stillbirth. I never thought I’d write a memoir, but, of all the genres, it was the most perfect and necessary for me to process the violence that had rocked my life.
The book, Life Touches Life: A Mother’s Story of Stillbirth and Healing, gained readers and touched hearts throughout the United States and in the Middle East, Australia, Europe, China, Canada, and Mexico. Later, I wrote a sequel, Self and Soul: On Creating a Meaningful Life, about how my life, years after the loss, blossomed. What wonderful communions I enjoyed with my readers.
But none of that stopped the insistent message that my life was fundamentally flawed.
One book reviewer told me my story was not one of courage, but of cowardice, because I didn’t get pregnant again.
“You stopped after failing,” she said.
“I couldn’t get pregnant after that,” I’d replied. “We tried, but it didn’t happen.” She remained immovable in her opinion.
Indeed my husband and I had made a decision that was right for us: we opted against fertility treatments. We’d just gone through hell and barely come back—literally, in my case. The Group B Strep that took my daughter’s life almost claimed mine. For a couple of weeks, I was touch and go. When I was suspended in the uncertain hell between life and death, we became very respectful of the powers of Mother Nature. We decided not to try forcing her to do our bidding.
Once, a well-meaning friend offered this thought: “You had half an experience—a pregnancy up to giving birth. Go and complete it. Adopt somebody else’s newborn baby.”
The piece de resistance, though, was the advice of a famed author who saw the Life Touches Life manuscript in its early stages.
“Stop writing this,” she said. “It’s not an appropriate topic.”
“Why ever not?” I asked, genuinely perplexed.
“Because stillbirth is something that didn’t happen,” she said. “Write about something that did.”
She’s the narrative expert, I thought, but apparently there are stories she doesn’t understand. Something happened, all right. Trust me.
So now two things are true of me: I do not have progeny, and I do not live out my days insisting upon, or lamenting, a destiny that did not, for whatever reason, materialize. I know my genes will not live on. Instead, I embrace a different kind of legacy. I approach eternity not by looking to some faraway future, beyond the imagination, but by embracing the moment called Now as it resonates through my whole being—body, mind, and spirit.
My life is about helping others reach those places inside themselves, too, and encouraging them to tell the full truth of their stories as they are—not as they could have been. My message is that today is the only day any of us can affect and that today, no matter the circumstances, is full and complete.
As the great Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh has said, “Life is available only in the present moment. If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.”
Tomorrow will be full and complete, too—but different. I can trace the change while still acknowledging the completeness. Becoming whole is a spiritual process. No matter what happens on the outside, it’s an inside job.
Do you live fully in the story of your life, as it has unfolded? Or are there still gifts in your experiences, however painful, that you have not yet opened?
Lorraine has generously offered a complimentary copy of her new book Self and Soul: On Creating a Meaningful Life. If you’d like to win a copy, simply leave a comment and type #gift at the end. I’ll do a random drawing on Monday, September 8th.
Lorraine Ash, M.A., is a New Jersey author, award-winning journalist, essayist, book editor, and writing teacher. Self and Soul: On Creating a Meaningful Life, her second book, is available in a variety of formats and online stores, all presented here. Reach Lorraine at www.LorraineAsh.com, www.facebook.com/LorraineAshAuthor , or @LorraineVAsh.
Hello and welcome back!
I don’t know about you, but for me this summer flew by. I had a great time with my visiting family and got to spend some really wonderful and long overdue time with my brother, niece, nephew, and their friends/partners. It was exhausting and fun, and I was very grateful to be able to take that time.
Despite allegedly taking the month off from Life Without Baby, a lot has been happening, so I’ll do a quick update and then we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled programming, as they say.
Last month I was invited to join a conversation for the Canadian radio show, Day 6, on CBC. I joined Otherhood’s Melanie Notkin and Laura Scott from the Childless-by-Choice Project to speak about the issues faced by childless women. We touched on many topics, including the growing trend of childlessness, social acceptance of childless women, and how each of us has made peace with our situations.
I am incredibly appreciative for the safe and non-judgmental environment that host Piya Chattopadhyay created. (I also got to geek out about getting a behind-the-scenes peek at the NPR studios here in L.A.
Anyway, you can hear a recording of the segment here.
My other big news is that, during my “vacation” I finally committed to writing the Life Without Baby book I’ve been talking about for about the past three years. I’ve been so overwhelmed by the thought of gathering all I’ve learned over the past five-plus years and writing an entire 250-300 page tome that I never managed to get past the first couple of chapters.
Then I hit on the idea of writing a series of mini eBooks covering each of the stages of the journey. Somehow, researching, writing, editing, and completing a short 40-50 page book felt so much more doable, and in fact, over the summer, I did just that.
Available for pre-order now
The first book in the series is Letting Go of the Dream of Motherhood and deals with the impossible decision of when it’s time to let go, how to create a meaningful ending to an indefinite journey, and how to begin making peace with a life without children.
This book is scheduled for release on October 6 and it’s already up on Amazon and available for pre-order.
It’s only available in eBook format at the moment, but my goal is (drumroll, please) to have all the books finished and compiled into a printed version by Mother’s Day 2015. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.
Here on the blog, look out for regular posts from me, as well as weekly posts from Kathleen, more Our Stories, some special guest bloggers, and of course, Whiny Wednesday. I’ll also be asking for your input on topics you’d like to see covered, so watch for that coming soon.
I hope you enjoyed your summer (or winter—Hi, Mali!) I look forward to catching up with here soon.
~ "a raw, transparent account of the gut-wrenching journey of infertility."
~ "a welcome sanity check for women left to wonder how society became so fixated on motherhood."
