filling the silence in the motherhood discussion
My apologies for missing last week’s Whiny Wednesday. It wasn’t some cruel April Fool’s joke; I just forgot to hit the “Publish” button!
Often we feel pressure to do something incredible with our lives because we won’t be doing the other “incredible” thing: being mothers.
In the past it’s sparked some healthy discussion, so I thought I’d use it as this week’s Whiny Wednesday topic:
Feeling the pressure to do something else amazing instead
Let the healthy discussion begin!
“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves;
we must die to one life before we can enter another.”
In these strange and scary times, this quote in a book about writing struck a chord with me. It relates to so many things in life, including making peace with a life without children.
One of the hardest stretches of my journey was the space between realizing that our options for building a family were running out, and the point where we made the decision to stop trying. I knew there were options still open, but they were beyond the scope of what Mr. Fab and I were willing to do. At some point we had to make a decision that we would not have children and that we would find a way to be okay with that. It was one of the hardest (and perhaps longest) decisions I’ve ever had to make.
I’m sure you’ve found yourself in this kind of situation in other areas of life, too. You know that you have to take a new direction, that ultimately it will be the right decision, but as France says, in order to do that, we have to leave a part of ourselves behind. Sometime the hardest part is listening to ourselves and not being afraid to make the wrong choice.
My first career was in engineering. I’ve made several career changes since then, trying to find the place in the world where I’d be happy. I’ve found it in writing, but it took me a long time to get here.
Many people can’t understand why, after all those years of college and graduate school, I would abandon a perfectly good and respectable career. I’ll be the first to admit that if I’d just stuck to engineering, I would probably have been more “successful” and definitely would be making more money, maybe own a home and live comfortably, but I know I wouldn’t have been happy. I might have been successful by the conventional definition, but the cost of sticking to a career that didn’t make me happy, just because it’s what was expected of me, didn’t make any sense. But it wasn’t easy to let go of that life and take a risk of finding happiness in another life.
Part of finding happiness is letting go of that which doesn’t make us happy. Although I believed that having children would make me happy, I was miserably unhappy running in circles trying to produce a baby that my body had no interest in creating. I could have gone on trying forever, but the cost to my mental and physical wellbeing would have been enormous. Letting go of that part of my life enabled me to find peace with my new life, even if it’s a life I wasn’t sure I wanted.
Just a reminder that, as Life Without Baby moves into the next stage of its life, the community forum will be closing down on April 8. If you’ve met people you’d like to stay in touch with, now is the time to exchange information.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
This simple phrase is the one thing I wish someone had said to me. It would have meant that someone—one person—acknowledged that my inability to have a child was an enormous loss for me and that I needed to grieve that loss, as if my children had existed.
As many of us are now facing a different kind of loss as we adjust to life alongside COVID-19, it’s worth taking a moment to acknowledge that small griefs can trigger our dormant deeper grief, and that the feelings of loss many are experiencing right now can be compounded when we’re dealing with other losses.
So let’s talk a bit about loss and grief.
In Western culture in particular, most people don’t know how to behave when someone loses a loved one. They follow accepted protocols such as sending cards or flowers. Some may call to offer help or just show up on the doorstep with the ubiquitous tuna casserole. A few will know to give people space when they’re mourning, expect unexpected behavior, and be ready for tears or anger. Still, most people struggle with how to handle those in pain.
Our society also has an unwritten hierarchy of loss. Someone who’s lost a spouse, a child, or a parent is given different allowances to someone who’s lost a boyfriend/girlfriend, a friend, or an elderly relative. Further down the ranking come pets, coworkers, and ex-lovers. Even people who’ve lost houses, jobs, and limbs are allowed a degree of understanding, sympathy, and mourning. But most people have no idea how to react when they can’t see the thing that was lost—in this case, motherhood and all that it encompassed. Many people won’t understand—or even acknowledge—your need to mourn at all.
In her 2010 memoir, Spoken from the Heart, former first lady Laura Bush writes about her experience with infertility. “The English language lacks the words to mourn an absence,” she writes. “…For someone who was never there at all, we are wordless to capture that particular emptiness. For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like slant, ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?”
The fact is that your children and your idea of motherhood did exist for you. If you had planned on having children, you undoubtedly made room in your life for them. This might have included creating life plans around the assumption that someday kids would be part of that plan. In some cases, making room for children in your life might have included making physical room, perhaps dedicating and even decorating a room in your home that would one day become a nursery, or it may have involved moving to a bigger house or a more family-friendly neighborhood. Did you pick out names for your children? Did you imagine which family members they might take after? Did you fantasize about your daughter winning a Nobel Prize for her research or your son bringing home a gold medal from the Olympics? You probably thought about the kind of mother you wanted to be. You collected data as you went through life, putting check marks through things you observed that you’d do better when you became a mother and striking red lines through the things you’d never do with your children. And you undoubtedly imagined what it would feel like to hold a child that was yours.
Here are some other losses you might be feeling:
Your children and your identity as a mother existed and were very real to you. You have experienced a great loss, and the only way to begin coming to terms with that loss is to acknowledge it and mourn it.
This post is excerpted from Lisa’s book, Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen.
A TIME magazine cover story awhile ago, “The Childfree Life,” came with an image of an attractive (and color-coordinated) couple lounging on a tropical, white sand beach, seemingly without a care in the world, resplendent in their designer sunglasses. That image prompted this week’s Whiny Wednesday topic:
The assumption that if you don’t have kids you have money to burn
Whine away, my friends.
I was asked once, by a well-intentioned person, if I thought I’d waited too long to start trying to have children. I have to admit that the thought has flitted across my mind on more than one occasion, but once I stop to think it through, I’m able to answer the question with a resounding “No!”
I remember being completely affronted (and rightly so) by a very conservative college professor who told me that the prime age for women to have children was 18. Of course, looking at a chart of fertility vs. age, I now see that he was correct, even if his suggestion that motherhood might be a more suitable choice than college was extremely misguided.
Looking back at my 18-year-old self, it’s hard to imagine what would have happened if that young woman had become a mother. Yes, I know lots of women do it, and I probably would have too, if I’d had to. But thinking about all the upheavals I’ve put myself through, I just cannot imagine that a child would have benefited from having me as an 18-year-old mother. Maybe (maybe) my supposed topnotch fertility at that age would have enabled me to conceive, but it would have been no guarantee of my suitability as a mother.
The truth is, I have absolutely no idea if I was fertile at 18. I assumed that, like many, many women, I would still be fertile at 34, and look how that turned out. There’s no way of knowing how long ago my body decided it wasn’t up to the task of reproducing, and now I’ll never know.
When I look back at the 18-34 years, they were rocky, but good. I had all kinds of experiences that I couldn’t have had if I’d had children to take care for. I went to college—twice—moved to another continent, traveled to many countries, did volunteer work, had fun but unsuitable relationships, changed careers (more than twice), and got to sample adventures not well-matched to motherhood. I certainly don’t feel as if I wasted those years. I wonder if I’d feel the same if I’d been raising children all those years.
So, no, I don’t feel as if I waited too long. I waited until I was ready, and while I waited, I was busy living my life to the fullest, and I don’t consider that wasted time at all.
Dear friends,
This week marks the tenth anniversary of Life Without Baby. When I started this blog to help myself sort through the mess of infertility, I never imagined that, ten years later, I’d have posted more than 1,600 posts, received over 12,000 comments, and become part of an online community of almost 4,000 members. I feel like I’ve got to know so many of you through your comments, emails, and social media posts. I’ve even had the very good fortune to meet some of you in person. I have felt connected to a worldwide group of women who understand me, and I am grateful for the support you’ve given me.
For ten years, I’ve been writing about letting go of the life we had planned, about working through grief, and moving on to a new chapter in which we can find joy in our lives again. The time has now come for me to practice what I’ve been preaching. It’s time for me to embrace a new chapter in my own life.
2020 has already been a year of huge transition. Mr. Fab took early retirement, we had to say good bye to our beloved fur-baby, Felicity, and in a few weeks’ time, I’ll transition into the second half-century of my life. My professional life is also transitioning, with several very positive changes happening in my writing career (which I promise to tell you about as soon as I’m able.) As a result, my work is now demanding more than my full-time attention. All in all, I’m receiving a clear message from the universe that it is my time to let go and move on.
I have struggled with this decision, because you and this community mean so much to me, but here is the transition you can expect to see over the coming weeks and months.
Firstly, Life Without Baby won’t go away entirely. I plan to maintain the site as-is for the foreseeable future. You will still be able to find old posts and comments when you need to know someone else understands what you’re going through.
On April 10, the private community forum will close, but I will continue to post new posts on the blog until May 11, the day after Mother’s Day here is the U.S. My last post on that date will include links to what I think are the most helpful posts for different stages of this journey. After that, I will make some small adjustments to the site to make archived resources easy to find, but I won’t be writing new posts on a regular basis. The social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter will remain active for now.
I want to thank you for being with me on this journey. Many of you have written to say how much the site has helped you, but you should know that having you in my trusted community has been a huge help to me too.
I know several of you have followed me over into my fiction writing and I’m so pleased when I connect with someone from this community over there. Although I write stories about young adult women, the themes of lost dreams, grief, letting go, and finding strength find their way into my fiction work. If you’d like to stay connected, you can find me at LisaManterfield.com. I send out a monthly newsletter from there and am also active on Facebook, Instagram, and sometimes Twitter.
So, before I get over-emotional, I will sign off for now. I still have 15 more posts to write before May 11 and I hope to catch up with you in the comments.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being a part of my world.
Lisa xxx
This is a hot Whiny Wednesday topic and I’m sure you’ve all heard this at some point. I’d love to hear your thoughts:
“Why don’t you just adopt?”
Spring has almost sprung and, as usual, I find myself in a cleaning and decluttering frenzy.
I’ve made trips to the thrift store with bags of clothes that are too big, too small, or just plain ugly. I’ve purged my kitchen of all those “good idea” gadgets, rusted cake pans, and broken plates that I’ll get around to gluing “someday.” I’ve even parted with a box full of books, which is a big give-up for me. And I’ve been eyeing the curtains in my living room and thinking about throwing them in the washer.
I go through this every year and find it very therapeutic. But in the past, it’s also been a dangerous pursuit, fraught with emotional landmines.
One year, while rummaging through a rarely used cupboard, I came across some baby-related stuff. I’d been getting rid of all those things bit-by-bit, and I was fairly sure they were all gone. So it was a deflating moment when I unearthed some items that had slipped through the net.
This find was particularly difficult, as it was the glossy information packet we received from our first fertility clinic. It had a picture of a beautiful glowing baby on the front and was filled with encouraging stories, happy family photos, and explanations as to how the expert team would help us build the family of our dreams. Inside I found test results, ovulation charts, and notes written in my own handwriting, reminding me of where I’d been. The whole thing reeked of hope and it stirred up some of those old emotions.
To my credit, I ditched the whole thing without getting upset. I didn’t keep one scrap of paper. There was another, similar item in the cupboard, too, but now I can’t even remember what it was, because I tossed that out as well.
After that, I went to my bookshelves and pulled out the Knitting for Two book I’d been keeping. In addition to the maternity cardigan I started (that was still somewhere in the house) I’d actually used the book to knit a sweater for a friend’s baby. I only did it once, because it was so painful, and I realized that it was part of the hair shirt I chose to wear for a while, when I was forcing myself to be around other people’s babies, and to be “genuinely happy” about pregnancy announcements. This was long before I figured out my need to grieve and heal, so that I could genuinely be happy for someone else’s news. At that time, I had opted to torture myself by knitting from my baby’s book. So out it went.
My purging of baby stuff was a gradual process. At first, I couldn’t get rid of anything. After a while I threw out the assorted test kits, and the doctor info, moving slowly towards throwing out baby clothes (and even a maternity top a friend had given me.) The fertility and pregnancy books went next, and so it continued.
I’ve no doubt that there will be other landmines scattered around my house, even now, and that they’ll come to the surface some day, but now I know I can handle them. And I know I can throw them away with no (or little) love lost.
You’ve probably noticed that there are triggers all around—at the mall, in the mail, on TV, in the streets. So this week’s Whiny Wednesday topic is this:
Being caught in public by surprise feelings of loss or grief
Whine away, my friends.
If you feel like you’re alone on this journey, I have some good news for you.
Today I am helping Jody Day of Gateway Women kick off a blog tour for the release of the second edition of her excellent book, Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children. Between now and March 19, the book’s publication day in the U.K., the tour will visit twenty-four blogs around the world, each with its own community of childless and women men.
Twenty-four!
That statistic by itself makes me feel less alone. We, my friends, are no longer lurking in the shadows. We are out there finding one another and traveling along this bumpy path together.
And here are some more statistics to give you hope. In the updated resources section of this new edition, Jody lists:
Often on this blog, I try to emphasize that you are not alone. I hope these resources and statistics will help validate that for you, and give you some new places to find information, support and compassion.
Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children comes out on March 19, and Jody has kindly offered a copy of the book for me to give away. Just post a comment below and I’ll select one commenter at random on March 19.
You can also enter to win at the other blog stops on the tour. You can find the complete list of tour stops here. The links will be updated as the posts go live
If you’d like to support Jody and her work and guarantee your very own copy of the book, you can pre-order a copy from here.
‘The book to recommend to patients when they face coming to terms with unavoidable childlessness.’ British Medical Journal
In Living the Life Unexpected, Jody Day addresses the experience of involuntary childlessness and provides a powerful, practical guide to help those negotiating a future without children come to terms with their grief; a grief that is only just beginning to be recognised by society.
This friendly, practical, humorous and honest guide from one of the world’s most respected names in childless support offers compassion and understanding and shows how it’s possible to move towards a creative, happy, meaningful and fulfilling future – even if it’s not the one you had planned.
Millions of people are now living a life without children, almost double that of a generation ago and the numbers are rising still. Although some are childfree by choice, many others are childless due to infertility or circumstance and are struggling to come to terms with their uncertain future. Although most people think that those without children either ‘couldn’t’ or ‘didn’t want’ to be parents, the truth is much more complex.
Jody Day was forty-four when she realized that her quest to be a mother was at an end. She presumed that she was through the toughest part, but over the next couple of years she was hit by waves of grief, despair and isolation. Eventually she found her way and in 2011 created Gateway Women, the global friendship and support network for childless women which has now helped almost two million people worldwide.
This edition, previously titled Rocking the Life Unexpected, has been extensively revised and updated, with significant additional content and case studies from forty involuntarily childless people (mostly women) from around the world.
And finally, if you’re looking for Mother’s Day support this year, Jody will be doing a webinar.
Free ‘Coping with Mother’s Day’ Webinar – Jody Day & Guests – Sat 14th March, 5pm GMT
This free webinar will be recorded and available to view/share on the Gateway Women website afterwards. We’re looking at the ways different experiences of childlessness and Mother’s Day can painfully intersect, offering insight, support and self-care tips.
~ "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."
