Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

How We Heal Our Emotional Scars

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Woman walking alone on beach

I have a large scar on my left knee. It has black lines of grit in it, and smooth patches of scar tissue that catch the light on an otherwise rough patch of skin.

My scar is 30 years old and I don’t think about it very often anymore. It doesn’t hurt, even when I poke it, and the wound that caused it healed long ago.

But if I think back to the day I got my scar, all the memories and the pain come flooding back. I remember the bike accident. I remember riding through the trees on a gorgeous sunny day, laughing with my friends and flirting with a boy I liked. I remember trying to get his attention and catching my front wheel on his back tire. I don’t recall sailing through the air, but I must have done, because I do remember skidding along the trail, trading bits of knee for bits of trail.

I remember sitting in the bath at home and crying as my mum tried to clean the wound. And I remember my older brother—a bit of an expert on injuries and scars—gently coaxing me to scrub out the grit or be left with a terrible scar.

I also have a vague recollection of a discussion among adults (not my parents) about plastic surgery and what a shame it would be if a “pretty girl” was disfigured by an ugly scar.

It all happened so long ago, but dredging up these memories can bring back all that pain, my embarrassment, the tenderness of my brother, the feeling that my scar would make me “less than” I could have been. I can feel all of it again as if it had happened in more recent memory.

Emotional Scars

I feel this way about my infertility and childlessness, too. Most days, I don’t think about it anymore. But lately I’ve been writing about grief and loss, and some of those awful feelings of sadness, anger, and deep, deep loss have been coming back to me.

It’s taught me that the healing process for emotional scars is much the same as for physical scars.

You have to suffer some terrible pain to clean the wound. You have to struggle through the initial all-consuming grief. You have to ask for support from people who might not know how to give it. You have to walk again, even if every step is agony. You’ll meet people who will see you as damaged and less than you could have been, because you no longer fit into their ideal of perfect.

But over time the healing begins. You’ll knock your healing wound a few times and break it open again. In one particularly unfortunate incident, you’ll fall on the same wound and end up with a double scar. But you’ll remember how much you loved riding a bike and you’ll take it up again. And you’ll meet new people, who don’t care whether you have one ugly knee, because they’re more interested in some other facet of who you are. And you’ll realize that being a “pretty girl” wasn’t what you were destined to be anyway, and you’re happy being an outdoorsy girl who’s accumulated a multitude of scars since then.

And when you’re shaving your legs (which is trickier because of the scar) you might sometimes recall how you got the scar and the pain you went through. But most days, you won’t even think about.

Having a big scar on my knee means I never got the opportunity to be a leg model, but I got to be so many other things instead, things that have made my life journey quite interesting. My infertility scar is much newer than my knee scar, but it is healing in ways I couldn’t have imagined when it was new and raw. And the things I never got to do or be have left room for so many other opportunities.

Whiny Wednesday: “Not having kids is selfish”

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I love the Internet for the breadth and depth of information it provides, and for the opportunity to read so many varying opinions on one subject. But sometimes I just have to walk away.

Case in point, I was doing research for a post and came across the following comment on an article:

“I take care of my parents. My children will take care of me. You want to force my children to take care of you too, meanwhile you arrogantly and selfishly live a much richer life style. Frankly, every GINK I’ve met was an arrogant, self-righteous, elitist. You should apologize for not adding to the future of our race.”

So after I ranted to myself about not expecting anyone else’s kids to take care of me, how our race of almost 7 billion people doesn’t need much adding to, and how narrow-minded this woman was to tar us all with the same “arrogant, self-righteous, elitist” brush, I stomped off and took a long, hot shower.

This woman was clearly on a mission (she posted about half a dozen comments to the same article) and I can’t believe I let her anger get under my skin.

It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s under your skin today?

Why It’s Time to Fix Your Self-Talk

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I’ve been spending more time than usual alone lately and it’s not good for my head. I’m beginning to talk to myself and some of those conversations aren’t good.

When I’m busy working, my brain and I get along just fine, but in the evenings, when I’m padding around the kitchen making dinner, doing dishes, or folding laundry, the conversations start.

You know the ones I mean. I pick up an issue that’s been bothering me, something someone said that stung, or some other injustice or conflict that’s gone unresolved. Then I set about solving the problem, confronting the offender, and getting into a big fight in my head. (Please tell me I’m not the only person that does this.)

Usually I gravitate towards the worst case scenario. I end up working myself into a lather over something that hasn’t happened, and may never happen.

Finally, I have to remind myself that my body can’t tell the difference between real conflict and imagined, and so it’s busy pumping all those stress hormones out into my blood stream, which isn’t doing my health any good. That’s usually enough to stop the arguments – at least for a while.

I used to do this a lot when I was busy beating myself up over infertility, trying to figure out why it happened – or more to the point, what I had done to make it happen to me. I’d think of all the choices I’d made along the way and imagine if I’d started earlier and had children with someone who wasn’t right for me, instead of waiting so long for Mr. Fab. Does any of this sound familiar?

Once you get that negative self-talk going, it’s easy to convince yourself of all kinds of things that aren’t true. And is that really going to help the healing process? Probably not. More likely it’s just going to create more stress and give you wrinkles.

So today, as you’re going about your business, listen to what you’re telling yourself. We all have plenty of real conflict in our lives; let’s not add to it by creating more in our heads.

Here’s a good article that explains more about the science of self-talk.

Whiny Wednesday: The Dreaded OB/GYN Office

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This topic came up in the community forums a while back and it’s one that I see over and over again. As I settle into the New Year, I’m thinking about my upcoming (and some overdue) health check-ups—teeth, eyes, and, of course, the annual visit to my OB/GYN. The latter prompted this week’s Whiny Wednesday topic:

OB/GYN office walls plastered with baby photos

Given that this is so often the first of many stops on the fertility trail, and given that so many of us don’t have children, but wanted them, doesn’t this seem a tad insensitive?

It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s under your skin this week?

How Did You Know it Was Time to Stop Pursuing Motherhood?

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Woman waiting for sunrise

How do you know when it’s time to stop pursuing your dreams of motherhood? How do you know when enough is enough, when you have to reclaim your life and make new plans? It’s not a simple question to answer.

There were several moments that I wrote about in detail in I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home. These were moments when I knew, deep down, that I had to stop treatment and had to find a way to move on without children.

The first was when I was sitting at a bus stop on my way home from my third doctor appointment of the week. I realized that getting pregnant had become a full-time job and that it was consuming every aspect of my life. Case in point, I don’t even remember why I was taking the bus (two buses, actually) to my appointments, but I do remember that this had become my habit. I can picture myself now, staring out the bus window, almost in a trance, so wrapped up my world of infertility, I was barely aware of my actions. I knew then I had lost touch with reality and myself.

Another point came not long after Mr. Fab realized that adoption wasn’t going to be a viable option for us. This really should have been the stopping point, but before long I found myself in the infertility section of the bookstore, browsing a book by a doctor who had performed fertility miracles through Chinese Medicine. I bought the book, even though we’d already traveled far down that road. When I mentioned it to Mr. Fab, he said all the right, supportive things, but I saw his face drop for a moment. I knew that he was wrung out, that he had reached the end of his journey, and that I should have been at the end of mine, too. But by the end of that week, I had an appointment with the miracle doctor and I was back on the bus, both literally and figuratively.

One of my last lightbulb moments came when Mr. Fab’s first grandchild was born. That passing of the motherhood torch to the next generation served to tell me that it was time for my journey to end. I had done all I could, motherhood wasn’t going to happen for me, and I had to let it go.

In between these events, and even after I was sure I would not be a mother, there were many moments of doubt, of second-guessing, of what-ifs. But for every step backwards, I took two steps forward toward recovery, and then three, and then four, until the backward slips became fewer and eventually stopped.

I imagine each of you has a similar story of realization and doubts. What were your “lightbulb” moments and how did you finally know it was time to stop?

Whiny Wednesday: Feeling Lost

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As the New Year begins and everyone around you is posting about goals for the year ahead, do you find it hard to envision a future that doesn’t include children?

This is the topic for this week’s Whiny Wednesday:

Feeling lost

Tell us what’s going on with you.

This Year, Aim for Progress Rather Than Perfection

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Well, here we are in 2020, and I think it’s safe to say that most of us are ready to see the back of last year. Between political craziness, tragic news stories, and a general feeling of uneasiness in the world, I’m ready for a fresh start.

I do love the New Year for the potential it brings in terms of a clean slate and the chance to make big changes. And yet, in the past, I’ve ended up putting pressure on myself to fix all the things that are wrong with me. My goals have included losing weight, exercising more, doing a better job of keeping in touch with people, and on and on—a long list of things I’m doing wrong.

But a couple of years ago, I started to change my outlook. Instead of treating myself like something broken that needed fixing, I began looking for my potential and making progress with the things I’m doing right. Last week, I wrote a post about it, Looking for Potential. Do take a look as I think you’ll find it a kinder, gentler way of approaching the New Year.

So, as we go into this year, I want to encourage you to be kind to yourself, too. Instead of trying to fix a laundry list of shortcomings, perhaps you could look for where you’ve made progress over the last year and focus your energy there.

For example, let’s say you have a friend who you’ve avoided because her children are the same ages yours would have been and you can’t bear to see her. Maybe you ran into her last year and realized you’ve missed her company. Could you set a goal to reach out to her, give her a call or send a quick email note, maybe broach the topic of getting together?

Or perhaps you’ve been reading this blog for a while or working your way through my, or someone else’s, book and you’ve hit a spot where you feel stuck. Maybe a goal would be to find a therapist, counsellor, or support group and get some additional help.

This healing process takes time. Oh, man, does it take time! But progress is made by inching forward a little at a time. So, don’t try to take giant steps forward. Instead, be kind to yourself and take the tiniest, most doable step possible, something you can actually accomplish and feel good about.

How could you inch forward on your journey this year? What’s the smallest, no-sweat step you could take? Let us know in the comments, and if you need a little encouragement to take it, just ask.

For now, I wish for you a genuinely happy new year.

Looking for Potential in This New Year

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A reader sent me a wonderful blog post that I wanted to share with you as we go into the New Year. It begins with this quote:

“We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.”

~Ellen Goodman

I really relate to this quote because, in the past, this is exactly how I’ve approached the New Year. I’ve gone room-to-room looking for all the things wrong with me and resolving to fix them in the New Year. Come year-end, I’d look at my goals for the previous January and inevitably find that I’d fallen short, let myself down yet again. So, I’d resolve to do better the next year, to make it the year I improved myself.

I’m not sure whether it’s facing the reality of infertility that’s made me realize there are things about me that just cannot be fixed, or if I’ve just reached an age where I’ve decided to be kinder to myself. Whichever it is, I’ve adopted a new philosophy about New Year’s resolutions.

I no longer resolve to fix my flaws. I’m not going to aim to lose weight or organize my house or try to be more stylish. Nor am I going to compare myself to others—especially women with children—and find myself falling short. I am who I am and, even though I’m far from perfect, I don’t need to be fixed.

Instead I’m looking for ways to tap my potential and be the best version of me I can be. Instead of resolving to be who I’m not, I will try to nurture the best of who I am. I will set goals that point me in the direction I’d like my life to go and not worry about whether the “me” that arrives there is perfect.

As you head into the New Year, will you be making resolutions or setting goals? If so, are you being kind to yourself or are you treating yourself like something that’s broken and needs to be fixed?

Whiny Wednesday: The Last Whine of 2019

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It has been a pretty wild year, hasn’t it? I am certainly hoping that 2020 shows some big improvements.

But, before we close out this year, here is your last opportunity to rant this year. It’s an open forum (within reason), so feel free to get things off your chest so we can start fresh next year.

Happy whining!

Hang in There. It’s Almost 2020!

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My overarching message around the holidays has always been this:

Do what you need to do to protect yourself when your emotions are still raw. Back out of the holidays all together, if that’s what feels right. Create new traditions that suit who you are now. And most of all, hang in there, because it does get easier, and eventually you’ll find a way to make the holidays joyful again.

But, this year, I want to make an amendment. Because, the truth is, for some of you, the holidays might keep sucking for a long, long time, and my being all Pollyanna about it, isn’t going to change that.

For years, I have followed my own guidelines for holiday survival. After a couple of years of trying to force the Christmas spirit, we chose to opt out of Christmas because it was too sad. Then, for a number of years, we made a point of going away and doing something totally non-traditional. It wasn’t “Christmas” as I’d envisioned it, but it felt right for us, and we enjoyed the season again.

I thought I had a different attitude about Christmas. Mr. Fab and I like staying at home, just the two of us, and keeping it low key. We put up a tree and decorated the house. We’ll keep up our new tradition of celebrating on Christmas Eve and it will be a “nice” Christmas, not perfect, but good enough.

I’ve talked to several friends, fellow bloggers who, like me, are several years into being at peace with not having children. They each talked about plans for a quiet celebration, of an adapted holiday experience. And each of them also added that some part of their plans had triggered the old sadness or poked at a tender spot. Not one of us gushed about the jingly joyful celebration we were planning. Instead, we talk of an “almost-but-not-quite” Christmas.

As I was rooting around in my mind, trying to find a point to this post, I suddenly thought about my dad. My dad hated Valentine’s Day, not because of the commercial tackiness, but because his own father had died on February 14th. Even two decades later, he couldn’t find joy in the day, and none of us expected him to. I tiptoed around him and, by February 15th, he was his old self again. As a young girl, hoping to get Valentines in the mail, I couldn’t understand why my dad felt this way. But, of course, I understand it fully now.

I stand by all my guidelines about the holidays: It does get easier. You will find a way to get through the holidays and even enjoy them again. But, odds are, they will always tap a sore spot and serve as a reminder of what’s missing. It might always be “almost-but-not-quite” Christmas.

But, before you know it, it will be January again, a new year and a fresh chance to live the life you do have to its fullest. I don’t know about you, but the New Year is fast becoming my favorite holiday of all.

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