Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Life Without Baby Takes a Holiday

Well, let’s face it, I’ve been whining for long enough about needing some time off, so I’m finally taking it.

I’m leaving next week for an extended visit to England to see my family. Mr. Fab is coming along too, and we plan to get some serious rest and recuperation.

Ordinarily, I would have taken my laptop and kept blogging while I was gone, or at least backlogged a month worth’s of posts before I left. In light of my need to regroup, I’ve decided instead to just take some time away. I’m sure you’ll agree that’s a good idea.

So, I will be gone until early September. I hope you’ll snoop around some older posts or head over to the main LWB site and get your own conversations going. Knowing me, I’m sure I’ll check in at some point to throw in my two cents.

But for now, be well, and I’ll look forward to returning reignited and ready to go in September.

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.

Who Are You?

It’s interesting to look back on my journey and see all the people I’ve been over the past seven or so years.

I’ve been a woman who expected to be a mother and wanted a baby with the man I loved; then I became a crazed mama-wannabe, desperately trying to solve the mystery of my infertility and looking for a way to get what I wanted.

I’ve been through a phase of realizing that children weren’t going to be a part of my future, but not being able to quite let go of that dream. After that, I entered a phase of acceptance, where I knew I had to get through this and move on, but I didn’t know how.

There was a period of wondering what I was going to do and who I was going to be if I wasn’t going to be a mom, and finally, I came to the phase I’m in now. I am a childfree woman, accepting and even embracing this new life, not apologizing for my infertility or my choices, and moving on to enjoy a life I couldn’t have had if I’d had children to care for.

I never imagined I would get to this place, mainly because I never expected I’d need to, but here I am, and do you know what? It’s not bad here. In fact, I think this childfree life is growing on me.

I know that some of you are at or near this place, but others are still struggling to come to terms with not having the children you always dreamed of. So, I’m curious to know: Who are you?

Are you a newbie, trying to reconcile the idea that you won’t have children and maybe not even sure you’ll ever come to terms? Maybe news of a new treatment, or a friend’s new baby triggers all the old desires and keeps that “what if?” hope alive.

Are you coming-to terms? Have you accepted the idea of being childfree, but just need to figure out how to be okay with that decision? Are you making progress some days, and taking several steps back others? Are you still struggling with other people’s babies and finding your place in your family and community?

Are you moving on? Have you reconciled your loss, accepted your lot in life, and are ready to start a new chapter of your life? Maybe you don’t know what that is yet, but you know (at least most days) that you’re going to be okay not having children?

Please take a second to tell me who you are in the poll below. Let me know in the comments if you think these categories are accurate or if you fit into an entirely different category all together. My goal in doing this is to make sure I post information that covers all the categories, so that this blog is useful, whoever you are.

[polldaddy poll=5210879]

Whiny Wednesday: Hot!

It’s about a million degrees at my house (ok, it’s about 95, but anything over 90 may as well be a million, as far as I’m concerned) and over the past three days I have spent more than 12 hours sitting in a car. All I want to do is go to my local park and run amongst the trees. But it’s too flipping hot!

Aside from that, I’m feeling pretty chipper this week, but it is Whiny Wednesday and the floor is open to get whatever is on your chest off your chest. So, let it all hang out.

For those of you who expressed an interest, here is a link to my interview from yesterday’s Sacramento & Company news show. The host was fantastic, and offscreen, I had a great conversation with him and two of the producers, about being childfree. It’s always good to meet people who get it.

Happy 4th of July

It always tickles me as a Brit to be celebrating America’s independence from my people, but hey, you can’t stop progress.

This year I will be watching the rocket’s red glare over my state’s capitol building (assuming the California budget will stretch to it this year.)

Then I am taking my show on the road to talk about my book, infertility, and the ups and downs of being childfree-not-by-choice.

If you happen to be in Sacramento I will be talking to Guy Farris on Sacramento & Company on Tuesday morning’s show, 9:00 a.m. Channel 10.

On Wednesday, I’ll be talking to Shannon Sanford on WTBQ in New Jersey (airing Saturday, I think.)

Then on Thursday, I’ll be talking live with Kim Iverson on her show that airs in all these fabulous places:

AUSTIN – KAMX (7pm-Midnight)
BUFFALO – WTSS (7pm-Midnight)
DENVER – KALC (7pm-Midnight)
INDIANAPOLIS – WZPL (7pm-Midnight)

MILWAUKEE – WMYX (7pm-Midnight)
MEMPHIS – WMC-FM (7pm-Midnight)
NORFOLK- WPTE (7pm-Midnight)
PORTLAND – KRSK (7pm-Midnight)
WICHITA- KFBZ (6pm-11pm)

If you get the chance, please tune in. I will post links when I can.

For now, whether you’re celebrating 4th July, Canada Day, or having a normal Monday (or Tuesday for our Oceanic friends), have a safe and happy 4th of July.

P.S. Kathleen’s regular Monday “It Got Me Thinking…” column will post tomorrow.

Whiny Wednesday: Busy trying to relax

My husband passed this comic strip across the breakfast table to me earlier this week.

 

This is me.

We really need a vacation. I am long overdue to go home to see my mum. We just planned a weekend away that turned into a business trip and had to be planned and replannned and replanned and rescheduled so many times that I feel as if we’ve spent the past three weeks planning a vacation we’re not actually going to get.

I’m almost ready to throw some clothes in a suitcase, go to the airport with a credit card and get on the next flight to anywhere. Right now, I can’t think of anywhere I wouldn’t want to go.

It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s your whine?

It Got Me Thinking…About Telling Friends

By Kathleen Guthrie

“I’m leaving my husband.”

It was girls night out, and my small group of gal-pals was catching up over wine when Jen* dropped this bombshell on us.

“What?!” After twenty years and three kids together, their marriage was one I held up as a role model for making things work. How did it suddenly come to this?

That night I learned she’d been going to counseling for years, trying to make it work, trying to overlook her husband’s shortcomings for the sake of keeping their family together. She’d wanted to leave him months earlier, but the timing wasn’t right, and now she was ready to take the leap and begin to build a better life for her and her children.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked, as I reached over to touch her hand.

“Because you are so happy and in love, and I didn’t want to take away from any of your pre-wedding romantic bliss.”

I quickly replayed our recent visits in my mind and looked for clues that things were amiss, some hint of her pain that I hadn’t picked up on, some expression or comment that gave an opening for my to check in with her, to ask her deeper questions, to see how she was doing. Had I said anything that made her feel worse? Had she felt I was rubbing her face in my happiness? Had my joy in my new role as bride-to-be added to her hurt? I hated that I had not been a good friend to her in her time of need.

I respected her choice to hide her situation from me, yet it also broke my heart. “I wish you’d told me. I want to know so that I can be there for you.”

“But you have so much else on your plate with all the wedding stuff.”

“I’ll always have stuff on my plate, but my priorities include taking care of my friends.”

As I mulled over this in the ensuing week, it reminded me of our conversations—on LWB—about talking to our friends and families about our struggles with infertility and childfreeness. When do you tell them? What and how much do you tell? It’s not dissimilar from Jen’s decision to not tell her friends what was going down in her marriage, and I found it interesting to be on the other side of the conversation for a change.

And here’s what I learned: It’s important that we share our pain so that we can allow our friends to support us. Allow them to be better listeners, to learn how to help you with a hug or by knowing when it’s better to ignore the elephant in the room. Once you open up to a close friend, you also have an ally in groups. Moving forward, when the dynamic shifts to all things pregnancy and mommydom, and you feel yourself being pushed to the periphery, your informed and sensitive friend can help steer the group back to more inclusive topics before you have a meltdown.

Please share. How else will I know what you need? I want to help. I want to be there for you. I say to Jen, as I say to you, “Please let me know how I can best support you.”

*Not her real name, of course.

Kathleen Guthrie is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She’s mostly at peace with her decision to be childfree.

Travel: Back in the Big Easy

Continuing the new tradition of posting about something fun on Saturdays, I thought I’d share with you my recent trip to New Orleans.

I love New Orleans. I love the food, the architecture, the history, and even the climate. I love the easy pace of life that’s forced upon you there by the heavy atmosphere, and the mood of the residents, who never seem to be in much a rush to go anywhere. I walk differently in New Orleans, slower and with a relaxed saunter. I even find myself adopting that soft, warm, Louisiana drawl that seems to have no use for half the letters of the alphabet. There’s a good reason the city is known as the Big Easy, and I love it.

I hadn’t been to New Orleans since before Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 or last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and I wanted to go back to see how much of the city I loved had physically and psychologically survived.

I’ll admit I was nervous to go, afraid that the city had gone, and also wasn’t sure at what point it was appropriate to be a tourist in a place that had seen such devastation. This year I decided it was time.

I’m happy to report that the Big Easy was just as I’d remembered it and the message from its people is, “We’re still here. Y’all come on back.”

While we were there, we took a Katrina Tour, again not sure where the lines between genuine historical interest and opportunistic tourism blurred together, but I’m very glad we did. We traveled through the Lower Ninth ward, one of the areas most heavily hit by the flooding. It was truly shocking to see how many houses were boarded up, their doors still showing the painted marks left by the National Guard search and rescue teams as they logged their findings. It was also shocking to see just how many house were gone. I mean, just gone. Nothing left but the outline of the foundations and, in some cases, a set of concrete front steps.

Our guide pointed out a street sign, about 14 feet above the ground, that still showed a brown horizontal mark where the muddy water had reached. I think that was the most shocking thing of all for me, to see that and realize that everything around me, including myself would have been completely submerged.

But amid all this devastation were many signs of hope. Many homes had been repaired and repainted, and local businesses have opened their doors again. We traveled through a neighborhood that has been completely rebuilt through a foundation started by Brad Pitt. All the homes were designed by renowned architects and built to prepare for the chance of flooding again. That area of the city stands about ten feet below sea level, so at some point, it will flood again, although hopefully never with such devastating consequences.

The most optimistic sign of recovery I saw was a vegetable garden, neatly planted in someone’s front yard. For me, that garden was a statement of determination and permanence.

So, if New Orleans is on your list of places to visit, but you’ve been hesitating, go back. The city needs tourism and, just as it’s always done, it’s ready to make you feel welcome. Oh, and if you go, have a soft-shell crab Po’ Boy and a Mint Julep for me, would you?

The Rose Run for Breast Cancer

If you happen to be in Petersburg, Michigan, look out for the Rose Run coming up on July 16th. Even if you’re far from Michigan, you can still participate in a virtual run (or walk) to support this important cause.

My friend Jessica Cribbs founded the Rose Run in 2009 in honor of her mother, Rose, who lost her battle with Breast Cancer earlier that year. Jessica is 100% dedicated to her crusade to raise awareness and funds to fight this disease and I really admire her for her determination.

It’s paying off, too. In 2010, the Rose Run raised $10,000 for Breast Cancer Research and this year “virtual” teams have already formed in Boston, Alabama, Los Angeles, and Afghanistan.

I’ve signed up and for my own one-person virtual event and will plod around my favorite 3.1-mile loop in Howarth Park in Santa Rosa. Please consider joining me where you are. All you have to do is sign up online and do your run or walk wherever you are.

The event is five weeks away, so if you’ve been looking for motivation to get moving, this could be it. My training starts on Monday!