Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Sharing Tips for Getting Through the Holidays

By Lisa Manterfield

thanksgivingThis week we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the U.S. and, for the first time in a long time, I am looking forward to it. We are bucking tradition this year and spending the day with good friends, including another childfree couple. Mr. Fab is cooking a decidedly nontraditional Thanksgiving dinner, so all I’ll have to do, aside from a few sous chef duties, is show up and have a good time.

I know for many of you, Thanksgiving might not be such a fun time. Traditionally, it’s a holiday when families gather, which might mean facing insensitive relatives and prying questions about children. It also marks the beginning of what can often be the most difficult time of the year, with social gatherings, kid-oriented activities, and constant reminders of the many ways we don’t get to celebrate the holidays.

I love that this community includes new readers and seasoned pros, so let’s help one another out this year by sharing ideas on getting through the season with our hearts intact.

What are some of the issues you know you’ll face this holiday season? What events are you dreading? What’s going to be hardest for you?

And perhaps most important of all, how to do plan to get through the season with minimum emotional damage?

For more tips, inspiration, and support, check out the Life Without Baby Holiday Companion, available now at Amazon.com and in PDF format at Gumroad.

Whiny Wednesday: Left Hanging by the Fertility Industry

Whiny_WednesdayThis week’s topic is for those of you who arrived here via the infertility route.

Do you feel you were left hanging by the fertility industry?

Okay, I know that’s a loaded question, so if you don’t feel like jumping in on this topic, or if it doesn’t apply to you, feel free to bring your own whine to the party this week.

Whiny Wednesday: Staying Busy to Fill the Hole

Whiny_WednesdayWhen 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?

Whiny Wednesday: Traditions You Won’t Get to Share

Whiny_WednesdayTomorrow is Bonfire Night in the U.K. As a child, it was one of my favorite nights of the year, second only to Christmas Eve.

We’d have a bonfire in the backyard, and my dad would bring home a box of fireworks to set off and a couple of packets of sparklers. We’d have baked potatoes and roast chestnuts, and my mum would make parkin and gooey, delicious bonfire toffee. It was an evening spent outdoors, clustered around the fire. It was about friends and food and a little bit of danger.

It’s one of the many things I miss about my homeland, and it’s one of the traditions I would have enjoyed sharing with my children. And that’s the topic for this week’s Whiny Wednesday:

Traditions you won’t get to share with your children

Happy Bonfire Night and happy whining.

Whiny Wednesday: Halloween

Whiny_WednesdayThis Saturday is Halloween, which for many of us means streams of cute children knocking on our front doors.

Love it or hate it; it’s hard to avoid it. So the discussion topic for this week is:

How do you handle this difficult holiday?

As it’s Whiny Wednesday, there’s room for your gripes here, too.

Guest Post: Shadow Lives

By Paula Coston

Image courtesy of Ideago/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Image courtesy of Ideago/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’m 60 now, and over those six decades I have mapped out in my mind an entire web of paths untaken. Would’ve, should’ve, could’ve. And for that reason, Chapter 7 of Jody Day’s book Rocking the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfilling Life without Children chimes with me. (Jody is the founder of Gateway Women, a British-based website for women childless by circumstance.)

The chapter’s first two sections are headed “The shadow of the life unlived” and “The dark side of daydreams.” She shares her own experience with searing frankness:

“For many years I’d been living two lives: one in which I was hoping for a baby and making the best of things till then, the other in which I had succeeded and had become a mother….

“At no point in that time… did I fully and completely embrace the life I was actually living—that of a childless woman….

“I think of the ‘shadow life’ as the life you dreamt about while your ‘real’ life was happening and … which … depleted the life you were actually living.”

We all have our path forks. A few of mine happened when:

– Somewhere in my childhood, I believed my family was encouraging me in the single, career-driven life, not a life of love and family.

– Over the years a couple of men proposed to me, both in fun. Friends laughed too, hearing about it.

– It became clear to me that one special lover had serious issues about parenthood, so when the option came up for us, I knew I had to forgo it.

– Neighbors and colleagues at work became grandmothers, and, like a photograph gradually developing, I soon saw that I never would.

Slowly, I’m coming to terms with these losses. These days, what fascinates me more is the way we persist in tracing and re-tracing these ghosts of roads untaken.

I wonder whether, once we surmount the pain, their rehearsal can bring us comfort. Why not trust that we’re living our shadow lives somewhere else close by, if it helps? Maybe the psyche is instinctively drawn to the idea of alternative realities. And if you’re a writer—like me—well, it’s unavoidable.

In 1964, a TV soap, Another World, started on NBC, set in the fictional town of Bay City. It was so popular that it ran till 1999! The co-creator Irna Phillips explained the idea behind it: “We do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand other worlds.” Bay City and its happenings represented to her the difference between “the world of events we live in, and the world of feelings and dreams that we strive for.”

In recent years, my best therapy has been to struggle with, and beat, writing a novel. On the Far Side, There’s a Boy tells the tale of a woman who doesn’t know that she even contemplates having children until she begins to dream—of one particular boy in Sri Lanka, whom she has known only through letters, so only half-known—and to see that he is what she wanted: even, what she may still want. It’s a kind of fantasy experience, parallel to her real life.

Aptly, her story echoes much that has happened to me. So these days, I’m learning to live with my shadow lives, to let them be and wend their ways, sometimes even to enjoy them.

I think I’ll term myself an AMo. Meaning “I love” in Latin, it also suggests that I’m a kind of Alternative Mother, somehow living both lives, the one I have and the one I didn’t, in harmony.

Paula Coston’s On the Far Side, There’s a Boy is available in paperback and e-book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/author/paulacoston

Whiny Wednesday: Fearing the Quiet

Whiny_WednesdayThis week’s suggested Whiny Wednesday topic is thought-provoking:

Fearing the quiet we will have for years

How do you feel about this? Is it something you worry about? If not, what is on your mind this week?

Whiny Wednesday: Work Pregnancies

Whiny_WednesdayIt’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!

How Not to Say the Wrong Thing

By Lisa Manterfield

shhhI 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.

Great news: The final book in the Life Without Baby ebook series comes out September 22. Writing Thriving in a New Happily Ever After showed me just how far I’ve come in making peace with my childlessness. I’m looking forward to sharing it with you. It’s available now for pre-order at Amazon, along with the first three books.

Whiny Wednesday: Do You Want Mine?

Whiny_WednesdayIf you’re new to the site, you might wondering what Whiny Wednesday is all about.

A few years ago, some readers commented that they couldn’t express how they felt around friends and colleagues, as they were always made to feel as if they were whining. So, we created Whiny Wednesday as a place to complain and grumble about whatever’s on your mind each week. It can be an issue surrounding living without children, or just a general grumble about life, work, family, the world.

I used to start each post with a gripe of my own, but lately I’ve found I’ve covered most of what bothers me, so I put out a call for Whiny Wednesday topics, and you, dear readers, came through! So, each week, I offer one of your suggested topics as a starting point, but as always, any topic is fair game.

So, let’s kick off with this week’s topic:

Parents who complain and complain then ask “Do you want my kids?”

Happy whining!

P.S. If you need something to cheer about instead, check this fun list of quotes from famous childfree women.

If you have a topic that hasn’t been covered yet, please drop me a line, send me ideas, or a list of ideas, and I’ll include them here. You can reach me at: lisa [at] lifewithoutbaby [dot] com.