Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

It Got Me Thinking…About Connections

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

Marlo Thomas—That Girl, St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, and “Free To Be…You and Me”—is on my mind today. I just finished her most recent book, Growing Up Laughing. If you need a pick-me-up, I highly recommend you run out for a copy. It’s her memoirs of growing up with her famously funny father, comedian Danny Thomas, and his legendary pals, which include George Burns, Milton Berle, Don Rickles, Bob Hope, and Red Buttons. She also interviewed present-day stars, such as Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Tina Fey, and Jon Stewart, to get their thoughts on how they ended up funny. I laughed out loud at the many anecdotes and jokes, and I have a new appreciation for the hard work it takes to be a successful comedian.

But what struck the deepest chord within me was a brief story about when Gloria Steinem, founder of Ms., asked Thomas to speak to a group of welfare mothers. Thomas was unmarried at the time, and childfree (she later became a stepmother to husband Phil Donahue’s four sons), and wondered what in the world she could talk about. “Trust me,” Gloria said. “They’ll love you—and you’ll love them. You’re all women.”

And I thought: “That’s IT!” That’s the one message I want to get out to the world through our site and through how I live my life. We’re not mothers and non-mothers, we’re not breeders and infertiles, we’re not with child or childfree. We’re all women.

Thomas bonded by sharing family stories. We can all relate to the antics of the eccentric grandmother, the regrets of aunts who shelved their dreams for the so-called security of marriage, the sisters and friends whose talents were “dismissed because they were women.” With her stories, childfree Thomas had the audience of mothers laughing and crying along with her. “Gloria had opened my eyes and my heart to the connections that we women have with each other.”

It’s so easy for me to obsess over other women’s haves versus my have-nots—or to gloat over the freedoms I enjoy that they have sacrificed for family life. Enough. Let’s focus on our common ground and celebrate and support each other, as women, regardless of the paths we follow.

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She celebrates Marlo Thomas for breaking down barriers to gender equality. 

It Got Me Thinking…About Soccer

By Kathleen Guthrie Woods

I am a lifelong UCLA Bruins fan, I am growing to love the San Francisco Giants, my adopted team, and we have season tickets for USF men’s basketball. But cleats down, my favorite spectator sport is kindersoccer.

Kindersoccer is not quite “soccer” because it is being “played” by first-year athletes, the five- and six-year-olds. There are no real rules. The players travel around the field in a pack, following the ball, kicking randomly, and ignoring any concept of positions or strategies. Once in a blue moon, the ball connects with a foot, meanders through a tumble of pudgy bodies, and makes its way into the net. Everyone cheers. No one boos or screams obscenities. Loyalties are not based on team colors. It’s a field full of pure joy.

I don’t get to experience this very often, because as a non-mom, I am on the sidelines of the sidelines. I’ve told family and friends, “Send me your game schedule! I’d love to come!” and occasional invitations come through. But mostly, they are ignored, I guess because the families are too busy or they don’t think I’m serious in my request. And after I’ve asked a few times, I let it go, because I don’t want to seem pushy or weird.

This. Totally. Sucks.

So to my friends with kids, I repeat: I would love to join you in cheering on the basketball/baseball/soccer/football team this and every season. Your kid gets all the glory, and you might mend a piece of my heart. Everybody wins.

Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She will never forget watching her nephew make his first hit in his first-ever T-ball game.

What’s Your Holiday Plan?

OK, even if you’re still in denial, sooner or later you’ll have to face the fact that the holidays are coming at us. Halloween is over and Thanksgiving (for those of us in the U.S.) is just over two weeks away.

 

No matter which holidays you celebrate, odds are it will mean family get-togethers, maybe including relatives you see only once a year, and holiday parties where people drink too much eggnog and say stupid things.

 

Whether it’s your brother-in-law yelling across the dinner table to ask how the baby-making’s going, or great aunt Ethel fussing over your cousin’s brood and then turning her questions on you, or Bob from accounting unfolding a wallet full of toe-haired kids and grilling you about your family, the holiday season can be a minefield of awkward questions and inappropriate comments. So what are you going to do?

 

Granted, one option is to hole up with It’s a Wonderful Life and a box of Kleenex, but I don’t recommend it. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to go out in public and it pays to be prepared.

 

We’ve often talked about how to deal with those difficult, awkward, or downright rude questions. It all sounds good on paper, but then someone catches us off guard and we end up mumbling an almost apologetic answer and then kicking ourselves later (or venting about it on Whiny Wednesday.) So, let’s get prepared.

 

Think about all the events you’re going to have to attend this season. Think about who’s going to be there, and how informed they are about your personal situation. (If you see some relatives only once a year, word may not have reached them that you’ve stopped trying, for example.) Think about the questions you might be asked and practice your answers.

 

This technique is called Mental Rehearsal. Athletes use it to visual scoring points; people use it for job interviews to practice confidently asking questions; even the military use it to prepare troops for what they might face on the battlefield. True, you can never know what you’re going to face on the holiday frontlines, but if you’ve practiced an answer to “So, when are you guys going to have kids?” or “Why don’t you just adopt?” you’ll be prepared, even if someone throws out a variation.

 

Here’s an article with some suggestions on how to practice this technique. Try it now, before the holiday madness kicks in. Maybe you’ll even get to relax and enjoy the season, instead of dreading the inevitable stupid question.

Forgetting Our Dreams

I love this post, Forty, Single, and Childless from Jody Day at Gateway Women. I applaud her for having the guts to look inside herself and really think about why she wanted children. How many of us really do that?

So much of what she wrote in her post resonated with me. She writes:

“What would things have been like for me if instead of neglecting my dreams, my passions, my friends, my work, my finances (and, quite often, my common sense) during that time I’d focused on creating a life without children, whilst still remaining open and excited about the possibility that one day I might become a mother? Why did I get stuck on this one outcome, mostly out of my control, rather than take a saner, broader view of things?”

Why indeed? I often think how much I changed over the five or so years I spent trying to conceive and the past three years since. I’m more introverted, less likely to be spontaneous, more likely to just stay home. I’m not as daring as I was, perhaps not quite so “devil-may-care” about my choices. But the former me is still in there and I’m working on dragging her back out again.

But what if I’d had a different attitude to motherhood and accepted is as something that might happen for me instead of something that had to happen, or else? I wonder, with the benefit of hindsight, if I could. It certainly would have made for a different story now.

We lament the loss of our dreams, especially when our dreams include motherhood, but I wonder how many other dreams we let fall by the wayside while we’re questing for that ideal life?

Jody ends her post with a quote:

“There’s nothing as attractive as someone who respects their dreams enough to follow them.  Children are indeed a blessing, but they are here to fulfill their dreams, not ours.”

How easy it is to forget that.

Whiny Wednesday: World’s most insensitive comment

During my random Internet rambles I came across a community called Widows Too Young, an amazing group of women who have lost spouses. (Can I just say at this point that I love how we women come together to support one another. We rock.) However one of the forums deals with women who are childfree, and I think this one wins the prize for “most insensitive comment ever.”

SusieBear posted that for years she and her husband dealt with prying questions and insensitive remarks about their decision to be childfree. Now that her husband is gone, people are actually commenting to her about what a comfort children would have been to her, and suggesting that she must now be regretting her decision to not have kids.

Really, people? Is there any chance you could engage your brains before opening your mouths? Can you please explain what it is about these statements you think is actually going to be helpful?!!

 

I’ve complained plenty here about the things people sometimes say to “help,” but I think that this really takes the cake. My heart goes out to SusieBear, and I’m glad she’s found a supportive community that gets it.

It’s Whiny Wednesday, and while it’s hard to top Susie’s whine, feel free to have a grumble and get your gripes out.

Great Expectations

As young women (or men) we set our expectations and created a vision of how our lives would turn out.

My life was going to include college, a fantastically successful career traveling the world as an engineering consultant, and eventually a life with Mr. Right, in a large English country house with a circular driveway, and four children (including twins.) Sounds like a pretty good life, doesn’t it?

Well, I made it to college, then graduate school, and launched my engineering career, and that’s about as far as my expectations took me. I fell in love with Mr. Romance (who really wasn’t Mr. Right), fell out of love with engineering, and never even got a sniff of anything resembling my four children.

But…

I found my true vocation and now do work that I love. I picked my way through the minefield of potential spouses until I found, not simply Mr. Right, but Mr. Fabulous. These two areas of my life didn’t meet my expectations; they exceeded them.

When I look back at my expectations I realize that I probably wouldn’t have been happy in that life. I’ll never know for sure, but because I made some mistakes and some poor choices, and because things didn’t go as planned, I’ve had opportunities I would never have had, and I have a life that is, overall, better than it might have been.

So often we set expectations for ourselves and when they don’t work out we lament our misfortune or beat ourselves up for not achieving what we set out to do. But I’m coming to believe that life isn’t supposed to go as planned. And sometimes out of those disappointments comes an unexpected and pleasant surprise.

This may all sound a little Pollyanna to those of you who are trying to make some sense of the hand you’ve been dealt, but I really do believe that each of us will someday be able to look back and say, “Wow, this great thing that I have now could never have happened if I’d had kids.” Yes, it’s Pollyanna, but for now, I’m hanging my hat on it.

Guest Post: With Eyes of Faith…Our Sacred Journey

I’m very pleased to announce a new series of guest bloggers. We’re kicking off this week with Dorothy, who will share her thoughts on faith and infertility. If you’d like to contribute your voice to the conversation, I’d love to hear from you. You can find  Guest Blogger guidelines here. 

by Dorothy Williams

“Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27).

 

As a childless Christian, I was shocked to discover the lack of biblical guidance for my particular situation. You know, the kind of specific, scriptural passages which give hope to a permanently barren wife. And I stress the word permanently because the more I researched the topic, the more I saw that infertility was merely a temporary situation for believers.  As I looked at examples from the lives of Abraham and Sara to Hannah to Elizabeth, I saw one miracle baby after another.  Gosh, it seemed that as long as I had God on my side, all I had to do was pray for my circumstances to change and BANG! I would get that miracle baby.

But that didn’t happen.  So where in the bible was support for my situation? Did it mean that my journey was not sacred or my life not meaningful?

After praying about this for over a year, the answer finally came when the Lord prompted me to look more closely at a resurrection story about Jesus.  It’s known as the “Road to Emmaus” and it is contained in a book of the bible called the gospel of Luke (specifically, Luke 24:13-35).  I won’t repeat it here, except for the one line quoted at the top of this blog entry.  The gist of it is that the bible is not actually about me. (Slap my forehead…duh!)   It is about God’s relationship with His people and the gift of His Son, Jesus.

Christians believe that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus saves us from everything that is lacking in the human condition, including infertility. Our journey can be sacred despite all the twists and turns it may take because Christ’s perfection fills up what is imperfect in our own lives.

So I have a renewed devotion to the risen Jesus, of course, but this exercise also gave me a profound respect for authors who write specifically on the topic of being permanently childless.  Their books may not carry the weight of Holy Scripture, but they just might be working with God in a different way to give our lives sacred meaning as we travel together on this unique road.

Dorothy Williams lives in the Chicagoland area and is making the transition from childless to childfree to Christian one prayer at a time.

The Game of Life

Courtesy Hasbro Games

My brother and his wife are very open with their children and talk to them about all kinds of things my mother would never have brought up in conversation with me. And somewhere along the line I know they’ve answered questions from their children about me and my lack of offspring. One of my nephews (let’s call him “Frank,” because he is – always) even asked me flat out why I don’t have children. So I told him.

I’m actually glad for this openness; it’s allowed me to practice answering direct questions honestly in a situation where they’re asked in pure innocence. When someone asks out of nosiness, I already know I can say, “I tried, but I couldn’t.”

On my recent trip home I conned my nieces and nephews into playing Game of Life with me. As I loaded pink and blue pegs into my car, “Frank” said, “It’s funny that you have so many children in the game when you don’t have any in real life.”

And then the cool, calm, well-practiced me snapped, “Well, you don’t have a yacht in real life either!”

Yes, sometimes I have this whole thing under control, and sometimes all the embarrassment and insecurities come rushing back at me and I bite off some poor innocent bystander’s head.

Frank, if you’re reading this post when you’re not supposed to, I’m sorry I snapped at you. And I know you’ll be mad that I called you “Frank” in this story, so I’m sorry for that too. And you’re right. It is funny that I always end up with a ton of kids in the game. It’s funny that I end up at the Millionaire’s Mansion sometimes too. If one of those doesn’t come true in real life, maybe the other one will. If it does, I promise to take you out on my yacht. Love, Auntie Lisa –x-

Whiny Wednesday: It Could Happen to You

Dear Excited Future Mothers/Grandmothers/Aunties/Friends,

There’s no need to tiptoe around me anymore. If you want to tell me the amazing story of how you/your daughter/sister/friend was told she’d never have children, then miraculously became pregnant, it’s okay. I know these things happen, and I’m happy for you and your loved one. Just please, please, please don’t end your story with, “So, you see…it could happen to you.”

Yes, I know it could happen, but realistically, it’s probably not going to, and hanging onto this possibility will keep me from moving on with my life. And I am moving on. So please just let me move on.

Thanks.

It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s put a hitch in your git-along today?

Whiny Wednesday

She doesn’t know it yet, but my cat, Felicity, has to go to the vet today to have three teeth out, which requires a general anesthetic. Meanwhile, I’m alternating between beating myself up for not being a better cat mother, and wringing my hands, worried to death in case anything happens to her. And all I can think is, imagine what a basket case I’d be if I had kids.

It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s on your mind?