filling the silence in the motherhood discussion
I had to take a break from the news and social media recently. It just seemed as if nothing good was happening in the world. Amid all the wars, politics, tragedies, and deadly diseases was story after story that prompted this week’s topic:
People who shouldn’t be allowed to have kids
It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s making you furious this week?
By Paula Coston
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
This 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?
By Lisa Manterfield
The other day I spoke to a friend who had just been sideswiped. Like me, she’s been off the “baby train” for several years and has truly come to terms with the fact that she won’t have children.
Then she had a birthday and found herself totally sideswiped, caught off-guard by her grief, and in the kitchen having a meltdown.
What happened?
She’s not sure and neither was I. Maybe her birthday signified moving one step closer to menopause and the final loss of the possibility of motherhood. Maybe spending time with a friend’s son reminded her of the missing part of her life. Maybe she was feeling alone in her family-oriented community.
The point is that sometimes, even when we’re sure we have it together, even when we’ve done the grief work, even when we’ve cried an ocean and think there’s nothing left to resolve, sometimes we just get sideswiped.
Has this happened to you? What unexpected trigger has caught you off-guard?
It’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!
By Lisa Manterfield
When you realized you were never going to have kids, did you reassess your lives and make any big changes that you never would have made had you had kids?
I was asked this question recently and it caused me to stop and think. Much of the past five years has been spent healing, coming to terms with a life without children, and learning about myself again. And while I’ve done a lot of reassessing about the kind of life I want to live, I’m not sure much has changed.
When we thought we were going to have a young family, Mr. Fab and I had planned to buy a house in the neighborhood where we rent. The schools are good, and the city is family-friendly. But now we won’t be having children, that’s no longer a priority and we’ve talked a lot about where we’d like to live now that we’re free to live almost anywhere. Buying a house is no longer a priority. In fact we have our eyes on a sailboat instead.
But aside from that, not much has changed in the way we live. Much has changed in the way we thought we were going to live, but when I step back and reassess, life really has just gone as before.
Sometimes I think we feel pressure to do a major life overhaul when we realize we won’t have children, but is that true? Yes, I have more freedom to take opportunities and make changes, but after all is said I’m done, I’m still the same old Lisa and the things that were important to me before are largely still important to me now.
How about you? Have you made big changes now that your life won’t include children?
The final book in the Life Without Baby ebook series comes out tomorrow! In Thriving in a New Happily Ever After, we look at how to find joy in your life again, how to decide what, if anything, needs to change, and how to take the first steps to move in a new direction.
One of the earliest posts I wrote here was about the trend at the time in baby doll tops that, on me, looked like maternity wear.
This week, a reader offered this Whiny Wednesday topic about shopping for new clothes. Her whine is:
“The need to go shopping for new clothes and trying to find something I feel good in vs. something I think screams ‘infertile and has a poor sense of style.’”
She may not have a great sense of style, but at least she has a great sense of humor.
It’s Whiny Wednesday. What can you laugh about this week?
By Lisa Manterfield
Oh my goodness! What a nutty couple of weeks. There I was, all set for my traditional “summer’s over, time to get back to business” post when suddenly the comments stopped working.
Of course, it was right before the long Labor Day weekend, so any tech experts were busy flipping burgers, their phones and email either turned off or vehemently ignored. I sweated, I panicked, I considered trying to fix it myself based on an assumption of what I thought was wrong.
Instead, I took a breath and reminded myself of what I so often preach:
It will be okay. It will get fixed, even if it’s not today and even if it’s not how I’d envisioned. In the end, one way or another, it will all work out.
And here we are. Everything is back to normal and all is right in this corner of my world again. It turns out that our little community has been around so long that it outgrew some of its technology. We’re all up-to-date now and should remain that way, knock on wood.
So, if you were frustrated, cursing, and muttering my name under your breath as you tried and failed to jump into a conversation, I apologize and I really appreciate your patience. Here are the posts you missed if you want to jump in now.
On Monday, I wrote about the Ring Theory in How Not to Say the Wrong Thing.
Whiny Wednesday’s topic was the thorny issue of making new friends when you don’t move in the mommy circles.
And on Friday, Kathleen, wrote about assumptions and pressure in her post about Being Blessed with Children.
Normal service will resume on Whiny Wednesday this week.
In other news, I spent much of the summer working on the final book in the Life Without Baby ebook series and it comes out next week!
Thriving in a New Happily Ever After is all about embracing the future, rediscovering who you used to be, and taking small steps in a new direction. I didn’t want it to be another “fix your broken life now!” book and what I hope I’ve written is a gentle, encouraging “How do I get unstuck from where I am now when I have no idea which direction to head next?”
The book comes out on September 22nd and it’s available for preorder on Amazon now. I hope you’ll find it useful.
By Lisa Manterfield
I 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.
If 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.
~ "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."
