filling the silence in the motherhood discussion
Happy Whiny Wednesday! I hope you’re doing okay today. If not, this is the place to get it off your chest.
This week we turn to spotlight on the men in our lives and discuss the topic of:
Spouses or partners who aren’t dealing or healing
If you have one of these, we’d like to hear to about it.
In honor of Thanksgiving, we’re mixing it up a bit. Instead of the usual Whiny Wednesday, I want to ask you this:
What are you grateful for?
Often when we’re in the thick of grief it’s hard to find anything positive, but my Thanksgiving wish for you is to find a patch of sunshine this week.
Next week we’ll get back to whining. 😉
By Lisa Manterfield
Photo courtesy: Clemens v. Vogelsang
It’s Thanksgiving here in the U.S. this week. For many of you, that’s going to mean spending a long day, perhaps a long weekend, with people who care about you, but perhaps don’t really understand what you’ve been through or what you’re going through still. It can make for a lot of unintentionally hurtful comments, strained emotions, and reignited grief.
This year, we have post-election fatigue to throw into the mix. No matter your political affiliations, I think it’s safe to say that most of us have been completely worn out by this year’s election horror show. I certainly reached a point where I didn’t even want to hear from the people I agreed with, never mind the opposing sides.
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been hibernating from the news and social media, needing a post-election detox. Consequently, I’m sleeping more restfully, spending more enjoyable time with Mr. Fab, and my brain is starting to function with clarity again. In sitting down to write this post, I also realize that I haven’t had any of the weird headaches I’ve been experiencing for the previous month or so.
I’m aware that this seems like I’m sticking my head in the sand, but I prefer to call it self-care, putting my own needs first for a while, so that I can regain enough mental strength to keep moving forward.
I also believe that self-care is one of the most important tools for making it through the upcoming holiday season, especially if your grief is still raw. But even if you’ve been making progress, the holidays can be a breeding ground for tactless comments, reminders of loss, and emotional triggers galore!
So, here are a few suggestions that have helped me navigate the holidays over the years:
Say no to difficult events. If you know a gathering will be problematic, make an excuse and don’t go. You may have some guilt about it, but that will pass, and you’ll end up much better off emotionally than if you go and end up upset. If you’re in the early stages of grief, take a year off from the holidays. Seriously. The holidays will be back next year, and they’ll get progressively easier to deal with.
Have an escape plan. If you do go to a gathering that might be difficult, have an escape plan. That might be as simple as borrowing the host’s dog and going for a long walk or volunteering to be the person to run to the store for last-minute ingredients. A little time alone is like a mini detox, so you can gather yourself together before facing people again.
Use this community. I promise you, you won’t be the only person looking for an understanding ear over the holidays. Use the community and connect with someone who know what you’re going through and can offer support and encouragement.
Plan some post-celebration self-care. Know in advance how you’ll take care of yourself after the event. Go home and take a long, quiet bath, or a long walk, or plan to do something with someone whose time you enjoy. If you can, schedule a post-Thanksgiving detox day.
If you need more ideas for getting through the holidays, we have several resources available. There’s an entire chapter on navigating the holidays in both Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen and Life Without Baby Workbook 3: Dealing With the Day-to-Day Challenges, and a book full of inspiration and tips in Life Without Baby Holiday Companion. You can also get a free copy of Dealing With Social Landmines when you subscribe to the newsletter, and if you’re already a subscriber, you should have received a refresher via email. Finally, here’s the link to the community forums, where you’ll already find several holiday and family-related threads going.
Please take advantage of these resources and this community and make sure you have a happy Thanksgiving. –x-
By Lisa Manterfield
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
This simple phrase is the one thing I wish someone had said to me. It would have meant that someone—one person—acknowledged that my inability to have a child was an enormous loss for me and that I needed to grieve that loss, as if my children had existed.
In Western culture in particular, most people don’t know how to behave when someone loses a loved one. They follow accepted protocols such as sending cards or flowers. Some may call to offer help or just show up on the doorstep with the ubiquitous tuna casserole. A few will know to give people space when they’re mourning, expect unexpected behavior, and be ready for tears or anger. Still, most people struggle with how to handle those in pain.
Our society also has an unwritten hierarchy of loss. Someone who’s lost a spouse, a child, or a parent is given different allowances to someone who’s lost a boyfriend/girlfriend, a friend, or an elderly relative. Further down the ranking come pets, coworkers, and ex-lovers. Even people who’ve lost houses, jobs, and limbs are allowed a degree of understanding, sympathy, and mourning. But most people have no idea how to react when they can’t see the thing that was lost—in this case, motherhood and all that it encompassed. Many people won’t understand—or even acknowledge—your need to mourn at all.
In her 2010 memoir, Spoken from the Heart, former first lady Laura Bush writes about her experience with infertility. “The English language lacks the words to mourn an absence,” she writes. “…For someone who was never there at all, we are wordless to capture that particular emptiness. For those who deeply want children and are denied them, those missing babies hover like slant, ephemeral shadows over their lives. Who can describe the feel of a tiny hand that is never held?”
The fact is that your children and your idea of motherhood did exist for you. If you had planned on having children, you undoubtedly made room in your life for them. This might have included creating life plans around the assumption that someday kids would be part of that plan. In some cases, making room for children in your life might have included making physical room, perhaps dedicating and even decorating a room in your home that would one day become a nursery, or it may have involved moving to a bigger house or a more family-friendly neighborhood. Did you pick out names for your children? Did you imagine which family members they might take after? Did you fantasize about your daughter winning a Nobel Prize for her research or your son bringing home a gold medal from the Olympics? You probably thought about the kind of mother you wanted to be. You collected data as you went through life, putting check marks through things you observed that you’d do better when you became a mother and striking red lines through the things you’d never do with your children. And you undoubtedly imagined what it would feel like to hold a child that was yours.
Here are some other losses you might be feeling:
Your children and your identity as a mother existed and were very real to you. You have experienced a great loss, and the only way to begin coming to terms with that loss is to acknowledge it and mourn it.
This post is excerpted from Lisa’s book, Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen.
By Lisa Manterfield
Halloween is a holiday that others assume everyone is joyous about, but for many of us, it’s a holiday that surprises us with all kinds of triggers. Halloween delivers a steady stream of Other People’s Children—all impossibly cute—to our neighborhoods, Facebook pages, and workplaces. It’s hard to avoid it when it comes, quite literally, knocking at your own front door.
Around Halloween, it’s a good idea to steer clear of social media, the mall, and kid-related gatherings. If you live in a family-friendly neighborhood, you might also have to deal with a steady stream of adorable munchkins.
As always, it pays to have a plan so you don’t find yourself hiding behind the couch with the lights out, pretending not to be in, because the first set of trick-or-treaters reduced you to tears and now you’re trapped in your own home. And, by the way, this is a real-life story from a reader, not a humorous hypothetical scenario.
So, how will you handle it? Do you want to turn out the lights and pretend you’re not home? Do you need to make alternative plans so you don’t have be at home during trick or treat time? During those years I wasn’t ready to face it, I’ve turned off the front lights and hidden in a back room of my house with a book. I’ve also left home before dusk and gone to dinner and the movies. Other years, I’ve decked out the lawn, bought a cauldron of sweeties, and fully embraced other people’s children (although I’ll admit there was more of the former before I could muster the strength for the latter). If you feel you want to participate by handing out goodies, consider inviting friends over for dinner so you have a back-up for answering the door, and be ready with a Plan B in case you suddenly discover you’re not as ready as you thought.
The holidays are always going to be challenging, but being aware of the emotional triggers and having a plan in place can help you to get through them and maybe even have some fun.
By Kathleen Guthrie Woods
“Come trick-or-treating with us!”
I cried after I got off the phone with my friend Irene*. She had extended an invitation for me to join her and her two small children for some revelry on All Hallow’s Eve, and the ask brought on my waterworks. But not for the reasons you think. It wasn’t because I was once again feeling sorry for myself, heartbroken that I’ll never get to:
No. I was crying out of sheer gratitude.
You see, a while back Irene and I had a frank talk about some of the things I’ll miss most because I won’t get to be a mom. Ballet recitals, baseball games, the Tooth Fairy, Santa. And…are you sitting down?…she listened. Not only did she listen, but she heard, and a few months later she did something about it by inviting me to be part of her family, so that I get to experience some of the joys I otherwise would have been denied.
I have been waiting a looooong time to find a friend like this.
I had to decline Irene’s invitation, but I’ve already booked out next Halloween to spend with her and her kids. Oh, and the reason I declined was because I’d already accepted an invitation from another friend to come over to her house and help hand out treats to the neighborhood kids. Look at that: Someone else heard me.
For the first time in ages, I am feeling hopeful again.
*Not her real name. I don’t want to embarrass her, and she knows who she is.
Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.
By Lisa Manterfield
When I first realized I wasn’t going to be able to have children, I had no idea where to turn. Online searches for “infertility” only turned up more sites and books with miracle cures to help get me pregnant. Googling “childless support” almost always turned up groups and books celebrating being childfree-by-choice. There was some help out there, but often it was buried several pages back.
Ten years later, there is more support for people who find themselves childless-not-by-choice, but often that information is hard to find. So, today, I’d like to ask for your help in helping others.
If you’ve read books on the topics of infertility and being childless not by choice, and especially if you’ve found those books valuable, please consider writing a short review on Amazon.
The reason Amazon reviews are so important is that Amazon isn’t just a bookstore, it’s a huge search engine, enabling someone searching online for help to find the handful of books out there. Reviews of books on our topic help to push them up the rankings to make them more likely to pop up on the first page of a search. Reviews also let potential readers know that the book is trusted by others.
So I’d like to ask you now to take a few moments to help others find help and support. If you’ve read my books or if you’ve read books by Pamela, Jody, Justine, Jessica, Tracey, Melanie, or any other authors, please consider leaving a short review. (And if I’ve missed any books or authors, please add them in the comments.)
If you’ve never written a book review before, don’t worry. You don’t need to write more than a couple of sentences. Here are some examples borrowed from actual reviews:
“This book captured the many emotions of dealing with an infertility diagnosis and facing a life without children.”
“After learning I would not be able to have children, I found this book. It was like reading my own story.”
“This is an awesome book. I’ve been through the same challenges, concerns, worries, emotions, and could relate to the author’s journey.”
“I couldn’t put it down. I laughed, cried, laughed, and cried some more. A must read.”
“The author’s story is so similar to mine that I empathized with every word.”
“I really appreciated her sense of humor on this serious topic.”
“A must read for anyone struggling with infertility, the ethics of medical procedures, whether to adopt, etc.”
“Great read if you’ve gone through the struggles of trying to have a child.”
Below are links to my books, and the others I mentioned above. If you do write a review, please let know so I can say a huge and heartfelt thank you.
Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen by Lisa Manterfield (Steel Rose Press, 2016)
I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home: How One Woman Dared to Say No to Motherhood by Lisa Manterfield (Steel Rose Press, 2010)
Life Without Baby Workbooks by Lisa Manterfield:
Workbook 1: Letting Go of the Dream of Motherhood
Workbook 2: Getting Through the Grief of Childlessness
Workbook 3: Dealing With the Day-to-Day Challenges
Workbook 4: Thriving in a New Happily Ever After
Silent Sorority: A Barren Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost and Found by Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos (BookSurge Publishing, 2009)
Living the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfilling Future Without Children by Jody Day (CreateSpace, 2013)
The Next Happy: Let Go of the Life You Planned and Find a New Way Forward by Tracey Cleantis (Hazelden, 2015)
Ever Upward: Overcoming the Lifelong Losses of Infertility by Justine Froelker (Morgan James, Publishing, 2014)
The Pursuit of Motherhood by Jessica Hepburn (Matador, 2014)
Otherhood: Modern Women Finding a New Kind of Happiness by Melanie Notkin (Seal Press, 2014)
Avalanche: A Love Story by Julia Leigh (W. W. Norton & Company, 2016)
Resurrection Year: Turning Broken Dreams Into New Beginnings by Sheridan Voysey (Thomas Nelson, 2013)
Finally, a big thank you to Cathy at Slow Swimmers and Fried Eggs, who did a really nice write-up for I‘m Taking My Eggs and Going Home last week, and reminded her readers (and me) of the importance of reviewing books on this topic.
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
I’ve been writing and talking a lot about grief lately—here on the blog, in my fiction, in my personal life, in the novels I’m reading, and for the Life Without Baby book that came out earlier this year. Even when I got chatting to a stranger on a plane, the conversation turned to the topic of grief.
Over paper cups of tea, this woman—who had lost her brother to suicide—and I talked about how grief stays with us long after we’re “over it”, how the shape of grief changes with time, how it can change us, and how everyone carries around their own personal grief.
My only regret in the discussion is that it didn’t begin sooner on our journey, because I would have liked to hear more about what she had to say on the subject. But eventually we parted ways, she to her office and I to catch another flight, and I didn’t have the opportunity to ask her more about her grief.
So, I’d like to ask you instead.
As a society, I don’t believe the topic of grief gets enough attention. We’re uncomfortable with grieving people, no matter what type of loss they’ve suffered, but it’s especially true when the loss isn’t understood.
So let’s start the conversation now. Let’s talk about this grief. I’d love to hear what you have to say.
By Lisa Manterfield
One of the big changes I’ve seen since starting this site is that the topics of infertility and childlessness are being brought out from behind closed doors and are being discussed in more public forums.
Whereas once I felt as if I was the only person talking openly about this, I’ve since found an incredible network of fellow bloggers and authors writing very intimately about their stories. I’ve also received several requests to complete surveys from researchers who are exploring the effects and issues of unplanned childlessness.
In your corner of the world, you may still be feeling that NO ONE is talking about this, that no one understands what you’re going through, and even your closest confidants don’t want to talk about it. Sadly, I think this is still true for most of us. But the tide is turning, and the more we talk about this topic and the more we venture out and start these conversations, the less taboo it will become.
Even if you’re not ready (or feel as if you will never be ready) to start your own campaign for understanding, you’re already part of this quiet revolution. You’re here, you’re talking about your experience with others, you’re sharing comfort and encouraging other readers. Even if you’re doing all of this anonymously and even if you’re coming here in secret to contribute to these conversations, you are part of the change that’s coming.
This issue is never going to go away, in fact I believe that our segment of the population will only continue to grow (but that’s another post for another day), but perhaps in the future, our sisters who need help will be able to pick up a leaflet from their doctors or walk into a local support group or sit down with a friend over coffee and feel comfortable talking openly about what it feels to not to have the children you wanted.
~ "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."
