This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic is a tough one.
Baby names you never got to use
As always, you’re free to vent on your own topic, too.
It Got Me Thinking…About “The Wall”
By Kathleen Guthrie Woods
I love my gynecologist. She’s smart, she’s about my age, and like me, she’s childfree. So, yes, I believe she “gets” me.
That’s why it continues to gall me that her office still doesn’t “get” how devastating each of my visits are. I make a point of not making eye contact with anyone else in the waiting room. I don’t want to know—I don’t want the possibility of sensing—that the woman sitting across the room from me is in the full bloom of pregnancy. I also don’t want to know if the woman four seats over is falling apart because she’s about to get confirmation that another round of fertility treatments has failed to produce a longed-for baby. Honestly, I have enough on my plate just keeping my own emotions in check as I telepathically beg the nurse to call my name next.
And I’m pretty successful until I walk past the gatekeeper and enter the hallway where I’m once again faced with The Wall.
Technically, it’s one long wall with three bulletin boards overloaded with healthy baby and family photos. Hello, knife to the heart! There’s no avoiding it. It’s literally IN MY FACE as I make my way to the scale, then to the ladies’ room, then back into the hallway and to the exam room. I get one last look as I head out, and I typically manage to hold myself together as I ride down the elevator (sunglasses on, just in case), exit the building into the glaring sunlight, and all but crawl into my car where I let it all go.
Failure. Loser. Incomplete Woman. Freak of Nature. These are all the labels I give myself as I process my annual confrontation with The Wall.
With this being National Infertility Awareness Week, I wish my doctor and her staff could be more, well, aware. For the sign on their office does not read “Health Care for Mommies Only” or “Doctor of Pregnant and Breastfeeding Women”. It’s supposed to be an office that provides health care for all women. Although my reproductive system may have exceeded its best if used by date, I am still going in for my routine physical checkups, I continue to be a paying customer, and (dangit) I’d like to be represented on The Wall.
So, here are my suggestions:
- In the waiting room, post images of a variety of women, such as prints of famous works of art from different eras. Maybe one is a classic Mary Cassatt mother and child painting (By the way, did you know Cassatt was childfree?), then choose from the abundance of works by Botticelli, Michelangelo, Berthe Morisot, or Annie Leibovitz.
- Or go abstract and hang a bunch of prints by Georgia O’Keeffe, you know, those floral images that subtly represent healthy female reproductive organs.
- On The Wall, post photos of healthy women, all women. You don’t need to take out the babies and families—they have their place here too—but add to the mix your other patients, the single women, the lesbian women, the families of two, and the post-menopausal women who are still kicking, who tell their whole life stories in the lines on their faces.
I hope that I’ll see some changes on The Wall when I go in for my next checkup. But honestly, I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to look.
Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is mostly at peace with her childfree status.
Our Stories: Nora
As told to Kathleen Guthrie Woods
Nora endured devastating abuse from her parents and from a former husband. With such dysfunction in her world, becoming a mother wasn’t something she dreamed about. Then she discovered she was pregnant. “I wanted to keep the baby very much,” she says, “but the situation was too dire.” So she made the heartbreaking decision to end the pregnancy.
With the help of therapy and work in creative fields, she has survived her youth and has healed herself “to the point of being able to live in a loving relationship” with a wonderful fiancé. “I can finally do something productive with my life,” she writes, yet at the same time, feelings of doubt and failure pop up as she wrestles with the results of her choices (oh, how I hate that word).
I hope you’ll offer her words of compassion and encouragement in the Comments, especially if you can relate to her story and have escaped an abusive situation yourself.
LWB: Describe your dream of motherhood.
Nora: I honestly never pictured myself as a mother. The whole idea felt too foreign to me, as I came from a religious family that was profoundly dysfunctional and had no internalized positive image of motherhood. I came to terms with the reality of being an orphan after I disowned my abusive parents and cut contact with my younger siblings who were my only other relatives. I started therapy as early as I could, driven also by the fear that if I didn’t arrive at a point of healing soon enough, I might be too old to create a loving family of my own when that day finally arrived. I have found this to be common among victims of child abuse.
LWB: Are you childfree by choice, chance, or circumstance?
Nora: Circumstance. I believe if I had had a semi-functional family background, I would have made better relationship choices in my 20s and I´d feel encouraged to plan for a family with my fiancé now.
I had an abortion at 27 when I unfortunately became the victim of a serial fraudster, a foreigner who married me and then took all my money. This man took advantage of my profound longing for family and for love. I wanted to keep the baby very much, but the situation was too dire. He was threatening me, and I was in danger of developing serious STDs, which could have affected the child, too. It all happened so fast.
LWB: Where are you on your journey now?
Nora: Sometimes I think about that abortion, that somehow I “could have made it”, living in a shelter house, alone in a foreign country. But then I come back to my senses and realize it was the best decision. I would never want to bring a child into the mess I grew up in. The possibility of having a family is fading in front of my eyes when I realize that nothing is going to happen unless I put substantial effort into creating a suitable environment for a child—and I feel too hollow and tired to pursue it. I never really expected to become a mother, so it doesn’t surprise me. It just feels of empty and out of reach for me.
LWB: What was the turning point for you?
Nora: When I moved in with my fiancé, into his one bedroom apartment, it finally dawned to me that it’s never going to happen. He is a bachelor, 10 years older, and looking forward to his military pension. But I think we both find the fantasy somewhat comforting, that we “still can change our minds.”
LWB: What’s the hardest part for you about not having children?
Nora: Feeling like a failure, like I am not “good enough”, normal, natural, whatever. But I guess it’s cruel to measure oneself against other people’s standards. None of them has walked in my boots.
LWB: What’s the best advice you’ve received?
Nora: Somebody related the question of motherhood to a form of immortality, and said it is viable through creating children or something else of lasting value, like art.
LWB: What’s your Plan B?
Nora: I want to become a writer and documentarist. I find art and writing very fulfilling, but also it asks for your full being to be present. Sometimes I feel I have already given up some of that creativity by entering a close relationship, but I don’t regret that. I love my fiancé, and I can picture living a happy life together.
What is your Plan B? Or are your wounds so raw that you can’t even imagine a happy future? We can all benefit from hearing about your experiences, plus we’d like to support you. Please visit the Our Stories page to get more information and the questionnaire, and consider sharing your story with women who truly understand what you’re going through.
Did you know Kathleen Guthrie Woods is getting ready to tell her own story? The Mother of All Dilemmas follows her journey of pursuing being a single mother then embracing a life without children, and explores the reasons our society still presumes to calculate a woman’s worth based on whether or not she’s a mother. Keep an eye on LifeWithoutBaby.com for announcements about the book’s release.
Whiny Wednesday: Being Taken Advantage Of At Work
Some people assume that if you don’t have children you have nothing but time. Nowhere you have to be, no responsibilities, and certainly nothing important to get home for.
Which brings us to this week’s Whiny Wednesday topic:
Being taken advantage of at work because you don’t have kids
And, go…
Whiny Wednesday: Being Excluded from Conversations
Have you ever been in a conversation with a group of women, only to watch the talk turn to motherhood and feel yourself fading into the background?
That’s the topic of this week’s Whiny Wednesday:
Being excluded from conversations because you don’t have children
Happy Whining!
Whiny Wednesday: Don’t Pity Me
A while ago, I asked you to share topic ideas for Whiny Wednesday. Quite a few of you were glad to oblige. Thanks for the great ideas. If you’d like to suggest a topic, please leave it in the comments below. (Add ** so I can easily find it, please.)
This week’s Whiny Wednesday topic is this:
Other People’s Pity
As always, you’re free to vent on your own topic, too.
It Got Me Thinking…About the Sisterhood of Childfree Women
By Kathleen Guthrie Woods
“You are not alone.”
I think those might be four of the most beautiful words in our language.
Not long ago, I was a single, childfree woman who felt like the last single and childfree woman on the planet—or at least among my circle of friends. I rarely talked about my sadness, my isolation, my desperation, and my fears that I would never be a member of the mommy club with my peers. Instead, I pasted a smile on my face and stuffed myself into puffy bridesmaids gowns and nodded with feigned understanding as mommies shared their birthing and child rearing stories at baby showers. It is possible to feel completely alone in a room full of people.
I credit our amazing founder Lisa Manterfield with opening my eyes to a new world of possibilities. Through her and the LifeWithoutBaby site, I became acquainted with Pamela Tsigdinos, author of Silent Sorority; Melanie Notkin, the Savvy Auntie; and Jody Day at Gateway Women. I was introduced to our cheroes (heroes who just happen to be childfree), including Oprah Winfrey, Marilyn Monroe, Sally Ride, Mary Cassatt, and Julie Taymor. Getting to know more about these women has shown me that a childfree life can indeed be exciting and fulfilling.
What has touched my heart the most is how women just like me have shared their stories and offered support. As I’ve (cautiously) begun to tell women outside of our circle my story, I’ve been amazed at the candid responses: “I never really wanted children…I love being an aunt and that’s enough for me…You are so brave and you inspire me…I’ve never told anyone this, but….” Wow. Once I opened myself up, women from all corners of my life opened up to me and told previously undisclosed stories of infertility battles, adoption disasters, and hurtful discrimination—stories we hear on this site every day. All of these experiences have served to remind me that while the circumstances that brought us here may be different, our passion for living our lives to the fullest is a common denominator. I am humbled to be included in these discussions, and awed to sometimes recognize that I have been the catalyst.
If you’re feeling alone, I encourage you to explore this site more fully and look for topics and stories that resonate with you. There are many resources available here. There’s wonderful support and encouragement here. You are—and I am—not alone. Embrace it.
Kathleen Guthrie Woods is a Northern California–based freelance writer. She is wrapping up a memoir about her experiences as a temporary single working mom, an adventure that helped her come to peace with her decision to be childfree.
Whiny Wednesday: An Explanation
Whiny Wednesday has become such a favorite on the blog and I know that many of you look forward to the chance to have a good rant about what’s on your mind.
For those of you who are new to Life Without Baby or maybe not sure what this Whiny Wednesday thing is all about, I thought an brief explanation might be in order.
Whiny Wednesday came about because many of us felt we were going through our respective journeys alone and that our friends and family often didn’t understand how much we were hurting. Many readers said felt they felt they had to put on a brave face around other people and that the things they wanted to talk about sometimes felt like “whining.”
So, Whiny Wednesday was created as the place where, once a week, you can come and vent about whatever’s on your mind, especially the things you feel you can’t say in-person around others. Most weeks I post a topic for discussion, but the comments are always open for griping about whatever happens to be on your mind.
So, now you know what it’s all about, feel free the have a really good whine this week.
***
P.S. Just a reminder: To celebrate the 7th anniversary of Life Without Baby, I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home and Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen ebooks are half price on Amazon this week.
My “Life Without Baby” is better because of you
By Lisa Manterfield
This week marks the 7th anniversary of Life Without Baby. In March 2010, I sat with my laptop on a sunny patio in a little restaurant (now gone) in Northern California. I ordered a glass of sparkling wine and a dozen oysters, and I tentatively wrote my first blog post.
It was more of a mission statement, really—a public show of my intention to talk about infertility and childlessness. It was a shout out for help, too, a call out into the world in the hopes of hearing someone call back, “Me too.”
No one did.
In fact, no one commented on my posts until I wrote the first Whiny Wednesday post the following month. It’s remained the most popular feature of the site ever since. Turns out there were lots of us wanting to be heard, after all.
Kathleen was with me from that very first day. I texted her to tell her I’d written the first post and we celebrated this wary step out into the unknown. A few weeks later she wrote her first guest post about finding a new path. By the end of the year, she had was writing her regular It Got Me Thinking column, and she’s been here ever since.
That year, I also discovered Pamela’s book Silent Sorority: A Barren Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost, and Found. It was my first encounter with someone who’d shared my experience and had put into words all I’d been feeling.
Since then, I’ve posted almost 1500 posts, received more than 11,000 comments, and welcomed more than a million visits from over 100 countries. I definitely don’t feel alone anymore.
A couple of years ago I wrote a post about the importance of marking anniversaries—the happy and the sad—as a way of measuring how far we’ve come. I could never have imagined that, seven years after that first post, I would still be writing posts and meeting new people, or that I would have written two books about life without baby.
I also could never have imagined the level of peace and, yes, happiness that I have in my life, even though it will never include children of my own. For those of you just trying to figure all this out and wondering what your lives will hold, I hope this serves as encouragement. It does get easier, you will find a new path, and there is even happiness, more than you could imagine, in a life without children.
No good anniversary celebration would be complete without presents, for this week (until March 20), the ebook versions of both I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home: How One Woman Dared to Say No to Motherhood and Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn’t Happen are half price ($4.99) on Amazon.
Finally, a big thank you to all of you who’ve supported me all these years. I never dreamed when I started this site that I’d get to know people from all around the world or that I’d get to form real friendships and even get to meet some of you in person. It’s been a journey I could never have imagined, and I’m grateful to have had you along for the ride.
The Circuitous Route to a Dream
By Lisa Manterfield
All of us here are experts on the circuitous routes of dreams. Sometimes we encounter insurmountable obstacles out of our control, and sometimes we never make it to our destinations at all. Sometimes our dreams get shunted aside, and sometimes new dreams take their place and the circuitous cycle starts all over again.
About 20 years ago, before I had even met the man I wanted to have children with, I had a dream of becoming a writer. As I lived in Los Angeles, I imagined I would become a screenwriter. I’d never written a screenplay, but I’d seen one and I liked movies, so I started writing. It was horrible. I rewrote it, but it was still horrible. I wrote another one and that was horrible, too. My writing dream went off the rails.
Finally, I realized that perhaps screenwriting wasn’t for me. I liked movies, but I loved books. So I tried my hand at writing a novel instead. It wasn’t quite as horrible, and it had potential, so I kept working at it, kept taking classes, and kept learning how to write a book.
And somewhere in the middle of that I started trying to have a baby. I didn’t know how to get myself through the heartache and frustration, except to write about it. My novel got pushed onto a siding, and I wrote endlessly about my quest to have a baby. I wrote in my journal, I wrote in my workshops, I wrote blog posts, and eventually I had enough stories to write a book. Instead of making up stories for my novel, I wrote I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home. I started this site, and I kept writing about my infertility, and then I wrote another book about all I had learned. I was officially a writer, but it was far from the dream I’d originally envisioned.
Finally, I got back to my dream of writing fiction. It’s been a long and circuitous route, but unlike my dream of motherhood, this one is coming true. And now, my first novel A Strange Companion is making its way out into the world.
The story is vastly different from my original bad screenplay idea, and while the concept has remained unchanged, the themes of the book have been colored by my life experience. The book is about a young woman, mourning the death of her first love, who believes he’s been reincarnated into the body of a little girl. (This part is purely fictional!) But, what the story is really about is the many ways in which people deal with grief. You might not be surprised to hear that much of what I learned from infertility and other losses has found its way into the book. The assumptions people make in how we should grieve, how long it takes to get over a loss, and the slow, circuitous route to making our own way to letting go are all part of my own experience. I have to admit that the book is richer for this. In fact, I’m not sure I could have written this book without my hard-earned experience. A circuitous route indeed.
A Strange Companion comes out on April 4th. As you can imagine, this will be a big day for me. After all that has happened over the past 13 years, I am ready to have a dream come true.
You can find out more about the book and read the opening chapters over on my website. It’s also available for pre-order in eBook format, with the print version coming later this week.
The greatest gift anyone could give me is their support in making this dream a reality. If you’d like to help, please grab yourself a copy of the book. Buy one for a friend, too, if you’d like. If you enjoy the book, tell everyone you know. (If you hate it, please keep that to yourself!) And if you’d like to write a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever you bought the book, that would be the most wonderful gift of all. Thank you for your support.
