Childless Vs Childfree: It shouldn't be a contest

The Daily Mail has published an article, written by Samantha Brick, titled "The agony of not being a mother: At 55 and childless, why I'm so sick of apparently 'cool', smug women boasting about their well-off, child-free lives and ignoring the grief of others, like me." It's getting a lot of comment across the internet. Due to a paywall, I'm not able to read the full article word-for-word. The title and summaries say enough for me to get the gist.

This same writer had an article in The Sun three years ago with a title about breaking up with friends as soon as they get pregnant, and wrote about being "happiest around the pool with her childfree friends."

Hmmm. Clearly the author has some issues. Consistency, and working for decent "news" publications, to name just two.

Other than for the aim of being sensationalist - which given the publications she writes for, explains a lot - the tone of both articles is, to put it mildly, unpleasant, and devised to create division. After all, it's what The Sun and The Daily Mail feed on. I am sorry for the writer. She is clearly disappointed and grieving at being childless. And maybe her childfree and parent friends don't understand her disappointment in not being a parent. We all know that can be hard. But at 55, is she still unable to see any benefits of her No Kidding life? If so, that is  just plain sad. Because as I have written multiple times before, there are plenty of benefits of a life without children, even if we did not choose that life.

Ironically, just yesterday I saw a post elsewhere commenting that, even in the midst of grief for the loss of a life partner, there might be aspects that we can enjoy. Cooking what we want to eat seemed to be one of the most common things. It does not mean we wanted this. It just means we get to eat mushrooms and/or pasta (in my case) more often. I'd give it up if I could have D back. But I enjoy them when I eat them. Just as living life without children brings benefits, even if we would have happily given them up for the children we wanted.

And those benefits, which we need to be able to see to embrace our lives fully, are what we share with childfree women.  Along with the judgement of society for not having children (for whatever reason), the biases of health and elder care situations which rely on children (to varying extents) when we grow old, the devaluation of our lives because we are not parents, the exploitation of workplaces, the infantilisation (infantilization for the search engines) of women without children, etc etc etc. Surely there is more to unite us than divide us.

Yes, I've probably said all this before. Notably here. But it's worth mentioning again. 

 

Previous posts: 

Why We Should Support the Childfree By Choice 

Thanking No Kidding Women 

Posts labelled childfree 

Navigating grief

 I have just started listening to a book about grief. It was recommended to me, and is called "How Will I Ever Get Through This?" written by Dr Lucy Hone. Familiar with grief in her personal life, she is also a grief and resilience researcher. I thought that sounded interesting. I'm still on Chapter One, but I thought I would share some things that initially have struck me, and some thoughts I have about them.

Firstly, even in the summary, she acknowledges that you can feel grief for more than a bereavement. Infertility is one of the features she lists, she acknowledges that there is grief from it. That's not that common, and that simple recognition would have helped me all those years ago. I hope it helps any readers who might be going through pregnancy loss or infertility or coming to terms with childlessness right now.

Secondly, the title. She says this is the most common question people experiencing grief ask themselves. It is not a question I have asked, Not recently at least. Over 20 years ago, after pregnancy losses and failed IVF treatments and accepting permanent childlessness, I did ask it. I know that some of you, maybe all of you, have asked this at some stage of your journeys too. I don't ask it this time because of that experience around pregnancy loss, infertility and childlessness. I know I will get through it. My husband and I talked about it over the last year or so. He worried about me. I did too, but I have always felt that I will get through it. Not that I want to have to do the "getting through" part of my life now, and wish so very much neither of us ever had to face what his death. But I've never doubted that I would cope. That's a gift I guess my No Kidding life has given me - some resilience I already had, as a result of experiencing previous pain and loss.  

The author also referenced a few things I look forward to reading more about. She noted that grief is probably the most common universal experience of all humans. If we live, we experience grief. It may be for lost loved ones, for an experience we didn't get to have or a life we didn't get to live, for a pet, or anything else that we have lost that invokes strong emotions. Those few words made me feel less alone. We all know it. Or we will.

Another thing she will talk about in the book is resilience. Instead of referring to PTSD, she wanted to refer to post traumatic growth. This blog is evidence of that. But I don't think they are always two opposing sides of grief. I think they can both occur around the same event and in the same person - to differing degrees of course. But surely we can admit that overcoming PTSD is a huge effort in resilience. I certainly feel as if I have been haunted by some events, and that I keep reliving them. But it is mild, and I know it will ease. And then growth can begin. The author notes that this growth, this resilience is almost always inevitable. I've talked about this too. As humans, even as creatures on this planet, we have an innate drive to survive. So what is the option? To survive, and thrive, is really the only option. That gives me hope. But I know it won't come easily.

Finally, she referenced the concept of Ordinary Magic, a phrase coined by a researcher, Ann Masten. Ordinary Magic gives us the strength to cope through every day actions, such as connections, acceptance of things we can't change, asking for help, and being kind to yourself. For me, I would add joy. Or at the very least, pleasure. Enjoying a nice meal or a freshly baked banana muffin (as I did this morning), enjoying the feeling of the sun on my back, or relishing a good storm simply because it reflects my mood, or laughing out loud at something funny. Maybe that is being kind to myself, but I see the two things as very different. Maybe I'll write about that another day.

Included in the list of things that comprise Ordinary Magic was "not letting yourself fall apart." To an extent I disagree. It is very necessary to fall apart, at times. I've felt a little cheated that I haven't been able to fall apart. First, there were people staying with me. Then I had so much to do with my husband's estate and also house maintenance matters. And I have forced myself to maintain my connections so that I have almost lacked the time to fall apart. And now, three months on, I feel like I missed the opportunity. I would say we need to give ourselves permission to fall apart, for a while, so that we can then gather the strength to pull ourselves back together and face the world. 

She notes that all these things bring a "cumulative potency." I really like that idea. Every little thing helps, and the cumulative effect is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Even in these very early days, the power of a message checking in on me or a postcard from a blogger friend from across the seas is formidable. Being kind to myself, and asking for help can be harder, but they also help. 

I know my grief is very different now to my No Kidding related grief. But it is also similar in many ways. I have lost a future I expected. I have no choice but to get through it. I have to allow ordinary magic to do its work, and I have to be kind to myself. I hope you are kind to yourselves too.

Tone Deaf or Conversational Slips

Anyone who has gone through infertility and/or childlessness will have experienced comments or actions that are completely tone deaf to their situation. After telling a relative about my second ectopic, she told me to come to her country for a wedding, and I could hold her baby, because that is "good luck!" And last week I saw a monumentally bad example, during a CNN International interview with the founder of World Childless Week, when all the background graphics were of babies or pregnant bellies. It went on and on and on. I think they must have used AI to generate or compile images, because surely no human could be quite so ignorant or tone deaf. Except we all know that a human can and will be tone deaf like that. I see Loribeth at The Road Less Travelled has written about this too. Go and check her post here, and see the link to the interview. Warning though - the images are very confrontational, even for an old hand like me!

I am experiencing this differently at the moment, around my husband's death. In a conversation with friends, we were expressing sadness that she had also lost a friend to cancer recently. It was a notorious cancer and her friend had lived with the diagnosis for two years, longer than we usually think for that particular cancer. "She was determined she was going to last longer than the odds gave her," said my friend. "She was lucky," I said, both agreeing and disagreeing with the premise that "being determined" led to her longevity. "No, she was very determined!" my friend countered, looking at me pointedly. Was she being tone deaf, or did she actually imply that my husband wasn't sufficiently determined? She has been very supportive to me, so I'm hoping it was just the first. I just replied that she could not say that to me, not then, maybe never. And we changed the subject.

Other discussions have been difficult.  As friends deal with elderly and dying parents and relatives, conversations of death and the aftermath arise. They are real issues, and it is natural to talk about them. What to do with the remains of your elderly loved one? I have been involved in those issues with my parents, and my parents-in-law. And now my husband - but that is very different. Whilst my very supportive friends probably didn't even realise I was struggling not to cry, it was of course not central to their reality. Needless to say, I did not volunteer my own quandaries around that issue during that part of our otherwise lovely chat. 

Little, throwaway comments can give us stabs of pain. Another friend casually commented that she was at the "stage of her life" where she needed a partner. Similar ages, but I had just lost mine. Now, it was not the same, as she had been through a difficult divorce and has been single for 15 years or so. Whereas I am just coming to terms with this. But it felt like she was implying, at our age, that we needed partners. And so of course I winced at that.

And just yesterday I received an email from a friend of my husband's, who opened cheerily with, "I hope you had a great weekend." It has not yet been three months since my husband died. No weekends are great. Nothing is great, not yet.  

Book or TV/movie recommendations that have painful reminders seem to pop up regularly. This happened several times during my pregnancy losses. 24 years later, TV recommendations have had painful bedside death scenes. These are not deliberate, and although very distressing to me at the time, the recommendations were made with the best of intentions. Though I appreciate more those friends who have warned me off certain films or TV shows, because they are just too sad. 

I know some people going through infertility and childlessness have lost or changed relationships when people have made tone deaf comments. Perhaps I never had the worst comments made to me, but I kept those relationships, even if they changed. I guess, over twenty years on from permanent childlessness, I am again being reminded that:

• people don't fully understand what you are going through, even if they have been through something similar themselves

• even if they make every effort to understand, my experience does not enter their every thought, and so mistakes are bound to happen 
• my experience should NOT enter their every thought, although it does mine, and I understand that, and I accept the mistakes, because I also recognise my hypersensitivity right now
• they don't mean to hurt me 
• the relationships and friendships are valued, especially the ones I have mentioned here, where they have all been extremely supportive and loving over the last year or so, and that is far more important than an occasional slip up 
• no-one is perfect - I have made mistakes like this on occasion myself, once in particular that still makes me cringe and feel mortified about 20 years later

Not every comment that causes me pain is tone deaf. Sometimes there are slip ups, sometimes I simply can't join a conversation because I can't talk about something so difficult just yet. And sometimes someone says something that needs to be corrected because it is wrong, thoughtless, or even unkind. CNN International should have known better. So should my friend who thinks "determination" might be a cure for cancer. I may be understanding. But I also want to inform and educate - when I can, when I'm ready.

 

What Childlessness Taught Me

This is the first World Childless Week I have not really joined. Ironic, when I was named this year as People's Champion. But it has almost passed me by. Oops. Though I think I have a good excuse this year. Go and check it out (link below) and see all the activities and submissions and webinars that are still to come.

I did however write a submission, and you can find it here, and other wonderful writing here (and I've included the links below to follow easily) on the theme 10 Things You Should Know About Me. (Mine is the first on the page). 

These are ten of the myriad things that childlessness (and pregnancy loss and infertility) have taught me:  

1.      That being childless was not a reflection of my worth, and that I have nothing to prove

2.      That I would learn many things from adversity; some good, some bad, all useful

3.      That finding joy in little everyday things can be a lifesaver

4.      That what people say to you or about you says so much more about them than it does about you

5.      That it is okay to be vulnerable, and to surrender to loss to allow new hope to grow

6.      That I need to take care of myself

7.      That there is no Next Big Thing, just life, and that’s enough, and can be wonderful

8.      That honest self-reflection is life-changing; writing online was my way of doing that out loud

9.      That all these things add up to resilience, but being resilient doesn’t mean we don’t hurt, and being strong doesn’t mean we don’t feel weak

10.  That I will be okay, even when unexpected horrible things happen. That knowledge (or at this stage, hope at least) is giving me strength following the recent death of my husband.

 

Useful links:

https://worldchildlessweek.net/ 

https://worldchildlessweek.net/10-things-you-should-know-about-me 

https://worldchildlessweek.net/weds26-2/what-childlessness-taught-me

 

World Childless Week People's Champion

 I am honoured to tell you that I have been selected as this year's World Childless Week People's Champion.

You can find the announcement here on the World Childless Week website. A more detailed bio and comment is here. Oh, and a big close up photo of me in front of one of my camellias.

I have long supported World Childless Week, writing submissions and urging others to do so as well, to ensure a variety of voices are heard. It's a truly international venture, based in the UK but celebrated and recognised throughout the world, and including contributions from women and men across the globe.  

But I have been writing here (and prior to this, on the Ectopic Pregnancy website) for years before that. Come November, I'll have been here at No Kidding for 16 years. My commitment to providing a safe but honest space for women and men who are facing a life without children has been unwavering, and I am proud of that.

I want to thank those who nominated me for this honour. I have my suspicions that I might know who they are (😉), but whoever it was, I am grateful for the recognition. If there's one thing I've learned on this community, it is that they are giving and loving, and that support goes both ways. Sending love to you all.