No Kidding 2020 Project: Day 20 - Celebrate

When you think about living a life that was not your first choice, you might find it odd that I encourage you to Celebrate. But synonyms of celebrate include mark, commemorate and honour. I know many of my fellow No Kidding bloggers have reached this stage in their lives too.

But many of you who might be just saying good-bye to your hopes of building a family will be aghast at the idea of celebrating the end of their dream. I am not suggesting that’s what you should celebrate at all. We need to remember to be kind to ourselves when we fail. But we should also praise our achievements, and congratulate ourselves, not just for the big things, but for getting through life – for each time we recognise progress, or realise we did something hard, or wince and move on when something hurts or someone said something hurtful, or speak up against stereotypes, or remind people of our situation, etc. And as time passes, I think we all realise that there is, in fact, much to celebrate.

• Celebrate surviving a long, hard, and disappointing quest that did not deliver what we wanted.
• Celebrate our resilience, and our ability to adapt to new situations and make the best of them.
• Celebrate our hope for something new.
• Celebrate the progress we have made since the time we first knew that we would be living a No Kidding life.
• Celebrate that we kept taking all those tiny, small and often painful steps towards healing.
• Celebrate the relationships we have that have come through this.
• Celebrate the relationship we have with ourselves!
• Celebrate the wisdom we have developed, and the people we have become.
• Celebrate your new life.
• Celebrate the unexpected joys.
• Celebrate the networks you have built or are building amongst women who are not mothers.
• Celebrate all those other women who are blogging and writing and working to help us all know we are not alone, and to try to change the world to make it easier to navigate.
• Celebrate!

I also celebrate all my much-loved readers who motivate, encourage and support me here on No Kidding in NZ, who write me little notes, who challenge me to think about other perspectives, and keep me going.

And today, I’m also celebrating the 20th post and end of my 2020 Blogging Project, where I’ve laid out a path to healing, looking at the key areas that helped me move from that day when I first knew, definitively, that I would never have children, never be a mother, never make my husband a father. It has made me think about the process, about what helped, about what was hard. Thanks for reading along with me!

And next week, No Kidding in NZ will resume normal transmission. See you back here. I hope that's cause to celebrate too.