No Kidding: Coming Out as Childless

Back in World Childless Week, I reposted about Being Worthy. Since then, Sue posted about feeling worthy and talked about the issue of coming out as childless. Recently, Loribeth has written two posts about coming out  (here and here) too.

In Sue’s post, she said, “Don’t those who matter already know, and as for the rest, it’s none of their business?"

I loved this. It is exactly how I feel. I don’t hide the fact that I don’t have children. But what I do hide, a little, are the emotions around it. Well, except here! But then, I generally hide emotions around a lot of things. They’re mine, they’re personal, and I don’t want to share them! So I don’t talk about personal issues or opinions very openly. Correction. I discuss these things with people I trust, or people I think will try to understand. I’ve said frequently that I tell my story only when I choose to do so. That goes for any personal issue, not just childlessness. And childlessness and infertility is awfully personal. It involves our bodies, our reproductive systems and sex lives, our personalities and character, and – perhaps most importantly – grief. These are very personal issues, intimate issues, that some people feel comfortable sharing, and others don’t. Each of us is different. And as I've written before, coming out takes a toll.

I’m kind of in the middle about sharing. I don't hide my childlessness, and I don’t deliberately hide my feelings about it. However, I do agree that it is important to talk about the issue if we’re ever going to see people change their behaviour towards and their judgement about those of us who don’t have children. But I don’t go out to proselytise either. (There are others who do this brilliantly through blogs and groups and websites, and I thank them for their voices and their courage.) My blog here has two purposes. The first is for me to make sense of my situation, and figure out what I think and what is important to me. The second and most important purpose is to try and help those who have been through similar things or those who want to learn about what it is like to go through these things. My focus here is the No Kidding, not the rest of the world.

There is, however, no doubt though that I am “out.” I've been interviewed in a national magazine and newspapers. These were opportunities for me to spread the word. I was nervous, because doing this meant I put my pain and my otherness out on public display, and it meant that I didn’t have a chance to respond or deal with judgements that might have come up as such. It was very scary. I probably prefer the individual interactions I have with people to help them understand, or just – hopefully – make them think, just for a moment, about the No Kidding who walk amongst them.

If I want to say something to an individual or a group, I do speak up. I’ll casually mention in conversation that I don’t have children if it is relevant and then just move on. If someone has made a glaring judgement about people without children, or deliberately overlooked my situation because it isn’t the norm, I’ll point it out. As I have said, I’m not going to be dismissed or ignored! If I am asked about it, I choose how I want to respond – it ranges from saying simply "no, I don't have children" to willingly sharing more deeply, depending on the context and the person asking. I hold strongly to that right to choose how or if I respond. It gives me the power, and the confidence, in a situation where I might otherwise feel vulnerable.

But mostly, I have to say that it just isn't top of my mind to share (unnecessary) details of my story. It goes against my nature. But also, and most importantly, because being childless is really only a small part of who I am. At one stage of my life it felt like it was 100% of who I was. But no longer. It’s part of me, but only a small part now. I am not kidding.

 

From WCW 2018

 

700

This is my 700^th post on No Kidding in NZ, and only a few weeks shy of my ten year anniversary here. I started blogging when I had already come to terms with my No Kidding situation. It had been seven years since the day all avenues were closed to me. Those seven years saw me grieve, saw me question myself and my value, and saw me grapple with a lot of issues about myself and my place in society. But they also saw me embrace my lifestyle without children, expand into new career ventures, develop new coping skills, and finally feel a contentment that I’d been looking for over many years.

I wasn’t grieving any longer. I felt acceptance and clarity. But I felt alone too, in my post-grieving No Kidding world, and wanted a community that would understand. And I felt I had been through a lot, and through my volunteer work on a pregnancy loss messageboard, knew that my experience could help others, and I didn’t want to keep those hard-won lessons to myself.

And here I am 700 posts later, and ten years later. The blog is part of me now. I’m sure some people wonder why I still blog on this topic. Do I still have things to say? Most weeks. Though I struggle from time to time! Do I still find comfort knowing that there are people who get it, who get me? Yes, definitely. Do I know that I still help people from time to time? Yes. Every so often there is a comment or email that makes it so very worthwhile. So am I sticking around? Yes, for a while at least! Thanks for sticking around with me.

Optimism vs Pessimism

I was going another direction for my Monday post this week, until I read Mel's post here, debating the merits of pessimism and hope. This week Mel, and another blogging friend, both lost dear pets, important and much-loved members of their family. I send them my love, as I know how painful it can be. But it is probably accentuated in current times, when those we have at home play such a big role in our well-being. Mel wonders whether being pessimistic before the end or being optimistic would have been better for her. And she compares that situation to the global pandemic.

It's a topic those of us who have been through infertility or have become childless not by choice through other circumstances know well. All those people who say, "don't give up hope" simply because they don't know how to deal with loss or sadness or situations that might be outside the norm.

Even though I don't particularly like the "don't give up hope" brigade, as I call them, I am still a great believer in hope. It's a simple issue for me. Being pessimistic often feels awful. We begin to grieve before something has happened, something that might never happen. Pessimism feels bad. It creates panic. It obscures joy. It destroys peace of mind. Pessimism about a future that may or may not occur steals our present, regardless of the outcome.

On the other hand, optimism is a good feeling. It makes our lives easier. We don't feel pain when we hope, we anticipate joy. It's not blind hope – or at least, it isn't for me, because I am always acutely aware of everything that can go wrong. I'm an optimist who is perhaps a pessimist at heart. It makes life easier.

Most importantly, hoping for something doesn't make it harder when it doesn't turn out well – not if you're well-informed and aware of all the risks. I was hopeful during IVF cycles, when having investigations for my ectopic pregnancies, and when going through a final fertility test (that ultimately ended my quest for a family). I knew that they might not turn out well, but feeling hopeful made the waiting easier. I do not believe I would have been less devastated if I had been pessimistic all along. Preparing myself for the worst case scenario would not have helped when the worst case scenario arrived in person at my doorstep. The end result would have been the same.

That’s not to say that I don’t think about worst case scenarios – I do. As I said above, I like to know all the possible outcomes. I like to be prepared. And I try to feel that I can accept whatever happens. We have an election on Saturday, and I’m thinking of all possible outcomes, though I’m hopeful I will get the result I want. Yesterday afternoon, NZ played Australia in rugby, the first international game for a year, thanks to COVID. I said to my husband I had a bad feeling about the result, and I could have been accused of being a pessimist. (Do what I say, not what I do!) But I still watched, hopeful, and cheered our team when they did good things. (I also looked out the window at the rain, and celebrated our decision not to buy expensive tickets to go to the game only a few kilometres away). The end result was a draw, showing that both relentless pessimism or relentless optimism was a bit pointless. It’s the same with COVID-19. I’m trying not to be ridiculously hopeful, and I have zero expectations that we will be able to travel safely next year. But I’m hoping we will be able to return to travel sometime in the next few years. And in the meantime, I am hopeful for something new and different – that I’ll improve my bread-making, that we’ll have a decent and active summer, and that I can explore my country instead.

It’s the same when we embark on our lives knowing we will never have children. It’s new. It’s not what we wanted. But we can still be hopeful. There’s no point in being pessimistic. We’ve lost the life we wanted. But there’s no point in letting pessimism steal the wonder and joy of the life that is waiting for us

 

 

Does the grief stay with you?

I was thinking a bit about grief lately, for several different reasons, prompted by the arrival of Infant and Pregnancy Loss Awareness month, the discussions around Chrissy Teigen’s pregnancy loss (Loribeth has written a good post about it here, with some links and other  resources), blogposts and a question asked by another in our community, and last but not least, the fact that COVID-19 has meant that many people have to grieve losses without the families and support systems that you might get if people could travel easily and congregate.

Disenfranchised grief – grief that is not acknowledged or talked about – is a common feature of not being able to have children. I’ve written quite a lot about it, so what I’m about to say won’t be new. But maybe you haven’t seen what I’ve said in the past. Maybe you want to be reminded of it. And maybe – I know this is the case for some – you will vehemently disagree with it. But I want to put this out there, because it may apply to some of you too.

A lot of people say you never get over the grief, that it stays with you but that you learn to live with it. In some ways, this is true. And I am not denying anyone’s experience who believes that this applies to them. But for me, mostly, I disagree with this, and – as I’ve said before – I don’t like the impression that it gives new arrivals to life without children that they will always feel as bad as they do at the outset. It sounds so ominous, as if there is always that black cloud hovering, as if the depth of the grief you feel at the beginning is always there, waiting for you to let it out. This is not my experience. I don’t have a black cloud hovering. I don’t feel that there is an enormous wave of grief waiting to be unplugged. I let 95% of my grief go, and it has, indeed, gone.

So even though I know life is different for me, even as I might worry about my old age or loneliness if/when I lose my husband, I don't feel that I’m living with my grief. The reality of our losses and the results of that have most certainly stayed with me. I have learned to live with that. And so of course I still occasionally get pangs or feel real sadness about that. But I don't feel that the grief is there any more. It's just something about my life that I feel sad about from time to time. Does that make sense? Unfortunately, it can pop up when you least expect it. I had a moment a few days ago, reminding me unexpectedly painfully of what we have never had. But I wouldn’t call it grief. Loss? Yes, perhaps. A pang of a reminder of what we might have had? Yes. But not grief. It is too fleeting for that. I know that this fades so quickly now, and I can soon get back to a much happier normal. 

I’ve learned to live with my situation, and I’ve learned to embrace it. It’s not hard to do that. There is indeed much to embrace about our lives. I guess I choose not to focus on what I don't have, and focus on what I have. It takes work to be able to do that, and I won’t deny that it was very hard at first. But it really helped me to be able to move on, and I've found that it works in a range of situations. It's all about our perspective on life, I guess. And what works best for each of us. This works for me.