No Kidding blogging

Fourteen years ago (give or take a few days), I wrote my first post on No Kidding in NZ. I was well past the raw shock of losses and an end to my efforts to have children. Seven years, to be exact! It seems so long ago now. My childless life has just turned 21. It’s grown up and left home! But I’m still here. I continue to post on this blog, even though my day-to-day life is rarely disturbed now by emotions resulting from my infertility and the fact that I have no children. I don’t blog anymore to get my emotions out or to reach out so that I don’t feel alone. Correction. I don’t blog solely for these reasons. Or even partly. But I do, very occasionally, need to know there are people on the other end of this post who understand.

I write now because not having kids is now part of my identity. Most of the time, it is neither good nor bad – it just IS. Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to run out of things to say, and I know I repeat myself a LOT (though at times that is deliberate). But then I read a post or a comment, and have the urge to respond to it. Or I read a one-liner in the midst of another post that speaks to me, that reminds me of how I felt, or a comment that shrieks of a pain that needs to be recognised. Or perhaps, in a blogpost or a book, an article, or a politician’s speech, that oozes an arrogance or falsely promotes an assumption that I want to dispel. And suddenly there are still things I want to say. Or things I want to say again. They might seem random, and sometimes they are. Sometimes I’ve been thinking about an issue for a long time. Other times, I hear something on the radio, and immediately write about it. There's no resolution. The issues, thoughts, and questions don't end.

And so I write.