Months on from Otherhood’s release, and I am now able to
share my essay with you. It’s lengthy, and if you’re a regular reader here, there
won’t be anything new. But I wanted to share it. It focuses on my life now, and recent years, rather than those early years of coming to terms. IDon’t forget, Otherhood is available
internationally!
No Kidding
It was Mother’s Day 2014, an unusually warm, sunny day in
May. I was lying in a hospital bed post-hysterectomy with the windows wide
open, and I could hear chattering families getting in and out of cars outside.
My husband had visited earlier. My surgeon’s nurse had also popped in, happily
chatting about the meal she was about to have with her family. I felt very
alone. No flowers, cards or chocolates for me. Never my favourite day, Mother’s
Day, but this year I felt even more isolated than ever.
It was more than 10 years earlier that the door closed on
having children, on my forty-first birthday. There was no party, no special
dinner. Only a sad, tear-blurred drive home from the clinic where a last-ditch
diagnostic test had surprised me with its finality. After years of trying and
losses, I was not going to have children.
……..
I was a feminist from way back, even before I had ever heard
the word. Growing up on a farm, with no brothers, meant that I never felt that
girls were inferior. My sisters and I drove tractors, rounded up the sheep, and
threw around hay bales just like any farm kid in New Zealand. Help inside the house
was compulsory, too. None of it was gendered.
The feminism of the 1970s and the gains of the 1980s
confirmed my belief that we were equal, and we all had the right to choose how
to live our lives. I met my husband at university in Christchurch and we
married young. But I wanted to embrace the opportunities that presented
themselves to young women in the 1980s, and children were not something I
thought about in my twenties. So, I was surprised when, in my mid-thirties, I
actually felt ready to start trying for them. I was even more surprised by the
devastating sense of loss I felt when I discovered I would never have children.
Coming to terms with this was not easy. I had to learn to
accept this news, and then rebalance. I had to adjust my perception of what
life might be like. I could not think, My kids would look like this, or wonder
if they would be clever, or musical, or sporty, because it just was not going
to happen. It was too painful to think about the ‘what-ifs’ and
‘should-have-beens’, so I didn’t let myself.
I had to deal with the guilt I felt at having a body that
denied my husband and me children. I had to deal with the feelings of failure
at not being able to do something that everyone assumes they can and will be
able to do — ‘the most natural thing in the world’ as some people put it, or
‘the reason we are here on earth’, as a friend once said to me. And I had to
deal with my fear of judgement from family, friends and acquaintances. I say
‘fear of judgement’ because a lot of that judgement was in my head. But not all
of it.
Like everyone in my position, I had to make this adjustment
while surrounded by fertility and pronatalism. Pronatalism is when parenting is
prized over non-parenting, and as a result, those who parent are awarded a superior
status over those who do not. Friends and family were creating and raising
families, the ever-present emphasis on motherhood in the media seemed to grow,
commentators and advertisers alike made me feel invisible, and of course,
politicians focused on ‘the average family’ and talked about ‘your children and
your children’s children’ in election campaigns. It was almost impossible to
escape the feeling that I was in some way considered marginal to society,
‘other’ or ‘less than’ because I wasn’t a mother.
It was very painful to hear ad nauseum — sometimes
blatantly, often subliminally — from society at large that I was not as
important, that my life had less value, that I didn’t know what love is, and
that I wasn’t a ‘real’ woman. (Someone actually said this to a friend of mine.
Ouch.) Many women really struggle with this. Throughout their lives they have
been conditioned to believe it. There is so much shaming involved. Men get
similar messages.
‘C’mon, be a man, get your wife pregnant,’ my husband’s
brothers said to him. At first, my own thoughts parroted these ideas back to
me. But fortunately, with my innate sense of logic, I came to see how false these
thoughts are. There are examples in the news every day of people who are
parents but should never have had children. They have not been judged ‘worthy’
to be parents — biology simply allowed them to be — just as I have not been
judged unworthy.
As I learnt to dismiss those internal negative voices, it
became easier to dismiss the loud, external voices too. I came to see that
unhelpful and judgemental comments told me more about the person making them
than they did about me. Most fell under the category ‘how to tell me you don’t understand
without saying you don’t understand’. The ignorant ‘just adopt’ comments; the
cruel ‘here, have my kids’ said whilst laughing uproariously; the dismissive
‘at least you can <fill in the blanks>’ comments that either came from a
degree of envy of my freedom, discomfort at my situation, or a wish to silence
me because it just made the conversation too awkward.
Oh, and on top of all that, we are told we are selfish. Yet
many generous, giving people do not and could not have children. And many
selfish people have them.
……..
I gradually managed to develop an inner belief in myself,
rejecting the messages and judgements that were all around me. An online
community I joined after my first ectopic pregnancy loss was enormously helpful
in making this transition. Talking to others who understand was, and always is,
immensely helpful. We shared our fears and our victories, gained hope from those
who were a few years ahead of us, and provided hope for those coming behind us.
We had a lot of fun, too. If I couldn’t
sleep or was upset in the middle of the night, there would be someone up and
ready to chat in Coventry or Dorking or Indiana or Vancouver.
As the years passed, we became firm friends. Some of my UK
friends travelled here, and I travelled there. Together with other volunteers
and users, we celebrated the organisation’s 10-year anniversary at the House of
Commons in London. These online and now in-person friends and I ate cream
cakes, looked out the window at the Thames, and educated British MPs on ectopic
pregnancy.
Back then, online support was relatively new, and people
didn’t understand it. But if you don’t have friends and family in real life who
have been through similar experiences, then many people need to look online.
However hard some of my friends tried to support me, they were never going to
‘get it’ at the same level as those who had been through it.
Of course, in real life, many people do not even try to
understand, don’t broach it with us, and don’t in any way acknowledge our lives
without children. They worry about upsetting us (even though silence is always
more upsetting), they think it is easier to ignore the issue, or they suggest
adoption as if that is easy (it isn’t) and solves everything (it doesn’t). I
was once at a women’s business networking lunch, where a woman next to me asked
if I had children. When I said ‘no’, she muttered something and turned her back
to me — for the rest of the lunch, which was supposed to be all about business networking.
Sadly, this reaction is not that unusual.
Deep down, I knew I was not to blame, that my life was as
valuable as that of any other individual and, most importantly, that my life
would still be good, despite the societal messages that seeded guilt and doubts
when I was at my lowest. I came to accept the hand I’d been dealt, even if at
first I didn’t like it, and I felt like acceptance was a betrayal.
In the midst of my early grief, I sat on a clifftop looking
out over the Tasman Sea on a bright summer’s day, listening to the waves
crashing below me. I felt the sun on my back. It made me smile, and I knew even
then I would be okay.
Over time, I found renewed joy in life. And I was lucky. My
friends were mostly professionals, had their kids at different ages, and always
felt that being a mother was part of who
they were, but not the only thing. It made it easier to spend time with them,
because we always had other things to talk about — politics, books, travel,
work, houses, art, wider families, fashion, social change, you name it. Perhaps
inevitably, one or two friends dropped away, as they increasingly spent all
their time with the friends they had met through their children’s schools or
activities. It hurts to be dropped. But that was their loss, too, as we would
have gladly supported them and their kids in those difficult, growing years.
……..
My husband and I became that classic cliché of a couple
without children, travelling internationally. I had wanted to travel since I
was a child, it had been a large part of my career, and it was one of the
things I had looked forward to doing with children. But now we had to do it
alone. It wasn’t that we had a lot of extra funds. A friend once talked about
the fees for her daughter’s private school. ‘See, that’s my annual travel
budget,’ I pointed out.
During one trip, on a gorgeous island off the Queensland
coast, we were talking about where to go next. We could hear the waves lapping
against the beach as a gentle tropical breeze cooled the balcony where we were
enjoying a lunch of beer-battered barramundi and champagne. How could we top
this? ‘We need to put together a ten-year travel plan,’ my husband suggested.
My heart lifted. I set to my task with enthusiasm, and over the next 10 years
we saw many new places and had many new experiences. Every cloud has its silver
lining.
Life was good. I had left full-time employment and was
thoroughly enjoying freelance consulting, serving on boards, chairing a
government-owned company, and volunteering for the ectopic pregnancy charity’s
online support services. After six years my volunteer role ended, and I looked
for a way to replace that. I found several women blogging about being
childless. There are a vast number of supportive communities online that bring
people together, provide valuable information, and offer an understanding ear.
This was certainly true of those who were involuntarily living life without
children. I had found my tribe.
In 2010 I began blogging myself, as No Kidding in NZ. I was
perhaps the first person blogging in New Zealand about living a childless life
and accepting it. Others were still trying to conceive, and even now, newspaper
or TV articles tend to focus on people who hope that they will still have
children. Then there are the stories that end in the ‘miracle baby’. They are
the exception, not the rule, but they disproportionately dominate infertility
stories in the media. Because the idea that you might not have children when
you wanted them seems to be too awful, too final, for both media and the public
to confront. We are everyone’s worst nightmare, and those going through
infertility find it almost impossible to believe that we might be happy. But
for exactly that reason, it is important to talk about our stories, the tough
times, and even more importantly, the good.
So, I blogged. At first I wrote under a pseudonym, but I
have since nervously spoken out in several articles, internationally and
nationally, under my own name. I was receiving well over a thousand hits a week
to my little blog, so I knew I was reaching people. I talked honestly about the
positives and the negatives of my life. My mantra is ‘I’m not kidding’ (pun
intended). The feedback from people who needed to hear that they were not
alone, and that this life can and will be good, made sense of the isolation
that I used to feel, and the loss that I had endured.
Because that’s the thing that is rarely recognised. There is
ongoing loss, no matter how well I have healed, no matter how much I am
enjoying my life, no matter how it seems that I am now ‘over it’. A friend once
said, as I was losing my second pregnancy, that I hadn’t had anything, really,
so I hadn’t lost anything. This was a common refrain. But it didn’t feel like
that. I miss the lives that my children would have had, their growth,
difficulties, victories, their future. I miss their interactions with their
cousins of the same age.
Every Christmas, I decorate my tree on my own. I donated the
Christmas stockings I had bought in hopeful anticipation at a market in
Thailand years ago. I will never teach a child how to bake, knit, crochet or
sew, how to swim or play netball, how to play the piano, or introduce them to
the joy of books, languages and travel. I will never fall about laughing with
my child over something ridiculous. My husband and I celebrate major wedding anniversaries
and birthdays alone. We travel alone. And when we cared for our elderly parents
through illnesses, distress and confusion in their last years, we felt the
gaping future loss that we won’t have children to be there and care for us in
the same way. Don’t ever tell me I haven’t missed anything! I love my life. But
it has come at a cost.
By the time I was in my late forties and perimenopause was
making its presence known, I was not afraid. For me, it was a great leveller.
It was a shared experience with women in the way that motherhood had never
been. An experience that gave me permission not to focus on the differences
between mothers and non-mothers, but our similarities.
……..
After that difficult Mother’s Day in hospital, there was
real cause for celebration in my hysterectomy. Some women find it devastating. They
question their own womanhood. But by the time I had surgery, I had already done
the hard work. I had long dismissed society’s gaslighting, refusing to accept
that an issue with my body meant that I was in any way a second-class woman.
For more than 10 years, I had dealt with the issue of who I was without being a
mother. I knew more about myself, about other people, and about my personal
values. Working as a volunteer with women had taught me about resilience and
growth. Writing had led to deeper thinking, sorting out my values and beliefs.
Maybe this was simply a result of being in my fifties and knowing myself
better. If I’d had children, I would have undoubtedly changed, too. But going
through those years of loss and rediscovery led me to a new stage of
self-knowledge and understanding.
So, for me, my hysterectomy was a welcome liberation. After
all, my uterus had — it seemed — actively conspired to kill me, first with not
one but two ectopic pregnancies, and then with fibroids, leading to urgent
blood transfusions. It had never been of any use to me, and I did not miss it
when it was gone. I knew that a uterus, or what I might have done with it, did
not define me as a person, and definitely not as a woman.
This meant that I could move into my fifties and the rest of
my life feeling confident and free. Menopause, for me, meant that my
reproductive status was no longer relevant. That was liberating. It came at a
time when friends and family were facing empty nests and were more available to
socialise. (Although this is not the same as being childless!) Our respective
reproductive status is, for the time being, completely irrelevant.
Of course, my husband and I are now also beginning to think
about our old age. Caring for his parents taught us much about the preparations
needed, and the mental and physical declines that we may experience. Unlike
many who are parents, we can’t ignore it and leave it to our kids. It is easy
to be afraid. Most childless people worry, ‘Who will look after me when I’m
old?’ There will be no one else around on a day-to-day basis to help us. So, we
need to prepare. We’ve seen too many elderly people, both with and without
children, fail to do so. It causes angst — for them and their carers. We know
that we need to decide where we live, and what help we might need. And
crucially, we need to act before it is necessary, because by then it is already
too late.
That is an unexpected advantage of ageing without children,
I think. We are less complacent. We cannot afford to be. We know life does not
always go to plan. We know we cannot leave it to someone else.
Even writing wills as a childless couple is more
complicated. I made this admission in front of a friend who clearly found it
too much detail or saw it as a complaint, and — although I was already 50 —
responded with ‘Well, you could still adopt!’ But there are so many questions
to answer. Who will have power of attorney? Who will be executor of estate? How
well do we know all our nieces, nephews and great-nephews? Do they need our
help? Do we want to leave a legacy in other ways? For us, the answer to that
last question is yes, and we have made provision for scholarships and medical
research grants among other things. But it isn’t simple.
……..
Almost 20 years on from that drive home from the clinic on
my birthday, I am happy with my life without children. Mostly childfree now,
rather than childless, I can see and embrace the positives in life without
children. If I did not, if I simply mourned the life as a mother I never had,
then I would have lost two lives — the life I wanted, and the life I have now.
The only way to honour my losses and everything I have been through is to grasp
this life, appreciate it, and thrive in it. I owe it to myself, and to my
husband. I am not kidding.
I was asked recently what gives meaning to my life. I talked
about my husband, my writing, and how I have been able to help others also on
this path. But ultimately, my answer was that the most meaningful thing in my
life is simply my life itself — living it, enjoying it, feeling gratitude for
it. Shouldn’t that be what gives every life meaning?
