The contradictions of a No Kidding life

Along the same lines as last week, when I talked about holding joy and grief in the same space, I think infertility, loss, and childlessness has taught me a lot about contradictory emotions, or as Lori LL says, the “BothAnd.” So it is easy for me now to feel both loss and gain, sadness even resentment alongside gratitude, to feel pity and anger.

In my example last week, I talked about the joy of travelling. That’s one of the Gifts I mention in my 25 post series about the Gifts of Infertility (or Childlessness). It is a gift, a benefit I can indulge in that is easier because I don’t have children. I was chatting with my SIL the other week, and we were talking about London. I was talking about how we use the Heathrow Express to Paddington, so like to stay around there, or try to find a hotel or flat that is close to a Tube station (London Underground). She mentioned that her sister says it is much more reasonable to take the buses. It’s true, I know that. But it hadn’t crossed my mind, simply because the Underground makes it so easy for two of us to get around London when we visit. Unlike my SIL, we don’t have three kids and their girlfriends/boyfriends in tow, making it exceedingly expensive. My husband and I wouldn’t be able to afford to travel if we had to pay for so many. So while I feel the loss of not exploring the world with my kids, in the way they are able to, I can also see the freedom and benefits of a No Kidding lifestyle that still allows me to explore. Gain and loss, loss and gain, both sides of the same coin.

Likewise, I feel gratitude for the life I am able to live as a woman without children, even at the same time that I feel resentment at the societal assumptions about me and my life. I feel gratitude that I live in a city and society that accepts women without children more than other parts of the world. NZ’s first elected female Prime Minister, Helen Clark, has never had children. Our third female Prime Minister, Jacinda Arden, was elected when she did not have children (though soon announced her pregnancy). Women are, I think, more valued here, less bowed down by religious values and restrictions, and so I feel gratitude for that. But still, we are not immune from the political election cycles that talk about “our children and children’s children,” the tax policies that dramatically favour families, and the social welfare system that relies on families for support, forgetting that so many do not have families (at all, or nearby) to help. And so I hold gratitude and resentment in the same space too.

And even here, in No Kidding in NZ Land, there is always the conflict between embracing and enjoying my life without children, and acknowledging the ongoing loss that is a life without children that was not by choice. How much do I say about each thing? Is it balanced? How has it changed over time? How do I write about the fact that it gets so much easier than it was twenty years ago, without devaluing the loss and the pain that I felt back then? That still creeps up on me.

I guess that’s life, regardless of whether we have children or not. Life and its contradictions are something we all share. I hope I am able to talk about it all honestly here, and so find balance.

Perspective in a No Kidding life

I have been struggling with what I might post today. I know what I'm going to write about next week. But today, I have been drawing a blank. As a result, I've been doing a lot of reading - of my drafts document, of previous posts, and of articles that have been referenced, discussed, and debated in the wider ALI blogging community. It has been interesting. The key theme that keeps coming up is that of perspective. 

It comes up because so often there is a lack of perspective. Too often parents are unable to put themselves in our shoes, to see their comments from our perspective. Or we might be angry at others, unable to fully understand their perspective, or understand what motivates their comments. Equally, it might be that we can fully understand the perspective from the other side, but equally, not agree with their conclusions. After all, I might hear and understand someone's perspective and the points they are making, but still, on balance, disagree with their statements or analysis or judgements or approach.

But when there is perspective, there is better balance. By trying to look at things from the perspectives of others, I understand that life is not always greener on the other side, that our "what-ifs" focus only on our dreams, not the myriad possible realities of life. Perspective therefore is really important to me. Developing it has helped me heal, it has helped me better understand others (including someone close to me), and it has helped me become more compassionate and forgiving. Though I've always had it (I credit that for being a middle child!), my approach is much more conscious these days. As a result, it has changed the way I think.

Perspective grounds me. It gives me balance. It helps me understand and appreciate my life. It also gives me more confidence in my own views, knowing that I have tried to consider the positions of all involved. That is liberating to someone who has always been more hesitant about volunteering my views.

Perspective is particularly valuable in our No Kidding lives, allowing us to legitimately mourn what we have lost, and at the exact same time, allowing us to embrace and enjoy what we have as a result. There's such freedom in that.

Other relevant posts include:

• Balance
• Pathways, not Barriers

Pathways, not barriers

This morning I wanted, and needed, to get out of the house. Weeks of rain and gloomy weather have kept me inside, and it was time to do something fun. So I took myself off to Te Papa, our national museum, where they have an art exhibition of a famed New Zealand painter, Dame Robin White. I didn’t know much about her, though I realised once I saw some of her paintings that I knew some of her work. And I realised too that many other local artists have modelled themselves on her approach to landscape, even though she is very much focused on people in landscapes, to give the paintings context.

Context. Context and perspective. That’s how I come to be writing about an art exhibition here on No Kidding. Many of her paintings had quotes or comments she has made about her work. She has spent a lot of time living and working in the Pacific Islands (namely, but not only, Kiribati – pronounced “kiri – bus”), and noted that whilst Europeans see the ocean as a barrier, the Pacific peoples think of it as a pathway. I loved that change of perspective, and saw it immediately in my own context (which I’ve talked about on A Separate Life this week), as well as in my No Kidding context.

The concept of one thing that is seen both as a barrier, and a pathway, depending on your perspective, immediately made me think of infertility and parenthood. Parents look at having children as a pathway to development, to adulthood, and to living a full life. So do those going through infertility, still hoping to parent. Their chosen life is the end goal. Having children will get them there, they think, regardless of what they do with their lives then. Infertility or childlessness is the barrier to everything – to fulfilment, to happiness, to accomplishment, to love, to adulthood. We know this. I’ve written before about the idea that we, the No Kidding, the ones who came through life without children, are their worst nightmare. Many of us might remember feeling that ourselves. We’ve read those who become pregnant or parents after infertility talking about getting through to the “other side” and leaving behind those who are “still in the trenches.”

Yet for those of us who have also left the trenches, climbed out and put our faces to the light, I see that we no longer see childlessness as a barrier. For me, pregnancy loss, infertility, and childlessness have been a pathway to personal development, understanding, compassion, growth, and freedom. We’ve ridden the waves of loss and disappointment, and discovered that, once we stop fighting them, they work in our favour, carrying us to warmer waters, more tranquil and inviting. They changed our perspective from failure to achievement, from fear to delight, from rejection to an embrace of the present and future.We met others who have also ridden those waves, and we have been enriched beyond measure by our fellow travellers.

Most importantly, we’ve realised that our world views depend on our perspectives. And none of that is set in stone. And learning new perspectives open up new worlds of understanding and exploration and adventure. 

 

PS. Another No Kidding snippet from the Robin White exhibition: One of her famous works is a painting of her son when he was a toddler, with a dead seagull lying in front of it. She said that she was the seagull, exhausted by motherhood and the effort to combine that with her art. Again, it made me think of the writing and thinking that I have done both here and on A Separate Life, knowing that I probably would not have done this if I had had children.

Balancing my message

I read an interesting article* today, that talks about countries that measure happiness and receive a high ranking, and how that can actually increase mental distress. In brief, it said that if you are told you should be happy (because you live in one of the happiest countries in the world, for example) but you are not, then your level of isolation and mental distress is going to be higher. 

Effectively, it seems that this is the old equation whereby Satisfaction = Performance less Expectation. If you expect to be happy and are told that you should be, but you're not happy (for whatever reason), you are going to feel even worse. Your expectations have been raised, and by not achieving them, you feel even more deficient. The article noted of course that social media can accentuate this, because of the pressure to show only the beautiful parts of our lives, or only the best photos, implies that everyone else is living a wonderful life, except us.

When reading the article, it immediately made me think of those of us who are Not Kidding. We have been (or still are) surrounded by people telling us that parenthood is the ultimate goal (as it may have been for us at one time too), and that we won't know true meaning, love, and happiness if we are not parents. It is no wonder that, fighting against that paradigm, we find it so hard to deal with the world sometimes, and find our isolation and otherness to be distressing. But of course, that's because the difficulties and stresses of of being a parent, and the regret that some parents may feel, are not given equal air-time, or equal validity. Most parents, even if they do want to scream in disappointment, anger, and/or frustration, won't do it on social media because they want to protect their children from those emotions too, and (like us) they want to avoid the judgement that they know will result. Both those are very understandable reasons. But what it means is that they perpetuate the idea that parenthood is everything, and we continue to be bombarded with just one side of the story.

This brought me also to thinking about my blogs about embracing our new lives. I know I've expressed this concern before. I worry that by talking about the positives of life without children - which are varied and many - I might make people who are struggling feel worse. Having been there, I would never want to do that. It is a fine line between acknowledging the true joys of our lives with the losses that brought us here, and the difficulties that we might face. It's a fine line between emphasising the good times and denying the pain that we have felt or occasionally feel. I'm often torn. I want and need to let people know that life without children (not by choice) can be and is wonderful. I don't want pity, or condescension. I am not lesser, and I do not want to convey that. 

But at the same time, I don't want any of us to be ignored either. We face discrimination, we face bias, and we are often ignored or invisible. Our feelings are not often considered. Our isolation is dismissed. Our lives are joked about, even if at the same time, our lives might be envied. So I guess what I am saying is that if you are struggling, I recognise that, and have written about it, and will continue to write about it here. I would never want you to think that I ignore the tough parts of our life. Life is not perfect, and no-one has the perfect life. But life isn't all doom and gloom either. That is not our fate. Far from it. There is so much to celebrate. So much to hope for, even in the dark days. Hope that your life will be good, that you will find peace and joy again. That your growth will be extraordinary, even if you can't see it at the moment. That you will find gifts from this life that you would never have expected. 

I'm not kidding. It really does get easier.

 

* I can't find the exact link, apologies!

Walking a Not Kidding Fine Line

There's been so much written this week (and spoken) through World Childless Week. I'm still making my way through it all, both to see what people I know have written, and to find new writers and stories. It has been wonderful to see it grow, and to hear all the different stories. I do hope you have been looking, and reading, and listening. I submitted two pieces, one on Legacy (surprise, surprise), and the other, interestingly, was the piece I posted here last Monday for Our Stories. It was selected for the Moving Forwards theme of the week, appropriately the very last theme of the week. The one that shows people who are in pain that it is possible to move forwards, that life can still be good, that there's much more to life than whether or not we have children. It finishes the week on such a positive note, as it should.

I felt torn a lot of last week. I didn't publicise my writings on personal social media accounts. But I did write this on A Separate Life, where I neither hide my childlessness nor highlight it. You see, I was torn because whilst I want to educate people about the way they view, judge, talk to and think about childless people, I also don't want to make it see as if I want pity. Navigating that fine line isn't always easy. There are the intolerant people who role their eyes whenever I mention a difference in my life because I don't have kids, when all I'm trying to do is participate in a conversation. There are the ones who judge or condescend to me, and I don't want to give them any more ammunition. But it does get easier as I get older, because I both say more of what I think, and I'm not as sensitive as I might have been when things were very raw. And it's important to let people know that life for us is a little different than they might ever have considered. As I said in the piece,

"The more we understand about all our differences, the kinder we can be to both groups, and the more we will ALL benefit."

So I'll finish with World Childless Week 2021 by including my #Iamme pic. If you look carefully, you can see my shadow as I took the pic on our drive through the South Island in May. And if you read the words, I deliberately didn't label myself as "childless." Because as I've written so many times before, I don't like that label, though I use it out of necessity. I much prefer to say that I am not kidding. It's the truth, it doesn't judge, and the play on words pleases me. I am Mali, and I am not kidding. 

 

Inaccurate Thinking and Self-compassion

 Some time ago I read six words that I thought were terribly sad. The words were:

“I still wish I had children.”

I found them terribly sad not for the obvious reason. Yes, it is undeniably sad that they wanted children, and were not able to have them for whatever reason. I have enormous compassion for them because of this. I share in that experience. But that’s not the reason why I felt sad for the blogger. I felt sad because, years later, they have been unable to let go.

Sure, I’ve probably thought those words in the past. And yes, there are times when I feel the sadness of not having children, which is maybe what the person meant. That they wish their lives had been different. That they meant to say, “I wish I had had children.” This could all be my misunderstanding of a simple statement. Because I think we all understand that sentiment. I certainly do. Accepting what has happened, and moving into the future, doesn’t mean that we didn’t want something different, or that we occasionally wish it had been otherwise.

But I thought it was worth writing about, because what if this blogger actually does sit in their home, in the present day, years later, wishing they had children? I know there are people who feel this ways. I had an online (and then in real life) friend who would talk about bursting into tears in her 60s because she had seen children or pregnant women at the doctor’s office. She had moved on, but only to an extent.

And if that is the way this person feels, then I feel enormous compassion for them. Personally, I cannot imagine saying the words, “I still wish I had children” any more. I haven’t really felt that for years. The sentiment seems pointless to me. I never had children when I was younger. I’m never going to have them now. It would be a fantasy to wish I had something that is impossible. Why would I do that? There are enough instances in the average day or week that remind me I don’t have children, and remind me what my life could have looked like if I had had them. I don’t need to fantasise. Yet obviously, some people still do it.

Of course, it may work for them. We all cope differently. They may have a moment or a minute or an hour wishing they had children, have a bit of a cry, and then move on with their life. Of course, if they feel better after that, then they have found a way to mourn and to live. It may work for them, but it wouldn’t work for me. If I did that, I would be only focusing on what was bad about my life without children, and I would be thinking about only the good things about having children. It would be negative thinking, not accurate thinking. It would be living in a fantasy world, rather than acknowledging the good things in my life today. Some of those good things are a result of not having children. But worst of all, if I felt that way and allowed myself to regularly feel that way, it would be extremely emotionally difficult, and incredibly unkind to myself. I can’t imagine letting myself feel that way, and then wrenching myself away from the fantasy back to real life. A form of self-torture!

Teaching myself NOT to wish that things were different was a major step in healing. It was the beginnings of acceptance, and was, in reality, the first step of that process. I remember opening a cupboard where I used to keep the folic acid. There were still some tablets left, and I thought, “maybe, just in case, I should keep them.” Then my logical brain kicked in. “That’s not going to happen,” I realised. I remember repeating it to myself to make sure I fully registered the meaning. It hurt. That first time it really hurt. But I picked up the folic acid bottle, and threw it away. And the next time a thought like that slipped through, it was a tiny bit easier. It is the same as denying those negative thoughts I’ve written about before. I learned to address them and then dismiss them, and I am so pleased I did.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, indulging in wishful thinking when all doors were now closed to me would be inaccurate thinking at best. At worst, it would be self-punishment and denial. I have not been perfect at learning not to do it. But gradually I was able to recognise it for what it was, and to turn away from it. This helped me enormously. It was an act of self-compassion. And it became habit. And it allowed me to look forward, to breathe, and to live in the present and think about my future, rather than staying in the past.

 

 

Accurate thinking

 I was just listening to an interview on our national radio station. It was aimed at how to help anxious children (and parents) but there were many points that were equally relevant to us. My favourite point, though, was:

"Don't teach positive thinking. Teach accurate thinking."

Isn't that perfect? (And not only because it has given me a topic for today! lol)

I'm not overly negative or cynical (despite being told by a colleague once that I was "quite cynical for one so young" when I made a comment that he agreed with) but I'm also not someone with a glass-half-full attitude all the time either. I like to think I'm realistic. (Though once again, this comment is tempered by remembering friends of friends on Fbk who think that they are politically objective, then spew all sorts of hate. Sigh!) Perhaps all these qualifications about who I am or am not just back me up. I hope I'm realistic. I think I was realistic when I saw the infertility and loss statistics for and against my age and my history (first after one ectopic, then after a second) and the evidence we (me, my husband, and my fertility guy) were faced with during IVF cycles, and assessed these without emotion (or rather, with emotion put aside) to determine what if any our next steps might or might not be. It doesn't mean that I didn't have hope. But hope - and for a while, despair - were tempered by evidence, science, and brutal (from each of us at different times) honesty.

I think this is what we ask for when we ask that the "think positive never give up" brigade understand our positions. We don't want our positions dismissed, or the evidence to be ignored. We just want people to understand or at least, to accept our situations. 

In exactly the same way, it is not accurate to assume that a life without children will be never-ending gloom, loss, or sadness. Neither is it accurate to say it will be perfectly happy, and that everything we've all been through will be forgotten. Of course not! It is accurate to say that our lives can and most likely will be good, happy, with some wonderful experiences. Looking on the bright side, embracing the good things we have already, or have because we don't have children, is not blindly optimistic. It is simply realistic. Life is full of balances, trade-offs, pros and cons. The joy is there if we look for it. That's accurate. And I'm not kidding!