Life fills the void

The last week or two, I've been reading old posts and comments (10-15 years ago) from the infertility community. It's been interesting to see how my perspective - as someone who did end up on the road less travelled living a No Kidding life - is often completely different to both those who were desperately hoping to conceive and have children, those who were hoping to adopt, and those who became parents. 

I know that I'm reading these posts now as someone who has been living this life now for 22 years, who has had time to develop perspective, and who looks at the world from a very different viewpoint. But after so long, it has surprised me to see, so blatantly, some of the judgement towards those who might live a life without children, the self-congratulations for those who did not have to face the issues we might have had to face, and the pressure that was then put on those who were still trying, desperately believing that they would "join the club" or "climb out of the trenches" (in the terminology of the blogging community at the time) as mothers. And yet, I doubt that any of those people at the time realised what they were doing.

Here's a radical thought. Perhaps I was lucky not to be part of that community when I was going through pregnancy loss and infertility and treatments. How hard it is to be infertile and feel the pressure from society, governments, and family. How much harder it must be to feel it also from your fellow infertiles, who have that need to see others get the desired outcome so that they know it is possible for them, too, to get it. To feel the pressure to never give up, and to feel the judgement of doing so. To be someone's "worst nightmare." It encourages me too, that I haven't really been a part of that community (or only in passing) or felt that pressure, as our No Kidding blogging community has grown.

How important it is to now be part of a community that can take those people - the ones who suspect or know that they won't end their infertility stories as parents - and tell them they will be okay, that the wounds heal (even if scars remain), and that their lives can and will still be good, happy, and filled with joy. I want to tell them that the judgement dissipates. It's no longer top of mind for any of those who've been through infertility - regardless of their outcome. It fades away, to an extent. But more particularly, i want to tell them that we become so much better at dealing with that judgement. We learn so much more about our own selves, develop our own perspectives, and grow in confidence. We learn that the judgement tells us more about the people judging and their issues at the time than it ever says about us. And that makes it so much easier to dismiss.

I'm so proud of all my fellow bloggers - each of them have shown the way through the difficult times. We are not giving blind messages of hope above reason. We are showing them, with our own experiences and lives, that one day, this will only be a part of them, each year a little smaller, a little less painful. That it won't always be all-consuming. That life fills the void. 

And right now, my life is filled with, well, readjusting back into real life* after an amazing three months away. Enjoying the little things - summer, the tui in our garden, tennis, tomatoes and basil, music, and good books. Savouring life after being absent and then sick. I hope your lives are equally full with these precious little things that make life worth living.

 

 

* See A Separate Life's recent post, Right Now

Parenting ourselves

One of the losses we have when we can’t have children is knowing what kind of parents we would have been. What we might have copied from our own parents, and what we would have done differently. Perhaps importantly, we want to have a chance to think about what our own parents did, what we wish they did instead, and how we might have adjusted that for our own kids, had we had any.

Yes, there are many experiences and knowledge that I wanted to pass on to my children. Good memories that I would love to recreate. And of course, no parents are perfect. I wish my parents had done some things differently. But I have been able to recognise how hard they tried, and how they did the best they could at the time, with the knowledge they had at the time. Looking at their lives this way gives me a lot of peace, and allows me to appreciate the many positives of my childhood, and my relationship with them.

So personally, I wouldn’t take any comfort in thinking about what I wish they had done differently, or how I might have done it instead. It's a recipe for pain. However, when I think about it, I realise that I could change this for myself now anyway. Or that I have already done so. I’m not a child any longer. I can change the way I think. Reflection, forced on me by loss and change, has enabled me to - in some ways - parent myself, and learn a little along the way:

• I’ve learned that just as I’m not my failures, I’m not my achievements either.
• I’ve learned that judgement can often come from low self-esteem, and at the same time that I fight against doing this myself, I can more easily forgive it in others.
• I’ve learned that I can stand up for myself. That sometimes I need to, and that’s okay to do. That we can be tactful and forthright at the same time. It’s the biggest change from the way I was brought up.
• And best of all, I’ve learned that not standing up for myself/speaking up, has nothing to do with my self-worth. That I want to fight some battles some days, and on other days, I’d just rather not. I’ve learned to know the difference. And I have given myself permission to do whatever feels right at the time. It has been liberating.
• I’ve learned that I am proud of my values.
• I’ve also learned that I can be proud of pushing myself, and that it is worth testing my instincts. But that I don’t have to push myself every single time, either. That my feelings matter.
• I’ve learned that while I appreciate a community spirit, I also commend individuality and difference. Actually, I’ve always admired that. But now I know that the two are possible at the same time.
• And I’ve learned that “do they/you have a family?” is the question asked by someone who grew up in the 30s and 40s, who had their children in the 50s and 60s, and who lived in a time and place when women’s families were their careers, and the only careers they would ever have. I learned that they don’t mean to judge or condescend by asking the question, but that they see the world differently from those of us born in later decades. And I’ve learned to accept that.

 

Quotes in homage of the No Kidding blogging community

I love a good quote. Regular readers know that already! I love finding that someone has perfectly, succinctly, eloquently expressed an emotion I have not previously been able to articulate. Or when I read a quote that has expressed a feeling or belief I have had, and I see it validated in print. (If only I could memorise them all when I first read them.) Quotes can go a long way – much further than a too-wordy blogpost! And so, today’s post again highlights thoughts from the insightful Maya Angelou:

“If you are always trying to be normal, you’ll never know how amazing you can be.”

This seems to be made for the No Kidding community. We feel ever so normal until we find we will never have children. All of a sudden, we are isolated, judged, and seen as different. Not normal, even. But look around at our No Kidding blogging community. They embody this quote, and are truly amazing. I hope they know it.

“When you learn, teach, when you get, give.”

As a lifelong learner, I love this. I think it is also a special strength of our blogging community. Going through something difficult teaches us so many things. My Gifts of Infertility series is evidence of how that worked for me. This community gives us so much support when we need it. Passing it on through our blogs, and giving and taking the community support that has grown here, helps many. Teaching as we learn, giving as we get. This is such a good example for our lives.

And last but never least,

“You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.”
                                                                                   Maya Angelou

 

 

Quotes and Memes: Learning from others

I don’t always agree with memes and quotes I see around social media. In fact, I often disagree with them. Or despair at the way they have been misappropriated. And I often shake my head when someone uses them to imply that they are correct on a particular issue, but I feel that the meme actually points out the reasons why the exact opposite is true. But don’t get me started on that! Occasionally though, I will screenshot one that I think applies to our No Kidding lives. Here are a couple:

One I saw recently (unattributed) asked us to,

“Think about how much you’ve grown since the event you thought would end you.”

I loved that. Most of us have grown an enormous amount since we realised – slowly or abruptly – that we were never going to have children. Some people get stuck, forever grieving, unable to accept or move forwards. But most don’t. I for one have learned resilience, gratitude, self-compassion and compassion for others, courage, acceptance, and much more. Even in the midst of my grief, I learned to find joy in small things, to appreciate what I have, and to accept that which could not be changed. I see this every day in other bloggers too. We grow, even when we’re in pain, even if we didn’t want to grow this way. And after a while, that growth brings joy and confidence and freedom. We can appreciate the growth, even if we do not appreciate the circumstances that led to that growth.

Another meme quoting a poet, Camille Dungy, gave us good advice – whether you are a writer or not.

“Beware of being so certain of what you want to say that you stop yourself from learning what you need to discover.”

I have found this time and time again as I have written this blog, and read other blogs. Often I will start a blog on a specific topic, and by the time I have ended I discover I’ve said something quite different to what I had expected. Indeed, sometimes my conclusions are the exact opposite of what I set out to say! Writing gives me time to think, and helps me figure out what I really want to say, what I mean, and what I actually think and believe. I am thankful that here in the welcoming and compassionate and wise No Kidding community, I have been given the space to explore my thoughts and feelings, and to expand my understanding and knowledge of the world and myself. Too often, elsewhere, we are unable to work things through like that, for fear of what other people might think, say, or how they might judge. I am forever grateful that blogging-land has given me the chance to learn who I am, and what values are important to me.

A good life: despite or because I don't have children?

As I was writing a post recently, I found myself typing "my life is good now despite not having children." I stopped. I might have felt that way many years ago. But the word “despite” didn’t feel right for me now, in 2022. I asked myself, "is my life is good now despite not having children, or because I don't have them?" Maybe the answer is because. Sacrilege!

I will never know if my life is good despite or because. I will never know how my life would have worked out. Accepting that, rather than clinging to an idealised vision of what my life with children would have been like, is key to dismissing all the painful what-ifs. I'll never know how I would have reacted, or coped with any range of issues (I see the strength of my sister dealing with her CF child), or whether I would have had the energy, the temperament, etc to thrive as a parent. I might have. I might not have. Plenty of parents struggle. So there's no point in thinking about that. It might have been wonderful. It might not have been. If anything, everything I've been through in the last 20 or so years have reminded me that nothing is certain, and a happy ending is never guaranteed, regardless of the path we take.

The reality is that it doesn’t need to be an and/or situation. Maybe I could do all the things that I like about my life even if I had children. Almost certainly I would have found other things I liked about my life. Maybe the things I like about my life right now actually have nothing to do with the fact that I am not a parent. Maybe it’s all about attitude, luck, personality, life choices and opportunities. Realising that brings a feeling of liberation. Ironically, even though I write a blog about my life without kids post-infertility, my No Kidding situation doesn’t define my life – either despite, or because.

I think this is a progression of healing, and inevitably of age. I started off post-infertility being pleased when I could find joy in amongst the pain, finding positives despite my situation. I then moved to embracing my No Kidding life, loving the freedom I had because I wasn’t a parent. Right now, I think that I’ve moved beyond that too. My life is good now because a) I am lucky, and b) I choose to focus on the things I have, not the things I don’t. Life is a wonderful thing, and the alternative (death) is not. Right now I choose to live, I choose to enjoy my life, and I choose to be happy. As I age it will perhaps be harder to do this. So I’m going to make the most of life now, regardless of how or why it is good. My life is neither better or worse despite not having children, or because I don’t have them. The "why's" don't matter. In this moment it is good. That’s all I can ever ask for.

Growth and personality

Back in September, Infertile Phoenix wrote this post asking Does Trauma Change our Personality? I recognised a lot of me in her post, in the shift away from confidence, or I would suggest, towards more thoughtfulness and reflection.

I've written about how trauma affected me in this post about confidence and balance, and again in my Gifts of Infertility series, when I wrote called Accepting My Mortality. To recap, whilst I've never been brimming with self-confidence, or an ability to brush off other people's views or actions, I was growing in confidence in my late 30s. But with infertility, pregnancy loss that threatened my own mortality, and the resultant childlessness, I had a much deeper feeling that we are all vulnerable, and that anything can happen at any time. It has made my behaviour more conservative in some ways. I never had an out-there risk-taking bravado, perhaps because I always had a realistic awareness of risk (I was in awe of a female colleague who travelled to Pakistan for a month on her own just for fun). But I did have a willingness to be reasonably adventurous, emotionally and geographically, if not always physically! (Don't get me on a swing bridge or a steep mountain, lol) I travelled the world on my own without a thought, took on challenging roles, and swallowed my fear to live the life I wanted to live.

However, post-infertility/childlessness, and even by embracing the freedom of uncertainty, I was perhaps even more aware of risks. I think perhaps my world view, or rather, my place in the world had changed. I'm no longer young where I believed that the world is my oyster. Lots of doors have closed to me. My early degrees of luck (or perhaps, privilege) were not an insurance against future bad luck. As I have said, whilst that freed me from guilt that genuine bad luck was my fault, it also made the world seem quite vulnerable. Age probably contributes to that. The knowledge that there are no children waiting in the wings to support us if that is necessary probably contributes to that too.

But it has also made me more prepared to grasp opportunities when I can. The pandemic has contributed to that. We never know when the world will shut down and limit our opportunities again. I know I can't control these things. On reflection, then, my risk profile probably hasn't changed a lot, in reality. My assessment of risk might be a bit more brutal - some of that comes with age I think, and further acceptance of mortality and future frailty and vulnerability, and some of it comes to my experiences of loss and childlessness. But my appreciation of my life, and what I am able to do, is stronger too, along with the confidence of knowing that I can cope with adversities that might confront me. 

I think too, that I know myself much better now too. I know my strengths and weaknesses. I know what is important to me, and the values I will stand up for. So I look after myself much more, I take care of my needs more than I might have in the past, and I am prepared to stand up for myself. (Being a middle child, this is really hard for me!) This might mean that I have limited my world somewhat - I have learned to say "no" much more often. That might feel as if I am more introverted. But maybe it has allowed me to be more true to myself too. However, knowing myself better has also allowed me to say "yes" more often too. It has allowed me to understand others. It tells me which risks are important to take, and which are not important to me. That is, I think, the biggest change. To answer Infertile Phoenix's question then, I am not sure that my personality has changed. But perhaps, through the combination of trauma, healing, and ageing, I know my personality better now.

Do you think you are substantially different now than when you were younger?

Finding beauty in the weeds

Yesterday, I wrote a Monday post about a walk I had recently taken. You can read about it here. The key point was that I had found joy in the little things. Namely, trees I saw all the time, and weeds. Yes, weeds!

I thought again that this was one of the main things that helped me get through the dark days of loss. But not only the dark days. Noticing beautiful things helps make good days into great. It accentuates joy that I might  already be feeling. It deepens gratitude that I am already feeling. It is a lesson that I have brought with me into my No Kidding life. Yes, I know I talk about this frequently. But I think about it a lot too. I never knew at the time what an impact it might have on my life.

When I was young, I used to take joy in little things too, in the form of childish excitement. But as I grew into a teenager and young adult, I think I felt it less. Excitement wasn't acceptable as we grew up. I remember at one time being told to calm down. I never let myself feel or show my excitement in that way again. Not really.

But when I was grieving, I realised that I could take a quiet joy in things that took my mind off my grief. It helped. And it helped to be able to name what I was doing. A friend told me early on in second ectopic to roll with the feelings. That they'd come and go, and that was okay. That was, it turned out, good advice. Because in doing that, I was better able to understand those feelings, recognise them for what they were, and let them flow through me. .

The grief of loss, the pain, the fear, the jealousy, were each acknowledged. But at the same time, it helped to feel joy, and know it was joy or pleasure in the moment, without denying all those other emotions that were swamping me. It helped to feel gratitude, and recognise it as gratitude, knowing that things weren't so bad, that in some ways I was lucky, that there were things in my life that were still good. It helped with perspective. There wasn't just loss in my life. There was more than that.

Gradually, I became better able to understand, recognise, and actually own my feelings. My feelings weren't me - they were a part of me, but I could see they weren't permanent. Sometimes they helped, sometimes they didn't. But if I could recognise them, I could deal with them too.

Owning my feelings. Even the ugly ones. That has been part of the growth of coming to terms with, and living, a No Kidding life. Maybe it would have come to me anyway. Perhaps. But I'm pleased it has. It makes my life better. Easier. Filled with joy and gratitude. And I think (I hope) kinder too. Better able to understand myself and others. Perhaps that's the best gift of all. 

There is beauty everywhere. Even in the unwanted weeds. And it is there to help us.

 

No Kidding 2020 Project: Day 11 - Dare

When we’re going through infertility, we are conditioned to have our eyes on the prize. We focus on that above all things, and don’t divert from the path. We’re told to “believe.” We’re told to “never give up.” We’re told that science will solve our problem. We’re told that our lives will be better when we get that prize, that oh-so-elusive baby. We stay on the treadmill, trying cycle after cycle, trying treatment after treatment, or waiting month after month for that phone call. So it often comes as a shock when we are either kicked off the treadmill, or fall off it, exhausted, or realise the treadmill has completely lost power.

Even when it is obvious that our efforts have not and will never bear fruit, so many find it hard to begin to look to the future. The idea that the future can be good, that we could be excited about it, is anathema to the messages we’ve been absorbing (and promulgating) for the last months/years/decades. Grieving is normal, and we should let ourselves feel that.

But one day, when we’re ready, when we’re strong enough, and if we’re brave, we challenge ourselves by wondering whether our lives can actually be happy? It feels so scary, to let go of the dream, and open up to the idea of an alternative future. We search out examples of people who’ve been through the same experience, and we begin to open up to the idea. This is the beginning of acceptance. Being brave. Shrugging off what hasn’t worked for us. Daring to be positive about our lives. Beginning to hope for something new. And the rewards are wonderful.