The grass is always greener ... or is it?

It is World Childless Week.
Today we are talking about the comment parents make, “you’re so lucky to not have kids” and the question, “Do you consider yourself lucky?” 

If I’d been told 20 years ago that I was lucky to not have kids I would have been angry. Such a comment ignores what I have lost, minimises it, dismisses it. I’ve long known that most people don’t see our losses, ever since a friend said, “but you never had anything, so you haven’t lost anything,” as I was recovering from my second ectopic pregnancy. That feeling of being misunderstood is not new to me. But twenty years on, I know now that the comment “you are lucky” tells me more about the mindset of the questioner than it does about my own life.

Yes, I would still be annoyed today that someone could be so thoughtless. But I also see that for many, the grass is always greener on the other side. Being a parent is difficult. Being childless is difficult. And if all we can do is envy the other side, then we are stuck in a mindset of envy, of dissatisfaction, and unable to see the realities of life. No one lifestyle is perfect, without trouble or hardship, without heartache. A parent who looks at our lives and thinks we are free and easy with no responsibilities is being shallow and thoughtless. And if those of us without children envy parents, then we are ignoring the realities of their lives, the stress, the difficulties, and the worry that come along with the joy and love for which we have yearned. Ignoring the complexities of life is superficial thinking. Sadly, we are all guilty of it from time to time.

Yes, there are many times I feel lucky not to have children, just as there are many times when I do not feel lucky. There is a long list of things I will never do because I don’t have children, but equally there is a long list of things I can do as well, because I don’t have children. I have written on my blog about the 25 gifts that I feel infertility and childlessness have given me. Some of those would come with parenthood. Some might not. Some were lessons painfully learned. Some were freedoms and friendship and travel. I have learned not to feel guilty about that. It took some time.

However, I think I feel lucky for other, much more important reasons too. I have learned to adapt and be resilient, even if my life has turned out differently than I had intended. I am lucky that I can embrace my life without children. I do so joyously, without the guilt that comes so easily at first. I am lucky that I can see and feel the benefits of this life without children, and feel happy and content living this life. I am lucky that I have accepted what is, and I am not stuck, not forever grieving, nor am I yearning for something that can never be. I am lucky that I am not living in regret. This is not to say that regret and sadness and loneliness and other losses never raise their heads. They do. But they are not constant companions, as they might have been in the early days of navigating this No Kidding life. I can appreciate what I have now.

How tragic it would be to have this life I have been given, and not to live it to its fullest. What a waste of the years of grief and loss to refuse to appreciate the wonderful parts of my life, to refuse to breathe deeply and yes, to feel lucky. If we practice self-compassion and care, we can nurture the grass on this side of the fence until it is lush and green and welcoming. Life is not always greener on the other side.

 

I am childless; 100% Me

Okay, World Childless Week is coming up - 10-18 September - and I'm completely unprepared for it, and unfortunately, I'm unlikely to be able to do much for it given other commitments.

However, one thing that people are doing is to post an image on social media, either of themselves, or something that represents them. How cool would it be for the No Kidding amongst us to be visible for at least one week in the year?

The hashtag for this is #IAMME, as well as #Worldchildlessweek. The the ones I have seen so far also include a list of things we are, as well as the thing (No Kids. childless) we are not. It's hard narrowing it down, given that I once wrote a post of 100 things that emphasise who I am, rather than the things I am not. You don't have to show your face, and you can just write on a card or paper who you are.

This is mine, taken last year in Iceland: it is 100% me.

Gifts of Infertility Series - #16 – Humility

Looking back at my previous posts in this series, I realised that you could look at this and be gobsmacked at my hubris. I sound as if I think I am awesome. (Actually, I am awesome. So are you. But recognising that and accepting it without apologising is still hard. We women are I think conditioned against this.)

The truth is that before infertility and loss I felt like many people do – indestructible. I wasn’t in perfect health all the time, but I was very lucky. I wasn’t the prettiest, or the thinnest, or the best at anything, but I had grown up lucky enough to take pleasure in being athletic, and academic, and being reasonably well adjusted socially. In other words, I was beyond lucky. I recognised this to an extent – I didn’t grow up with a lot of money, but I was lucky enough to travel as a teenager, and be exposed to many people who suffered from poverty and war and health afflictions that I never even saw back at home. So I knew I was lucky. Perhaps that lead me to thinking that because I had been lucky, I’d continue to be lucky. Deep down, we don’t really think it will ever happen to us, do we?

Until it does. And when it does, it is a shock. Infertility teaches us we are fallible in the most personal of ways. If we can’t fulfil what we think of as our most basic biological functions, we come to a place where we will either drown with the knowledge that we have flaws, or we learn to accept that we have these flaws and are far from perfect, and love ourselves anyway.

Accepting we are fallible is humbling. It is also, I think, liberating. Letting go of pride let’s us decide what is important to us, what we really want to achieve in the world, and most importantly, what we can achieve in the world.

Humility teaches us to consider others, to appreciate them for what they are – flaws and all - too. After all, if we can accept our own flaws and failings, we can accept theirs too.

I’ll finish with a couple of quotes I found: 

"Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real."

Thomas Merton 

"With pride, there are many curses. With humility, there come many blessings."

Ezra Taft Benson

Time, friends, gifts

I've often talked about the gifts in my life as a result of my ectopic pregnancies, and infertility.  The ability to help others through tough times, and knowing that I helped, also helped me make sense of my losses and what has come after.  But as I've said before - and this won't be the last time I say it either - the biggest gifts were the friendships I established.

On our last night in the UK, I jumped on the train and sped off to Reading, an agreed central meeting spot, to rendezvous with three friends I first met on-line.  We became friends first back around 2002-3, and that was solidified with a fantastic working relationship over about six or so years that ended just last year.  But our friendship endures.

Those early years of knowing each other involved us talking about our losses, our efforts to build a family or complete our families, and to support each other.  But time heals. Now we are a normal (well, not so normal, quite mad in some respects, but you know what I mean!) group of friends.  We talk about about the kids of some, the pets of others, the spouses, brothers and sisters and parents, struggles with money, weight, bodies, jobs, and getting older.  We know that underpinning all this is the fact that we were brought together through shared losses and grief.  But we know now that it is love that keeps us together.  Love, respect, and enthusiasm for the future.

I felt sad leaving these amazing women.  I was beyond grateful that they agreed to get together to coincide with my presence there.  I know that it was a considerable sacrifice for at least one.  I don't know when I will see them again.  But I don't (I can't) doubt that I will see them again.  It might be two or three years, or it might be ten or twenty years (I hope not).  And in the meantime we keep in touch through the internet.  Love will ensure we see each other again.   What a gift that is.

Back to school ...

Throughout the northern hemisphere, people are talking about dealing with the "back to school" issues - whether as parents, having to cope with childcare, expenses, etc, or as non-parents, having to endure the media and personal (eg on FB) blitz about "back to school" which just seems to assume that everyone  has kids, or has had them.  It's not easy, I know.

This year, I'm lucky.  For the first time I'm in the northern hemisphere when it is time to go back to school. Unwittingly, we made plans to shift from northern Italy to southern Italy last weekend.  Yes, the weekend when all the Italians head home after their summer holidays, ready for the kids to go back to school, and to start work again on Monday.  We braced ourselves for the three day drive down the Adriatic Coast, on the autostradas.  It was busy, but not bad.  Because, like so often in my life, I was not going on the busy road, but on the road less travelled.  Yes, we were heading south, when everyone else was heading north.  The multi-lane autostradas north were jam-packed with cars, sometimes at a standstill, as we whizzed past at 130 kmph, with plenty of space, heading south into the sun.

And perhaps because I didn't have to deal with friends and colleagues talking about their kids getting back to school, or perhaps it is simply that most of my friends and family have children who have grown (or who are in the southern hemisphere, in the middle of the winter term), I could feel smug about our particular direction.

Sometimes, going in the opposite direction brings freedom, relaxation, wind in our hair (once we got to our destinations), and no queues at the Autogrills on the highway!

High Season

The timing of our trip to Europe was purely decided by my husband's work ... or rather, the timing of his redundancy.  They took ages to confirm, then to decide dates, and so it meant we left about a month or even two months later than I would have hoped originally.  (Though in reality, there is no way I could have organised the trip and got everything ready at home in time).  So.  Here I am in Rome.  In July.  

Travelling through the Middle East for the last few weeks was fine, as it is getting hot (and when I say hot, I mean HOT - 47 degs C was the hottest day), and so it is the low season there.  Tourist numbers were low, even in Israel.  But here we are in Rome.  In July.  With the rest of humanity.

Or so it seemed today, as we ventured into the centre of the city, to retrace some steps from our first visit here 15 years ago.  The tourist spots and routes thronged with people.  The Pantheon was full.  I remember being there in November 1998, standing inside in silence, with only two or three other people there with me.  Today, there were hundreds.  Lots of American accents, some German and some very pale Scandinavians.  All it seemed with at least two kids in tow.   Have I mentioned I detest crowds?  Especially in the heat?  

I have never before truly appreciated how lucky I am to be able to travel outside school holidays, and to be able to avoid the peak season in Europe in summer.  Even Bangkok at Christmas/New Year is better than this!  

And yet, because we have the luxury of time, because we're living in an apartment (airbnb - thanks Nicole for the recommendation you didn't realise you had made) in a real, middle/working class, section of Rome, we can escape the tourist routes.  It made me feel sad for all the tourists, because only about 50 metres from Piazza Navona, there were beautiful quiet streets, the type of streets you go to Italy to see, and they were empty.  Stuck to a timetable - not just because of kids, but with jobs too - the tourists missed these streets, the streets that were always my enduring memories of Rome, long after the Colosseum or Vatican.  And here at my apartment, there is a small street market every morning just two minutes walk away, just past the bar where we can get coffee in the morning, and beer/wine in the evening, and just past the small pizza place, and just before the gelateria, and a small square where people sit in the evening.  And even though I am in Rome in July, I know I am still lucky.