Success stories

Humans aren’t born with a fear of failure. Failure is how we learn. I wish as girls we had all been taught that, encouraged to embrace it. I’ve seen girls terrified of failure, maybe instilled from parents or family or a society that holds up behaviours and expectations that are impossible to achieve. They see their mothers subjected to standards of being able to achieve and have “it all” when their fathers are not subjected to that. They learn that failure is shameful. When actually, it means that at least they tried.

And so when women start to face infertility, they have already been trained to achieve what is expected of them. People assume infertility issues are those of the woman. People judge women without children very differently from how they judge men without children. We’re expected to achieve in our careers and social lives and marriages, and part of that achievement is to have children. So when infertility looms, our fear of failure is accentuated.

I hate that fertility is talked about in such strong, success/failure terms. It's one of the reasons I refuse to use the “failure” word when I talk about IVF cycles that don’t result in a pregnancy or even a live birth. The truth is, we are not responsible for fertility treatment that doesn’t get the result we were looking for. The medical profession don’t know why some cycles result in pregnancy and some don’t. I had a specialist who once said to me, “we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about women’s reproductive systems.” So really, we should never feel as if we have failed. The treatment might not have worked. But failure is a very strong term. It’s not through lack of application, or desire, or commitment. It’s due solely to biological processes working differently than we and our doctors had hoped. To me, that’s not a failure.

I know. It’s easy to say that now. But it’s how I feel. Biology is responsible. There’s no failure. I don’t feel a failure, or even that my body failed me. It did everything it could! The only failure would be if we refused to accept the outcome and the resultant life we have for the rest of our lives. That’s why, at the risk of repetition, I think that so many of the childless are actually the true success stories of infertility. That despite not getting what we wanted, we are still prospering, living good lives, feeling contented and happy, and being decent people. Not taking advantage of the life I had would be the true failure. 

Don’t you agree?

 

 

 

Resilience not failure

Some months ago, I heard an interview discussing failure and resilience. I forgot who it involved, but I think it was about Linda Graham, and her book Resilience. She talked about dealing with disappointments and failure, about bouncing back, and a number of things I thought were relevant for those of us who haven’t had children.

The most important topic was that of failure. It's not a word* I like, for a lot of reasons. But for those of us who are childless not by choice, failure is – to be blunt – how we got here. Or should I say, that is too often what we think and fear when we enter our No Kidding lives. It is common – dare I suggest, universal? – to feel as if we have failed, whether we have not been able to conceive or carry to term, have not been able to adopt, have not found the person we want to have children with, or who wants to have children with us. We berate ourselves – should we have done more, done it earlier, done it differently? We aren’t kind to ourselves. We aren’t always rational. We are often distraught in our failure. I think that is why we so often feel shame. The shame of failure. I know I did. 

And that’s because we personalise it. It failed – the medical technology, or the adoption process, or broader society failed. It doesn’t mean that I am a failure. It might be my body that technology couldn't help, but I personally am NOT a failure. And neither are you. Realisation that it was the process that din't work, not us, comes sooner to some than others. It helps us recognise that there is no shame involved. It helps us understand the situation we find ourselves in, rather than fear it. It helps us accept that so much of life is really just luck. It is random. There’s no blame involved. That’s critical to me. My favourite quote, as so many of you know, is that of Gertrude Stein, saying “there is no answer, there never was an answer, that is the answer.” It was a huge help to me, and enabled me to grieve without blame, and without shame.

That acceptance of the situation we are in allows us to stop turning inwardly on ourselves. We can then start showing self-compassion, and start thinking about the future –about how we can navigate the future in our new No Kidding lives.

The interviewee pointed out that when don’t personalise failure, we leave ourselves free to try again, or to try something new. That is so important. That freedom to turn our efforts and hope to something new – to our No Kidding lives without children – opens us up to successful lives, lives where we can be happy, kind, and generous. Lives where we can look outwardly. Lives we can embrace fully. And that is what resilience looks like to me. As I've written before, I often think that we are real success stories. And we should be proud of that.

* See my post The F Word

 

No Kidding 2020 Project: Day 19 - Liberate

I’ve never wanted to wholly conform to society. As a little girl, I groaned when I was given a doll for Christmas, because even then I liked playing outside and other active things (until I learned to read). I was shy and obedient, but I never wanted to be judged or have my activity proscribed by others’ views. As I’ve probably said before, I think I was a feminist from the moment I was born, so when I got married (which was quite young), I didn’t change my name, despite not knowing any other woman personally who had kept their name. (Though when I moved to Wellington I met a number, and in fact almost all my best friends who have married have kept their names too.) I certainly didn’t want to have children the moment I got married, and resisted all that initial pressure. So it was a surprise to me when I decided I did want to have children, and then of course, a surprise when I couldn’t.

Now, as a woman without children, I am by definition a nonconformist. Especially when I am a woman-who-wanted-children who loves her life-without-them. Or perhaps not? Because if there is one thing that life teaches us, it is that most of us have to learn, at some stage, to love what we have (or don’t have, as the case may be). Perhaps I’m just doing the predictable thing?

The truth is there is real freedom in not having children. The obvious things are freedom from sleepless nights, from early morning wake-ups, holidaying only in school holidays, expenditure on children and their activities, freedom to follow my own interests, spontaneity, travel when and where I like, etc. The list is endless.

But there are other freedoms too. When we learn to accept and experience our No Kidding lives, we break free from society’s norms, from our grief and our past and our what-might-have-beens. We are liberated from our own more limited expectations of ourselves. Perhaps we break free from our own stereotypes?

Personally, I know I broke free from stereotypes when I was forced to confront the question of what is “success” and what is not. I did this in terms of infertility, where “success” stories usually mean those who end up as a parent, rather than a broader definition of those who survive and go on to live a happy and meaningful life.* But I also did it elsewhere in my life.

My values didn’t change – they had always been the same. But I found that, in breaking free from stereotypes, I was able to fully recognise how important my values were to me. I could choose to embrace them without feeling that I was letting anyone (including, perhaps especially, my younger self) down. None of this might have been obvious to anyone else, but they made a world of difference to me, my thoughts, my level of contentment, my authenticity. I let go of a lot of things. But in doing so, I was able to begin to fully embrace myself, and my No Kidding life.

Liberation. It’s both the result of, and the penultimate step to healing, living and enjoying our No Kidding lives. Liberate!

* See The Real Success Stories