The problem is that I have grandchildren.
My husband of 20 years had been married before and so I have two (now grown-up) step-children, both of whom now have families of their own.
This sounds idyllic. It certainly looks idyllic to those who don’t know our family circumstances, but it also leads to confusion. My work causes me to move around the country every five years or so and no-one who meets me for the first time would ever think that I carry the burden of grief over not ever having a baby of my own. Add to the mix that I am a trained NNEB Nursery Nurse, and so I am often seen as ‘knowing what she’s talking about’ when it comes to small children, then the confusion is complete.
Plus I am in this on my own. My husband has children and grandchildren – he’s part of someone’s family tree. As for me, no-one saw the ‘family’ occasion when there was room for everyone to sit together except for one – and that one was me. No-one feels it like I do when one of my step-children puts all over Facebook, ‘Going to Dads.’ Or ‘I can’t wait to see dad this weekend.’ And no-one heard our eldest grandson say to me, at three years of age, ‘You’re like Grandad W, aren’t you? You’re not really my Grandma.’ (Grandad W is his step-grandad, and so not blood-related, like me.)
I got married at 35 and, assuming that I could get pregnant straight away, resisted starting a family for a year or so as I didn’t want to make the leap from being single to married and pregnant in one go. As it happens, any delay probably didn’t make much difference. I soon discovered that I had a very large fibroid that needed removing and I was told that it may mean a hysterectomy. At the time I wanted to kiss the consultant when I came around from the operation to hear that they hadn’t done the hysterectomy. Later on, I cursed the fact that they didn’t. It might have saved me a lot of heartache and still brought me to the same conclusion. Masses of scar tissue meant that I couldn’t keep any baby for too long. A different consultant, during fertility explorations, just dropped into the conversation that some of what I had assumed were heavy periods could in fact have been early miscarriages. That, and the fact that I had to sit in a waiting room with numerous pregnant women, just broke my heart.
To the outside world I am a mother and a grandmother. It can make it hard to correct people on this, especially when you hear the comments they make about others, like ‘What do they know. They’ve never had children of their own.’ Sometimes it makes me feel like I am living a lie, but it is not a lie of my making. It is a lie built on other people’s assumptions. And how can I summon up the courage to contradict them when, in actual fact, I often feel like a ‘nobody’: nobody’s mother; nobody’s grandmother. Nobody.
Of course, the reason that it hurts is because I love them – all of them. But I am never the person that anyone turns to when they want their mum, and that is a loss that I will never ‘get over’. Indeed, I am only just realising that this is a grief that I have been processing for over a decade now. I can remember the day, New Year’s Eve 2006, when my stepdaughter and her husband arrived and announced that she was pregnant. As they told us, full of excitement and anticipation, I heard a door slam – and I knew then that I was never going to be a mother, after years of trying. It was over. The years between then and now have been a blur, as bereavement often is. In fact, it was the loss of my dad in the summer of 2016 that forced me to face this bereavement head-on. Life has been hard but I enlisted the help of a good counsellor and I can see movement.
There is light at the end of the tunnel.
I was over the moon when I first heard about ‘The Dovecote Community’ on Facebook in late 2019. I was no-longer alone. Through joining that community I then discovered ‘Words that Heart’ and have taken part in one of their workshops, which I do recommend. I also heard about Jody Day and have just started reading her book, ‘Living the life unexpected’. Then, through the connection with ‘Words that Heart’, I first heard about World Childless Week.
On 13th September, the day before World Childless Week begins, I have volunteered to speak to a small congregation at our local church service about World Childless Week. I’m not sure how much of my own story I will share there this time around – small steps are best – but I will be flagging up World Childless Week, to increase awareness within the church –often a hard place to be childless when all talk seems to be based around ‘families’ - and maybe, just maybe, to offer a way forward to anyone else listening, who isn’t aware of who and what is out there to help them in their childlessness.
Being a Christian brings the added complication to my story of my being so angry with God for so long – and yet I can now see a way forward, and I am able to thank God for that.
Anon.