‘Write for World Childless Week’, I told myself this year, setting the goal weeks in advance.‘ Your loss has been so deep, so profound; you have so much you want to say. You need to speak your voice; it will be easy.’
It has not been easy. For what exactly is my story of childlessness, and where does it begin? Does it begin with the wedding that I called off in my early thirties, the wedding which held the promise of marriage and a stable relationship to bring children into? Does it begin from my teenage years, from the earliest day that I knew the name I would give my daughter, the daughter I did not have? Does it begin with the deep and enduring yearning to love and be loved? Does it begin with my own childhood – was there something wrong with me or my upbringing, that I am here now? Or is there not even a beginning, just this slow unfolding of grief, the gradual realisation that the dream that I clung to in my twenties, thirties and forties would not be fulfilled, that I would be left with the shame and the grief and the complicated loss, the reality of being single and childless at 49?
There may have been something wrong, but perhaps instead of it being with me, there was something wrong with the narrative - the narrative that schooled me to believe that the only fulfilling and expected path in life was to marry and have children, to become a loving wife, a devoted mother. Growing up in the church I was immersed in this worldview. There was, of course, one other approved path – that of being a missionary, being sent to some distant land to live out my calling, a life of adventure and devotion – single, celibate, devout. There were no other paths I ever really considered; the question was which one of these two I wanted, which I would be led to.
Little did I imagine that I would be led to neither; that the image I had of myself as a woman who loved deeply would burn, first in the fire of a broken relationship–until a broken bone, concerned friends and family, and the challenge of different citizenships intervened - and later in the fire of a broken engagement. Little did I imagine that anxiety would become my daily companion, that there would be days when the panic and the sense of worthlessness and loss would sweep away my very sense of self and all I stood for. For I was one who had been given much –a loving family, a place of security and stability – and so, of course, much was expected of me. What was wrong with me that I could not establish a similar kind of loving family, that so much of my energy was spent on my own despair and distress rather than on loving others as I so believed I should do with my life? This was my own narrative, not that of others, though of course I received my share of unsolicited advice. Little did I imagine the years of my thirties being lived out not with a kind husband and stable home, a white picket fence and two children, but on a roller coaster of anxiety and depression, interspersed with months of overseas travel, flatmates and five years of house sitting, a stable job and endless internal questioning.
Little did I imagine this life - or did I imagine it? Deep in my subconscious, had I somehow brought this about? To be honest, there were things about the traditional picture that I didn’t want. The white picket fence, for example – I was never that keen on a house in the suburbs. They say – I was told many times – that if you really want something you can have it. And I started to believe them, wondered if I maybe I hadn’t really, actually wanted the life I said I dreamed of. I gazed deeply into myself, circled around again and again, was left with only despair.
Yet this narrative too was faulty, I began to realise, at least in the way I was hearing it. The reality is that we do not always get what we want in life, and no amount of wanting can make it so – as so much of the developing world knows. The fact that I do not have children was not a consequence of secret ambivalence. I desperately wanted a child, despite the times I questioned myself.
But more than this, what I was reaching for was even deeper – love, belonging, acceptance, my place in the world. An identity that is beyond my own skin. Others for people to ask after: “How is your husband? How is your daughter?” Others to love, others to love me, to give me meaning. To be, in a world of couples and families, part of the larger whole. I didn’t want to have to fight each day just to create the meaning of my life.
And yet here I am. Slowly easing into the discomfort of my life, still learning to turn to face the anxiety that I have wanted to outrun. Sitting down with aloneness, befriending it. Letting my lonely and salty tears spill, doing my best to live well through the quiet days that should not be so quiet.
But it is not all of my life – not at all. There are dear ones who I love and who love me. There are candles and books, there is red wine, there are dinners out. There is laughter and poetry, there are blankets and socks, there is laundry and washing-up, home-made soups and picnics in the sun, banana bread and coffee. There is the bushland not too far from home where yesterday I sat and watched ants carry their burdens over granite rocks, where wind moved the branches of the eucalypts, and where fairy wrens and lorikeets chirped, where the sunlight fell warm on my bare arms.
There is me and my darkness and my light, and my faith which looks quite different now. Nothing wrong, just the narrative that needed, that still needs, shaking up, rewording, reshaping. The story that doesn’t come out right for a long long time, but eventually at least a little bit, a couple of words, a sentence or two fall into place. Sometimes that’s enough to share.
Anonymous