Sandy Deringer
“I love your necklace. It’s so pretty.”
My thumb moves over the smooth metal before I even realize I’m doing it, a now instinctive habit to ensure the letters are turned against my skin. To the woman standing in the checkout line with me, it’s just a simple piece of jewelry — a gold chain with two miniature, circular pendants dangling at the center — but it carries a weight most people couldn’t comprehend.
I offer a polite smile and say, 'Thank you,' shielding a truth far too tender for casual conversation. Because what she can’t see are the engraved letters “K” and “H” on the back — the names I chose decades ago when my hope of becoming a mother was still tangible.
Moments like these actually happen quite often, serving as gentle reminders of a loss society can’t name. We tend to recognize grief when there’s a person or memory to cherish, but in my case, loss exists entirely in the void of what should have been.
My road to becoming childless not by choice was the culmination of a cruel diagnosis and a prolonged medical battle. For over a decade, my body was a war zone while the healthcare system dismissed and gaslit my symptoms, putting off the care I deserved.
A hysterectomy at 32 became a painful necessity while simultaneously robbing me of the chance to ever hold my babies. Today, I’m stranded in a nameless middle ground, where I don’t fit into infertility communities, nor do I belong with bereaved parents. Even so, I lost my children as surely as if they had lived and breathed.
Every day I stumble upon triggers, or perhaps they find me. I can’t avoid the pregnant woman at the grocery store, the pregnancy announcements and gender reveal posts on social media, or well-meaning strangers who see a mother in me.
Each casual question about my maternity forces a gut-wrenching “no” that feeds a constant ache of stolen milestones. I remember the time when the young cashier at the coffee shop innocently wished me a Happy Mother’s Day. He, like everyone else, meant no harm, but the gesture shattered me.
The reality is that I’ll never see double pink lines on a pregnancy test, stand before a mirror to admire a growing belly, get to share the good news with loved ones, or feel a baby kick. While other women frame their first ultrasound or hang it on the refrigerator, the only one I will ever have is the image of my cystic, damaged ovaries.
The isolation I feel deepens when my grief bleeds into family celebrations, filling me with equal parts sadness, shame, guilt, and jealousy. Watching the people I love step into their next chapter and become parents creates a complex, sometimes suffocating friction within me. I want to rejoice with them, and genuinely wish them happiness, but sitting within those spaces often feels as though I’m holding my breath underwater.
Of course, the heartbreak is my own to carry, not theirs. They are living a bright, blessed reality, in which their bodies did exactly what they were supposed to, and they deserve to savor every minute. I do my best to shield my pain from view, stepping back to avoid dimming their light with my darkness. Yet, even as I step away in love, I worry my silence and distance might hurt them anyway.
Complicated grief like this doesn’t have an expiration date. Nearly six years into this journey, I am not healed; I’m surviving, choosing each day not to abandon myself in the deep end. Learning to prioritize my needs has become a quiet act of self-love, one where I finally listen to my body, let the tears stream, and simply surrender to the weight of it all.
I no longer apologize for protecting my heart from a world that doesn’t know how to handle this type of pain. Grounding routines give my grief room to breathe, whether that means walking in nature, digging in my garden, or baking sourdough bread — a tactile comfort my sister-in-law taught me.
With these quiet rituals, my motherly instinct finds a place to land, nurturing sunflowers from tiny seeds and tending to the house finches and wrens at my bird feeders. Occasionally, I even get visits from cardinals, which I like to believe are K and H coming to check on me. Giving myself permission to feel the grief fully, in all its physical toll and emotional wreckage, is the only way I can keep going.
Society only counts motherhood when there is a baby to show for it, but it completely ignores those whose children live only in their hearts. I had names picked out, arms open and waiting, and a lifetime of love with no children of my own to receive it.
By definition, I am childless. But when my fingers find the K and H against my collarbone, I am a mother grieving a life that was stolen from me.
I may never hold them in my arms, but as long as my heart beats beneath these letters, I give breath, form, and truth to their existence.
