At 53, in 2017, I thought I’d “come to terms” with my childlessness (despite assuming, since I was a little child myself, that I would become a mother.)

I wanted to write a second essay for World Childless week, but I found myself hitting up against some internal resistance. Today, I finally identified its source: I don’t want to be defined by my childless state.

We were both spent and shells of our former selves. I spend the next two years struggling with mental health, a deep sense of loss and sadness constantly and a complete lack of confidence. I decided I needed help and went to speak to a counsellor and it was the best decision I made.

I am childless not by choice as the result of several different factors. I grew up believing I was worthless and defective. I studied very hard for many years hoping to feel better about myself and gain approval.

The hysterectomy was definitely a massive full stop in my life

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It changed everything

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Deep in the midst of my childless not by choice grief, I read a quote which simultaneously made me feel heard and seen and also so, so sad

I like popping to the pub just for one after work.

I like late nights and lie-ins.

I like sex in the afternoon.

- when life is asking you to find another way -

I wrote this contribution to World Childless Week 2020 in the middle of the challenging and never before experienced situation of a long confinement due to Covid-19 virus.

I was diagnosed with Primary Ovarian Failure in my mid-20s - it looked like I had gone through puberty, suffered with a viral infection that triggered autoimmune issues causing my immune system to attack my ovaries. I was offered no support other than starting HRT treatment, which I have been on for 30 years now.

It is hard to describe what being told you can’t carry your own child feels like. When you are told essentially as a child yourself suddenly you are faced with a feeling and emotions you aren’t ready for and have no idea where to start to process this.

These past few months have been strange/challenging (choose an appropriate word) for everyone & no one knows what the future holds so, as lockdown eased somewhat in the UK, I took the decision to (as the saying goes) ‘make hay while the sun shines.’

It is not a straight line. We sit together. I stack three stones upon each other, remembering. We eat apples and chat about the old groynes, the lighthouse, the bay on our doorstep. It is something I often do, never forgetting.

I’m a twin – an identical twin – I always have been, and always will be. I know that that is stating the obvious, it can be joyful, painful, funny, hard, rewarding and misunderstood by other people.

Another September rolling in, another World Childless Week. This time has come to be a marker for me, to see how far I have come in the year between. Each year I seem to make imperceptible but great shifts, and I wonder if it will always be this way.

I am childless, but not by choice. I add the word ‘sadly’ when I am trying to explain so that people understand it wasn’t by choice... ‘sadly, we couldn’t have children’; ‘sadly, it wasn’t to be’, and then I add, ‘but we have two lovely dogs who are our surrogate children’.

The day . . .

I fell in love at 25 and married at 28 to a man eleven years older who was ambivalent about children, but committed to our happiness.

The concept of moving forward is daunting when you are in the throes of grief. Over time acceptance slowly starts to sink in.

As I sit here at my laptop thinking about what to write for World Childless Week 2020, I can’t help but look back to where I was only a few years ago, during the hardest part of my life yet. More importantly, I’m thinking about how far I’ve come since then.

In my late 30s I was lost; I was constantly looking for my purpose and where I fit in. My job didn’t seem fulfilling and I was still going to weddings on my own.

I was single and childless.

Summer 2020 here in the mountains where I live normally brings blue skies with puffy white clouds sailing by. Instead smoke hangs thick and brown grey in the air. Wildfires all around the western United States created this murky haze.

Last Christmas I was sat home alone, aged 43 with my cat and pondered on my life so far and how most of my friends are now mothers or mothers to be.

During the deepest years of my grieving, I felt frozen.

An old school friend got in touch and asked if I'd like to be interviewed for one of her 'random dialogues'. She said I could talk about literally anything I wanted and I realised that I felt okay enough to talk about CNBC.

Some time ago the weekly magazine of an Italian newspaper—in an issue entitled “Suspended Mothers”—invited its female readers to write and tell the story of how they ‘used’ their ‘share of grief’ for not being able to conceive.

Qualche tempo fa il settimanale di un quotidiano italiano - in un'edizione dedicata alle madri 'in sospeso' - invitava le proprie lettrici a scrivere e raccontare come avessero 'usato' le loro 'dosi di dolore' per non essere riuscite a concepire.

Six years ago, age 43, I had a miscarriage.

It was the culmination of a fourteen-month journey that began on my mother’s 65th birthday, when my husband unexpectedly declared he wanted a baby.

My plan B is to live a contented and meaningful life as a childless not by choice person. To find new meaning in the space left by childlessness.

I’m 37, married, and childless not by choice. I don’t exactly fit the mold of your typical “infertility story”. I can’t have children, but not because of my reproductive organs. I’m childless by circumstances.

We are all in various stages of acceptance in our childless lives – from thriving, comfort, and acceptance, to grief, anger, loss, and sadness.

In 2017, when I was still in childless denial, I started to train as a life coach. It was intended to be useful in my career as a teacher and a possible future alternative to teaching.

I am a singer/songwriter and musician and in 2018 I released an album entitled Seamonster, inspired by my experience of being childless not by choice.

I am 50 years old. It’s been 7 years since my IVF treatment ended and with it a dream of having my own children. Going through IVF treatment is one of the toughest challenges I have ever encountered both emotionally, mentally and physically.

It first dawned on me that I would probably remain childless at age 43, although I still harboured a secret wish that it would happen.

Many people who discover that they’re unlikely to have children sadly also start to think that they can’t have any kind of meaningful contact with children. That’s not true of course.

This photo of my dear husband on the Atlantic shoreline of southwest Ireland is one of my favourites.

All I can feel is this big hole in me

Something is missing

Something got lost

Here I am in my fifties finding myself in a place I never dreamed of–being involuntarily childless.

Prior to getting married, I was pretty ambivalent about having kids and spent my entire twenties enjoying life to the brim.

When we ended 6 years of struggle to conceive a child in February of 2020 I was devastated as well as relieved. But most of all I was paralyzed.

They told me I was grieving, only I wasn’t sure what I was grieving for.

Am I childless? Yes. I tried to have a child and it didn’t work out.

here must be something wrong with me.

Am I dead inside?

Is there something wrong with me?

I always wanted to be a mom since about the age of 6. I never wanted a career but to be just a mom .

#RedefiningmyPlanA is how I eventually found the strength to move forward after accepting that my journey (of trying to have a child of my own) was over.

How do you find a new ‘once upon a time’ after the ‘happy ever after’ never turned up? Victoria is on a quest to discover how you make a new life when you can’t have the one you imagined.

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