You would have to have children
To understand.
It's a phrase spoken onto me
Like footprints in sand.

On a Friday in July 2016, I flew from Toronto to Los Angeles and took a shuttle to Pasadena. The next morning, I was to meet 14 strangers in a second-floor meeting room at the Pasadena Playhouse theatre.

8 Ivf treatments - 3 natural pregnancies - Made a total of 9 pregnancies & 9 miscarriages 

It has always been a dream to to a be a mother. Unfortunately, not all dreams are made to come true, no that dream for us was destined to remain just that, a dream.

It has not been for lack of wanting, nor trying for that matter, that you have not come earthside. Life can be hard here, even when I’m doing my best, thriving, and have been given so many reasons to be grateful.

Hush little baby
You can now close your eyes
Your mama’s asleep
Her lips murmur “Goodbye”

I painted this picture to show that current statistics show that there are in fact a lot of childless people which many are unaware of as it is a little discussed subject.

In this creative art piece I reflect on my painful experience of childlessness..

I've thought about you, imagined you, dreamed about you, planned for you, prayed for you, and wanted you. But none of these things were powerful enough to overcome higher reasons of you not being able to come to me.

And so I wander

Cold and alone

Looking at my future

Through a window of frosted glass

How does a dream die? 

Is it a beloved pet in your vet’s office?

The dream spreading and growing beyond anyone's control.

A cancer growing ever larger.

"It's gone. Isn't it?" The recovery room nurse hesitated, her eyes flitting to my chart. "Yes... It is. I'm so sorry."

“It’s still raining.” After 27 years, it’s still raining. The white fluffy clouds that hung over our confident, optimistic, dream filled hearts that day in June 1993, became dark and gloomy very soon after.

My name is Carol, and I am the firstborn of my parents’ seven children. My parents home schooled us, took us to church every Sunday, and formerly subscribed to the Bill Gothard philosophy of “if you can have kids, have as many as possible.”

It started with a childhood where my mother was regarded as housekeeper, cook, nanny and maid. Not as a person. Not as a woman. I knew she was unhappy most of the time. I am not going to be like her.

We finished our final round of IVF in Spring 2015 & although none of them resulted in a pregnancy I very much feel a connection with the embryos we created and I carried, however briefly. 

I was born before the cultural uproar of the 1960s in the United States in the Greater Boston area of New England in the United States.

When I was 16, Mother's OBG asked to see me for an exam. He was the one who fed the DES to her, which also meant me, as there were signs of another miscarry.

Dear “Sam”- I will never know you but it felt like I did for so long.

¡Cuántasvecestehabrésoñado! (English translation included)

I’m not a mother

I’m no longer a wife

From the age of 13 years old, I suffered with very heavy and extremely painful periods.  On many occasions, I was not able to go to school and had to stay in bed. 

Do you have kids?

No. I have scars.

I turned 50 recently and reflected on the last decade, and what it now means to be a few years on from my initial childless grief.

I've told a lot of stories to myself. I have written them, attempted to live them, 'Rightmove'd' them, taken them on holiday, and discarded them amongst life litter.

Someone once said to me that I couldn't know how real love felt until I experience the one thing they had that I didn't. I disagreed.

How can I miss you, when you never came to be?

I am childless by circumstance, not my choice, but my story is complicated. My circumstances include:

Unlike some childless women, my tragedy doesn’t include a defining moment in which I learned I wouldn’t be a mother.

She claimed she didn’t mean to say it. She said she got “lost in the moment” and she was not even considering how it might sound to me.

Our hopes to hold all of you are gone!

That dark scanning room confirms no heartbeat

Why the same results over and over again!

How can they say it was not real

when preaching since childhood what ‘true’ love will mean

I have written this essay multiple times, each time dissatisfied with how it unfolds.

I started writing in the World Childless Week of 2020. Since then, I talk about the feelings that ebb and go as we come to terms with our involuntary childlessness.

As a student I worked as a cashier at a local retail store
a quiet senior citizen named Evelyn worked there, too.

I don’t think that I have fully accepted that I am going to be childless. I still believe that there is a chance I might not be. But then I wonder if I’m just saying that because I’m in denial.

Soon after picking up Jody Day’s book ‘Living The Life Unexpected’, I found myself making a sudden note in pencil on the opening pages, to capture a felt insight I’d just had as I was reading.

At some point during my 20’s, I started to question the appeal of dogs. They got hair and drool everywhere, kept you homebound. I was that person who never stopped to pat a dog on the street.

It started with tears and the feeling of darkness,

The ground felt unsteady and the days black,

A family tradition for many through the history of time....

It's not so long in the past where everything seemed acutely painful, but I'd still smile, be kind with responses and engage in the motherly talks..

I wrote this song to express my grief as I realized my dream of having children was slipping away, and I needed to make a choice to release this dream.

How does one describe the pain of the lost forever child?

I dance on dreams of shattered glass.

I never even heard the crash

                As the wall gave way.

I carry your heart in my pocket.

I had been seeing her for a while, C was warm and compassionate.