I guess I feel guilty in a way.

Guilty that sometimes, I project a persona to the world that might be considered a little misleading.

It’s like there is a ‘she’ who is not really all me. Well, okay, she is me, but she is only partly me.

Because behind that façade of seemingly having my proverbial shit together, and projecting a positive demeanour to people, all smiles and easy-going, there is a less-polished version of ‘she’ who definitely does not have her shit together.

This ‘she’? This ‘untogether’ side? I know that she will never stop mourning the babies she lost. Her grief is lifelong. Her grief is messy, disturbing to many, particularly those who can never know what it’s like not to have children. To them, I probably appear selfish, short-sighted, self-centred, as though I don’t appreciate the good things I have in my life; one who can never know things because she can never be the ‘as-a-parent’ person that universally qualifies someone for the right to have an opinion on most topics, especially global warming, climate change, the future of the planet and all manner of pronatalist privilege typically reserved for ‘breeders’.

But the thing is, those who see me and others without child in this particular way invariably have kids. So they can never know what this pain, this anguish, this longing, this grief is like. To them we are the lucky ones with time on our hands and no children to shop, cook, and run errands for. We have at our disposal (apparently) surplus income and endless freedom, the kind typically constrained by the presence of children.

Actually, none of this is true. But does it matter?

No. Regardless of the fact that such assumptions about me bare little relationship to my life – to our lives  –  they’ll persist unquestioned in some form anyway. Perhaps more importantly, the absence of compassion, empathy, and a genuine, heartfelt effort to understand our anguish also remains.

In addition to unquestioned assumptions about involuntary childless women – and men – in society in general, there is also an almost-universal invisibility largely arising from a combination of pro-natalist prejudice blended with said unquestioned assumptions.

One of those assumptions includes the “why don’t you just get over it and move on” inference. Can anyone imagine how inappropriate it would be to say to a pre-surgical, gender-reassignment transgender candidate in psychological torment around questions of identity, “Why don’t you just get over it! And while you’re at it, move on! Stop being so selfish!”

Difficult to imagine in an age of inclusiveness and political correctness. Such a statement would be correctly regarded as deeply offensive.

Which begs the question: why then is it okay that involuntary childless people are met with such assumptions – that we can ‘get over it’ and just ‘move on’? Hats off to anyone that can or that has. I applaud you in finding or creating this kind of hard-won peace. This is no small feat.

But I for one am not such a valiant trooper. Not for want of trying. The messy, mixed-up and eternally anguished ‘she’ is in the process of building some kind of a safe container for all of that anguish, that pain. But this takes patience, time and an endless reserve of self-compassion. Because for her – for me, and I suspect, for many of us - the balancing act of being present to a life that is, whilst simultaneously sensitive to reality of a lifelong grief and longing for my forever-sleeping babies, is more truthful and meaningful than banishing the reality of my losses from my conscious life. This balancing act has more integrity than the denial of truth; moreover, there is risk of more harm in turning my back on my truth.

As difficult as my truth might be for others to grapple with, the alternative is to risk stifling the truth of my trauma in layers of pretence and inauthenticity which in turn bestow the likelihood of further damage to my already fragile, inner core.

Integrating this balancing act in preference to inauthenticity allows me to cultivate the possibility of post-traumatic growth and, ultimately, sows the seeds for resilience.  

Sanity after trauma, resilience from adversity are the hard-won possibilities for anyone seeking to emerge from their Dark Nights of the Soul with integrity intact. Although the path may be strewn with heartache and despair, the cost of denying our pain, of inauthenticity, of pretending everything is okay as we don the socially-acceptable cloak of invisibility to conceal our inconvenient truths, ultimately, becomes a slow form of suicide of the soul.

We owe it to ourselves to say no to denying the Inconvenient Truth of our pain. Our scared task is, rather, to honour our pain and to mother ourselves into our fullest potential, messy bits and all….just as we may have mothered our little ones, had they walked alongside us on this journey called life.

Sasha Kershaw Reid

PLICA - Perinatal Loss and Involuntary Childlessness Alliance