Katherine Baldwin
Just before my 40th birthday, I started a blog where I shared my confusion about my age and stage and posed the questions I couldn’t get out of my head:
How on earth did I end up here – single, childless and nearly 40?
Why am I still single? Why have none of my relationships worked out?
How am I going to find a partner in time to have kids? Would I try to have kids on my own?
Can I even have kids? Do I want kids? How will I feel if I don’t have kids?
Twelve years on, at 52, I now have my answers:
I ended up 40, single and childless due to a series of unhealthy coping mechanisms I developed to survive my dysfunctional childhood, including an eating disorder, workaholism and addictive and avoidant relationship patterns that kept me detached from my own feelings and from anyone who offered intimacy.
I was still single at 40 because I was still healing those early life wounds, still recovering from various addictions, still terrified of commitment and still stumbling blindly into relationships with emotionally unavailable men and running away from the available ones.
I would decide against solo motherhood because I’d grown up watching my mother struggle on her own with two children and it hadn’t looked fun.
I would, miraculously, manage to find and form a healthy relationship with an available man but not until I was 43, possibly too late to have a biological child.
I would never find out for sure if I could have kids in my 40s because I wouldn’t try. I would fall in love with a man who didn’t want children. I would also discover, after digging deep, that I was ambivalent about motherhood because of my early life wounds – I wanted a child but I was terrified of the responsibility, the loss of freedom and the possibility I wouldn’t be able to attach to my child.
As to how I would feel if I remained childless, it would be a mixed bag.
It is a mixed bag.
There are many blue-sky days when I barely think about being childless. I’m busy writing, running my business, enjoying my marriage, developing emotionally and managing a beautiful but strong-willed cocker spaniel.
I have acceptance. I understand how I ended up here – that it wasn’t my fault – and I have compassion for myself and my journey.
Then, there are a few dark days when I see a woman cradling a newborn and I have to leave the room to have a cry and there are the occasional black days when I ask some of the biggest and hardest questions:
What’s the point of my life if I haven’t had kids?
Do I have a stake in the future if I haven’t produced a new generation?
Why am I here? Do I have a right to be here?
And what is my womb for if not to nurture and grow a child?
Sometimes these questions floor me but I take comfort in knowing that I’d be asking similar questions about my place in the world whether I’d had children or not.
This kind of questioning is part of who I am and I know now, thanks to the deep work I’ve done in therapy, that the pointlessness and hopelessness I occasionally feel is a legacy of my childhood – of the times when, as a little girl, I felt helpless, like I was fighting a losing battle, that any effort I made to change the situation would prove fruitless and that, somehow, I may not survive.
Once I understand these painful truths, once I look them in the eye, I can process my grief, draw on my courage, find gratitude for all the wonderful things in my life and brainstorm a brilliant plan for my remaining years.
That plan centres on the following truth: that I am a passionate, valuable, creative being, irrespective of whether I’ve had children or not, with the potential and desire to create.
To create a life of abundance, joy, health, wellbeing and freedom for myself and my family of two, plus the dog (does that make two-and-a-half or three?).
To support, nurture and empower others to create freedom, love, joy, well being and abundance in their lives.
To create more books– I am loving writing my novel and I have two non-fiction books to complete, not to mention poems and endless ideas for videos and podcasts. I have a creative talent and I am committed to bringing that talent into the world.
To create and cultivate a sense of deep gratitude, one day at a time, because I still have good health, while some of those close to me do not, and because life is a gift.
I know there’ll be dark days and perhaps some black days ahead but my commitment is to create as many blue-sky days as I can going forwards by using my gifts and talents and making a difference, in my own life, in the lives of others and in this incredible world.
So, in answer to those tough questions: yes, my life has a point and a purpose; yes, I have a stake in the future; yes, I absolutely deserve to be here; and my womb, like all wombs, is here to nourish, nurture and create, in a way that’s unique to me, unfathomably beautiful and of value, to present and future generations.
