A few years ago I was sitting on my couch, working on my laptop and a notification popped letting me know I had a new email. The email was of a “look back at this day” - it was a group of photos from that same day a few years before. One of the photos was of me with my dog but I didn’t recognize myself at first – because I looked so happy. I sat there staring and wondering what happened to me.
After staring at the photo for a while, I felt a sudden crushing ache. I realized the photo had been taken before I knew that I was never going to become what I had always wanted to be - a mom. This photo happened to show up when I was really struggling with the pain of being childless, not by choice. I had such a sense of loss, shame and feeling less than. I had lost the happiness that was so clear in that photo. My life had become focused only on my feeling of loss.
When this jolt of reality hit me I knew I had to change something to find the old me and pull the happiness I once had into my current life. I felt a sense of urgency to do something to “get over it”, because, at that point, I thought that “getting over it” was possible.
I had known since I was a child that I wanted to be a mom. There was never any doubt and I had it all imagined in my mind in detail. For as long as I can remember I knew that I wanted to have children, 4 to be exact. I had our lives planned out from pregnancy to life through all the stages of childhood and beyond. But life didn’t turn out that way.
I had PCOS and knew since my teens that getting pregnant might take a little longer - but I had always imagined that this was a hurdle that would be easily overcome. I was a teenager so, like most, I thought I was invincible. Plus, my mom had the same issues and she had 3 kids with one of them (me) being unplanned.
As I got older and remained single, as I wasn’t finding someone I wanted to spend my life with, I decided that I would become a single mom. Unfortunately though I let things get in the way of that. I had a boss who would fire me for being single and pregnant. I had a parent who would have mourned me and considered me dead for the same reason.
At that point in my life I hadn’t learned to stand up for myself. I had never been fired from a job so I couldn’t even begin to imagine that happening. Just the thought of it made me feel like a failure even though it hadn’t actually happened. I hadn’t yet recognized my power and ability to get through life’s challenges. The idea of standing up to my parent was one that was so foreign to me and I was terrified of being disowned.
Add to all of that I had then changed to a new job but ended up working over 100 hours a week. I had no time for a single doctor’s appointment, much less the multiple ones I now knew I needed for fertility treatments. If I didn’t have the time to go to even 1 appointment how would I take care of a child on my own? I was alone with no support.
I made the decision then to accept my situation. It was painful and devastating but I felt I had to move on. At least I thought I had accepted it and was moving on.
I met the right person late in life and got married at the age of 49. With that, the desire for a child seemed to have resurfaced. In reality, it didn’t resurface because it had never really gone away. I had pushed it down, distracted myself and pretended it wasn’t there. When we talked about getting married I didn’t consciously consider having a baby because I wanted to believe that I had gotten “over it”. But with marriage a switch was flipped. Or more accurately the light that I had dimmed (my desire for a child) and pretended was off was no longer dimmed - it was full brightness.
By then though my fertility issues only worsened and I was faced with needing IVF. I also had a husband who had 3 kids of his own and didn’t want any more. Once again, for me, my infertility and personal situation meant that motherhood just wasn’t going to happen.
With all of that came an excruciatingly deep sadness because I so desperately wanted a child. It felt like I could never experience happiness again because the pain was so all-consuming. It also brought “woulda, coulda, shoulda's” for all the things I would go over and over in my mind that I thought I should have done differently. Those still pop up at times because, as I now understand, healing doesn’t follow a straight path and doesn’t really have an endpoint.
When this all hit me - when I saw the photo that reminded me of just how happy I had been and I realized I needed to find that part of the old me again - I went on a journey to accept the loss of my dream of motherhood and to grieve. As I went through this I that, once I grieved that would be it--done and over with. But that’s not what happened. The sadness remained, and it’s still there.
I’ve come to realize though that my sadness isn't the defining factor in my life. It is a part of me but it’s only one part of my life, not the entirety of my existence. What I’ve learned is that I can carry that sadness with me as I move along a new path. I can honor that loss along with enjoying the life I’m living even though it’s very different from the one I had imagined. I have found happiness again.
I’m here to give others hope. It’s not that the pain will go away. The pain doesn’t have to limit you though, it’s just part of who you are - not all of you. The desire also doesn’t go away. However, you can live with the desire and the pain AND also live a fulfilling life.
Gail Miller
Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay