There was a time when I was caught in a small sense of self, living with apprehension, fear, avoidance and grief.

Such was my life living with the shitstorm that is childlessness. Dreading the next pregnancy announcement. Avoiding friends who were new mothers. Deeply resenting the failure of those around me to see and acknowledge my loss. And rallying against the unfairness of it all. Three pregnancy losses and a realisation I would never have children left me irrevocably changed and completely lost. Upping sticks and moving to the opposite end of the world, travelling on the back of motorbike through too many countries to count and landing a glam job in international film, didn’t make up for the life I really wanted. The one I assumed I’d have.

Yet, slowly, I’ve come to know how to sit with this living loss, understand that all living includes suffering. Becoming increasingly alive to the fact I have just one shot at this fleeting and precious life.

My moving forwards has been aided, in no small measure, by a newly-found sense of belonging. Being part a community of those just like me, the childless not by choice. To be heard, seen and acknowledged, has been the elixir to letting go of the limiting belief that there was something wrong with me and there was something deeply flawed with being childless. That I could even be a beacon of hope on how to live a life fully without children.

And still, here I find myself facing loss. Again. Losing my grip on youth and facing encroaching ill health.

And so, returns the fear and insecurity. Once again, my self-identity has started to crumble as my attachment to looking young, being healthy, strong and competent starts to unravel. What if I am no longer powerful, mentally clear, relevant and contributing? Who am I, who will I become, if I am not these? As with having children, I’d assumed I would be razor sharp, vital and fierce in my elderhood. A brave woman embracing her ageing in a style very much her own.

Instead, chronic anxiety welcomes me and a gnawing fear of what lies ahead. Forever vigilant and scanning for the smallest clue that something is wrong, all is not well. Like bracing for a good friend about to tell me she is pregnant. I watch myself contract and being apprehensive about what else I may have to let go. It is far from being the woman I want to be, showing up for those coming behind me in how a life without children could possibly look. 

Yet, if coming through childlessness has taught me anything, it’s to let go of visions of my future self.

Instead of tensing against what awaits me, to open to my reality. To, once again, let go of limiting beliefs that there’s something wrong with an ageing body, with sickness, with dying. To farewell that small and reactive self that wants to avoid feelings of loss and vulnerability. Just as I have learned to sit with my childlessness, so too, I can learn to be with the impermanence and loss that is life.

May the hard-earned lessons of childlessness serve me with a deeper understanding for letting go how I think life should be. May they give me the wisdom to love life, just as it is. And see that there will always be music, despite everything.

Janine Ford