I am childless, but not by choice. I add the word ‘sadly’ when I am trying to explain so that people understand it wasn’t by choice... ‘sadly, we couldn’t have children’; ‘sadly, it wasn’t to be’, and then I add, ‘but we have two lovely dogs who are our surrogate children’. This gives the person who asked the question a new line of conversation. An escape route. But whenever a Gateway Women email lands in my Inbox I feel like a fraud. What if I didn’t try hard enough to conceive?
In October 2016, I attended a ‘NoMo’s’ (non-mothers) conference in Solihull. The main speaker was author and psychotherapist Jody Day, along with a panel of inspirational speakers on the issues of childlessness. The ladies, and one brave man, I met that weekend had been through so much more than me: miscarriages, IVF, still births, broken relationships, cancer, money worries, heartache, isolation and despair. On the face of it, all I had been through was an inability to conceive. I was greatly moved and enlightened by the weekend with so many people having turned their lives around in a positive way, but I soon lost touch with the ladies I met because I felt that somehow I didn’t deserve to be among them. Not long afterwards, I slipped into a deep depression, but failed to link it with the conference.
Four years on, during lock-down, emails have been dropping into my Inbox about the upcoming World Childlessness Week in September. I am a communicator – a writer of short stories and poems – but I am finding it hard to explain my reticence about speaking up about my childlessness. Something has been blocking me – it feels like guilt or shame – and sometimes writing it out is the only way to explore the feeling. So here goes...
My mother was grieving when she was pregnant with me. She had been forced by my grandparents to give up her first daughter for adoption 18 months earlier because the baby was illegitimate, (the product of a brief affair, and abortions were illegal in 1958). She then married my father, and discovered too late he was a man who loved other people’s wives and other people’s children. My parents divorced when I was 11 years old, and although my mother re-married happily, the sadness of my early childhood lingered.
I had many boyfriends, but found it hard to sustain relationships for long. I was passive with men, and let them treat me badly. In my late twenties I had a traumatic experience with a doctor, which affected me psychologically. Two years after that, my mother died of cancer. It is only now in my late fifties, having had counselling, I realise my extreme anxiety of all things medical stem from those two events. In addition, the subconscious fear that I wouldn’t make a good mother originated from a lack of attachment to my own mother and father when very young: my mother because she was heartbroken; my father because he suffered from ‘attachment syndrome’, which is an inability to form attachments to one’s family, whilst making inappropriate attachments to other people’s families.
At the age of 39, I eventually married a kind and wonderful man, and we immediately started trying for a baby. For some reason, despite my age, we thought it would ‘just happen’. If only I had known then that a woman’s fertility falls off a cliff at the age of 33. My GP at the time seemed unconcerned – not once did he suggest a laparoscopy to check my ovaries. Being passive, I didn’t push for it, and was always in a rush to get out of the doctors’ surgery. It was only when I was 41 that a visiting locum took swift action and had me booked into hospital for a check-up. The results showed that one of my ovaries was bound with scar tissue from undiagnosed endometriosis, but the other one seemed ok.
We met up with an IVF specialist, who didn’t hold out much hope. I became intensely anxious as the interview progressed, and my anxiety turned to anger when he asked each of us how many sexual partners we had had prior to marrying. My husband and I had never shared that sort of information with each other, and I had no wish to do so. Surely it was irrelevant? After that, I found a lady specialist to talk to, but after reviewing the results of my laparoscopy, she said it was unlikely I would conceive via IVF, and she was worried about hormone treatment due to the history of cancer in the family. Again, my passivity made me accept what she said. My experience of childhood had made me fearful of bringing a child into the world, not to mention my experience of the medical profession – I think I was almost relieved.
As my forties progressed, I was stoic about my inability to conceive, not wanting friends and family to pity me. I would say, ‘I am so lucky in so many ways; one can’t have everything in life’. While there was a vague hope I might get pregnant with my one good ovary, we did just that; kept hoping. My husband turned 50 and had a huge party to celebrate. I remember how hard it was to pretend I was as happy as him that night. He seemed content and fulfilled with work, friends and sporting activities, and relatively unaffected by our childlessness. A year later, I also turned fifty. Far from wanting to celebrate, I shut myself away for weeks and couldn’t stop crying. I thought it was the menopause making me depressed, but in truth it was because time had run out, and I finally had to face the fact I would never be a mother. I felt angry with men, my father in particular, for robbing me of my self-worth as a child. His lack of love and care had removed the fight in me to be a mother; made me doubt my capabilities. But most of all I was angry with myself, and filled with a sense of shame and regret that I hadn’t tried harder.
I started to confide in friends and family about my sadness, but to my astonishment they withdrew. They all had children of their own, and my openness made them feel uncomfortable. For decades I had supported them during their journeys through motherhood, enquiring after their children, sending birthday cards and presents, helping with school runs, and listening to endless child-related conversations. But when I asked for a little understanding in return, I was ‘sent to Coventry’. With unaccustomed bravery, I took my sisters to task, and their response was, ‘it’s not always about you, you know?’ From that moment, I was on the other side of the fence – the black sheep without her lambs.
Since reading Jody’s book, Living the Life Unexpected, and attending the NoMo conference in 2016, I have learned to be kinder to myself. I have even learned to enjoy being a black sheep, especially when I meet other black sheep! I got back in touch with my creativity. I watched TED talks by Marianne Cantwell on The hidden power of not always fitting in, and by Elizabeth Gilbert on The art of being yourself, and read Liz Gilbert’s book, Big Magic – Creative Living Beyond Fear, which blew my mind. I had already done an MA in Creative Writing just prior to the conference in Solihull, and have since had short stories and poetry published. I have also discovered I am an Empath, which explains why I found the aftermath of the NoMo conference so hard. I came away carrying everyone else’s pain, and it sent me spiralling. Now I am discovering how to protect my sensitive self from overwhelming situations. I think the journey to childlessness turns many of us into empathetic people, and for those sensitive souls reeling from the carelessness of others, I would highly recommend reading a book called, The Empath’s Survival Guide – Life Strategies for Sensitive People, by Dr Judith Orloff.
Most of all I am learning to re-frame my view of life. Up until recently, I had been looking at everything through the frame of a childless woman, and the view was bleak. With practice, I am learning to look through a fresh new window and become a parent to my inner child, my ‘little one’, who missed out on so much in the early years. She and I are rediscovering the joys of nature, music, animals, painting, travel, reading, writing, cooking, walking, swimming. Never again will I see myself through the eyes of others, because that is the path to low self-esteem. Now I am beginning to follow my own path, my own truth, whilst holding the hand of my little one who has become my constant joyful companion.
Thank you for letting me share my story with you. I hope the last two paragraphs at least are helpful to others in their quests for plan B’s, C’s and D’s!
With love to all you brave, wonderful women,
Emma
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