Sarah Stinton
Dear Sarah,
I know that you’re struggling with childlessness and grief right now so I wanted to say a few words about that. Someone said to me the other day, there are five stages to grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and then finally, acceptance. Well I too went through each one of those; probably several times over. You see, that’s something I didn’t know; the path through grief isn’t linear. Rather it is an organic process which can jump about, double back and at any given time, any stage can demand our attention all over again. To make matters worse, life won’t necessarily leave us alone so we can come to terms with our loss. Other losses can occur and then the separate grieving processes become strangled and confused and even more wearing.
During my darkest times, when I yearned so hard for a child I thought I would die without one, I found it impossible to ever imagine accepting my childless status. This was partly because I was yet to finished processing my grief. But mainly it was because I didn’t know what acceptance would look like for me. In fact, I lived in it for quite some time before realising I had finally arrived there. I would dearly love to tell you how you can accept being childless and how you can make it easier for yourself (and I bet you’d love to know how long it will be before the pain ends.) But I’d be lying if I told you there is a formula. Each of us has our own path to tread and each of our journeys are unique; we will all be pioneers of our own story. What I can tell you is what acceptance feels like now that I’ve arrived here and I can say with my hand on heart, I now accept my childless status without heartache, longing, or regret. And I can tell you that acceptance is a truly wonderful place to be in and that my life without children is very content. It does not in any way feel inferior to the one in which I imagined being a mother. It is not better, not worse, just different.
Sarah, if hearing this makes you scoff with disbelieve then I understand. If hearing this makes you angry or makes you think I can’t possibly have desired motherhood as much as you do; or I’d never have gotten over it, then I get that too. When I wasn’t ready to let go of my motherhood dream, I would never have believed in acceptance either. When I wasn’t finished processing my grief, I couldn’t imagine that one day my broken heart would heal, my happiness would bloom and my sense of injustice would fade.
However, I wonder now, that when I was in my darkest moments, would it have been enough just to know I wasn’t alone? Know there was someone else out there who had not only walked in my shoes and gone through all the pain and self-doubt as I had; but know they had now made their peace with childlessness.Would it have helped to know this person was not simply surviving life but now positively thriving? Yes. I think it would have been good for me to have known this.
