Judy
When I was growing up, I loved making things.
I loved cooking and sewing, gardening and creating. I loved working with my hands, learning how things were made, taking something simple and turning it into something beautiful, useful or nourishing. I loved the slow, ordinary pleasures of a homely life.
And in my mind, all of those things belonged in the realm of family.
I imagined a little home of my own, children growing up around me, meals being prepared and shared, things made with my hands becoming expressions of love and care. I imagined gardening, baking, sewing, creating and nurturing as part of the everyday rhythm of family life.
I didn't realise how deeply I had woven those things together with the dream of becoming a mother.
So, when motherhood didn't happen, I didn't just lose the children I’d hoped for. I lost the whole future life I’d imagined around children and family.
On the outside my body was still present in the world, but on the inside, it was like life stopped. I stopped living.
Cooking didn't feel the same. Gardening didn't feel the same. Making things didn't feel the same. I didn’t feel like making and sharing gifts with friends and family – what was the point?
The pleasures of home and creativity had become so closely connected to the family life I had yearned for, when that dream was shattered, I also lost all the beautiful things that were once such a natural part of life.
For a long time, I didn't really understand what had happened. I thought I was simply grieving motherhood. But looking back now, I can see that grief had reached much further into my life. It had frozen my capacity for joy.
I was frozen in pain, longing and shame. And, without consciously deciding to, I denied myself pleasure.
Perhaps pleasure felt too far away from the life I had lost. Perhaps enjoying things that had once been connected to motherhood felt like an acknowledgement that I was having to build a different life. Perhaps I simply didn't know how to find my way back to myself.
It has taken years.
Now, a decade on, the deepest rawness of the grief is well behind me in the rear-view mirror. The social exclusion and the painful awareness of living outside the life I had expected have softened too.
And something unexpected is happening.
The things that are coming in to fill my heart and soul are the very same things I loved when I was young.
I'm rediscovering the pleasure of making things from scratch. Of cooking slowly. Of gardening. Of working with my hands. Of creativity and homemade things. Of taking my time rather than being busy. Of watching something grow because I have tended it.
And I'm finding new ways to share the things I make and grow.
There is something deeply healing in that.
I'm beginning to understand that those pleasures were never really dependent on motherhood. I had simply attached them to the particular version of family life I expected to have.
The love was real.
The desire to nurture was real.
The pleasure in creating a beautiful, welcoming, nourishing home was real.
But motherhood is not the only place those things can live.
That has been one of the unexpected gifts of looking back.
I can go back to the younger woman who loved these things—not to recreate the life she imagined, because I can't—but to reclaim the parts of her that were always there.
I can take the things she loved and give them a new place in the life I actually have.
And perhaps this is what moving forward can look like.
Not relentlessly looking ahead, searching for something to fill the void, or engender praise and status.
Not forcing ourselves to "move on."
Not leaving our dreams, our younger selves or our lost futures behind.
Sometimes moving forward means looking back with new eyes.
It means finding the things that grief took from us and asking whether they can belong to us again.
It means discovering that joy wasn't destroyed forever. It was waiting.
For me, one of the biggest realisations has been this: I deserve joy.
Even though I didn't become a mother.
Even though my life didn't unfold in the way I expected.
Even though there are things I will always grieve.
I deserve pleasure. I deserve creativity. I deserve satisfaction. I deserve connection. I deserve the deep, quiet happiness that can come from making something with my own hands and sharing it with someone else.
Motherhood is not the only pathway to a meaningful or satisfying life.
Love is bigger than motherhood.
Nurturing is bigger than motherhood.
Creativity is bigger than motherhood.
Connection is bigger than motherhood.
And joy is bigger than the life I once imagined.
I'm still learning this.
But perhaps this is my moving forward: not becoming someone new, but becoming more fully myself with what I have now.
Looking back has helped me find my way forward.
