Danielle H
My husband, James, and I had to put our 16-year-old dog, Leela, to sleep last month. I realize that this isn’t how one expects a piece about moving forward with childless grief to begin, but I promise I will bring it back around to this soon. In the weeks leading up to Leela’s passing, I went back and forth on whether we were making the best choice for her, and the closer we got to the date we had decided on, the more thought-consuming and intense the anticipatory grief became for me. At one point, James said that perhaps I was thinking and talking about this too much, and that it would be better if I could enjoy my final days with Leela without dwelling on how little time we had left together. I tried, though I’m not sure how successfully. The final moments we had with Leela, as the sedative took hold, were both devastating and beautiful. I cried a lot that following week, and at one point my husband mentioned that he was worried about me. I didn’t understand what he meant, as the level of grief I was experiencing seemed perfectly normal to me. Gently, he shared with me how he is afraid of losing me again to grief.
I acknowledged that I would be permanently childless in the winter of 2021; at least, this is what I have told myself. But James reminded me that I was grieving not being a mother at least a good five years before that. I’d been telling myself that the worst of my grief and depression lasted several months, but he is right that it started much earlier. The sadness was there, brewing beneath the surface, and I thought I was the only one who could see it. I didn’t realize the mask I was wearing, the one that signaled to the rest of the world that I was doing okay, had been slipping for quite a while. When I think about that time, everything is a blur. Were it not for photographs, I wouldn’t be able to tell you much at all about those years. Perhaps part of this is being an adult. Years seem to go by more quickly, with no real distinction from one to the next. I think it’s more than that for me; I spent years wishing and waiting for my life to be different. Years in which I was alive, sure, but not really living. There were occasional happy moments during those years. But the long spaces between those moments are blank, not only because I can’t remember them well, but because I moved through my days in a dream state, always focused on the future, while the present me remained vacant.
In 2021, the grief that had been brewing below the surface finally bubbled over. I don’t know the exact reason for this shift, though I’m guessing it was a combination of things: the birth of my nephew, my 40th birthday approaching, and my ongoing health struggles that seemed to be worsening. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I remember feeling anxious and having this overwhelming urge to make a final decision about having children. Up until that point, I’d been holding out hope that my health would improve enough to pursue parenthood. But after another week in which my symptoms had kept me mostly bedbound, there I was sitting on the couch in front of our Christmas tree at two o’clock in the morning, staring at the branches where I’d pictured us hanging handmade ornaments that the kids would have brought home from school and at the bare tree skirt where the presents with the names we chose for them scribbled onto tags should have been. I sat in the same spot and mulled over similar things just about every night that week, letting my tears fall on the head of my cat Tiger as he nestled into my shoulder. On one of these nights, I recall coming back to bed in the early morning and unintentionally waking James with my sobbing. I asked him if the possibility of us being parents was really and truly over, though I didn’t need the confirmation. We both knew the answer before the question passed my lips. Life dealt us a crap hand when it came to my health, and try as we might to change it, some things remained outside of our control. I’ve heard other people say that the reason they finally accepted their childlessness was that living each day in this limbo space with the hope of things changing had become so painful and limiting that they knew they couldn’t go on like that. This feels true for me, as well. But it doesn’t lessen the enormity of grief that follows these recognitions.
It was as though all my hopes and dreams and everything I knew to be true about myself and my place in the world had been crushed underfoot. I couldn’t, nor did I want to try, to envisage a future without motherhood eventually at the center. A black hole had opened for me years ago when I first became disabled, and I’d been trying to balance just one foot in its water. But now, the only thing I had the energy to do was to let the dark fully pull me under. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep more than a few hours at night. I had no appetite; therefore, I wouldn’t eat during the day, and then I’d binge at night, easily consuming a full day’s worth of calories in the span of an hour or two. I never felt full, just numb. I’d watch television, without really paying attention to what was on screen. James took me out on dates to nice restaurants, but I’d notice a family with an infant two tables over, and I’d start weeping. I wasn’t talking to him much during those months because the only thing on my mind was my own sadness and anger. I didn’t want to end my life, but I also didn’t want to live it.
During one of my late nights in front of the television, I decided to Google “women without children who had wanted to be mothers.” This search led to Jody Day’s TED Talk about involuntary childlessness. I remember watching it twice that night, bawling. I couldn’t believe I had stumbled upon another woman who knew the type of pain I was living. I spent the next few days further down the rabbit hole, which led to more of Jody’s work and the World Childless Week website, where I read stories I swore I could have written myself. I watched webinars in which women discussed moving forward with their childlessness and how they’d come to make some peace with it. As much as I wanted to take inspiration from the hopeful part of their stories, a larger portion of me remained skeptical, thinking that these women possessed a strength, determination, and joyfulness that I would never, in a million years, be capable of holding. For several days, I continued to seek out more childless resources and listen to other people’s experiences. I couldn’t get enough. When I read about Gateway Women (now The Childless Collective), an online group for women who are childless not by choice, I decided to join.
I couldn’t have known how this decision to connect with other childless-not-by-choice women, made on a quick impulse, would change my life. What I did know was that I was heartbroken and that, apparently, there were other heartbroken women out there too. Within a day of joining Gateway Women, I had written and shared a post introducing myself and a brief synopsis of how I came to be childless. Looking back, I’m so proud of my openness and courage in joining and taking that first step. I was blown away by the kindness and support I received in return. I’d never felt so welcomed and accepted by a group of women before. I wish I could say that the intensity of my grief lessened quickly after that, but that would be a lie. However, finding people who got it was a major turning point on the path toward acceptance. I learned that grieving the dream of becoming a mother isn’t grieving just one loss; it’s hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of losses spread throughout a lifetime. And my story, like every childless person’s, is complex and layered. No wonder it feels difficult.
Five years on, my life looks and feels different than I imagined it would, but that’s no longer a bad thing. My grief has eased over the years, and with it, so has my depression. The path toward acceptance hasn’t been straightforward; it’s taken a lot of work on my part to get to this point. I go to biweekly counseling sessions with a therapist who, although she is a mother herself, treats my grief over being childless with tenderness and gravity. I attend weekly meditation sessions for childless-not-by-choice women, which have helped me learn to get more in touch with my emotions and to welcome those feelings as they come to the surface, even when they are painful. I spend time and energy pursuing and noticing small joys in my life. I loved reading when I was younger, and I’m now an avid reader again. I’ve learned that I enjoy drawing and painting, and I’m having fun seeing my artwork improve. I’ve made connections within this childless community that are invaluable to me. Even before realizing I’d be childless, these are the types of close friendships I’d been searching for as an adult. We’re the kind of friends who show genuine interest in what one another has to say, who laugh together at the absurdities in our daily lives, who rejoice with one another when one of us has good news, and who cry together when things feel heavy. They show up for me time and again, and I try to do the same for them. Our friendships started because of our shared grief, but now we bond over so much more than our losses. These friendships have become so important to me that I cannot imagine my life without them. When I first started processing my grief, I thought I would need to do something big to fill the void left by childlessness, but somewhere along the line I realized I was trying to ease that ache and escape my own sadness by replacing one dream with another. After several years of working toward accepting my loss, most days now I’m content with my simple, quiet life that still has moments of breathtaking beauty, deep belly laughs, nurturing connection, and an abundance of small joys; it’s better than I thought it could be.
When James told me that he was afraid of losing me again to grief, I was able to tell him truthfully that I don’t share that fear. Yes, we are continuing to face heartbreaking loss, such as the recent deaths of a family member, a dear friend, and our sweet dog, Leela. These losses are devastating, and I cry over them, sometimes for weeks. I wish they hadn’t happened, but my world didn’t stop spinning the way it did with my childless grief. I spent most of my life dreaming of one day having children of my own. My identity and sense of self were wrapped up in this dream to such a great extent that when the dream fully crumbled, I didn’t know who I was without it. Instead of saying that I lost myself to grief, I think it’d be more accurate to say that I lost myself to a dream, and it just so happened that dream never came true. Of course, I understand what James means and how grief and depression can make you look and feel like the hollowest version of yourself. Maybe it’s naïve to think I couldn’t get back to that place. For now, I feel comfortable saying that I don’t think it will happen. I both know and like myself better than I ever have before in my adult life, and I’m trusting that I have the tools to navigate whatever life throws my way.
My therapist encourages me to imagine my younger self sometimes when I am having a more difficult time figuring out exactly what I am feeling in the moment. What often comes to mind is this one image: I was five or six years old, staring up at a sunny sky as I sang and spun in circles without a care in the world. I think back on this younger self and wish I could shield her from the suffering and pain that lies ahead of her. There have been times when I’ve felt so disconnected from that joyful, carefree spirit that once lived inside me, but I see glimpses of it coming back these days. When I am riding in the car, I find myself paying more attention to the way the sunlight streams through the treetops. When I’m walking, I’m aware of the way the asphalt glitters beneath me. And when I’m sitting in a chair looking out at the ocean, I’m not only in awe of the shimmering waves; I’m also silently thanking the universe for the friendships I’ve made with women who live on the other side of the world, friends I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for my childlessness.
