Honour
“Do you have children?”
And it is not just the no.
It is the loaded everything that sits behind it…..
I wanted and tried for children with everything I had.
The same everything that makes a parent do anything for their child.
I just never got to that other side of it …
And so, when the space opens after that word,
I feel the pull to explain, to justify,
not just to the person in front of me, but also to myself.
People do not ask.
Or if they do, they move quickly back to safer ground,
back to the version of my life that looks easy from the outside.
“You have such a great life.”
“You travel all the time.”
It is easier to envy than to ask.
Easier to assume the grass is greener
than to sit with something uncomfortable.
And yes I do, but there is a big, quiet hole in my life, that those words never reach.
I did not end my IVF journey because I stopped wanting a child.
I ended it because I lost faith.
Faith in clinics that felt more like businesses than places of care,
where payment seemed to matter more than outcome,
and where I was never truly held, seen, or cared for.
I reached a point where I asked myself:
how do I keep pulling myself up to believe this time will work,
when the very people meant to help me
seemed not to give a shit?
So I stopped. Not because I found peace or chose a different dream.
But because I could not keep pouring everything I had
into something that gave so little back, and I just didn’t have it in me anymore.
For years I lived on a relentless cycle:
work, travel, earn, make space for IVF, repeat.
And when that stopped,
I was left standing in the silence of what had happened, the endless losses,
and the uncertainty of what comes next.
In that pause, I have noticed how few people really ask how I am.
Not politely, not in passing,
but truly, from the heart.
I can count them literally on one hand.
Most return to the surface,
to the hard-working woman who travels, whose life looks full.
But fullness and happiness are not the same thing,
and a busy life does not erase an enormous empty space.
What I want is simple.
I want my journey to be recognised.
The years of trying, the hope, the grief,
the motherhood that never quite came but is still there.
I want people to stop feeling awkward,
and to stop trying to make me feel better about not having children,
because it will never make me feel better.
It is sad. It is unfair. It is rubbish. It just is what it is.
You do not need to fix it or dress it up. You do not need to tell me all I should be grateful for.
You do not need to remind me how lucky I am in other ways.
Just say: that’s just really tough. Life can be unfair. It’s totally rubbish. I am so sorry
And let it be what it is. It is what it is.
Because I am already doing the hard part,
I get up every day, find gratitude where I can,
trying to build a new chapter without knowing what it looks like,
trying to find peace in a life still bruised by all that has been lost and still find a smile.
Because nothing is as it appears from the outside.
We share the wonderful and quietly carry everything else alone.
Do not assume I am fine or ok. I do my best, but it isn’t easy
and I am learning, slowly,
that I deserve to be someone’s priority.
That I do not have to keep being the one who is fine.
That I deserve to need people,
and I am slowly learning to ask.
Please do not let me down.
Because when someone does,
I will simply close back into myself and step back again
I really am doing my best.
And slowly, gently,
I am moving forwards.
And what I need more than anything are ‘true’ genuinely caring people who show up beside me and just hold my hand.
