In 1990, we married at 36. Ready to go, do what is expected of us, with fertility on both sides of the family well proven.

Within a year we were facing the fact that, due to our combined difficulties, it pointed to no unassisted conception.

With time against us, we flirted briefly with the IVF juggernaut, before accepting that we didn’t have the stomach or the bank account to go beyond the first round.

We decided to steer away from the adoption option or what I would call the parenting plus alternative.

Just the two of us. Alone. Washed up. Lost. No sign posts. No destination. In limbo.

With our shared therapeutic and spiritual experiences, we realised that we needed to seek closure from being marooned to move forward.

Through the support of our close friends, with their three young children and Springer Spaniel, we devised our own ritual and lit candles to bid farewell to parenthood and embrace the subsequent gap and uncertainty.

In that letting go, this family gifted us the opportunity to be temporary ‘in loco parentis’ for these 3 delightful bundles of energy and curiosity for week-ends away with us at our seaside location. An alternative model of extended family, giving the parents times to nurture their relationship and recharge. Win, win, as it helped us to dullen the impact of pain and disappointment.

We struggled through years of dysfunctional and non-existent sexual relationships and had periods when we would drift apart into parallel places of isolation and disconnection. Simply no let up from the unexpected desolation of a two-person family.

Out of these heartaches emerged a new mantra: How to be differently fruitful together, in the world.

After two years incubation, we had our first birthing with a yearlong trip around the world: from New York to Hawaii via Vancouver; from the Grand Canyon to New Zealand and on to the Sydney Olympics; trekking in Nepal to cycling in China, three through India by train, three city tour of South Africa and a final extended stay in Namibia. We returned pregnant with our second progeny – tour management of an Indian dance troupe from Kerala.

Our third birthing came with the bouncy shape of Moksha, our English Springer Spaniel puppy. She gave us 13 years of joy and challenge; nose to the ground, unconditionally loyal and melting hearts of all she befriended.

In 2019, came the unexpected emergence of unfinished mourning through my engagement with an online writing group, based on the core principles of Writing Practice as set out in Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones”.

By keeping the pen moving, day after day, showing up for the twice weekly online group, repeatedly writing to prompts out of which emerged my sense of loss, sadness and emptiness on being unintentionally childless and reading out my contributions via Zoom break out rooms with no comment. Living through Covid-19 restrictions confronted me with the realisation that I was missing out on grandparenting and that we had no immediate family looking out for us.

Through my commitment and discipline, I strengthened my writing spine and instilled a confidence and wish to share my story. I approached the BBC Radio 4 programme, ‘The Listening Project’, and the skilful producer matched me up with a total stranger, younger yet likewise experiencing the vagaries and tortured decisions of facing childlessness. We went live and spoke uninterrupted for over an hour. My first conversation on the topic after 26 years.

I emerged liberated, heartbroken, tearful, exposed, proud and emboldened that we as men can find our way through the brokenness that fate had thrust into our crotches.

There remain conversations still to be entered into about the nature of family, the sharing of individual stories within safe spaces, the reaching out to the women and their sufferings and the push through the troughs of our shared experiences out into the light and delight of human compassion with love prevailing.

Nicholas Paton Philip

Photo by Amanda Hortiz on Unsplash