Being childless and single is double the loss, pain and heartache. The sheer scale of aloneness every day as well as at weekends, holidays and ‘special’ occasions is overwhelming. For those of us who are childless not by choice as well as single not by choice, the reality is living with another layer of devastating pain and loss every day.

Society doesn’t recognise those of us who have neither children nor partner. I am invisible, unseen, unheard and unacknowledged. I don’t exist outside the childless and unpartnered community. Without children or partner, I’m living in no man’s land, in society’s wilderness. Living a childless and single life means I don’t belong in a society which celebrates and reveres marriage and children often to the exclusion of all others, especially the childless not by choice and single not by choice.

SS

Photo by Majestic Lukas on Unsplash