Anonymous

It’s a tough gig, this childless step-parent business. Tougher than I could have imagined and due to so many invisible layers and dynamics, both internal and external.

In a way, being childless by circumstance (early menopause) is what opened me to the idea of going into a relationship with a partner with his own children. It seemed a perfect match as I couldn’t have children and he had 3 who could do with some bonus mothering when they were with him. However it is also being childless that has made this journey so much more emotionally and existentially difficult.

While I get to be in the ‘mother’ role 50% of the time, this time also confronts me with my childlessness. I am mothering children that I didn’t birth. My partner and I didn’t have those deeply bonding pregnancy, birth, and post-birth experiences that I can only imagine are life-changing. And the children I mother have different values and come with quite a lot of pre-conditioning that I don’t align with. In short, it leaves me constantly grappling with feeling like I am serving a family that is not of my own making. My desire for creating a family, or rather, being a Co-creator, is not met. And I find this so incredibly hard.

There is a further layer of just being a ‘childless woman’. I have never consciously subscribed to the emotions that come from being a part of this group. But I feel this sharply. How many children did I not have? How many grand-children will I not have? How many beautiful human experiences have I missed out on because I haven’t held the gift of creating life nor the gift of daily handling the risk of death. There are deep psycho—spiritual-emotional places that I can never reach because I am not a parent. None of this had I even thought about before I grasped that I could not have children.

My life is fine. I have much freedom and can conduct myself as I please. But I cannot deny the sadness, grief, loss that I feel on a daily basis. And I need my fellow women to help me to process this because otherwise it’s just a weird, untrodden journey within me and I wonder if it is just me going mad. I know it is not. I know this is a deeply important bit of processing that needs to be done and a further immaculately painful human experience that needs allowing and processing. It’s not one I thought would be part of my life. Yet here it is.

Perhaps, getting this experience out into the open will allow it to be processed and then, perhaps, I will be able to birth something else after all.

Photo by Clark Van Der Beken on Unsplash