Salma Mohamed-Smith
Growing up in an Indian family really shapes your identity and who you’re supposed to be. The identity of mother is everywhere and is truly revered. You grow up understanding that you’re supposed to get married and have children, and be like a mother to your siblings’ kids…and more specifically, to fulfill your parents’ aspirations of gaining the title of Grandparent.
When it doesn’t happen, you end up feeling…invisible. Like you have no value or worth within your family unit. There’s an unspoken hierarchy that you all of a sudden find yourself at the bottom of. Conversations go in circles about kids. Friends come by and talk about kids. The parental status is elevated. New people your age are introduced to you and the first question asked is if you have kids, and when you say no, I couldn’t have them…they can’t even look at you or even fathom having a conversation with you about ANYTHING else in the entire world (of course after the perfunctory question of whether or not you thought about adopting, as if they can’t possibly believe you the first time around).
Your family starts to treat you differently. You start to feel unrelatable, like you don’t belong. You have a unique perspective of the world but your family is either uninterested or unable to see it. Instead, the only thing you get from them, especially your parents, is this sense of disappointment and failure…you already have it because your body didn’t do what it was supposed to, but now there’s the fallout with your family to deal with. Since stopping infertility, the dynamics have shifted. The conversations have stopped. The sharing has stopped. The interest in my life in general just…stopped. I wish someone had told me along the way that I would be okay. I wish NOBODY had told me to just keep trying and not to give up. I wish someone had asked me if I was mentally okay. I wish someone had told me that I was still valued and worthy and respected even if I didn’t bring more kids into the family.
Childlessness forces you to confront who you really are. Parents get to invest their entire lives and identities and purpose in their kids. For me, I must forge something new entirely. I must find a different purpose and a different identity. I have to confront myself and my failures and my disappointments every single day, and accept that this is just the way the world works. In a culture where family/mother is everything, I need to figure all of this out by myself since my family will never understand this world I live in.
I also have to grieve. Going through infertility was just the beginning, and looking back now I wish someone had given me a heads up on what to expect. Being childless not by choice really is like that proverbial onion. I see it as my CNBC onion of grief. There are so many layers to it that you just don’t know until you get to it. I started with the grief of the life I had imagined for myself. The grief of not having the baby I dreamed I would. The grief of not holding a baby and giving it a name, of not being able to honor my ancestors and pass down our names. This grief is daily.
There’s now the grief of the life I used to have with my family growing up. The relationships that I had with my sisters and my parents were so different from when I was a child, to my teenage years, to my ‘infertility treatment’ years, and to now. I had support from them up until treatment stopped. Now, I grieve the relationships that sadly I have to say no longer exist. Of relationships that are stuck in the past, that never developed, that will never be. I don’t get to be part of the ‘mom club’ like my older sisters are. I don’t get to make my parents proud by showing them pictures of their grandchildren and talk about how far they have come. I think on some level I am not even seen as an adult, but rather the ‘baby’ of the family (I am the youngest of four children) and because I never had kids, I don’t have the wisdom that they do. I have to live up to THEIR expectations of me as an aunt to their children, and I can’t help but sense a subtle feeling of you couldn’t have kids so here, invest in mine…which is just insulting, if I’m being honest. There’s almost a sense of hostility that I’m choosing MY life over their children. It’s constantly being made to feel like I’m failing, I’m not good enough, I’m a disappointment.
But they don’t know…that I am wise. I am valuable. I am worthy. I am strong and I am capable and I’m able – no, I deserve to live a life for me and nobody else. I am only now starting to swim up through the dense, muddy waters that life spilled my way, and see what my life can be. What my life is beginning to be. But entwined in that is a kind of grief that they will never understand. A grief that we CNBC women confront all day, each and every single day, and will for the rest of our lives. I know that a few years from now my nieces and nephews might start building families of their own and making my sisters grandparents, and I won’t get to be part of that journey.
But what I see now is a different journey that I must forcefully put myself through. I need to discover who I am and find joy and value and worthiness somewhere, because I have realized now it was never going to be in the form of a baby, nor was it going to be in the form of belonging in my family. I grieve the sisterhood and the motherhood that never was, AND I can dream and manifest a life of my own, FOR ME.
It’s okay. It’ll be okay. It’s okay to live my life for me. It’s okay to disappoint others. It’s okay to not meet their expectations, no matter who they are in my life. It’s okay to find purpose and meaning and happiness beyond what any of them will ever be able to comprehend.
I was having dinner with my parents last year, just the three of us, and I tried to open up a little about my childlessness (BIG no-no in our community, you just don’t talk about it). In about 5 seconds, I got the clarity that I needed. My mom said to me, ‘at least you have your Oscar’ (the cat). It made me realize that she only sees life through the lens of a mother. It made me realize that I am different to her, and she’s grasping at straws to relate to me as some kind of mother, even if it is to a cat (who, by the way, is my everything and the center of my universe #childlesscatladies). Again, it’s okay. I don’t fault my family at all; that’s what they know and that’s how they live. Even if it results in a feeling of not belonging. Of not being valued. Of being a failure.
That’s the thing about CNBC. You learn so many lessons, each and every day. And it’s exhausting. The biggest and hardest lesson for me is acceptance. Acceptance of what never was, what will never be, and of what that now means for me and those around me. I can start to find happiness and joy and fulfillment for myself, and accept that it may rub people the wrong way; I can also accept and believe that it cannot be my problem. I can accept that I can never meet others’ expectations or take on their burdens, and accept that prioritizing myself is okay.
For anyone reading this that has just started their journey of acceptance, just know that it’s okay. It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay.
Here’s something I wrote last year and now more than ever it’s resounding within me. It’s okay to be me, because here I am:
I am
The Woman who grieves silently, always
I am
The Woman with endless yearning, daily
I yearn
To be seen by Mothers and Grandmothers
I yearn
To be seen the way Mothers and Grandmothers are seen
I imagined
What life would be
I image now
What life could be
I loved
What would have been
I love
What now will be
I am
Love
I am
Me
