Ari MR
Author’s Note: I originally published a version of this article on my Substack in 2025. I have since deleted my Substack account, but if any part of my article sounds familiar, you may have read it over there.
Trigger Warning: permanent childlessness, religious trauma, infertility, grief, chronic illness. Dear reader, please take note of these trigger warnings before reading.
Learning in my early twenties that I would be permanently childless and chronically ill was an agonizing experience I will never forget. I married young and wanted to become a mother and build a family with my spouse, only to find out that it would never become a reality. It is a cross that has been taking me a tremendous amount of strength to carry, because the only other alternative is to be crushed into pieces by a society that refuses to acknowledge the dignity of childless women. In accordance with my personal beliefs, I have cried out to God in anger, time and time again, as I wonder why He took away my health and crushed my precious dreams so young.
I have fragile vasculature. My uterus could rupture. I would be at risk for a bigger stroke and cardiac arrest (after having one already, and just narrowly missing cardiac arrest in my twenties due to a life-threatening arrhythmia). Above all, I cannot take care of myself. I have to rely on my sweet husband, who is also my caregiver. I cannot shower unattended most days. I pass out for seconds and even minutes at a time. I become so fatigued that I can barely move a limb. A simple cold turns into pneumonia and makes me bedbound for weeks at a time, as has happened before. My husband and I live mostly in seclusion due to my illness. My husband has a medical condition, too. We simply cannot take care of children. We simply cannot have children.
But no one holds space for this type of pain and grief. Every now and then, someone who means well will send me a resource relating to infertility; yet, this journey is very different from that of someone walking through infertility, and infertility support groups are often triggering to those who are permanently childless. We can neither try for nor adopt a child. Those walking through infertility are often met with support and rightly so. From what I have personally witnessed, they are prayed over, loved, supported, and counseled on their journey to conceive or adopt. They are held in their grief by supportive family members, friends, religious communities, and other faith-based organizations who grieve alongside them. (Note: I can only speak from my own experience. If this is not your experience, please know that you are loved and your experience is completely valid.) From what I have witnessed within my former communities, they are rewarded for trying to bring new life into the world. But what about the permanently childless? We can neither try nor adopt, and so we experience a type of grief that is rarely talked about. We are grieving what never was and what never will be. Others cannot see this pain. Many struggle to understand it. So instead, many religious communities and society at large have chosen to condemn, criticize, and abandon the permanently childless. Oftentimes, family and friends react the same way- mine did. I wonder why life has to be so cruel. I did not choose to become ill. I did not choose this. Why do so many people see permanently childless women as unworthy of love and support? Why isn’t our grief validated? Why is it that people assume we brought these circumstances onto ourselves?
My husband and I were told by the community we loved so deeply that our marriage is invalid and we are going to hell. People (including our own families) accused me of faking my illness and making excuses. They said we were being selfish, not trusting God enough, and living in sin, among many other things. There was no empathy. There was condemnation and then silence as my body continued to fall apart. So we took our place outside of society and watched from afar as our young adulthood slowly started to go by- all while our peers continued to announce their first, second, third, and even fourth child. My husband and I held- and continue to hold- each other close as we witness those who carry the heavy cross of infertility being met with the love and support we so badly wish we were given, too, as a permanently childless couple.
Those who do mean well will say “you’re so young! I’m sure you’ll be able to have children in the future. Look at Sarah and Hannah in the Bible! Don’t listen to the doctors.” Such phrases are an attempt to offer hope and consolation and are easy to say. They are essentially band-aids in the form of phrases. But band-aids do not fix genetic conditions, nor do they cure the debilitating symptoms I face every day. We cherish our marriage. Of course, we wish we could welcome a child into our family through adoption, but my health is fragile. My prognosis is not great. No adoption agency wants that in a potential parent. I do not have the capacity to care for a child, let alone myself. I spend much more time in medical appointments and in bed than anywhere else. I have a shortened life expectancy, and to pretend I do not would be ignorant. My husband and I have recently shifted our focus to improving our quality of life in the midst of our circumstances. There is only so much we can do.
My husband and I are at peace with our loving marriage, but the condemnation we receive for being childless and chronically ill makes our heads spin and adds more pain to the grief we still delicately manage in our lives.
I have seen support for older women who are permanently childless, but nothing for the twenty-something with lost health and lost dreams. I have seen forty- and fifty- somethings deeply held by others who mourn with them during and after their long battle with infertility, but there is nothing like that for the permanently childless twenty- and even thirty- something who is forced to watch the world go by from her bed, as her own body revolts against her, all while others continue to tell her she is choosing this, that she is “not being open to life” and that she is going to hell. This is not at all to minimize another person’s challenges, but to ask, with sorrow in my heart, why permanently childless couples are not met with the same love and support, and are often given the opposite- hatred, condemnation, and alienation.
And so I cry. I grieve. I beg. I plead. I plead for mercy. I ask to be saved from this debilitating illness. From the crippling weight of isolation. From the cruel words of others. From the loneliness of not having friends or a community. From the fatigue that my sweet husband feels so deeply, too. I cry. I grieve. I beg. I plead.
I try to remain in joy by reminding myself that we have been given the strength to carry these crosses we would have never imagined having at our age.
I rejoice in having an incredibly loving marriage, living among nature even when I cannot go outside to physically enjoy it, and in every little thing that makes my heart jump a little with childlike excitement and joy.
But grief and joy can coexist on earth, and I would be remiss if I did not discuss this cross that weighs so heavily on us.
If you are a permanently childless twenty-something (or any-something), please know that you are loved. You are cherished. Your worth is not found in the number of children you do or do not have, regardless of what others may say. Your worth is found in your sheer existence as a beautiful person on this earth and that alone. I am so glad you are here and I am in your corner as you continue to fight the good fight.
Your grief is valid and real.
