Dannie-Lu Carr
1. I am childless, not childfree. I am childless not by choice because I was coerced into an abortion that I didn’t want to have back in 2010. I miscarried in 2011. I was completely traumatised by both and had many phantom pregnancies (moments where my body or mind convinced me I was pregnant again, out of pure grief). I always remember the date I had my abortion, the date I had my miscarriage, and both of my due dates. Nothing about this was by choice or made me feel free.
2. I have grieved a lot. I still grieve. It happens less often now, but it's no less intense when it does. It can hit me anytime, anyplace and it is not usually prompted by the things you would expect. I am still angry about what happened. I still feel it was all very unfair. I accept that life is very unfair, but I do not accept how normalised and blinkered everyday pronatalism can be and how many people can be hurt by it.
3. I find holding other people’s babies one of the most joyous experiences (I couldn’t do this in the depths of my early grief). I love kids. They make me smile and laugh and think profound thoughts. I love how uncensored and how honest they can be.
4. Being without children doesn't make me care any less about children, their futures, or the harsh realities of the world. I feel just as responsible and invested in the future of our planet as any parent does.
5. I am building my lineage through my creative practice. Music, writing, theatre, some sketches. My bloodline ends with me, but my creative work carries something different and something just as precious.
6. I now have a loving partner, a stepdaughter and a little dog called Nancy Violet. I live only with my dog and we still do lots of amazing things together. I do not call us ‘our family’. I call us ‘our little team’ which feels special for our unique and non-conventional set-up. It 100% works for us, despite what anyone else might think or say.
7. I have written a fair few articles around childlessness, childfree-ness and disenfranchised grief. I am about to start running a training course for leaders on how to have taboo conversations at work, to help support people with reproductive health and fertility issues in the workplace, and to encourage greater empathy and understanding.
8. Most of my good friends are childless not by choice or are childfree by choice. Between us we all have very different stories and sets of circumstances around us. Some of my friends have children. This can be a more challenging navigation at times, but we all talk and listen to one another, and nobody tries to out-do anyone else on how hard life is or how much better life is with or without children. It needs self-awareness but it isn’t so hard to do, and it is achievable for anyone who cares enough. I did a podcast dealing with some of the complexities around this.
9. I don’t believe that my life has no purpose because I am not a parent. Mothering is a verb and we can do it in a vast number of ways – with animals, with other people, with nature. No one way is better than any other and our planet needs every version of it. I very rarely feel lonely because I have purpose (and a dog, and lots of books!)
10. I wish I could have met my unborn children. I still wonder what they would be like in character, what they would look like, what our lives would have been like together. I have no doubt that their father would never have stayed. I have big moon-shaped emotional scars from this chapter in my life and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It means that they still matter. I will always hold them in my heart and in my psyche.
