There are two sides to the question “Do you ever get over not having children?” And it really depends on who’s doing the asking.
One is incredibly insulting, as in, “Aren’t you over that yet?!”
Whilst the other is “Will I ever feel good about my life again?”
The fact is that if you were to have had children, and by some tragic event, they had died, nobody would ever expect you to be ‘over it’. Indeed, if you ever were, you’d be considered heartless – that terrible fairytale nasty: a bad mother. Every Christmas or Mother’s Day, people would be sensitive towards how hard those celebrations must be for you. And if they forgot your loss, they’d feel terrible about it. Your loss would be considered life-changing.
Yet if you’ve spent years (decades even!) of your life longing and planning to become a mother, and for a wide variety of reasons, some of them mundane, some of them tragic, you ended up without a family, you’re expected to just ‘get over it.’ But it’s not the flu; it’s not something you ‘get over’. You lost your family! You lost the chance to be a mother, to be a grandmother, to give birth to another life, to be the person that brought your partner’s children into the world, to be a grandmother. To have a hand and say in shaping the next generation. To have the respect of others, a place in the community of mothers and a say in how things are done. So, no biggie, really. We really must all be making a fuss about nothing…
Now, I am not for a moment trying to downplay how awful it must be to lose a child, a family. It must be like having your heart torn out of your body. But the grief of the childless by circumstance, for some women, is as disabling, as life-changing.
We cannot grieve what we have not loved because grief, in my view, is part of love. And whether you held your children in your arms or not, if you grieve for them, you loved them. The children that childless women loved were real to them. And the loss of those children is real too. And without mourning those lost children, we will never ‘get over it’.
Not having children broke my heart. Why didn’t I have them? Well, it was a 15-year journey through infertility, denial, codependency and bad luck. (That’s the short version!) But grief healed my heart bigger. I am not the same person as I was before I grieved that loss. Because grief, like love, transforms us. We are never the same person again. What once was an open wound in my heart is now a scar – a tender spot – and it has changed me.
I have not ‘got over’ not having children, but rather my heart has healed around that loss. It is a part of me, a precious, tender part of me that gives me a depth of compasssion for others who suffer that was always in me, but which now has fully blossomed in my character.
Loss like ours doesn’t have to ruin our lives – it can transform it:
- I have more courage now, because having healed this wound, I trust my resilience.
- I have more empathy now for all disenfranchised groups, because I understand what it is to be stigmatised.
- I have more patience and tolerance now for awkward and difficult people, because I know that each of us is carrying around an invisible wound, leaking pain from so many ungrieved losses.
- I have more faith now, because I have understood that grief is the gift of love, not a cruel kicking when I was at my most vulnerable.
But I couldn’t have done this alone. Grief, like love, cannot exist in a vacuum; it needs to be held in the tender heart and understanding of another.
In my experience, the only people who ever understood, really understood what it felt like to not be a mother, were women like us – the childless by circumstance. No one else ever understood the depth and breadth of my loss, my future, my identity as a woman, my place in society and amongst my peers. And in that understanding, my grief finally felt heard, held, understood. And so it did what it longed to do – it healed my heart so that I was ready to love life again.
Will you ever feel good about your life again? Yes, once you have done your grief work. But you cannot do it alone. Grief is a form of unrequited love. It is not a poisonous illness trying to deform your life. It is a loving energy that wishes to heal you. You cannot wait it out, and you cannot repress it. It is patient and strong, like all love, and it will out-wait you. And you will grow ill and weary from the effort of trying to avoid it, out-run it, out-think it.
How to do your grief work? Seek the company of your fellow Gateway Women. Comment on the blogs. Join the Gateway Women Meetup Group. Ask to start a Meetup in your own area. Join the Gateway Women Private Community Forum on G+. Come to a workshop. Just get out of your head and preferably out of the house.
Not being a mother has left a scar on my heart that will always be there. Always be tender. And can be touched and bring me to tears for surprising reasons.
But I can live with a scar, grow with a scar.
Grief heals. Life goes on. And I am part of the flow again.
***
Jody Day (48) is a London-based writer and the Founder at Gateway Women. She set up the Gateway Women website and network in 2011 to support, inspire and empower childless by circumstance women (like herself) as they develop meaningful and fulfilling lives without children. Jody runs groups, workshops and retreats for hopeful mothers-to-be who are ‘running out of time’, as well as for those women reluctantly coming to terms with the fact that motherhood didn’t happen for them. Jody also consults with individuals and organisations and she regularly speaks out in public, in the media and online about issues and prejudices facing childless women in our society today. Neither a bitter spinster nor a dried up old hag, Jody puts her heart, mind, and soul into lovingly and mischievously subverting the stereotype of the ‘childless woman’. She is living proof that your Plan B can rock too!
I just read this blog having posted “Do you ever get over not having children” and i’m so glad I found it! Thank you, Jody.
I googled that because I had just spent some time with a friend who is really struggling to come to terms with it, as I have also struggled to come to terms with it.
It wasn’t infertility that caused this situation for me, but circumstance – too involved to write about here.
At 40 when I realised I probably was never going to have children, I fell into a blur of misery and addiction. I could not cope with the amount of grief I felt, combined with the often thoughtless comments or assumptions of others. My heart was physically hurting, I really didn’t think I would live through it. But I did.
I am addiction free now (10 years later) and the wound is more of a scar now, but the pain can still come alive again if I’m with the wrong people or the wrong situation. Thankfully that is not often now as I am a lot more careful about who I associate with. As a result I feel blessed with the friendships I have around me.
I work in the welfare field now because I too strongly identify with the disenfranchised people of the world and all my pain comes in handy these days because empathy comes naturally to me, and it helps me to think it wasn’t all for nothing because I really can help – not all the time, but often.
I do get angry at the way women who don’t have children are treated by the world, but maybe I don’t regret what I’ve learned because my life is meaningful now in a way I didn’t expect it to be, and I have a respect for myself for surviving all that pain.
Not many understand, and I don’t expect them to, but it’s really nice to read this.
May we all find happiness and healing in whatever ways we can xxx
My wife and I have went through different procedures but have miscarried on more than one occasion. I try to get on with things but my heart is broken and I can’t seem to fix it.
Thank you for writing these wonderful aricles!
Many people think that if you are childless it is for a medical reason or lifestyle choice. For me it is neither. I spent 9 years in an abusive, manipulative relationship with someone I later found out had NPD and my life was one of trying to escape and survive.There was no way I could inflict such a life on another human being. I was then on my own for years. Living in a village it wasn’t easy to meet people. Then I met and fell in love with a wonderful man, but he didn’t want any more children. I totally understood why. He had married at 19 and took on a 2 year old as his own. He then had 2 more children. They split up and he remarried, but his 2nd wife died and he also brought up her three children on his own. When we met they were in their early teens. He was looking forward to a bit of me time and why shouldn’t he. His whole adult life had been spent bring up children, mainly other peoples. I stayed with him because I loved him and loved being with him. It really hit home when I was diagnosed with fibroids. I was very aware that my operation could result in hysterectomy, but I was so ill I had to go through with it. I was in turmoil. I had to attend the same department as all the expectant mums. It was my vision of hell.I wanted my body clock to say it was too late, not an operation. It went well but they came back. I have now had 3 operations which all went well and was told i could still technically have children if i had a cesarean. 3 years ago i was diagnosed with 6 more tumors, but the aren’t causing me too many problems so I have left them. Although I am no longer in a relationship with this wonderful guy, we are still best friends. I am single again at 46 years old. Although I can potentially still have children I am fully aware that it is highly improbable. I never chose to be childless; to not have a family. People make many assumptions about me and none of them are ever correct. Christmas used to be difficult, but i learnt to live with it and now it has become easy to just ignore it. I live over the road to a primary school and when i here the 5 year olds playing i realize my heart still brakes and i also remember that when i was 5 i thought i would grow up to be like everybody else. But like many other people, i bury my feelings deep inside and ignore them as best i can and try to concentrate on what is positive in my life and what i do have rather than what i don;t have. This is the first time i have ever shared this with anyone. I know there will be other women and i dare say men who will relate to this. It is a pain that goes unseen, but is very real indeed.
How amazing that you are telling your story at last. You will find lots of support on the Gateway Women google community page, email Jody or contact Gateway Women through facebook to find out more.
Hi Joolz
My father was a psychopath. My amazing Mum protected us both, but there were some difficult times. He nearly killed me once when I was just a few months old, he was in a rage and swung the bassinet too fast when coming in the front door. I was catapulted across the room, bounced off the wall and fell onto the floor. There were other times when I wasn’t properly supervised and nearly drowned. My Mum put up with him for 10 years, leaving him when I was 4. I’m now 36 and we only recently figured out that he fits the classic psychopath/narcissist profile.
He was never able to empathise with me as a child, and our relationship was non-existent by the time I was 15. I spent a long time in counselling trying to understand why he was constantly rejecting me and why I was making such bad relationship choices.
Your ex sounds more violent than my father was, and I’m guessing he would never have been able to bond with his child and would at least have caused irreparable psychological damage. What happened to you was awful and it angers me that women’s friends and family don’t step in to save them from these men. I am so sorry that this man robbed you of the chance to have children. You had no choice at the time, any kindhearted woman would have done the same.
I also feel annoyed at men who have children and think it’s ok to start a relationship with a younger woman and make her choose between the relationship and her ambitions of motherhood. This puts a woman who is in love, in an impossible situation. Relationships don’t always last, but the grief of not having children stays with you forever. This may sound unfair, but I have a friend in Australia in this situation and it makes me very angry that men do this.
Sending love your way.
Tya
Thank you for your understanding Tya. (Regarding the first guy I mentioned) Don’t be too hard on people who don’t help in these situations as they aren’t always aware of what is happening to their friend or family member. I’m also sorry to hear about your friend. I myself have never been in the position where I have been pressured into making that choice between a relationship and children; for me it was just bad timing and this isn’t the reason why I’m no longer in relationship with the second guy who had children. I also think that men have just as much right to choice as women. Unless there has been deliberate deceit then it is sad but unfortunately sometimes we do have to make upsetting choices in life. I think honesty about wanting, not wanting, can’t have, should be dealt with in a sincere and sensitive manner from the start from both parties really.
My house is full of the sounds of my neighbours raising their child. There was an advert for a children’s clothes sale on the doormat when I got home. I have one of those counter things that tell you how much electricity you’re using and it’s next to nothing but the momentary feeling of smugness doesn’t make me feel any better. There was nothing special about today, it was a day just like every other day and there is absolutely nowhere to go to forget. There’s always someone with a pregnancy or a pushchair or a whining teenager. Every person in the street has a mother. It’s so easy and yet so f….g impossible to live with if it doesn’t work. It would be better to come here and say it’ll be all right, I suppose, because that’s what everyone does. But it isn’t all right, it’s ongoing agony. Thank you for letting me say that x
I always think I am getting over it, until I read smug twaddle like this:
http://www.rolereboot.org/family/details/2013-01-maybe-you-are-ready-for-kids-youre-just-not-paying-a
I wonder if she knows how hurtful to a wider audience her sanctimonious and supercilious advice to this non-mom is?
Hi Rose
Thought you’d appreciate this brilliant article by a Mother in response to this ‘twaddle’.
Open Letter to ‘Clock-Ticking’ Childless Women Makes Moms Look Condescending & Self-Righteous | The Stir
http://www.ow.ly/h7myo
Jody x
I lost a triplet pregnancy last year, at 19 weeks gestation. My grief has been far from easy to understand. Am I a mother? Did I ‘know’ my children enough to grieve for them? Were they even real people or just a cluster of cells with the potential to become real? Am I a bad person because I know I’d be even more devastated if one of my babies had been a girl, instead of 3 boys? I didn’t expect the confusion, and I didn’t expect to be SO ANGRY with the whole world.
Only 2 friends asked to see me after the miscarriage. Many sent short messages, but no-one knocked on my door. Very few people recognised my experience as a real loss, except my ex-colleagues who sent me a big bunch of flowers. This recognition made me feel better, at least for a day or two. Most people treat miscarriage as if your distant cousin had died (your’e allowed to be sad for a day or two but you didn’t know them well enough to grieve, and therefore a one sentence email is all you need from them in the way of support). Or they simply treat you like a leper.
My partner’s sister committed suicide when she was 19. My partner’s mother has treated my loss as the loss of a child. She told me “losing a child is losing a child”. She also told me people would cross the street when they saw her, for fear of being confronted with her grief. People just don’t know what to say, and they don’t realise that saying nothing is worse than saying the ‘wrong’ thing.
I believe the loss of a child is painful whether or not that child has been conceived, and whether or not that child was brought to term. I have 4 children through 2 miscarried pregnancies. I never met any of them, but I felt them grow inside me and I will always love them. I’m still hopeful of another pregnancy, and I already love the child I hope I will one day hold, and I know it will be painful as hell if this child is never conceived.
The grief we feel is unique to each of us. But we have one thing in common – the lack of a living child. And it hurts.
Hi Tya,
I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your babies. I lost my daughter at 37 weeks of gestation. She to date is my only child, but like you I still hope for one that I can take home. It is so hurtful when people don’t acknowledge the loss and expect you to move on and return to normal “as if it hadn’t happened” when this is just not possible. My daughter would be 14 now and I have never forgotten her though over the years it has become easier to bear. I do consider myself to be a mother, but sadly not a parent. Sometimes it can feel very lonely. Sending you a big hug over cyberspace.
Emily x
I know I found this site at just the right time.. I thought I was doing well with the fact that my husband and I do not have children. As a teacher, I have worked with many, many children over the years and somehow I thought that was helping me deal with my life, etc.,
Today at church I was in a small group of women, all are great people and one is a close friend,… however, when they start sharing pictures and talking about their children I feel like they are making me invisible and I had this roller coaster of emotions, that I wanted to be mad and then remind them that no one should idolize their child…this was of course all going on inside my head… The odd thing is one friend is in a terrible situation with an abusive husband and I know that I am truly blessed to have a dear husband. Will I ever handle this exclusion of “lets talk about out children” and I am on the outside?
I have a friend who had a baby that died six hours after birth, she told me once that she didn’t know what to say when people asked her if she had children. I told her to tell them “yes I had a daughter, but she died”. I felt it was important to allow herself to acknowledge her child and to express her loss, since they asked. I have been struggling with infertility issues and have been unable to conceive since a miscarraige over three years ago. I once burst into tears at work when a client asked me when I was going to have children. I felt guilty for my emotional outpouring, but I also think people deserve a personal answer when they ask a personal question. I have been told this is selfish, but I feel we should speak honestly about our experiences so others will understand the debth of the questions they are asking. There is so much fluff surrounding the childbearing/birthing process, and we mostly hear athe good news about happy healthy babies. In reality there are so many women who experience loss through miscarriage, death, or the inability to conceive. I think that by talking about these real life experiences we raise awareness and create compassion for those whose lives may not have turned out as they had hoped. I thank you for creating this space for sharing, as the world is there are far too resources for women struggling with the childless by choice/chance delimma.
Oh Jody, you’ve done it again. To be honest, I didn’t want to think about this today. When I started reading, I thought, oh no, I can’t handle this, but then as I read on, I felt the healing that you describe. With the multiple losses in my life, not only children, but my husband and my mother, too, I have grieved hard but also gained strength and understanding. I can’t wait to share this post with my Childless by Marriage readers.
I was crying reading this post. I am 45 and first found out that it would be extremely difficult for us to ever have children when I was 34. One of the first things that I did to try to cope was to read as many different books on the subject as possible. I congratulated myself on how well I was handling things. The women in the books talked about never completely getting over the many losses of infertility. I thought that seemed odd. Don’t all feelings of pain & loss lessen over time? Well, unfortunately for me, I think the opposite is true. Every time I think that I am in a good place and have moved on – wham it all comes at me again. Trying to get through the grieving process but it feels never ending.
“The fact is that if you were to have had children, and by some tragic event, they had died, nobody would ever expect you to be ‘over it’. Indeed, if you ever were, you’d be considered heartless – that terrible fairytale nasty: a bad mother. Every Christmas or Mother’s Day, people would be sensitive towards how hard those celebrations must be for you. And if they forgot your loss, they’d feel terrible about it. Your loss would be considered life-changing.”
I read this part, as a woman who lost a baby half an hour after his birth, and thought “No. That’s not even close to what happens. People are not sensitive about your loss, they do not feel terrible when they forget it. That’s not even close to what happens.”
I have been told that I could just have another one – as if one baby is replaced by another as simply as buying a new pair of socks. I have been told “well, at least you didn’t take him home and get used to him.” Friends who have lost older children were told “well, at least you got a chance to know them”.
I have learned that as a race, a people, a kin we are simply bad at confronting the “other”. We do not manage well when someone has a different experience, when someone doesn’t match up to the way we expect the world to be. The unfortunate reality is that we ask others to “simply get over it” because we are uncomfortable about their situation, their loss, their circumstances. We are unable to handle their sorrow, it makes us uncomfortable.
Asking someone to find closure and become happy, just like us, is nothing more than our inability to manage sorrow and tragedy in any coherent or collective sense. It says much about them and virtually nothing about us.
And so we find communities where we can be who we really are – moments of happiness and pockets of sorrow. We find places that accept us, affirm our journeys and show us the multitude of ways we will find happiness on our different paths, and people who will stay with us in the moments of sadness.
This post broke my heart, a little bit. As a woman who was unable to have more children after the death of my son, I belong here. I am a childless woman. And yet, it separated those of us who in some sense ought to be natural allies. It broken a small group into smaller groups – it made me feel like my road wasn’t as difficult as someone else, rather than simply saying my road was different, and different is not less.
We are such a small community, those of us who wanted children and didn’t have them. It seems to me that we are better served by drawing the circle wider and asking careful questions of our erstwhile companions, seeking to understand all of our collective experiences and bearing witness to each other’s sorrow and pain, regardless of how we found ourselves here.
I have found more comfort in those who, for whatever reason, did not find themselves living the lives they expected to, planned to, hoped for, dreamed of. All of them have taught me and continue to teach me how to make peace and sense of this world I live in. And I am thankful for all of them – the woman who was widowed at 30 and gave up a life of long marriage and happiness, the mother who lost her daughter when that girl was 20, the man who had the stroke at the age of 40. All of them have spoken words to help me reconcile the life I have with the life I wanted, have whispered truth and helped me heal.
All of them were there and willing to help, when I simply listened to what it was like to be them, without insisting that my own journey was more painful and more difficult than theirs.
Dear Mrs Split,
Thank you for taking the time to write such a thoughtful and moving response to my article. Reading your comment also broke my heart a little. I am so sorry that, in my ignorance, I made you feel like an outsider from our little community. I totally agree with you that I too find comfort with others who do “not find themselves living the lives expected”. There is a humility to those who have had their hearts broken by life – and I can hear it in the tone of your comment too. Thank you for caring enough to write.
I am one women, attempting to speaking on behalf of many. Sometimes I don’t get it quite right, but each time I learn a little more. And I grow a little more too.
I too do not believe there are ‘levels’ of loss – and I certainly do not wish to divide us from each other. I think your point of asking “questions” is absolutely valid, and I hope that you can perhaps see this post as a kind of “question” and your response as a kind of “answer”. I believe that greif is a dialogue, but I coming to understand that it doesn’t mean it’s always going to be a comfortable one!
I am so sorry for your loss; for all our losses. And in that, I trust there is more in common than can divide us. My work is a drop in the ocean of compassion that the world needs to help us understand our own, and each other’s pain. My dream is that Gateway Women will become a community and network of healing and understanding to support us all, contain us all. I do hope that you will continue to feel included in that.
Once again, many thanks for taking the time to share your point of view and experience with me, with us.
Jody x
I’m a 39 year old woman and am currently in the inbetween stage. I do not know for sure if I can’t have children, so do not feel appropiate to move on. We have explored adoption but we have to to be free from all infertility issues first before out Local Authority will allow us to go forward. In fact at a recent meeting we were told we had to wait six months after we had completed our fertility journey and this is because we would have grieved then and enough time has passed.
I’ve pondered this the last week or so and wondered if a woman can go through the ‘normal’ grieving process, when you have not lost an actual being. There is no face to remember, no familular smell to recall etc.. So how can you move on?
This group means so much to me, when I am completely lost and it is always reassuring and warming that you are not alone.
I have been wondering recently about creating some kind of ritual to help me move on – not sure what yet.
reposted: http://thebitterbabe.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/hidden-fears/
Jodie’s posts always make me cry, for happy and sad. They are just so on the mark.
Thank you – I’m glad it touched you and I hope you’re doing OK. Would be great to see you again soon. Jody x
I am just at the very start of what feels like the next phase of my life – accepting and coming to terms with a life without children. There was a point a few months ago when I came to realise that it was the end of that particular road for me as and I am slowly beginning to think of my future without children (something that I wouldn’t have even considered for many years). Over the past few weeks I have been struggling with a question that has been doing a merry dance round and round my head – “this grieving thing – how do I do it?”. So, I have come to realise I will not be a mum. Now I was an expert in all things to do with trying to conceive (although not successfully so I guess there is some room for debate), ask me any question related to trying to have a child and I reckon I could win Mastermind. But not being a mother, trying to work out what I’m meant to do now, grieving…….no idea…… After reading this post though it seems I am making an okay start. Finding this group, taking part in the webinar and going to the talk last month has been hugely beneficial. It has shown me there are so many of us in similar circumstances who have all found ourselves in this place for varying reasons. I am so grateful to have found this group and although I don’t really feel like I know what I am doing and I’m only at the beginning of walking out of this tunnel I am determined to feel good about my life again.
Hi Helen
I’m sure that so many can identify with you “this grieving this – how do I do it?” point! I guess, we don’t “do” grief – it “does” us! But we need to create a space for it, and find others who can help us hold that space. And you’re doing both. If you accept my idea that grief is a form of love, perhaps you can see that grief is something you “do” but something you “experience” or “are in”. It will unfold within and without, and not to a timetable that we can set, or which is convenient or predictable.
We live in a culture that does not understand or accept grief and loss, so we’re going against the grain here. But if my experience is anything to go by, the gift of grief is a healing that makes the past acceptable, the present available and the future possible again.
Hugs, Jody x
Thank you for this article. I am far from over my grieving process but I hope with time the grieving for what I always wanted will pass.
Thank you again x
Thoughtful article Jody, thanks. I’m sorry to say that I find myself disagreeing quite strongly with your sentence: “The fact is that if you were to have had children, and by some tragic event, they had died, nobody would ever expect you to be ‘over it’ “. I know parents in this situation and after a while they are expected to get over it. I’m sorry because I wish it wasn’t like that, I wish we were all much more compassionate to one another (me included!) I think it points to a problem in our society of a lack of acknowledging and having meaningful rites of passage for all sorts of grief and losses. We’re so caught up in our own lives, stories, busyness that I do think we expect people to get other the most difficult of things. What a shame. Great that your work is bringing about greater empathy and sharing of lives.
Hi Kamalamani
Thanks so much for commenting and I really appreciate you disagreeing with me! I cannot learn and grow in understanding unless others care enough to reach out and share their wisdom with me when I’m missing the point. However, much I appreciate those who let me know when my work ‘hits the spot’ for them, I also value deeply knowing when I’ve missed it too.
Yours is one of a few comments today from women who have told me that the simplistic mother-vs-nomo (not mother) divide I described does NOT create the empathy and understanding from others that I imagined. I am so sad to think that even giving birth to a child and losing it is still not enough to create the space and understanding that grief deserves. I did understand that losing a child in miscarriage or still birth gets little sympathy, but I presumed (erroneously it seems) that losing a child would be different. I am so sad that this is often not the case.
I’m absolutely with you that, as a culture, we have lost so many of the rituals and acknowledgements that would create and hold the space for transitioning through such losses. I believe that apart fromt the rituals of marriage, parenthood and death there’s really very little else. Even a ‘coming of age’ party (at 18 or 21) seems to be more about getting drunk than acknowledging the passage to adulthood. I believe that we are a much poorer society because of the loss of our rituals to help us make manifest our internal transitions.
Thank you for commenting, and for supporting my work. And thank you for illuminating me further on how a loss which I have not experienced is often experienced by those that have.
Jody x
This is a wonderful article, I’m not at the end of the grieving process yet and it seems like I never will be. It’s comforting to know that there are others out there coping well with their grief.
Thank you Jidy, I am going to send this to my friends with kids as well as those without. More and more I am realising that grief heals.
This has done me so much good. Thank you.
Are you a mother if you have gone through labour and delivered a dead baby? Or had a late miscarriage? I was called a mother both times by the obstetrician dealing with me. I lost a few friends after both incidents. I don’t tell people now. I consider myself a mother without children. I am often asked why I don’t have children and I just say I wasn’t lucky enough.
Dear Cate,
Thank you for your comment. What you have been through is heartbreaking, and I’m so sorry that you also lost friends. I’m sad that you can’t share your experiences with people either. From the comments I’ve received on this blog today, I can see that my simplistic either/or breakdown of mothers/not-mothers is far from the full story. I hope that my ignorance about this, as compared to your experience, has not given you further pain.
With love,
Jody x
Cate, have you consulted any groups for support, like Compassionate Friends (www.compassionatefriends.org)? I know that most bereaved parents feel that only another bereaved parent can truly “understand” their pain (and even then, sometimes). We as childless women feel pain too, but it really isn’t acknowledged. I know that for a bereaved parent, they don’t always find the sensitivity that you need, either, though, and I can’t imagine your pain. I guess you can’t understand ours necessarily either, through your own. I am so sorry that you lost friends and that you feel that you cannot tell people. I say, tell people, your pain is valid.
Dear Cate,
What you have been through is so absolutely awful, and makes me so very sad. Having been called ‘a mother’ and lost both of your babies… I can only imagine the pain and sadness you must carry in your heart. And then to lose friends too, and to feel that you have to ‘not’ tell people.
I wanted to let you know about some very important work being done by http://www.sayinggoodbye.org they are organising services of remembrance for lost babies at Cathedrals around Britain, and this year, they hope to do so in the US as well. I went to the service in St Paul’s Cathedral last November and it was one of the most beautiful and healing things I have experienced. To be amongst other women (and couples) who have lost babies (at all stages of pregnancy) in birth and in infancy was very special indeed.
In my experience, until I had done my grief work around my childlessness, it wasn’t really possible for me to find a way to talk about with others that didn’t make them uncomforable. I say this because it may not ALWAYS be the case that you feel you can’t say the truth of your experience – but it may be that to get to that place, you may need to find women who you can talk to freely. And that’s women like us here on Gateway Women.
We have a wonderful Private Gateway Women Community over on G+ where a lot of support and understanding is being given and received. Do please come and join us:
To join the Private Gateway Women Community on G+
1. Join G+ (Google Plus) using your Gmail address (other email addresses won’t work, so you might need to set up a Gmail email address first – go to http://www.gmail.com).
2. Search the “Communities” tab (on the vertical bar on the left hand side of the screen) for “Gateway Women”
3. Request an invite.
Also, in time, you might like to consider setting up a Gateway Women Meetup in your area, or come to one that already exists.
http://www.meetup.com/Gateway-Women/
With my warmest wishes
Jody x