Bibi Lynch’s piece in today’s Guardian about the pain of not being able to have children has, predictably, (and already, it’s only 10am as I write this) provoked many comments telling her off. (Many of them telling her off for the headline – I do wish commenters would realise writers don’t write the headline!!)
Having been in more or less the same position, albeit at 36 and with post-chemo infertility (and, being gay, no chance of a ‘happy accident’, though with the great benefit of a partner to love), I can nod my head to absolutely everything she’s written there. All of it. The pain on seeing pregnant women or people with small children, the way every time a friend tells you they’re pregnant feels a little like a small stab, the envy that feels like it’s taking over, the ouch ouch ouch, the dreaming into a future where no toddler becomes a small child becomes a teenager becomes an adult, the knowledge that it stops with me. All of that.
But what I also know, as it’s now 9 years since I last tried (and ‘failed’, ah the language of infertility that constantly reminds us our bodies are broken) with the last embryos made before chemo (with our loving and very good friend babyfather), is that it’s grief. And grief feels all-consuming, slaps you when you least expect it, takes over your life and then it does, honest, it really does, change. Not go away, not fade even, none of the useless cliches people usually say about grief, but it does change. We re-work our narratives to be the people we are becoming instead of the ones we can’t be. We look around and see that, yes, from our perspective, the world really does treat mothers like graduate women and the childless/child-free as little sisters, no matter our age. We learn to put up with that or even accept it, because we know better. We know that the world IS unfair, that things aren’t the way we’d like them to be. And, eventually, we get to a place where that’s just how it is, not how-it-is-and-killing-us-every-moment-with-the-inequity.
Until that time though, until the grief becomes an ordinary and not a daily shock, grief does what it does, and to ask a person who is grieving to snap out of it, or look around and see how lucky they are, or to count their blessings, is as pointless as asking anyone who has lost a loved one to do so – because those children we’re never going to have are very real dreams in the minds of those of us trying to have them.
And just in case you can’t find your way to understand someone else’s grief, here’s a few things not to say :
1. Don’t say ‘have you considered adopting?” D’uh! well of course she’s considered adopting. Constantly. In Britain at least, it’s still quite difficult for single people, older people, and those who have had life-threatening diseases to adopt. And anyway, that’s about as sensible as saying to a young fertile couple trying for their first baby “have you considered adopting?” – the reason people want to grow their own child is because they want to grow their own child. That’s it. And why should the adopted child be considered a second option, surely if adoption is so perfect for the infertile it should be the first option for fertile couples as well? AND, personally, I could never get over the idea that for the same cost and time in adopting a child myself, I could likely help another woman to keep her child. (It’s why I support SOS Children, I happen to believe most children are better cared for in their own communities and, ideally, by their own families.)
2. Don’t say “I know just how you feel” if you don’t. If you have secondary infertility (one child and then couldn’t have another) you have your own grief, yes, if you desperately want a second child, but you do not know how it feels to have none. Especially don’t say it if you are assuming how you felt before you had children is the same as your friend feels who CAN’T have children. The state of not-being-a-mother-yet is not the same as the state of never-being-a-mother.
3. Don’t say “you can have mine if you want” – you don’t mean it. You know you don’t.
4. REALLY don’t say “Well, your books are kind of your children, aren’t they?”
5. and if they’re a lesbian couple, don’t suggest the partner tries to get pregnant. Well of course that’s been thought of and tried and no doubt (as in our case) also ‘failed’. All you’re doing is reminding them of the double loss.
Basically, do what you’d do with any other person grieving. Don’t offer solutions (because that never helps), don’t offer comparisons (grief is of the ego, of attachment, comparison is pointless), just say ‘there there’. It’s all any of us want to hear in the white-heat of hurting. Comparison and other possibilities for life come later. For now, let them grieve.
Grief is awful. It often makes us self-centred, certain our pain is the only pain, unaware that we are not the only one, unaware that others are suffering or in difficulty in their own lives. That’s how it is. That’s why we turn grief into narrative, make story of what has happened to us, tell out our dramas of loss and sorrow time and again to anyone who’ll listen so we can finally find a way to package that pain and make it bearable.
Any grief does this and the pain of childlessness is no less a grief than many others and has its particular problems in a patriarchal society that really hasn’t moved that far from a time when a woman was valued primarily for her ability to breed sons. A society that reminds us, day in, day out, that we are different, not quite part of the rest, when we are childless. Be kind about that, generous, and wait for the time when your friend/lover/sister/brother (oh yes, it certainly does affect men too) has moved on from the intensity of grief to it being a dull ache. Most of us wake up from grief eventually, no matter who or what we’ve lost. When we do it’s good to have some loved ones with us to share what is, having mourned what’s not.
And yes, of course it’s easier for me to write this, 9 years later – I’ve also had lots of grief-practice, with the deaths of sister, mother, father, nephew, and all-but-one uncles and aunts. Having practice in grief is not a very happy badge to wear, but it certainly helps me to know that it has its phases and will change eventually.
My wife Shelley Silas wrote a great piece, in 2002 when her play Falling was on, about the not-baby thing. Things have moved on for us since then, but the core of what she said still stands :
“I was fed up with putting the rest of my life, our life on hold. Being hopeful one day then desperately sad the next was too much to bear. My whole focus had been on something I didn’t have. I wanted to focus on all the things I did have.”
ps – yes of course this is all first-world-problem stuff, sort of (because we know infertility affects people in poverty far more directly and painfully). Yes. See SOS link above.
hi Stella,
thank you thank you thank you for writing this. I shouldn’t have read the piece, let alone the comments but I couldn’t help it.
This line you wrote encompasses it all for me: We re-work our narratives to be the people we are becoming instead of the ones we can’t be.
You think you know which way your life is going to go and then it’s all taken away from you and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.
much love to you
xx
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thank you for saying so. yes, we should all be wary of reading those comments, but sometimes just can’t help ourselves.
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Reading this and have just stopped and attempted to assess my views and behaviour towards those who I know who can’t have children. Of which 2 are not by choice, but I see less of these people due to area, and the other is a couple who are childless entirely by choice. Because I have this happy couple who are really rather happy and close to me I had kind of forgotten the pain that others who may want children might feel. Their choice to not have kids was due to loving their jobs and enjoying money and little luxuries they share together, which to me always just seemed perfectly reasonable and ultimately an acceptable alternative to having a child if that’s what my biology had deemed for me. I think I was incredibly naive after reading your article. Thank you for sharing you and your partner’s pain.
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thank you for saying so. (a pain that has, for us at least, lessened a great deal – mostly! – as do many griefs, with time and love.)
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Thank you. X
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Thank you.
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Thanks again for writing this. Having gone through secondary infertility – and I’m in no way trying to compare! – I’d also like to point out that people are very quick to assume and judge. When you’re going through all the pain, (it’s a different kind of pain, but it’s there) you tend to forget to enjoy and appreciate, what you already have. Sadly enough you only realise that when you grow up a bit. But what you certainly can’t listen to, is people saying to you, after you finally, finally, after all the treatments, crashing numerous times and all the rest, (I’m sure I neaden’t remind you), saying, “oh, you’ve had a nice long break between the two!”
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Thank you for this – I have never before considered that maybe what I am going through at the moment is grief. I feel like I’ll never come through this, but hopefully what you say is right and eventually I’ll accept the hand fate has dealt me.
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Rebecca, I can only speak from my own experience (and also from having been beside it as my partner went through the same), but it truly feels very like grief to me. And the truth about grief is it does change. You don’t ever need to accept, in my opinion, but you may well find a way, in time, to accommodate. I have – with a lot of work and a lot of trying! I wish you well with your grief process and your future.
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Many thanks for writing this and for your comment over at the Guardian. I get by/over it by trying to see it in a broader feminist analytical way.
But the fact remains that a single childless woman is somehow “abnormal” just by being herself. Even if she works on becoming herself more vividly. If anyone asks, I call myself “socially infertile.” As a straight female, I’ve not been in in the situation of a relationship suitable to test my physical fertility by trying to conceive, and that’s because patriarchy trains men not to seek successful alpha women as long time partners for child rearing. And patriarchy trains men not to take emotional responsibility.
Where are the castigations of the Peter Pan men, for a start?
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Yes. All very true.
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thank you.
a friend forwarded me this, knowing I am grieving and the dark tunnel it has taken me. what irks me is that whilst men definitely grieve the loss of children, which is real and deeply emotional, it just isnt the same. women’s bodies are scrutinised and examined. and when it comes to fertility, it is public, politicised, and depersonalised. It feels as if my private body is part of the public domain. despite it being discussed publicly, society has not developed the appropriate sensitive vocabulary to talk about fertility, miscarriage and loss. I would add to your rules the following
NEVER ask a woman about her fertility. ever. at all. never assume anything, if she is trying, if she doesnt want, and especially painful is asking if she is pregnant, as she looks like she might be. Never.
thank you for your wise words.
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Yes. Thank you for saying so. Although I’m not sure about never asking a woman about these things, I suspect the only way we’ll ever develop a vocabulary that can help is to risk using one that may be crass or clumsy – personally I prefer attempts at kindness with honesty (about any matter) than the more trad (middle class) British stoicism and not saying anything. (thankfully – most of – my family aren’t middle class and have no problem being open!)
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Excellent post Stella.
Like Redbookish, I fall into the socially infertile camp. But it’s never as straight forward as that. I decided to not have a child on my own and that I only wanted to conceive a child with someone who fully wanted to be a parent and play an equal role in their life. Blokes said, oh yes I do too but not yet. Or, I think I do but I’ve got to be sure you’re “the one”. Or just no, not now. Maybe not ever.
Friends (especially the ones with children) told me not to be fussy, “just get pregnant and he’ll come around” and one elderly, slightly batty woman just looked at me aghast and declared “kill your cat and pick up a baby” Um “pick up a baby?” Yes, she went on and described ways to steal a child.
To me the old bat was more honest than the friends who were also suggesting I take something that was not mine, to be a sperm bandit (as my doctor called it, she was equally aghast about the common practice).
At 40 when I found my lefty, switched on, idealistic, artist, love of my life, it was of course too late. We have a dynamic life together, that’s far from conventional but it works for us. (I’ve encouraged him to be a sperm donor, but that’s another story).
There is grief. But it’s fades as the oestrogen levels drop. I’m hoping by the time menopause wraps me in her arms, the last of the sadness will fade. As my mum once said when a friend asked her about how she felt about never being a grandparent “it’s hard to miss something you’ve never had”.
Am I angry at the blokes? A little, however that too has faded.
But I never cease to be amazed, horrified and angry at the way childfree/less women are portrayed in the media and comments like this http://otherrants.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/naming-and-shaming.html on my blog.
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yes, the absurd things people will say and suggest around getting pregnant happened to us too. the person who told me to ‘just go out and have sex with some men and give it a go, just in case you still have some good eggs’ not only wasn’t joking, but also clearly had no concept of valuing men/fathers either. weird weird.
and yes yes yes re ‘shame resilience’. I have always acknowledged that my wanting to have My Own Child (that ‘piece of me’ thing) – to create another human being because I wanted to – is about the most selfish desire I’ve ever had. of course bringing up a child involves a massive amount of selflessness, but to create one in the first place? that has nothing to do with unconditional love and everything to do with our own, driven, animal, innate desires.
and while we’re here … as for unconditional love, holding my mother while she vomited, washing my sister in law in the middle of the night before she died, I’m fairly sure they count on the unconditional score. Those of us without children are often called upon to care for our wider extended family more than those with, because of the assumption we have more time available.
I’m loving all these comments. thank you all.
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Bibi’s article rang so many bells with me and the responses angered me so much that I felt an urgent need to answer each and everyone. I suffered the devastation of infertility and get tired of explaining what unexplained infertility is. I am a novelist and freelance writer and a new book in no way replaces a baby. Nothing can ever replace a child and anyone who considers a newly written novel can, must be mad. Women who have children, I feel, have no concept of the pain that a barren woman carries. A child is the greatest gift on earth. I went through the pain of denial because I did not want to admit that I could not reproduce. I did not want to admit to the guilt that tortured me because I could not produce a grandchild for my parents. Ten years ago I opened up and admitted for the first time I could not have children. I was tired of being alone. I founded a Facebook group titled ‘Childless support’ which now has over two hundred women talking to each other and sharing their pain. Out of this grew ‘Childless awareness day.’ I went on BBC radio and talked about being childless. I wrote articles on childlessness and encouraged women who were barren not to feel ashamed. To hear mothers say ‘Why don’t you adopt?’ angers me so much. It is not as easy as they would like to think it is. I was refused all programmes because my then husband had Crohns disease and was not considered healthy enough to go onto an adoption programme. It is also not something all infertile women want to do. This flippant attitude drives me crazy.
‘You’re not missing anything, if I could go back I wouldn’t have children.’
Yes, right. Easy to say when you have them and actually we happen to feel that we are missing a great deal and perhaps this is just the attitude that Bibi was talking about. I hate when mothers talk to me like I am just a little bit stupid.
‘Did you ever think of adoption?’
Good God, no. Of course I did!
I also have to listen to them saying,
‘But you help those children in Cambodia, that must help.’
I have now learnt to smile nicely and respond with a gentle,
‘Nothing can replace a child of your own.’ And move on.
The grief is always there but as time goes on so you find better ways of coping. It has always been important to me to remain positive and to live my life to the fullest.
Here here, Bibi, is all I can say. We have re-printed your words on our group page. Thank you for speaking out. Thank you Stella for a great posting, as always.
Love to you and Shelley
x
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and thank you for your response. x
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Thank you so much for writing this. I recently found out that the boat for me having a baby had left unexpectedly early and it’s something I’m still struggling to come to terms with. It’s so so helpful to hear from someone who’s been there and your experience has left me feeling more hopeful than before.
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thank you for saying so. I do think that knowing there are more of us out there than usually speak up can help. help the isolation at least. (having said that, someone nastily having a go about something totally unrelated, but calling me an “old woman”, prompted a huge sobbing fit last night, all to do with the ‘old woman’ nature of my fertility. sigh.) it never goes. but we do get more practiced at living with it … x
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So sorry you had a miserable night. Your advice about learning to live with it rings very true as well with how I felt when I lost my mum – it’s not something you ever get over but you learn to manage your pain better.
The ‘old’ thing rings particularly true – being told I’d had premature menopause a couple of weeks before my 40th birthday really didn’t help how I was feeling about myself.
Thanks again for speaking up about this xxx
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Thank you Stella, you have articulated exactly how I have felt for many years. On the virtual eve of turning 50, I still greive for what I never had.
The message that hit home most with me, was the questioning of how far have we actually come when woman are still treated as somehow not complete or slightly imperfect because we have not become a mother. It is almost like an extra stab in that most vulnerable part of us – it goes deep, and we don’t need reminding of how yet again we just don’t fit in to the world of ‘mothers’. Hard indeed for me are those who are flippant and take their motherhood for granted and don’t even seem to enjoy it. I also tire of hearing how lucky my life has been because I must have all the time in the world not having a child – they seem to forget, many of we single woman have worked all our lives to support ourselves and are constantly on the backfoot financially and yet our contribution to the economy by never having stopped working seems to never been acknowledged. An often isolating and lonely experience if you travel this path without a partner: even in 2012, there is still social stigma attached to being single.
Instead of highlighting the differences between mothers and those who have chosen not to have children or those who never had the opportunity to create a child, we should, as woman, be celebrating the similarities of our gender and supporting each other. It would be a very boring life if we all chose the same path. Thank you for your intelligent and sensitive expression of thoughts; I am sure they resonate with many out there.
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yes, all of that. and especially the lack of awareness of particular difficulties for single people in a world where so much of our society/social lives/community is predicated on either couples or (preferably) families. thank you.
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Thanks for writing this. My 27 year old daughter is facing infertility from Non Hodgkins when she was 18. She may be fertile (doubtful) but is scared to embark on the final tests as then she will have a decision to make. The problem is the steroid treatment killed most of her bone density so she faces increasing disability that could make looking after a child very difficult. She feels time ticking as her body gets more fragile, and the threat of early menopause faced by lots of cancer survivors makes matters worse. Sometimes it’s not even as straightforward as can/can’t. Worse the drugs she is taking to help with the pain have given her a little pot belly and people keep asking her if she is pregnant. I want to help her and support her and this really helps.
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I’m really glad it was useful to you, and I wish you and your daughter all the best.
(and yes, early menopause is no fun either – all too often the world simply thinks “yay, you didn’t die” – and OF COURSE we think that too!!, but we rarely escape any major illness with no consequences.)
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Thank you for writing about this subject. It is often taboo to talk about infertility amongst those of us who have wanted children and are gay. I think you bring out into the open very well what not to say. Brave of you to do so – sometimes writing about or even speaking out the truth on this subject often brings about a vicious and ignorant commentary which further wounds.
xXXx
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