alone in old age

How does it feel to be childless on Mother’s Day and every day?

Sue Fagalde Lick articles about childlessness, blessings of childlessness, childless on Mother's Day, childlessness, Mother's Day at church , , , , , , , ,

“What is it like, being childless?” That title of a recent post at the Life without Children Substack got me thinking. In a minute, we will look at how author Colleen Addison answered the question, but first, let’s think about this. What is it like for you and for me?  

With Mother’s Day happening this weekend, why not start there. What is it like? 

  • Last night at church choir practice, two moms in the group were talking about the Mother’s Day breakfast happening Sunday after Mass. Apparently, they serve mimosas to the mothers. I have never attended. I try to avoid church and all public places on Mother’s Day because it’s uncomfortable having to repeatedly explain that I am not a mother and therefore should not be receiving a flower, mimosa, or special blessing.
  • It’s like I don’t have the right clothes, so I can’t attend the party. 
  • I speak to women my age or older whose adult children help them with every aspect of their lives. Do these mother women even see that I have no kids to help me? But I am proud that I can manage things by myself.
  • I see pregnant women and know that amazing process will never happen in my body. I also know that that process can change a body in ways I don’t really want, so I’m a little relieved. 
  • I see moms snuggling with their little children and know the best I can do is snuggle with a dog. 
  • I see the physical characteristics shared by moms, dads, and kids, and wonder what my children would have looked like. 
  • Sometimes when people assume I’m a mom, I let them think I am because it’s easier than explaining why I never had children. 
  • I see kids acting out and wonder where I would find the patience and self-restraint not to kill them or give them away. 
  • When I hear politicians and theologians raving about “these selfish women” who don’t want to have children, I want to scream, “But I did want them!”
  • I feel younger than my peers, as if I’m still waiting to go through the life stages they experienced decades ago. 
  • I feel older than my peers because I’m not around children and don’t know what young people are doing and thinking these days. 
  • I think about the choices I made and the things that have happened and wonder what if, what if, what if.
  • I am often alone on the holidays and my birthday. I am free to do whatever I want on the holidays and my birthday. 
  • My name will not disappear as I become Mom or Grandma. I will be Sue forever. Sometimes Aunt Sue, which I treasure more than I can express. 
  • I will forever grieve the loss, a loss most people don’t recognize–how can you grieve what you never had?–and I will forever enjoy my freedom. 

That’s what it’s like for me. 

Let’s get back to the article. Addison’s therapist was the one who asked, “What is it like?” The therapist was a father with family photos on the shelves behind him. 

  • Like all of us, Addison has many answers. “I can say that I am sometimes happy I didn’t have children, and that there is guilt in that.” 
  • “I can tell you that there are bad aspects and that I veer away from them. I don’t look at babies and avert my eyes from pregnant women.” 
  • “…if I had children I would be someone else, utterly and profoundly…the me I am now would be lost if I had had children and the loss would have been as sad or nearly as the loss of my imagined children.” 
  • “It is being alone, really alone, on a wide wide sea.” 

I have never lived the life I might have lived if I had had children. I only know this one. I do know it is different in many ways from that of people who have children. Look around my living room. There are no pictures of children, only landscapes and photos of long-dead loved ones. There are no toys. Nothing is child proofed. Nothing is child sized. I’m not saying that’s good or bad; it’s just how it is.

Your turn. Ask yourself, “What is it like?” If a therapist, friend, or podcast interviewer asked, what would you say? I invite you to share your answers in the comments. 

I thank Ali Hall for her fabulous Life Without Children Substack. Subscribe. You’ll like it. 

Photo by Wojciech Kumpicki on Pexels.com. Why a cat picture? He looks like he wants to know what you think, doesn’t he?

Jody Day and Katy Seppi are offering a free masterclass, “Navigating Mother’s Day as a Childless Woman” on Saturday, May 10 at 11 a.m. PDT. If you register here, you can attend live on Zoom or watch the video later.

The electronic edition of my book No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s is on sale for just 99 cents! The sale will last through May 11, then go back to the usual $9.99 (I don’t set these prices). If you have ever thought about reading NWOOT, as I call it, now is the time. It’s practically free.

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Childless Suffer ‘Disenfranchised Grief’

Sue Fagalde Lick "get over it", dealing with grief over childlessness, grief , , , , , , , , ,

On a recent podcast, UK childlessness guru Jody Day and host Kathy Seppi talked about “disenfranchised grief.” We have talked a lot about grief here at Childless by Marriage, but something clicked in me when I heard that.

What is disenfranchised grief? Grief researcher Ken Doka defined it as “Grief that persons experience when they incur a loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, socially sanctioned or publicly mourned.”

Let me put it another way. You have suffered a loss, such as the chance to have children, but other people just don’t get why you’re hurting or acknowledge your right to grieve.

Seppi, whose Chasing Creation podcast focuses on infertility, said disenfranchised grief is “the feeling you have to prove how much it hurts.”

Jody Day, who is also a psychologist, added, “We want people to see our pain.” Grief changes a person, she says. Our lives might look completely the same from the outside, but grief changes how we feel about it from the inside.

At a site called whatsyourgrief.com, Litsa Williams lists 64 situations where people tend not to acknowledge the right to grieve. They include death of an ex, moving to a new place, losing a friend, and death of a dream. Losing the family you had expected to have certainly fits on that list of things we grieve but other people don’t understand why.

Not long ago, I sang at a funeral for my friend’s husband. I found myself in tears. Not only was I sad for her and missing her husband, who was also my friend, but I felt my own losses–my father, my mother, my husband. But most strongly, as I watched my friend’s adult daughter holding onto her, taking care of her, I kept thinking who will be there for me? Once again, I grieved the loss of the children I never had.

The grief is there. I will always be different from all those people at the funeral who have children. It’s not something I could speak of, certainly not that day, and not something that anyone would have thought about when they saw me trying to wipe away tears around my COVID mask.

I don’t look bereaved. You can’t tell from the outside. I’ve got a pretty good life. But still, that thing is there. Aug. 21, on the first anniversary of my father’s death, I posted a picture of him with me and my brother as babies on Facebook. No one will ever post a picture like that of me, and that hurts.

Childless grief is tricky. If you had a baby who died, you could hold a funeral. You could maybe dress in black and avoid society for a while. But grieving for something that never existed, for the lack of something you wanted with all your heart? People will say buck up, you’ve got a good life, look at all the freedom you have and all the money you’ll save. Right?

If you burst into tears at the office . . . well, you feel like you can’t. You mustn’t. And yet we do want people to see that we’re hurting and to offer comfort. Just like when we were little kids and skinned our knees, we want someone to hug us and bandage our wounds, to acknowledge that we are hurt.

With childlessness, it’s like we didn’t get that doll we saw on the TV commercial; what right do we have to cry and carry on? We want to be held. We want someone to stop the bleeding. We want someone to say we didn’t realize how much it hurt. Here is your doll. Now wash your face and we’ll go get ice cream cones. Isn’t that what we want? Of course it is.

You know what? I think it’s okay to express our grief right out loud. I wanted to have a baby. My heart hurts because I never did. Will you hold me and help me feel better? Let’s say it out loud.

COVID be damned, I want to hug all of you.

Please share your thoughts.

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Do you want to tell your story at the Childless by Marriage blog? I’m looking for personal stories, 500-750 words long, that fit our childless-by-marriage theme. You could write about infertility, second marriages, partners who don’t want children, stepchildren, feeling left out when everyone around you has kids, fear of being childless in old age, birth control, and other related issues. Tell us how you how you came to be childless “by marriage” and how it has affected your life. Or you could write about someone else. We love stories about successful childless women. We do not want to hear about your lovely relationship with your children or how happy you are to be childfree. Not all submissions will be accepted, and all are subject to editing. If interested, email me at sufalick@gmail.com.