“It’s Not that I Can’t Have Children” is the title of a poem by Kai Coggin that was featured at poets.org recently. It really caught my attention. I think so many of us can identify with it. For copyright reasons, I can’t reproduce the whole thing here, but I encourage you to read it.

The poet speaks of the ways her womb could have been a home for children but never was, and yet she has been a mother in many ways.

I love these lines:

But perhaps that proverbial ship has sailed,
and the life that I have created
is the life I have      the life I love.
Perhaps my womb has turned outward somehow
and my heart is fertility itself.

Isn’t that beautiful? “The life I have created is the life I love.” Think about that. Can you treasure the life you have right now, not calling yourself “less” anything but full of all that you are and all that you need?

“My heart is fertility itself.” This can mean that we plant seeds and grow all kinds of things, literal things like flowers and vegetables but also ideas and projects and love. For me, it’s books and music, which the readers and listeners take in and then create something of their own.

We may not have children, but that doesn’t mean we’re idle, that we don’t do anything. The things we make, the things we do, the love we give, wherever we give it—it all counts.

Coggin concludes:

I mother other kingdoms,
rock every other species to sleep--
the green and howl and pulse and bloom.

It's not that I can't have children,
it's that I already do.

Yes. We use our mothering energy in all kinds of ways, whether it’s with pets, partners, parents, friends, students, or through volunteer work. We use it with the flowers we nurture in our gardens and the birds we rescue when they fall. We use it when we clean up litter or fight for clean air and water or assist others with whatever they need, whether it’s a babysitter or help rebuilding after a hurricane.

We mother. And we father.

And it’s okay.

I know not everyone likes poetry, but I find that sometimes a poem can say in a few words what is impossible to express in a whole book. If you’d like to read one of mine, here at the blog in 2017, I posted this poem about being surrounded by grandmothers: “Sunday Brunch with the Grandmas.”

I welcome your thoughts.

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More to Read

“The Son I’ll Never Have” by Mark Wunderlich

I Will Bear This Scar: Poems of Childless Women, edited by Marietta Bratton. Nearly twenty years old but still beautiful.

Nulligravida, poems and essays by Saralyn Caine—just arrived in my mailbox, but it looks goods.

Bearing Life: Women’s Writings on Childlessness, edited by Rochelle Ratner. This book includes poetry and prose about life without children.