Help am I like you

Hi Amllikeyou, thanks for posting. You are not alone. I know exactly how you feel about the sense of isolation from not belonging to an identifieble group and the tendency of childless women to avoid each other, especially before they get to know each other better. It sucks and it can feel one's life is floating on aimlessly. I'm in a place where I'm feeling stuck - tired of trying to conceive with IVFs and my husband is not ready for adoption. I'm afaid when he does become ready, if ever, I won't have the energy to raise a kid. Anyhow, I don't have the answers, except that I know I'm feeling better from having found this site and seen someone like you having cared enough to leave a note in the forum, so wanted to wave back.

Hi Cow1819

I just wanted to say hi and that i read your post - so you are not left wondering if after you opened up your heart that maybe no one heard.

So I wanted to wave back and maybe others will feel the courage to speak too.

I have decided that this year I am going to find out 'who I am again' - as in the 'me' that isn't defined by children or no children, etc or any box that society needs us to fit into. Sounds like a cliche but it's needed.

I now see so many friends who's children have grown up or are leaving home or becoming independant and what I see is that my friends are plunged intoa similar lonely place of emptiness that I experience.

I know its easy for me to think "well i would rather have the chance of that empty feeling with children who are grown up rather than without children" - and of course it is hard to escape these thoughts and even 'truths'. However it has made me see how many people have tried to just fill a 'gap' in themselves by having their children. For some it seems that it allowed them never to have to look at themselves, or question who they are or to face their own inner 'gaps' stuff because they could be "too busy" with their children to ever have to do this and society supports this with the "selfless mother who doesnt have time for herself" image whilst I without children struggling away with my inner loss, etc and trying to face all this stuff may have been seen as "selfish" because I didn't appear to be taking on this "selfless path".

Many of them are kind of now passing time 'waiting' for grandchildren so they can fill the space with them and so go through their whole life never connecting with themselves at all and expecting these children to complete their lifes for them. I don't mean this is the way it is for everyone but just what I am seeing emerging in some of my friends and how unexpected and sort of sad this is.

I realised that I haven't had the excuse to hide behind children and avoid facing my own pains and emptinesses but that I may have been avoiding 'my self' by focussing so much on this child issue. The emptinesses which in the end have just lain dormant in my friends and are now surfacing as their children grow up are the same in a way as the ones i feel when i panic about what 'future' means if i have no children. I was always scared that the need for children would blind me to seeing any other future possibility and that I would lose site of any joy that could be waiting for me if I could let go of this loss.

So these past months since I wrote I set my intention to keep an opening in my mind that "maybe my job in this life isn't to be a mother but to be something else equally as important (as my mind tells me that being a mother would be)". I am trying to keep an open space, so that I don't waste the chance of allowing whatever the beauty of that alternative is to come into my life, by focussing so constantly on my sadness that life didn't go in the 'children' directio

I decided this year that I have the choice and to embrace and work on allowing this space to open - and to see what comes. I have no idea how this will be but with small steps, when i spiral into the 'loss' or single focus of children, I try to take it as a cue to hold the image to open up to something brighter rather than curling inwards and if tears come they come and then they pass. So I don't turn other joys away by closing a door to them. Sounds nice in theory huh ?

I set my intention to allow myself to 'be a family' this christmas just me and my husband - and sod what society defines as a 'family' - to decorate the tree and the house, to play board games, etc for the love of it myself wthout needing 'others (children)' to allow me to do this. I thought it would be painful but it was fun. We had a lovely time which didn't feel empty at all. I was surprised.

Now i step into a new year I am going to look at all the other parts of my life and interests that were or could be important to me before this 'issue' took over. What are my other dreams, and to start re-building and re-connecting with myself so I feel whole again and not empty or missing or purposeless as I have during this issue and as my friends who's children are now grown up feel. So I am not trying to rely on something external to fill this gap and make me feel 'complete'.

Then i hope, that whatever is next, I will be able to take it on from a place of feeling more integrated rather than a place of fear and clutching at filling a painful gap. I wondered if I channel my need to 'create and nurture' into some other directions it may help me to expand out from this place I am in. Or find other things to 'create' with my husband - I realised what is the point of creating a child if in doing so it breaks us apart and so it is time to ease up and nourish what we have together without this tension.

We are all different and experience things so differently but I can understand your panic about time and adoption and your tiredness, etc - it does feel like time becomes a kind of enemy somehow. I can also understand your husbands need to wait.

There is kind of desire to just flop and surrender to something and to stop trying to maintain the energy to have to 'make it all happen' and alongside this is a fear that if I flop I may never get up again. Maybe the relief comes with the 'letting it go' - but I guess we can't force this process.

Sometimes I wonder if the joy and desire i feel to hold a small baby is because in doing so we come as close as possible to holding 'pure love' and this is also why the desire is so strong. In wondering this, I question for myself if finding a way back to more 'self love/ kindness' after all this distress would help lessen this need.

So! this is where I am at, after years of feeling helpless and ruled by all this and tossed around like a boat with no anchor, I have decided that whichever way the future is going and whenever I feel strong enough to make a choice in my reactions - that it will be in a positive rather than a negative direction.

It is slow progress and I still can't cope with spending time with friends with young children but therehas to be a bigger world out there.

I wish for you a great year ahead however it 'opens' up.

Today I am feeling pretty sad that I am childless because of I never married and going through menopause at 54. As I look back, I literally was waiting to find someone. In the meantime, parents passed, bad boyfriend literally (verbal abuse), moving from Oklahoma to Wisconsin, and personal illness (lupus) got in the way. Struggling everyday to make ends meet. These posts made me cry and so I am reaching out. I kinda feel like I am punished for my situation. I so wanted to be a mom since I was little but it just never worked out. I tell everyone "that I couldn't have kids" which is partially true but not sure. I am a "furry mom" to three 13 year old cats.

I am using today to remember the moms in my life, cook a little bit, and start a list of what I want to do for the next year. Crying helps a bit. I have a motto to do 55 things before I turn 55 in April. I have done four things. Well that's it. Feeling a little better just posting.

@ladykayok

I cried a little bit on Mother's Day after spending time with my sisters (both are mothers), my mother, my mother in law, and sister in law (also a mother). It was during a quiet moment at the end of the day. Hugs to you!

Its hard for me some days too. Being around friends and family who have kids or who are having kids. What's really hard is seeing women have children that don't really want to or who treat having a baby like they are a trendy accessory, which unfortunately i know one or two. Some days are better than others, i just hope that one day i can come to accept the fact that i will not be a mother and it not hurt when i think about it.