TW - Childlessness & related grief
I’ve been working on this post for a good while now, chipping away at it here and there whenever I felt strong enough to do so, because to sit down and really face it all in one go is tough. Then I realised that this week is World Childlessness Week and thought what better time to share it. There are so many people bravely sharing their stories around this topic this week and whilst they are so important, I rarely see chronic illness talked about in these spaces. So I hope that in sharing this little piece of my reality, of my pain, that it might help make those of you in a similar position feel just that little bit less alone.
For as long as I can remember, I knew I wanted to be a mum. I was never sure what I wanted to do as a career, where I wanted to live, what I wanted my life to look like. But I always knew it would involve being a mum.
Growing up, my mum was a childminder and so we had a steady stream of babies and small children coming through our house. Some people might find that annoying I guess, but not me. I loved it. I Ioved getting to be all grown up by changing a nappy or doing a bottle feed. And getting to push my baby sister in her pram outside? That was the pinnacle of maturity for little me. You couldn’t tell me anything when I was behind that pram, I was a grown woman of 6 (being carefully supervised by her mum, of course).
So I think it made sense to a lot of people that as I got older and eventually decided on a career, it was Early Years Teaching. Kids are the best company. They’re so funny and smart, and honest in a way that adults rarely are. I was in my element. For the first time in my life I felt like I was doing what I was always meant to do. Then, you know, the Big Sick came along and blew all of that up.
Early into my diagnosis I held on to the hope that I would get better. I did what everyone does and threw myself into research and trying all manner of supposed “cures” or “fixes”. None of it really helped, and as time went by my health only declined. And my hope of getting better along with it.
Naturally, it’s been hard watching all my friends and peers reach certain milestones while my own life came to a screeching halt, but none quite so emotionally tricky as watching them become parents. I’m happy for them of course, but I’m also really sad for me. I love their kids, and I love getting to see them be parents but it is hard to watch from the sidelines, knowing that will never be you.
It’s the one thing in my life that I always knew I wanted, so it’s been gut-wrenching to have to come to terms with the fact that it’s not going to happen for me.
Sometimes, it can be really difficult having this conversation with people who don’t really understand my illness. They see me sat up before them, dressed, hair done and a smile dutifully painted on, and they can’t get to grips with what I’m telling them: that I am too sick to care for a child.
“But if you want it so badly, surely there’s a way to make it happen?” It’s a nice thought, but unfortunately it’s just not realistic. I struggle to get through every day as it is, just caring for myself. If I were able to bring a child into the world, it would make me much, much sicker. Dangerously so. I wouldn’t be able to be the kind of parent I want to be*.
I’ve spent enough time around children, both in my personal and professional life, to understand what a huge job it is to raise one. I’ve also spent enough time sick with M.E to know that there is just no way I could safely do it. I’ve explored every possible avenue to try to think about how I could make this happen, but I have to be realistic. People might see this as me giving up, but at the end of the day only I know what my body is and is not capable of. Only I know how much more painful it is to hold on to a flailing hope than it is to face up to the reality, and try to make the best of the life you have. Whether it looks like what you expected or not.
And despite my realism, there is still that tiny flicker of hope that persists. It sits deep in my bones. Sometimes it whispers, other times it shouts. It speaks of all this unspent love with nowhere to go. It whispers of a love for children who don’t even exist. Children I’ve pictured in my mind - red hair like their dad’s, with curls like their mum’s maybe? I’ve thought about what parts of our personalities they might inherit, and what parts would be entirely their own. I’ve pictured how I would handle tricky topics of conversation with them & try to raise them to be a force of good in the world. How I would encourage them to be wholly who they are, unapologetically themselves, and how excited I would be to watch their personalities grow and develop. I try not to let myself go there too often, it’s too painful. And yet, whenever I’m around my friends’ children, I can’t help but wonder what my own would’ve been like. These children who I will never meet.
I don’t write this for sympathy, there are countless other people in my situation and we are all just getting on with it the best we can. We have all had so much taken from us by chronic illness, and we all know how painful it is. One thing about very sick people is that we are the champions of perspective. The masters of making the best of our circumstances. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t mean that we ever really get over what we’ve lost. Like with any type of grief, we just have to learn to carry it.
I’m sharing this with you to kindly remind you to be mindful of this with your sick friends who are childless not by choice. Please don’t question, judge or offer advice, just trust that we know what’s best for us. We don’t need suggestions or recommendations. We don’t need you to point out all the benefits of not having children, in a misguided attempt at cheering us up. We know the benefits, we are simply too sick to really enjoy any of them.
All we need is for you to hold space for the fact that this is really hard, and that we will probably always carry this grief with us. It doesn’t mean we aren’t happy for you, it’s just another thing we have to accept has been taken from us by our illness. Our sadness doesn’t override our happiness for you, but that also doesn’t mean that a little tact wouldn’t be nice. It’s a tricky thing to navigate for sure, but if we can still carry joy for you alongside grief for ourselves then I hope you can make a little space for our sadness too. A little acknowledgment from you that this is a difficult subject for us, that’s all. It won’t take away from your own joy, it will just make it that bit easier for us to sit in it with you.
To anyone else dealing with this: I’m so sorry. Chronic illness has stolen so much from us, and it is all so painfully unfair. I’m sorry that the lives we had hoped for were taken from us, and I’m sorry that our lives now are hard in so many ways. I want to tell you about how you don’t need children to be a family but I understand that doesn’t always feel like the best thing to hear, because it doesn’t make having that choice taken away from you any easier to come to terms with. So instead, I’ll simply say that I see you and I share your pain. None of it is ok but we keep on trucking, and we continue to try to make the best of what we have.
I’m really proud of us.
🩵
*I’m not suggesting for one minute that sick people can’t be great parents. I know a good number of them. Please just try to remember that no two people experience the same diagnosis in the exact same way and there are so many factors that affect a person’s experience of their disease - where they are on the severity scale, their level of privilege, finances, external support etc. Everyone is different and just because you know a sick person who was able to become a parent, that doesn’t mean it’s possible for everyone.
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