Well Received

I am happy to share that the research I presented last month was well received. It was a great opportunity to conduct the research in the first place, and it is just as important to disseminate the information. I plan to share the information at future conferences. I will also write an article about the study and submit it for publication to an academic journal. I want to get the information in the hands of people who will use it.

Which is everyone. Nobody is untouched by infertility and living childless not-by-choice. Everyone has a family member dealing with it. Or a co-worker that you don't know about. Or a client. Or an acquaintance. Or a friend. Whether we know they're going through it or not, odds are we all know someone, at least peripherally.

In order to develop effective support programs to help people transitioning to involuntary childlessness, we need to understand the lived experience. We need to know: what are the common experiences, factors, and needs among this growing population? Research exploring this phenomenon can help get the ball rolling for future program development.

So, back to it being well received... It was! I wish you could have been there. It's not like a ton of people stopped by my little spot, but if just one person stopped by and asked me a question, the trip would be worth it. And it was worth it. Everyone was interested in the research results for different reasons. People were interested in everything from the methodology to sharing they were going (or went through) the experience to asking how to support loved ones who are going through it. Connections were made and many meaningful conversations were had. 

And then I crashed. I slept so hard that night. I don't know why I didn't think to anticipate it, but talking about infertility and involuntary childlessness was exhausting. 

It was also awesome. I'm so grateful for the opportunity. It's priceless to feel so well received.

On the opposite of that, I have received some unsupportive comments on this blog in the last several months. I don't know why someone would want to read what I write unless they're trying to cope with their worst nightmare. I definitely don't mean to sound like I'm judging fertile people. I'm just working through my own anguish. But, I also have learned I don't need to explain myself.

So I'll be stepping away from this space for a while. I've made some really good friends here, and I encourage anyone reading to reach out and build a community for yourself. There are other people out there who will understand. 

You are allowed to grieve. You can heal. You deserve to enjoy your life.

I will leave my posts up for now. Maybe I'll take them down eventually or maybe they can hang out in the ether forever. I don't know yet.

Thank you all. Thank you for saving my will to live. I love my life, and I don't take that for granted.

Above is the March Hare with his spilled tea for The Mad Quilt Party at Art East Quilting Co.
I've had a lot of fun doing this sew along with the monthly mystery block since September.
It ends next month and I'm looking forward to learning what the next sew along will be.

Underlying Assumptions Get Old

Experiencing infertility and being childless not-by-choice changed me in too many ways to count. After living my whole life with my own personal problems (depression and anxiety) but pretty damn good and lucky circumstances (loving family, stable housing, etc.), going through infertility and involuntary childlessness gave me the experience of being part of a marginalized, even invisible, population. It made me more aware of society's assumptions and more sensitive to some of the struggles other people experience (though I would never claim someone else's hardships and lessons as my own). 

But now I know how little I know. 

And I am grateful to know what I do know.

*****

Here is a very small thing that is another example of the pronatalist assumptions in our society. 

(By the way, in the draft of this post, the word "pronatalist" was underlined in red, so I just added it to my blogging dictionary of recognized words.) 

I was at a work training. It was just me, a co-worker, and our manager who was leading the training. The topic was skin integrity and the different products we have at our facility. Our manager was describing under what circumstances you would use each product. For one of the products, she said you would use it when the patient's skin "looked like diaper rash." 

During our break, I turned to my co-worker. Our jobs do not involve working with babies. I asked her if she had ever seen diaper rash. She said no. I said neither had I. I asked my co-worker, "Why would she reference diaper rash if she is training two women who don't have children?"

Pronatalism strikes again. Not all women are mothers.

I suppose it's sexist too, assuming that all women have taken care of babies at some point...

*****

It's not the small, individual comments that hurt or even annoy me anymore, not at this stage of my healing. It's the overall onslaught of all of them. It's all of the underlying assumptions. It's the constant feeling of having my existence invalidated in a way that I can't explain to people who don't experience it themselves.

And that gives me some insight as to how much I don't understand other groups' marginalization.

I want to use what I've learned and experienced to try to better see and connect with others.

Picture found on an unrelated article here:
https://diversityq.com/the-great-disconnection-is-costing-340-billion-every-year/

Knowing I Won't Have Kids

I will never have children. This was an unfathomable nightmare/reality for me to face at first, but it has gotten easier with time. For 35 years I thought I'd be a mom and I planned my life around it, including the career I chose, the man I married, and the house we bought. It makes sense that I could not change my lifelong thinking overnight. 

Knowing I am not going to have children is easier than trying to get pregnant. Living my life knowing that I won't have kids is easier than coping with the initial years after the realization. My life is not easy, but it's a whole lot easier than it was.

I still get sad. Moments come and go throughout the week. Several days ago I saw an acquaintance with her two little kids. They made a cute picture, the three of them walking off into the sunset. I felt nostalgic for something I've never had. 

Then last night I cried. I had a moment where I was very sad about not having children and so I cried for a couple of minutes. It came after a fun night out with friends. With food, drinks, music, conversation, and a late night, I think I was overstimulated and that's what triggered it. I'm just so dang sensitive. Oh well. 

But I feel happy too. There are things I look forward to. I feel joyful, enthusiastic, and grateful. Not all the time of course. That would be weird. But it's nice to feel positive feelings when all I felt for many years were negative feelings and emptiness. It's no small feat to enjoy the life we're living.

I will never have children, but now that I know that, it frees me to live the life that I do have.