Childless, child-free, without child and why?

One month from today, I'll be finished with the "blogging without children" panel at BlogHer in San Francisco. I've been thinking about it for a long time and it's cool to think it's finally almost here. I'm really looking forward to the conference this year. This kind of connection with people I respect professionally and care about personally cannot get here fast enough. I've been so depleted, knocking around rudderless for the past several months...since I got home from Vietnam, pretty much.

To be quite honest, my status as a woman without children has been pretty far from my mind during this time, as a specific issue that I'm thinking about or dwelling upon anyway. I've had other stuff going on that's taken precedence. When you're feeling the crazy, do you really want to bring a defenseless child along for the ride? I think not.

So in the immortal (in my family anyway) words of Bill Murray in What About Bob, "I'm baby-steppin'. I doin' the work." I'm working really hard on getting myself from point A to point B everyday, managing my anxiety levels that are worse than they've been in many years. I think it's because there's so much limbo. Graduation is six months from tomorrow and for as many doors as that opens up, it means there are so many choices to be made and things to be done and mountains to climb and cliches to beat to death with the nearest hammer, yes. I go to the Dems convention in Denver in August, which should be nice. I'm doing okay in my summer classes. I'm seeing my friends. I'm resisting my usual desire to isolate when things are shitty and I'm going out and talking to people on the phone, and if occasionally I have to sit down in the shower, well, who needs to know about that?

My wires are a little crossed, I guess. I don't know if my intuition is broken, exactly, but I'm definitely not trusting it. I'm not giving myself too many breaks, lately, that's for sure. I'm feeling vaguely or mightily dissatisfied with where I am in my psyche and in my physical space. I miss the ocean, I miss the mountains, my life is kind of one big highway right now (and not the kind I wanna ride all night long, dig?)

I have worked out a way to get to the beach with my family for what is such an important experience for all of us. This has really been a year of destruction on a basic level, breaking down a few situations that have been essential to my life - whether I wanted them to be or not - for the past decade, and I guess that's the hard work before rebuilding begins. I suck at letting go, but I'm getting better at it. if there's one thing in the world I wish I could accomplish it's that, along with being more peaceful about outcomes I don't think are good or right.

This brings me around to the child-free thing. I'm a little nervous because my angle on it might seem more sad and depressing than the people who are there because they chose it, because they felt in their heart and their bones that parenting was not right for them. I mean, how do I make "The men I loved didn't love me enough to want to have a family with me or commit to me on the level I needed them to and therefore I'm 37, in the waning child-bearing years, no imminent possibilities for changing this situation and not financially ready to adopt or sure I want to do it single," sound ANY LESS DEPRESSING THAN IT IS?

It sucks, make no mistake. It's even worse because I wish I was less emotionally engaged with the issue. I wish I could be all "Oh yeah, I'll make the coolest aunt, bring it on, I'm fine without being a mom," but I can't. I also have no zen capability at all whatsoever, so the necessity of trying to make myself think that way although really? NO chance in hell. It's exhausting. Have you ever tried to make yourself stop feeling something? Talk yourself into common sense on an issue about which you're completely emotionally clouded? Fun, isn't it.

I can't do it anymore.

I know what I need to do. I need to stay open. I need to try to get my mind and my arms around the idea that this is just the way life worked out for me. I need to work on acting smarter (actually, wiser is a better word) than I have in the past, to avoid pitfalls and beartraps, like acting pitiful like I did last night. I need to stand firm in my belief and choice that I will not pick a life partner because I want a child. I'll remember that that connection that you form - actually, that the Earth and chemistry and a teeny bit of fate forms - well, that it happens and from that, a life can flow - that forcing yourself into a partnership because it might produce children is wrong-headed on so many levels.

I hope this comes out in the panel, somehow.

Comments

[Lemmonex]

This sums up so much of where I am right now. Not the kid thing so much, but the feeling of being adrift in the ocean. I feel an absolute disconnect from who I am; I need to find me again.

[Zandria]

I'm looking forward to seeing you at the conference and also attending this panel. If you can say what you just wrote in this post, I think it'll be a great discussion. :)

[Neil]

I'm a firm believer that happiness is vague and depends on a person's POV. In every good there is bad, and vice versa. Children are a tremendous blessing. They also require you to give up a lot of yourself. Someone without children can do a lot of things someone with children cannot. I think the key is looking at the positive things about your life right now, and accepting some of the negatives -- and remembering that if you had the opposite, your life wouldn't suddently become ideal. It would just mean some happiness and some negatives of another sort.

[laurie]

Lemmonex - I'm meditating. It's kind of working for me. Ocean sounds and whatnot...but really, I need to slow my brain down and reconnect. It's been good. Not perfect, but good. Can't ask for much more.

ZAN! A month! So glad you'll be at the panel. (I'd personally rather be at the one about blogging beautiful or whatever with Kyran and others. ;)) And there will be a SINK gathering, I hope. I want to e-mail you and Liz and make sure we have a plan to connect.

Neil - You are right, and wise. I'm ready to give up that part of myself, perhaps sometimes sick of myself. : ) But whatever comes I'll make peace with it, I know.

[joanna]

Sometimes I wish that I had had a child, and it makes me very sad, but given my life and my health, I have always known (on some level)that I would not make a good mother. It's the giving up of self and time that Neil writes about that would have done me and the child in. And having had a depressed mother myself, wouldn't want to pass the experience or the genes on to anyone. But it has never been easy to accept, even now, when I'm moving beyond childbearing age. My biggest comfort (next to being one HELL of an aunt) is knowing that I made the right choice for me.

Laurie, going through these changes that you're going through can be physically draining and painful. I know you know that, and I'm just bringing it up to say that when you get to the other end,you'll feel stronger and better.

[Jenn]

whatever the reason we don't have children-- by choice, by circumstance emotional physical or otherwise-- we should still be valued as women, as people. don't be ashamed of the reality of it. sometimes things don't go as we planned... plan b is not really a bad plan, it's just different. good luck!! represent for the single without children clan!

[zchamu]

Hey there,

I saw you were going to be doing this panel and I was going to email you about it - but having a post to discuss it is even better! I won't be making it to BlogHer this summer, and this panel is one I'm particularly disappointed to miss as this is something I've been thinking about a great deal.

First, about your post - Laurie, you don't "need" do do anything. You feel what you feel. Yes, this is the way life worked out for you so far, but to say "I need to change the way I feel about this issue" sort of negates your own feelings, diminishes them. You have a shitload of things going on, and I can imagine that you're overwhelmed - but if you wanted to be a mom by now, and it's bothering you that you aren't, then you need to acknowledge that. Because that one probably won't go away.

From my perspective and the panel - I sometimes find it really tough to be a non-mom blogger. Most of the people I know through the blogosphere are somehow mommy bloggers - lots of the posts I read, lots of the stuff that makes me laugh, lots of the things I comment on are about being moms and having kids. To me this is normal, because most of my peers in my "real" life and on the internet are now parents due to the age range. I am used to hanging around with moms and kids because of this.

I'm not childless by choice, I'd love to have a child, but it is apparently not that easy. I'm a woman who would love to be a mom (but I do make a careful effort not to let it consume me), who finds plenty of mom blogs interesting due to the writing or the people or whatever. I participate when I enjoy the blog, but I am feeling increasingly disconnected, because my life and the things I write about really appear to hold no interest in return. (And yes, it's entirely possible that my content just sucks :) )

It's as if I'm in this wierd limbo: my peers are mommy blogging, but because I'm not feel like I am not considered "their" peer anymore. I guess it parallels real life, in a way, because my friends who have kids are more and more only seeming to do things with other people who have kids. So what are those of us who are childless in that peer group to do, except.. go find new friends? Yeah, I guess, but it still feels crappy.

[JCK]

I think it is absolutely vital that you talk about the child-free direction your life has taken - with the feelings that fluctuate, perhaps daily? I have friends who are in that very difficult place of being child-free without it being their choice. It is also very helpful to women to hear how full one's life can be without children, but hearing your personal story - that is what will resonate with the women who come hear you speak.

Kudos to you! Keep being honest. Pain is universal.

[sunbear]

I'm glad you talked about being a bit sad while being childfree. I am childfree and I know it is the best for me, but I do feel twinges of being not normal or fear of being alone when I am older. Also, just now, I feel like the media is celebrating our presidential and vice-presidential candidates so much for being parents. At my job, the people who are parents of small children never do overtime and never answer the mobile phone on the weekends. The rest of us (people who don't have any kids or those whose kids are grown) end up doing more work.