Childless Not By Choice Infertility Survivorhood
SUPPORTING AND UNDERSTANDING THE INVOLUNTARY CHILDLESS Eight actions for family, friends and the rest of the world #1 Myth Awareness, #2 Know the Numbers, #3 Listen, Listen and Listen, #4 Have An Informed View of Adoption, #5 Respect the Grieving Process, #6 Setting Reasonable Social Expectations, #7 Know Your Audience, #8 What To and Not … Read more #1 MYTH AWARENESS
SUPPORTING AND UNDERSTANDING THE INVOLUNTARILY CHILDLESS Eight actions for family, friends and the rest of the world. #2 KNOW THE NUMBERS Currently, 17.1% of the female population in the United States over aged 45 does not parent. In the UK it is 20%, and even higher in other countries such as Germany and Japan. … Read more #2 KNOW THE NUMBERS
SUPPORTING AND UNDERSTANDING THE INVOLUNTARILY CHILDLESS Eight actions for family, friends and the rest of the world. #3 LISTEN, LISTEN AND LISTEN What? Yes, the healing power of a willing ear and open heart I thought I’d start off with a short list. What do the involuntarily childless need from people in their lives? I … Read more #3 LISTEN, LISTEN AND LISTEN
Dear Readers,
After all this time I’m finally able to offer you some yoga! Wanted to let you know about Afterward Honesty’s very first yoga offering this coming Sunday May 8 from 12:00 – 1:15 ET. Get the class description, sign up and other info when you click the image on the left. Hope to see you there and over at the blog on Afterward Honesty!
I’ve always been drawn to difference. Hailing from a quintessentially small white New England town, on the edge of my adolescence my restless soul began to grumble about the lack of human variety in which I was swimming. To which my Dad would chuckle something along the lines of, “How do you know anything about human variety? You haven’t been anywhere yet!”
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Hope to see you on board over on my new platform,
where I’m looking forward to supporting childless health and wellness through yoga offerings and webinars
Hop on over to…..
Why I Love Rudolph
My unexpected childless holiday tradition
For a long time, I could not have even conjured the possibility of sitting myself down and taking in a holiday tv special. These potentially glorious childhood throwbacks naturally reeked, for a good many years, of what should have been.
Well Dear Readers, look what December dragged in –
Meet my new and expanded platform,
I’m happy to share that, coming in 2022, I’m going to start offering yoga workshops, yoga classes and webinars for the purpose of exploring and supporting the experiences surrounding involuntary childlessness. Along with the occasional sassy blog post you’ve all come to know and…..well, I’ll let you fill in the rest!
We’ll be kicking off with a Your Breath As a Resource Workshop coming this spring.
So what can you do right now? A few things:
It’s been a long road to get to this point, a road that has involved a pile of obstacles followed by soul searching and intense descision making – both practically and existentially. I feel good though that I’ve assembled something that accurately reflects what I have to offer and what I hold near and dear.
So what’s going to happen to Infertility Honesty?
I’ll be posting one or two more pieces this month, at which point I’ll be tenderly packing things up and exiting formal writing and posting on this space. I will however, be keeping this site up for your viewing pleasure – or pain – or entertainment, or whatever the case is for you. I mean really, who am I to judge??
While this is not quite yet goodbye to this spot, I just want to take this moment to say that Infertility Honesty saved me. And that includes you, Dear Readers. For that I’ll be forever grateful.
Revelations and Reflections On a Healing Trajectory
Photo credit: Geoff Colley/Shutterbug
Once upon a time, I gleefully passed out Halloween candy as a wide eyed new homeowner.
This occurred for a couple of years before the friction between my envisioned future and actual reality started to grind. And it culminated amid my ttc efforts with hurriedly drawing the blinds down in the wake of an unexpected onslaught of trick or treaters in 2012, hardly 36 hours after hurricane Sandy left town. Seriously.
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#worldchildlessweek2021
Not even two months after my final failed fertility treatment, I had entered the adoption option’s funnel cloud. As harsh realities and impossibilities swirled from every direction on this front, I was also sharing myself with people as I tried to make my way out into the world again. I’ve noticed since this is something that other grieving people commonly and spontaneously tend to do.
After conveying some grief over my unfruitful attempts at trying to conceive I was told by an acquaintance I thought well of, “Well, you can ALWAYS foster or adopt…..”. Given that this was someone with a few healthy biological children of her own, I was thrown by her unyielding certitude.
Read moreAnd what precious little separates us
The day after the fierce flooding caused by Hurricane Ida here in the northeast United States, I had just so happened to have a consultation scheduled with a solar company. A sobering, “too little too late” synchronicity? Perhaps. But given the years – long absence of it in my trying to conceive and healing processes, I now revel in any remnant of synchronicity that comes my way!
As I took the virtual call, I was fumbling through assimilating the events that had occurred a mere thirty miles from my home while feeling mildly comforted in taking a step that would perhaps contribute a drop to leveling off the climate crisis.
Towards the end of the call I inquired about the benefit to the environment.
“You care?” The representative said in a facetiously caught off guard tone.
“It’s a quaint notion, but yeah, every now and then…” I shot back sarcastically.
As he went on to connect the dots between solar power and burning less fossil fuel, he also shared that almost no one ever asks about the environmental benefit when looking into going solar.
“Well, that’s strange,” I thought. I mean, of course people want to know the ways in which THEY will benefit, as did I. It’s only human. And, if infertility and childlessness have enlightened me to anything, it’s the human tendency to be disinterested in other people’s suffering. But what about one’s own potential suffering due to the climate crisis? Why would that not be of any concern?
And then I remembered – there’s also the human tendency to fail to see how easily other people’s suffering could (or could have) become their own. Or as I inwardly have been referring to it, the “It Can’t Happen To Me” mentality.
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I don’t have to tell most of you, dear readers, that in a world that likes to think of itself on a progressive social change trajectory, it has, in fact, become increasingly HARDER to be involuntarily without children.
In our modern day world, the now ever plentiful pathways to mommy-hood grab headlines. Along with the myths and implied simplicities surrounding those pathways that also have seeped into the human conversation.
I mean, you could be a person without children living solo in an igloo close to the north pole with your hands literally tied behind your back, and you would still get the “You really shoulds……..” and the (my favorite) “You could ALWAYS……” overtures regarding becoming a parent.
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Reflections on what’s missing from a year of headlines
It was early on in the pandemic that talk of grandparents not being able to see their grandchildren started to become part of the daily swirl.
I was genuinely moved by the grandparent heartache at first. I could, all too well, relate to the plight of having something close to your heart to which you expect free access ripped from your existence. Even if only temporarily. I actually shed some tears on behalf of this not asked for angst.
At the time, I was six years out of multiple fertility treatments rendering no baby. Like most people who spend merciless stretches in the trenches of trying to conceive, or in other circumstances hoping for parenthood, I had formed surprisingly deep and influential bonds with my unborn.
By the time the pandemic hit I had come to a point in my grieving and healing process where I was able to hold some space for life’s more meager infractions. “Fertile world problems” I’ve come to refer to them as.
Fast forward one year, and past endless headlines blaring the pandemic discord and disturbance heaped upon the parented and grandparented world. Much of it entirely justified and important to air. It’s what has been missing from our conversation that stirs concern.
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Life is strange. Not that I had to tell any of you that. It’s an obvious truth that just needs to be plainly stated sometimes.
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