Surviving childlessness: It’s all in how you look at it

“I hate this rainy weather. It’s so dark and wet.” I whined to my counselor the other day. I live on the Oregon coast, where it starts raining in October and keeps going until Fourth of July. We hadn’t seen the sun in two weeks. I’m fully aware that other parts of the country have much worse weather, but I’m from San Jose, where it never rains more than a day or two.

    
She held up her hand like a stop sign. “Every time you say things like that, it plants a negative thought in your mind.”

          

She was right. I can’t change the weather, only my reaction to it.           

It’s like the fog. My friend from New England says she loves it. I feel closed in, as if I’ll go crazy if I don’t see the sun within the next few minutes. It’s the same fog, just different ways of looking at it.

Life is like that. I’ve been complaining because the neighbors behind me just built this giant building directly across from my office. At first I saw bare wood sticking out through the trees. Then this week, they installed a bright blue metal roof. It’s so blue. It’s the first thing I see in the morning when I go to turn on my computer. I hated it those first few days, but you know what? I’m starting to get used to it. It’s kind of a nice blue. In time, I might even like it.

Childlessness is a little like that. I think about Karen, one of the women I interviewed for my book. Physically unable to bear children, she grieved until she discovered the term “childfree.” The concept changed her whole perspective. She stopped feeling as if she was missing something and started spreading the word that it was okay not to have children.

In a book called Childlessness Transformed, Brooke Medicine Eagle describes how among the Crow Indians when a person has no children, all the children are her children, not just humans but every life form. When a woman, parent or not, passes through menopause, she moves into the Grandmother Lodge. These “grandmothers” are responsible for all the children of the earth.

I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel better.

  

If we wanted children and we can’t have them, we are entitled to grieve, but we mustn’t let it rule our lives. By changing our attitude, we can see the good things we do have, like maybe a loving partner, and other ways we can use our mothering energy.

I’m not saying it’s easy. That same friend from New England posted a photo yesterday of her with her new grandson, and I felt the familiar ache. When I took my dog to vet for her kennel cough shot in the afternoon, an employee on maternity leave was in the waiting room showing off her four-week-old baby.

Annie stared at it, puzzled. “That’s a tiny human," I explained. "I wish we had one of those.” We both gazed in awe at the baby’s tiny hands and feet. Then I took a deep breath and said out loud to the mother, “Congratulations. She’s so cute.”

After which, the technician called Annie in and my 77-pound baby dragged me into the examining room, where she knew there were dog treats on the counter. Who cares about babies when there are cookies to be eaten!

It’s all in how you look at it.