The Messy Middle

It’s my second attempt at starting blog for women without children. I posted my first entry, The Surprising Grief of a Woman Who Didn't Want Kids, in the spring of 2018. Back then I had a fledgling coaching practice helping not-mom’s find meaning and purpose in their lives. This new coaching focus grew out of my personal journey finding a path out of the grief and learning to love my life without kids. I wanted to help women who did not become mothers to craft a new dream.

I had the best of intentions when I shared that first blog post. I yearned to tell my story of moving from not wanting kids, to struggling to decide whether to have them, to feeling devastated when I didn’t. I wanted to break my silence about the shame and grief I felt in my early 40s as I said goodbye to my fertility. I wanted to let women know that it’s possible to live a joyful life and to illuminate how. But I just couldn’t get traction. For one, I had yet to discover that I had ADHD. A diagnoses last summer at the age of 53 helped me understand why I found it difficult to follow through with some goals but not others. Without an external deadline for the blog, it became a permanent fixture on my to-do list.

I also didn’t realize at the time that my story was far from unique. When I first discovered the community of women without children, it seemed as though you had a choice of two camps. You could join the ranks of the childfree by choice. This group was all zero regrets and fuck motherhood. While I understood where they were coming from, I had officially left their ranks in my late 30s when I started to wrestle with nagging doubts. While wandering around the web I also encountered the women who identify as childless. They seemed to have an unwavering certainty about the desire to have a family. When motherhood didn’t happen, they expressed their devastation and deep sadness. And though I could connect with their grief, I felt like an interloper in spaces with women who had never imagined a life without kids.

What I did not yet know was just how many of us are in the messy middle. We’re the ones for whom neither the childless nor childfree labels quite fit. When it came to making a decision about having a child, we felt pulled in two directions. We felt a longing for some of the things promised by motherhood, like the connection and fulfillment that it promised. But we had major concerns too - often for the loss of freedom and identity that we could see other parents grappling with. We feel both grief and relief about not having children of our own. Though I can’t find stats about how many we are, my own very unscientific accounting suggests we are not an insignificant cohort. When I polled the members of the my facebook group Your Best Life Without Kids, 26% identified as childfree by choice, 26% as childless by circumstance and 47% as both. The same is true for the majority of women who reach out to me. 42% of the women who have contacted me for a free consult expressed feeling ambivalent about their circumstances. But despite our numbers, our stories are rarely told and our unique needs go unaddressed.

Curious to hear more? Let me know that you’re interested in a blog that speaks to women without kids who feel ambivalent about not being moms.  My ADHD brain is counting on you to count on me.