ISSUE S


I carry my ‘child- less’ grief around with me like a small hand I hold onto


by Melanie Allen, Outdoor educator, explorer, adventurer, animal lover


I WENT TO SEE a therapist one time to help me deal with the complicated grief of infertility and the myriad of ways in which it had impacted my life for what had seemed like so many years already. His opening line to me was, “Have you


heard of the term child-free’?” This was a surface attempt to supposedly help me to find a fresh new perspective and come to terms with my situation so that I could embrace it with a renewed enthusiasm for life. I was close to being speechless


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and definitely unable to relate to this wonderful ‘child-free’ existence I was given by the universe. This man was apparently a professional in his field and knew what I was there to deal with, and still came out with this highly insensitive and offensive statement to me that showed a total lack of understanding. All I could say to him was, “Well the way I feel about my situation is that I am child-less”. There is a big difference between the two terms and the former implies a level of choice on the matter of not being a mother. I certainly did not have a choice as far as being a mother was concerned and that is what has taken me so many years to accept. Infertility has its own perpetual grief


cycle that goes around and around, with no end in sight. It never seems to go into the ‘well that


loss has finally happened now’ basket so that you can grieve it in the way you do with other great losses in life. The only end I had to this torture was when I hit menopause quite early in my life. Until then there always remained that tiny 1% of hope of the miracle, and it is amazing how powerful that can be as we cling to it against enormous odds. Eight years on I now have a much higher


level of acceptance and have learnt to embrace it with what the universe has given me. I carry my ‘child-less’ grief around with


me like a small hand I hold onto and only every now and then does it get squeezed in a way that catches me off guard and has me pausing to breathe deeply while I feel the tears well up uncontrollably. For the most part I cope well and focus


on the blessings I have in my life. I would have read something like this a few years ago and not related at all, as I was in very much still in the eye of the storm. Now I am outside looking in, dipping my toes into it once in a while. I doubted for many years that I would ever rise out of the darkness and get to this place, and I am so thankful that I have, as I have watched my life slowly begin to thrive again. What I do still find challenging is to


know how to fit into society and where my place is. People look at me and assume by my apparent age that I am a mother, and they often lead with, “So how old are you children?” or, “What school do your children go to?” – all innocent questions of course – and after I answer it as delicately as I can, I am left with an empty feeling that I have now, by no fault of my own, excluded myself from the biggest club that a woman will ever be a part of, and with that goes so many conversations I will never be asked to join in on and so many invites that I will never receive. Not being a mother can be a lonely place; even more so as you get older. n


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