As I read your article initially, I thought to myself, gosh that was me (childless) twenty years ago, and my heart just went out to you. But then I saw your comment about needing to hear from others further down the road. I posted but then removed some details of the past two decades bc they sorta feel unbelievable to read them myself. Suffice to say, life has unfolded in unimaginable ways, both happy and sad.
The hardest thing for me is it's one of those ambiguous losses that just isn't recognized. No one has ever said to me, "Gosh, I can't imagine wanting kids and never having them... how are you doing with all that?" There are still times when it hurts afresh... weird conversations where everyone is complaining about their kids as moms do at times, then someone turns to me and says, "and how's your [dog, cat, mom, house-buying, whatever]?" Or the endless cycle of enjoying friendships during the school year and feeling abandoned when their kids are off for the summer and they're too busy to get together. Or missing the relationships I might have had with children of my own. At some point, I came to terms with, as you say, the life I have. And yet, allowing myself to grieve the loss for as long as I need to, in all the different seasons, has maybe been what has helped the most. I can be grateful for how life has unfolded, alongside the sadness that still surfaces from time to time. Carrie Newcomer's album, The Point of Arrival (the first 4 songs) has been healing for me lately, giving voice to things I know to be true. Hugs to you as you mourn this very real loss.
I've been musically marinating in Jess Ray's latest album "Mama" which includes a lot of reflections on the ways women mother each other and what mothering looks like. (Jess does not have children and a long struggle with infertility, like me.) Her song "kingdom come" kept coming to mind as I read; "I know how to curse the path I tread/When will I learn to bless it all instead/To open my arms and kiss the face/Of my own life as it comes my way". Wrestling with a life we did not plan or choose, what does it look like to choose our life again, anyway? To bless even as we say "this wasn't what I planned or wanted"? To long for a better kingdom but see the goodness along the hard path we walk? To be honest about the hard, the bad, the things we would not have ever chosen - but embrace the life we have been given? I'm still wrestling with this too, and thankful for a fellow traveler who asks great questions. :)
I sometimes have similar thoughts, and I have a kid--albeit a very disconnected-from-me-one, thus those thoughts. Then out of the blue a young person shows up from a long time ago and restores hope. Blessings Lore. I made the acquaintance of a lovely gaggle of gals who occupied one end of an apartment complex in Oaxaca--it was like back to dorm life. Somebody's electricity is out. Somebody else runs an extension cord from her place--and the connections continue. So very sorry about your Harper. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you so much for writing this, Lore. I am a single woman in my 30s and much of my life has not gone “as planned.” I am happy with my life for the most part, and suddenly sometimes waves of grief will come. I’m learning as I go (I think). 💛
These words are really sticking with me, especially alongside your footnote about fostering/adoption. Thank you for saying all you did. So much of our parenting journey has been breathing through the losses and living the life we’ve been given.
“We do live the given life, but life interrupts that too, and I guess I’m learning to roll with it, move through it, absorb it, flow with it, become soft and tender toward it, but also strong and resilient with it. To welcome the blows and breathe through the losses and stare down the future as it is, and not just as I wish it would be.”
Well Bruce and I are childless by choice. I had no desire to have children and Bruce didn’t have a burning desire to have them. I had an enormous amount of emotional clutter to work through as well as the grief of my birth family gone (not all at once but within seven years.) My husband’s mother wasn’t kind. I wrote my novel and rewrote it and worked things out in therapy and on the page.
But when I hit menopause I grieved pretty hard for not having them. The passage in the Great Divorce about the childless woman Followed by people and animals she’d loved is great comfort along with the passages in Isaiah about the barren woman having more children than the one with children.
His birth family has since passed away. We are in our seventies and don’t know who will watch out for us when we become frail elderly. I feel the Lord is saying trust me. There’s a gift in this loneliness I think.
Sending a hug for the loss of your pup and your dream to have children. I very much admire The Understory.
Thank you for sharing that, Kate. Truly. One thing I lament is the lack of older women ahead of me with stories of childlessness. I want you to know there are people like me (and others) who are looking for the mothering voices of the childless ahead of us 💙
I’d love to be there for you. That would be a gift. I am your mother’s age. And I’ll admit there’s no small amount of fear around our lack of family/committed community when frail old age hits. I too have thought of a group of women but oh boy that could be tough! There are stories of saints who lead solitary lives. Paul Kingsnorth just wrote one about a guy who lived in a tree!
Excuse my butting into your exchange here. I too am childless by choice and I'm 45. I have always been very happy with this choice but this year for the first time, I feel afraid of the future. Who will care for me when I get old & frail? As an RN I can tell you there are many people with children who do not care for their parents. That being said, it still scary. And of course having children just for them to be caregivers when we are older isn't a very good reason to have them. I have also always been frustrated with the pushback from those with children or who look down on those of us childfree by choice. I have always believed that I would be a part of a community and we would care for each other. But here I am at 45 and that community is not here. Maybe it will come, but in the US anyway, everyone is so individualistic. People crave community but don't want to do the hard work and take the risks. It's worth it to me, but unfortunately for the time being I live in a place surrounded by people who do not share the same values as I do. I have hoped for a miraculous community nonetheless, but 5 years in there's nothing.
Hi Casey, you're not butting in =) You (and I!) are why i think we need people like Katie ahead of us helping us see different ways of growing older without children. Your voice matters here too.
Elizabeth Oldfield (https://morefullyalive.substack.com) has a lot of thoughts on living in community (she shares a house with her family and a few other families/singles) that I've found really helpful. Not reductionistic or glossing over the challenges, as I've found many in the church to do when they talk idealistically about "doing life together," or whatever.
I think a lot about how the last ten+ years have really changed our world and particularly our country, thinking especially of MAGA/"christian nationalism" + the pandemic. These two things created a chasm that I don't know if we'll ever see filled in our lifetime and unfortunately, this is *our* lifetime. The only one we get. I know every person has to reckon with difficulties in their lifetime, but this one seems more divisive than many in the past. I don't know. I can't know. But I do know it's unique in its own way and that's what we have to navigate, and that's just really hard to figure out how to do. Especially without anyone to show us how to do it.
Anyway, solidarity to you (and Savannah). Whether you feel it or not, so many of us are seeing what you're doing and cheering you on and that IS creating a community—even if it's not the one you envisioned.
I hear you on that fear. The fear is real. Children not caring for parents is also real. Covid did its damage. We live near people who share our values it’s still pretty lonely. (Had a luncheon group from a former church that dissipated so I get it.) People are so busy! But I keep getting the message to trust the Lord in this and study in the present, give thanks. I’d imagine you know this. We’re also loosely thinking of moving. Will say a prayer for you to find good friends.
Thank you for sharing this with us. The photo of your vision board and lovely art, speaks to me of paying attention, noticing, intention. And beauty. Reminding me of Sara Groves' song, Add to the Beauty, a favorite of mine. There's a sort beauty in telling your story, even the sad parts.
Came here to say exactly this about the footnote. As another infertile couple, this is a hill I absolutely will die on, and you put it so graciously and clearly.
As an infertile adoptive mom, I so deeply appreciate your footnote. My family doesn’t look like what I envisioned before I had it, but it is no consolation prize.
Your vulnerability and labor to beautifully share the very crux of the hard thing is, as always, a gift.
When life interrupts. The title caught me and your words are sitting with me. I got your book The Understory just in time for our trip to Seattle. Our middle son and his wife had scheduled C-section for birth of their son. We took my 67 year old intellectually disabled brother along because he lives with us and he wanted to see the Mariners. Which we did. After the birth the baby developed breathing problems was transferred to a higher level NICU and there were continuous progress and setbacks. He is still there but improving. In the meantime my brother had a complete meltdown screaming and yelling because of a golf game his favorite player lost and he could not go see the baby. It had been a tiring trip. It has been a while since we’ve experienced one of his screaming meltdowns. My younger sister had medical problems when she was younger and now functions well with just one kidney. but my whole life I was in between these two. Supporting taking the heat they couldn’t growing up. I asked my younger sister to stay at our house to keep my brother in his routine so we could travel back and forth to Seattle to be with our son, she refused. She lives an hour and half away. There is much more to this story that’s enough to share. Your book. The Understory. The tree that fell. That’s me. I’ve been leaned on my whole life and now in my 60s I just can’t do it anymore. The tree has fallen and I’m making changes. In your book you talk about making people angry with truth. And sometimes even in families that causes broken relationships. The tree may have fallen but like that tree in your book I know there will be new life working beneath the surface of this hard circumstance. There will be broken relationships too. I talked with my therapist about this yesterday and she loved how I related to your story of the tree and how it describes my life. She agrees. Sorry to be such a long comment. But I wanted you to know that your book is not dead. It is breathing new life into me. It was just the right time. Thank you for writing it
Thank you for sharing all this, Janet. Life, right? Just keeps coming at us, felling us over sometimes. I'm grateful the book is meaningful to you and thankful you've shared that with me =)
You're always a wonderful writer whose words resonate with me but this piece really helped me / touched me today. Thanks for writing it. I appreciate your honesty and your calling it like it is. For years in similar spaces to you (exvangelical in Denton, TX here, some overlapping acquaintances I believe), I felt so exhausted by being pressured to believe and say that, as you worded it, "what I had [and what others had been dealt] was good whether it seemed good or not, and that if I didn’t have it, it wasn’t good." I feel freed by your strength here to say that's not true.
As I read your article initially, I thought to myself, gosh that was me (childless) twenty years ago, and my heart just went out to you. But then I saw your comment about needing to hear from others further down the road. I posted but then removed some details of the past two decades bc they sorta feel unbelievable to read them myself. Suffice to say, life has unfolded in unimaginable ways, both happy and sad.
The hardest thing for me is it's one of those ambiguous losses that just isn't recognized. No one has ever said to me, "Gosh, I can't imagine wanting kids and never having them... how are you doing with all that?" There are still times when it hurts afresh... weird conversations where everyone is complaining about their kids as moms do at times, then someone turns to me and says, "and how's your [dog, cat, mom, house-buying, whatever]?" Or the endless cycle of enjoying friendships during the school year and feeling abandoned when their kids are off for the summer and they're too busy to get together. Or missing the relationships I might have had with children of my own. At some point, I came to terms with, as you say, the life I have. And yet, allowing myself to grieve the loss for as long as I need to, in all the different seasons, has maybe been what has helped the most. I can be grateful for how life has unfolded, alongside the sadness that still surfaces from time to time. Carrie Newcomer's album, The Point of Arrival (the first 4 songs) has been healing for me lately, giving voice to things I know to be true. Hugs to you as you mourn this very real loss.
Thank you, dianne. I will look up that album =)
I've been musically marinating in Jess Ray's latest album "Mama" which includes a lot of reflections on the ways women mother each other and what mothering looks like. (Jess does not have children and a long struggle with infertility, like me.) Her song "kingdom come" kept coming to mind as I read; "I know how to curse the path I tread/When will I learn to bless it all instead/To open my arms and kiss the face/Of my own life as it comes my way". Wrestling with a life we did not plan or choose, what does it look like to choose our life again, anyway? To bless even as we say "this wasn't what I planned or wanted"? To long for a better kingdom but see the goodness along the hard path we walk? To be honest about the hard, the bad, the things we would not have ever chosen - but embrace the life we have been given? I'm still wrestling with this too, and thankful for a fellow traveler who asks great questions. :)
Mama has been on repeat at our house since it dropped =) We both are loving it!
I sometimes have similar thoughts, and I have a kid--albeit a very disconnected-from-me-one, thus those thoughts. Then out of the blue a young person shows up from a long time ago and restores hope. Blessings Lore. I made the acquaintance of a lovely gaggle of gals who occupied one end of an apartment complex in Oaxaca--it was like back to dorm life. Somebody's electricity is out. Somebody else runs an extension cord from her place--and the connections continue. So very sorry about your Harper. Thank you for sharing.
Man that quote from Wendell Berry is a hard but good one. Thank you for your reflection Lore.
Thank you so much for writing this, Lore. I am a single woman in my 30s and much of my life has not gone “as planned.” I am happy with my life for the most part, and suddenly sometimes waves of grief will come. I’m learning as I go (I think). 💛
These words are really sticking with me, especially alongside your footnote about fostering/adoption. Thank you for saying all you did. So much of our parenting journey has been breathing through the losses and living the life we’ve been given.
“We do live the given life, but life interrupts that too, and I guess I’m learning to roll with it, move through it, absorb it, flow with it, become soft and tender toward it, but also strong and resilient with it. To welcome the blows and breathe through the losses and stare down the future as it is, and not just as I wish it would be.”
Feeling much if the same! Love you, friend!
Love you. Thanks for seeing me yesterday. It means a lot.
Well Bruce and I are childless by choice. I had no desire to have children and Bruce didn’t have a burning desire to have them. I had an enormous amount of emotional clutter to work through as well as the grief of my birth family gone (not all at once but within seven years.) My husband’s mother wasn’t kind. I wrote my novel and rewrote it and worked things out in therapy and on the page.
But when I hit menopause I grieved pretty hard for not having them. The passage in the Great Divorce about the childless woman Followed by people and animals she’d loved is great comfort along with the passages in Isaiah about the barren woman having more children than the one with children.
His birth family has since passed away. We are in our seventies and don’t know who will watch out for us when we become frail elderly. I feel the Lord is saying trust me. There’s a gift in this loneliness I think.
Sending a hug for the loss of your pup and your dream to have children. I very much admire The Understory.
Thank you for sharing that, Kate. Truly. One thing I lament is the lack of older women ahead of me with stories of childlessness. I want you to know there are people like me (and others) who are looking for the mothering voices of the childless ahead of us 💙
A book that might speak to you is Molly Peacock’s Paradise Piece by Piece. She chose to be childless and like you is a traditionally published poet.
I’d love to be there for you. That would be a gift. I am your mother’s age. And I’ll admit there’s no small amount of fear around our lack of family/committed community when frail old age hits. I too have thought of a group of women but oh boy that could be tough! There are stories of saints who lead solitary lives. Paul Kingsnorth just wrote one about a guy who lived in a tree!
Excuse my butting into your exchange here. I too am childless by choice and I'm 45. I have always been very happy with this choice but this year for the first time, I feel afraid of the future. Who will care for me when I get old & frail? As an RN I can tell you there are many people with children who do not care for their parents. That being said, it still scary. And of course having children just for them to be caregivers when we are older isn't a very good reason to have them. I have also always been frustrated with the pushback from those with children or who look down on those of us childfree by choice. I have always believed that I would be a part of a community and we would care for each other. But here I am at 45 and that community is not here. Maybe it will come, but in the US anyway, everyone is so individualistic. People crave community but don't want to do the hard work and take the risks. It's worth it to me, but unfortunately for the time being I live in a place surrounded by people who do not share the same values as I do. I have hoped for a miraculous community nonetheless, but 5 years in there's nothing.
Hi Casey, you're not butting in =) You (and I!) are why i think we need people like Katie ahead of us helping us see different ways of growing older without children. Your voice matters here too.
Elizabeth Oldfield (https://morefullyalive.substack.com) has a lot of thoughts on living in community (she shares a house with her family and a few other families/singles) that I've found really helpful. Not reductionistic or glossing over the challenges, as I've found many in the church to do when they talk idealistically about "doing life together," or whatever.
I think a lot about how the last ten+ years have really changed our world and particularly our country, thinking especially of MAGA/"christian nationalism" + the pandemic. These two things created a chasm that I don't know if we'll ever see filled in our lifetime and unfortunately, this is *our* lifetime. The only one we get. I know every person has to reckon with difficulties in their lifetime, but this one seems more divisive than many in the past. I don't know. I can't know. But I do know it's unique in its own way and that's what we have to navigate, and that's just really hard to figure out how to do. Especially without anyone to show us how to do it.
Anyway, solidarity to you (and Savannah). Whether you feel it or not, so many of us are seeing what you're doing and cheering you on and that IS creating a community—even if it's not the one you envisioned.
I hear you on that fear. The fear is real. Children not caring for parents is also real. Covid did its damage. We live near people who share our values it’s still pretty lonely. (Had a luncheon group from a former church that dissipated so I get it.) People are so busy! But I keep getting the message to trust the Lord in this and study in the present, give thanks. I’d imagine you know this. We’re also loosely thinking of moving. Will say a prayer for you to find good friends.
Very nice entry
💙
Thank you for sharing this with us. The photo of your vision board and lovely art, speaks to me of paying attention, noticing, intention. And beauty. Reminding me of Sara Groves' song, Add to the Beauty, a favorite of mine. There's a sort beauty in telling your story, even the sad parts.
Thank you!
I am so grateful for your words and I hold space for all of them.
(Also thank you for that footnote. That is a whole topic that many people do not explore much if at all.)
Came here to say exactly this about the footnote. As another infertile couple, this is a hill I absolutely will die on, and you put it so graciously and clearly.
Sending you so much love, Katie. <3
I have SOOOOOOO many thoughts on it all =)
We have very different situations yet I resonate with much of it. ❤️
💙
As an infertile adoptive mom, I so deeply appreciate your footnote. My family doesn’t look like what I envisioned before I had it, but it is no consolation prize.
Your vulnerability and labor to beautifully share the very crux of the hard thing is, as always, a gift.
Yes. Kids are not a consolation prize, no matter how they come.
When life interrupts. The title caught me and your words are sitting with me. I got your book The Understory just in time for our trip to Seattle. Our middle son and his wife had scheduled C-section for birth of their son. We took my 67 year old intellectually disabled brother along because he lives with us and he wanted to see the Mariners. Which we did. After the birth the baby developed breathing problems was transferred to a higher level NICU and there were continuous progress and setbacks. He is still there but improving. In the meantime my brother had a complete meltdown screaming and yelling because of a golf game his favorite player lost and he could not go see the baby. It had been a tiring trip. It has been a while since we’ve experienced one of his screaming meltdowns. My younger sister had medical problems when she was younger and now functions well with just one kidney. but my whole life I was in between these two. Supporting taking the heat they couldn’t growing up. I asked my younger sister to stay at our house to keep my brother in his routine so we could travel back and forth to Seattle to be with our son, she refused. She lives an hour and half away. There is much more to this story that’s enough to share. Your book. The Understory. The tree that fell. That’s me. I’ve been leaned on my whole life and now in my 60s I just can’t do it anymore. The tree has fallen and I’m making changes. In your book you talk about making people angry with truth. And sometimes even in families that causes broken relationships. The tree may have fallen but like that tree in your book I know there will be new life working beneath the surface of this hard circumstance. There will be broken relationships too. I talked with my therapist about this yesterday and she loved how I related to your story of the tree and how it describes my life. She agrees. Sorry to be such a long comment. But I wanted you to know that your book is not dead. It is breathing new life into me. It was just the right time. Thank you for writing it
Thank you for sharing all this, Janet. Life, right? Just keeps coming at us, felling us over sometimes. I'm grateful the book is meaningful to you and thankful you've shared that with me =)
You're always a wonderful writer whose words resonate with me but this piece really helped me / touched me today. Thanks for writing it. I appreciate your honesty and your calling it like it is. For years in similar spaces to you (exvangelical in Denton, TX here, some overlapping acquaintances I believe), I felt so exhausted by being pressured to believe and say that, as you worded it, "what I had [and what others had been dealt] was good whether it seemed good or not, and that if I didn’t have it, it wasn’t good." I feel freed by your strength here to say that's not true.
Thanks, Jenna. It's not true, some of us just don't know it yet 💙
Praying for your family, your hearts, and the people who are loving you all through it. (Also, what a beautiful footnote).
Thank you, Lo. Also, that's what my close friends call me too =)