Port Lincoln...

Well – haven’t I been a slacker!

It seems some months have passed since I’ve written a blog entry. I could come up with lots of excuses – such as it was Christmas and I’ve been adjusting my diet to help combat my fibromyalgia (which is helping – yay!) etc. But I’m not going to. I’m just going to get on with this entry!

Between Christmas and New Year, Kirby and I travelled with our friends to Port Lincoln for three nights. The purpose of our trip? To go out on a boat with Adventure Bay Charters to swim with sea lions.

Travelling on the boat to the seal lions

Dolphins joined us for part of the journey

                                                     

Me and one of our friends in the water

It was absolutely brilliant! Sea lions are endangered – there are only 10000 left – so swimming with them was a real honour.

The sea lions lazing around

In the water

I also loved the way the crew of the boat we went on to where the sea lions live were very respectful of the sea lions. We were not allowed to approach them, but rather we were to wait until, and if, they came up to us  –  which made it all the more special when they did.

Sea lions are so playful and cheeky! One of the crew put a floating line as a guide to where we were allowed to swim – one of the sea lions grabbed one of the floats and took it down to the ocean bottom (it was shallow water) and proceeded to lie on it!

Look what I can do!!

You can't see me!!

While we were in Port Lincoln we also visited Coffin Bay National Park, where we were fortunate to see an emu and his chicks (yes – the Dad takes on the child rearing responsibilities!), New Zealand fur seals playing, and a kangaroo. The beaches were so wide and white, and the water so clear. It was stunning.

Baby emus with their Dad

Loving life!

 

Beautiful remote beaches

Kangaroos camouflage so well! 

Fur seals playing...

The ferocity of the ocean

I’m writing about this holiday for a couple of reasons – aside from the fact that it was awesome. And those reasons relate to the fact that we couldn’t, and don’t, have children.

The view from our balcony at the Port Lincoln Hotel

The first is that our friends are in their early twenties – and we are in our early forties. It’s quite an age gap and yet we are good friends and we get along so well. The truth is that if we had children it is less likely that we would spend as much time with these friends, if any, because we would be mixing in quite different circles. People with kids tend to mix with other people with kids – and are less likely to mix with people from very different age groups. Lately Kirby and I have been looking more at what we do have in life, instead of what we don’t, and these friends are part of what we have – and they are a blessing.

The second is that we could just go away. We can go away, work permitting, any time we like. We don’t have to think about school holidays or making sure that the activities we do are kid-friendly. Kirby and I can take off on the weekend, or even just for a day, and do what we want. Of course, we have our fur-kids to think of – but they are so adorable that I think we’ll have to start a raffle with the winner being the one to look after them next!

Lastly – life is getting better. I still get sad about not having children – but what we have is amazing. Kirby and I have changed in the last year. It’s taken a while, but we have become more aware that we have a life well worth living and that we shouldn’t waste. It doesn’t mean we don’t feel a sense of missing our children though – that will never go away.

Kirby and I are spending more time with friends and family, going out to different places, and enjoying life. We even spent Christmas Eve putting together Lego – Kirby had a car and I put together Rey’s speeder from Star Wars: The Force Awakens! If that’s not geeky I don’t know what is!

Life – dance, play, work, laugh, love, cry, walk, see friends, listen to music, feel angry, do something.

 

It’s too precious not to.

An old soul...

We took the eleven year old daughter of our friends out on Saturday. We went on a dolphin cruise on the Port River in Adelaide and we even saw four dolphins! We were the only ones to see one of the dolphins which was pretty special!

Jess knew that Ari had died and in the car on the way to the Port she said about how sad she was that Ari was gone and how it must be really hard for us.

She said “He was like your child…so he was like my cousin too.”

Okay – I’ve got tears in my eyes right now.

This beautiful, amazing girl said so simply and honestly exactly how we felt about our Ari. He was our child.

She showed more understanding than many adults would and with such simplicity and honesty.

We adore her so much – she is a pure delight in our lives – and I know for sure she is an old soul.

We love you Jess! 

Me, Jess, and Kirby

The Port Adelaide River

One of the tall ships the "One and All"

Jess with her Dad, and Kirby with Ari when he was a puppy.
Jess can't remember a time when Ari wasn't around.

Friends...

We recently went to visit some friends who have a new baby boy. He is beautiful and already knows how to do fist bumps so obviously he is very gifted!

I loved giving him a big cuddle and I tried to sneak him away so we could keep him, but our friends know where we live so I don’t think we would have gotten away with it…

This entire entry could be just about him, but there is something else I want to write about.

I was holding this amazing child, feeding him with his bottle, and burping him, and we were all talking about him and how he and they were going, and his Dad suggested that he (not the baby) might try out the tummy time cushion we had given them (would have made an interesting sight – a grown man, tummy down, on a cushion for a little baby!)

Then they asked us how we were going, and about our dogs, and about many other things that were going on in our lives.

What they didn’t know was that on the way to their place Kirby pulled over to the side of the road as I was crying (mostly because of the hormonal effects of the Mirena) and feeling like my life was worthless. Kirby suggested we put off visiting our friends, but I said no because I really wanted to see them. I was grateful to Kirby for offering an out if I needed it – he is so understanding.

So, in asking us the questions they did I was given a great big validation that our lives are interesting and that our friends care about us and what we are doing too.

Focussing on a newborn baby is absolutely normal and understandable, and should the conversation have been completely about them and their baby I would have understood. But it was a precious gift to have our friends being genuinely interested in our lives.

Sometimes I feel like our lives are not as important as those of people who have children – not because of anything any one says or does really, but because of my own thoughts.

The gift our friends gave us that day pushed those feelings aside and have actually made me relook at my life and see that what I do is worthwhile in a different way to what it would be if I was raising a child.

I do feel like I’ve rambled in this entry – it’s harder than I thought to express my thoughts and feelings about what happened. So I’ll leave it at this.

Thank you to our beautiful friends, and isn't their baby gorgeous!!

I didn't want to give him back!!

Strange jealousy...

This week I want to talk about something that I experienced in the early months of us realising we would not be able to have children.

It seems a strange thing to have thought now, but then, when we are grieving our thoughts are often different to those we would normally have.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we only have photos of our children as embryos. Wow – this is hard to write about…as I feel a bit ashamed about it (although I tell myself I shouldn’t.) I used to be jealous of people who had children, of course, but I also was kind of jealous of people who had had a still born child.

I didn’t, and don’t, actually wish a still born child on anyone and certainly not on ourselves. I can’t even begin to know what it would be like to have a child and for them to have died before they took their first breath.

What I was jealous for is that they got to hold their baby and have photos with them and show the baby to their family and perhaps friends too. Their baby, their child, was real. Ours were just a flicker for a few days and nobody but us and the medical staff saw them. Our parents couldn’t hold them – we couldn’t say “look at this beautiful angel that we created.”

Even now my arms are aching to hold them.

It’s a strange kind of jealousy – actually I’m not even sure, now, that jealousy is the right word. Perhaps it’s more that I wished for something more than what we had – even if it was just to get to hold our child. To have those photos and to see their faces. I wanted to take every part of them into my memory.

We didn’t get to do that and sometimes I think that our loss is not even viewed as a loss because of that. But, we did lose something precious.

It’s impossible to compare losses and it’s certainly not a competition. What am I trying to say here? Perhaps that there was nothing for us to hold out and say “see what we have lost – we created this and we had dreams and hopes for this and we loved this…and now it’s gone.”

Our pain about our loss was ours and the pain my friends have felt about their loss was theirs. There’s no scale to measure which was stronger or bigger or worse – but both losses and the grieving for our children were, and remain, real.

I feel that this entry is a bit all over the place, so let me know if any of it doesn’t make sense. xxx

What Mali said...

One of my regular readers, Mali, made a comment on my last blog entry about losing friends.

Here it is in its entirety:

“You're right - there's no real reason for this. But I had one friend - the last person I would have thought I would have lost - who withdrew from me when her children started school. A few years later I was invited to a dinner, and there were all these new friends I'd never met - all parents of her kids' friends. None of the friends she'd had five or ten years earlier.

I'm lucky though - the friends I have who have children have mostly not changed. And you'll find that once their kids are older, they start to come back too. Case in point - I'm going to my aforementioned friend's new house for dinner this week.”

It’s the last two sentences of the comment that had me really thinking.

I hope that the friends that have disappeared from my life after they’ve had kids do come back to me one day.

And I do believe I’ll be there to welcome them with open arms, a smile, and, of course, a coffee!

Thank you, Mali, for your comment, your continued support, and for how you have a way of making me reflect more deeply than I otherwise might about the issues we face when we can’t have kids.

Lost friends...

I never expected that it would happen to me. I always thought that the friends I cared about most would be my friends throughout any situation – including when they had children. I imagined being there for them, spending time with them and their kids, listening to funny stories about what their sons and/or daughters had done, and being a sounding board whenever they needed one.

The truth is – when you can’t have kids, and your friends who were without children when you met them have their babies, you may find yourself on the outer edges of their world, or not even in their world at all.

This has happened to me. Fortunately I still see most of my friends who have had children and I am so grateful and blessed for this. But, there have been a few that no longer contact me or make any effort to try and catch up. I’ve tried a couple of times to organise coffees or a trip to a local play café so their kids could come too, but to no avail.

I don’t know why this happens. Some people have told me that it is because my friends have children now and they will have made friends with other mums – women who have more in common with my friends and understand their situation more than I do.

Maybe that’s true. But, I have friends from a range of different situations – from single to partnered or married, to divorced or widowed; friends with and without children (some children are young and some are adults); people in their twenties to people in their seventies; people who are gay and people who are straight; people from all different cultures…I don’t see why becoming a mum means you can’t have a range of friends from all walks of life as well.

Especially when a friend outside of the parenting community is willing to drive for 45 minutes just to have a five minute coffee, if that’s all the time their parent friend has to catch up.

I don’t get it. Maybe they no longer contact me for some other reason – something I’m not aware of that has upset them perhaps.

Anyway – I need to remember the friends and family I do have that are amazing, that seek me out as much as I do them, and for whom I have such love and admiration – family who are my blood relatives, and friends who are my soul family.

Friends without kids...

Yet again I’ve been a bit slack with writing blog posts…but I have a good reason…

I’ve had whiplash…from slipping over in the shower…not the smartest thing to do, but I now know that our shower screen is rather strong and our bathroom tiles are rather hard!!

And onto today’s post…

Over the past four to five years we have “collected” a group of friends who don’t have children. 

Together we are four couples of around the same age – more or less. We have dinner at one of our homes every six months or so – although we will now be adding some hikes on the Waterfall Gully to Mt Lofty Summit trail which I am really excited about!

The interesting part of this group of friends is that I have no idea what the story is behind each of the other three couples not having children. Could they not have them? Did they decide not to have them? I don’t know and it’s not something that we’ve talked about or felt the need, so far, to bring up.

I think they know our story, but again we haven’t talked about it directly with them.

It’s clear that all of us love children. Much of the conversation together is about our respective nieces and nephews and how we much we adore them…so it sometimes seems odd that we haven’t talked directly about our own situations.

I would absolutely be happy to talk should any of our friends wish to, but at the same time it’s nice to have a group of friends who don’t have children and with whom we talk about many other things other than why we don’t have children – topics such as travel, hobbies, and so forth. And that we are not “distracted” (that sounds horrible, but I can’t think of another word at the moment) by children.

Does that make sense?

It’s not that I don’t want to spend time with my friends who have children – I most certainly do – but having this group of friends kind of makes it feel like it’s completely normal to not have them.

I am very, very grateful for this group of people!

Cleland and children...

There is a wonderful place in South Australia, in the Adelaide Hills, called Cleland Wildlife Park. Whenever we go there, or anywhere where there are animals to be truthful, my inner child comes out to play. I love animals and quite often ask random strangers if I can pat their dog.

A few weeks ago Kirby and I took the daughter of our friends, Jess, and one of her friends from school, Georgina, to Cleland. It was for Jess’ birthday, which was actually in June, but the year was so unexpectedly busy for all of us that we were only able to find a day to go recently.

I love spending time with the children of our friends and family. The children are all different ages – from six months old to thirteen years old. The stages they go through, the interests they develop, the characteristics they have, are all so fascinating.

It is true that we would have loved to watch our own children change, develop and grow over the years. I often think about what they would be doing now and one of them, the child that would have come from our first cycle of IVF, would have been starting school next year. I can never forget our children and I wouldn’t want to. As the years pass I will think about them and how they would have been turning thirteen, eighteen, forty, and sixty. I will wonder what they might have done with their lives and what they would have been interested in. I will always wonder about them and keep them in my heart.

We are so fortunate, especially because we can’t have our own kids, to have so many children in our lives – children that we love so very much.

Jess and Georgina absolutely amazed me with their imaginative play in the car on the way to Cleland, with their tender attention to the different animals at the park, with their humour, with their sense of adventure, and with the knowledge they have about wildlife and the environment.

Both girls are nine years old, but they quite capably told the koala keeper, when they were getting a photo with a koala, what koalas eat and how they only eat certain eucalyptus trees, and how koalas use their noses to know which leaves they should eat. The koala keeper looked at us and said “Well I guess my job is done!” I think she was pleased with how much the girls knew.

I don’t know what our children would have been like or what they would have been interested in, but I suspect they may have loved animals if they took after me even a little bit. Whoever they would have been, I would have been delighted if they had the loving, interested, compassionate, and funny characteristics that both Jess and Georgina have.

I would have been absolutely delighted.

I love you Jess and Georgina.

Grandma...

I’ve recently reconnected with one of my best friends from school.

We spent many hours in our teenage years walking to and from the local grocery store in the country town that she lived in singing Guns n Roses, The Beatles, and AC/DC songs – well, sometimes they were our versions of songs. Instead of “it’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock n roll” we sang “it’s a long way to the shop if you want a sausage roll.”

We were cool… At least we thought so at the time. Our fashion, when not at school, consisted of basic t-shirts, checkered flannel shirts, and jeans which were ripped at the knees. We didn’t bother with fancy hair or makeup. We adopted a dog from the local fair and brought him back to her place, where her parents begrudgingly let her keep him.  I’ll never forget Ben!

My friend played guitar and sang amazingly well. I sang too, but amazingly terribly.  But that didn’t matter.

We went to another school when our school was closed for the day. Our teachers and parents thought that it was wonderful that we came up with the idea of attending another school for the day to experience what it was like.  Ummm…our intention wasn’t really to experience another school…we just wanted to meet boys…

We chose a mechanics class for one of our school subjects. Once again, so that we could meet boys…

The first time I went to the city without my parents was with her. We ended up not coming home when we should have. It wasn’t our fault…really…  Our parents got together to try and work out what they were going to do with us, and we were out in the backyard deciding that we would run away to the sand hills near my home to live. Surely they’d never find us in a 0.325 km2 conservation park about a kilometre away from my house!

My friend has just become a grandmother to a little boy.

It is so unbelievable to think that the little girl who led me astray in the 1980s is now a grandma. Okay – maybe we led each other astray…

I gave her some things (cups, bibs, etc) that we had here for Hugo when he was a baby to have at her house for when her grandson comes to visit. I also gave her two romper suits. These romper suits were ones that I bought for our babies in 2008. Ones that we never got to use for our children.

I am so grateful that my friend has come back into my life and that a part of what I had planned for our babies can become a part of the life of her grandson.

She asked me whether I would like to come up with her and visit her grandson in the next few weeks.

Gee…let me think…

YES!

Turning 40...

Here’s a very important tip when making a curry. If you are using a hand held blender to make the sauce make sure that the blender is turned off before you try to take one blade off to replace it with the one you need. Otherwise, like me last night, you’ll end up with an interesting cut on your finger which will really, really, really hurt and make you wonder if you are going to spend the night in the emergency department!

Fortunately my finger stopped bleeding quickly and I didn’t need stitches. 

And a positive I can take out of the incident was that Kirby had to finish making dinner!

I think it’s fair to blame my lack of attention to on turning 40 in the past week.  I’m officially over the hill now…so it’s only to be expected…

Of course I’m joking. At times I am just clumsy – I was clumsy in my teens, my twenties, and my thirties.

Turning 40, for me, is a milestone – it is not the end of anything, but is the beginning of something new. I told people before my birthday that it was just a number, but I don’t feel like that anymore. It is more than that – it is a time for changing the basis of my life.

My life was very different to now when I turned thirty. I was living in my lovely one bedroom apartment with my darling girl, Minerva. I was single and wondering whether staying single was a path I should actively pursue. I was in the fifth year of a job as a student advocate – which was a job I adored and I still miss (much of this is to do with the people I worked with). I had my friends and family and I was enjoying life.

But, even though I could see myself staying single I still had that deep desire to meet my life partner and have children of my own. Many of my friends were committing to their partners or getting married and/or having children. The reminder of what I really wanted was all around me.

I had no idea of the mountainous adventure that lay before me in the coming decade. What a ride!

Here’s a quick summary. Ready?

I met Kirby and moved in with him and then we bought an old bungalow together which we planned to renovate. I sold my lovely little apartment. I gained a whole new set of family and friends that came with Kirby. Kirby and I were married. We were blessed with new nieces and nephews (through both family and friends). I lost touch with friends I thought would be life-long and made new friends who I believe will really be life-long. My beloved Nan died. We brought home our gorgeous little Ari (not so little now!) and adopted our funny little Odi. We gave a home to one of my colleague’s cats (Felix). We looked after my sister-in-law’s cat, Frankie, for what was to be a few months, but seven years later she is still living with us. I was made redundant from my advocacy job due to the organization I was working at being closed down. My Dad was seriously ill and nearly died. I tried to run a dog training franchise without much success. I’ve had two or three bouts of serious depression which lasted a couple of months each. I’ve had three or four other jobs all in administrative roles. Kirby and I realized we were having trouble conceiving a child. We lost two babies to very early miscarriage. We tried IVF but the two embryos that were transferred into me died which devastated us. I started working for myself as an editor. We went on a dream holiday to New York. I completed a Masters in Creative Writing. Through some kind of unconscious unfolding we realized we wouldn’t be trying IVF again. I’ve lost touch with family members who I was close to and miss terribly. We moved house to be closer to our nephew, and because we realized our old house and the constant need to repair it wasn’t for us. Our Minerva died after a short illness. I went on a holiday all by myself to Thailand to Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary.

Throughout all of this I have been constantly trying to define my identity and my spiritually. I’ve tried to pick one type of spirituality (or religion) from Buddhism, Hinduism, Yoga, various forms of Paganism, and Christianity. I’ve read numerous books on being happy and on positive thinking. I’ve sat down with pen and paper and tried to draw a path to a life where I would be content and where I would have a constant link to something higher than myself. I tried to get to a place where I would finally have everything about my life sorted out. I thought about myself a lot. I was completely immersed in the self-help movement.

I think much of this trying to define everything has partially been because of being unable to have children. Something so huge that I was sure would be part of Kirby and my lives just didn’t happen and in response I tried to grab hold of the other aspects of my life so they wouldn’t slip away and so that I could find some kind of identity when I realized I wouldn’t  be a mother. I needed a new meaning for my life.

Something has changed recently. I think it started before I went to Thailand but it became clearer while I was in that amazing country. I’ve been spending so much time on myself that I am missing the real life that is all around me. I am missing the people, the experiences, the just being, the emotions, the failures, the success, the chance encounters…it’s true I have seen all of these things but I haven’t been fully immersed in them because I have been afraid that I will be wrong.

It’s utter rubbish really. The whole thing is just crazy. I spent most of my time trying so hard to fit into a mold of what I thought I should be and what I thought my life should be that I ended up twisted and tormented.

When I was in Thailand, especially when I was at the elephant sanctuary, I saw people who had very little but they were happy. Sure they strived to have the necessities of life and they had goals, but they were happy while they were waiting to see what their lives would bring. They didn’t need some book telling them how to work themselves out. They didn’t need some self-help guru harping on about how positive thinking and intent would ensure everything they wanted would come to them. They just got on with it. They worked, they smiled, they wept, they helped each other out, they shared with each other and with me what little they had, and they spent time with their families and friends just being in the open spaces under their home-made homes.

It’s opened my eyes to just how self-centered I was being. I was constantly thinking about what would be in it for me if I did something or shared something. I kept my stuff to myself and worried about whether the curtains we had were okay and whether the house was clean enough to meet other people’s standards (which were imagined standards by me). It just doesn’t make sense to me, anymore, to live like this.

While I’m not going to let our house become a dirty mess, and from time to time I will reflect on what is going on in my life, I won’t be letting these things get in the way of living.

It’s okay to reflect and to read books on improving life, and it is definitely okay to have a connection to that something greater than me, but at some point I have to get on with living. I have to take risks in reaching out to people, I have to let things go, I have to love the people in my life, I have to let people go when they need to, I have to weep and laugh, be angry and be at peace, and let my emotions have a healthy reign on me sometimes. All I have to do is be and love people and animals and life – just the way it all is. I have to let go of controlling everything in my life and taking responsibility for things that are just not in my control, while having passion for those things I choose that I can perhaps do something about.

I have tried hard, in my thirties, to sort myself out.  But, I realize now that nothing in life is ever irrevocably sorted out. And I mean absolutely nothing. At the beginning of my thirties, and especially when I met Kirby, I thought I knew where my life was going.

At the beginning of my forties I have no idea what life has in store for me.  So it’s time to let it go and just see what happens and not be so serious about myself. It really is liberating.

Anniversaries...

Eight years ago I was having a breakfast of croissants, juice, and coffee with my Mum and Dad and three of my closest friends at the old house Kirby and I used to own. After our breakfast we were going to the hairdresser where my friends and I would have our hair and make-up done.

After that we would come back home and I would put on my beautiful white dress which reminded me of autumn, and my friends would put on their stunning pale green dresses.

Dad and I would then get into a 1957 Bentley and my friends would get into a Royal Daimler Limousine which would take us to the Adelaide Town Hall where Kirby and I would be married in front of our family and friends.

I can’t believe it has been eight years already, but at the same time when I think of everything that has happened it couldn’t possibly be less than eight years because there wouldn’t have been time for it all.

Our anniversary is always a strange kind of day. A celebration mixed with tinges of wistfulness. I love Kirby so much and the 8^th of April is a celebration of that love and the day that we committed to each other for exactly who we were and who we were to become. But there are two shades of wistfulness that come about as well, and one of them I’ve only realized exists in the past year or two.

The most obvious source of wistfulness is that if we had been successful with our very first round of IVF our baby would have been due on about the 8^th of April 2009. We did not get to the stage of egg collection and there was no embryo transfer, but nevertheless I think about the “what if”. It would have been awesome to be celebrating the fifth birthday of our child as we celebrate the eighth anniversary of our marriage.

The other font of wistfulness, which I have only realized in the past few years, is that our anniversary is cause to look back at a time when we were certain about what our lives would be like today.

We were sure that by now we would have children, that we would still be in our old house and have renovated it, and that we would both have satisfying careers (I thought at the time that I could be working in human resources) which would also give us a work/life balance for our kids. We saw family holidays, children’s birthday parties, kindergarten, mess, finger paintings on the fridge, little tiny beds and teddy bears, and toys everywhere.

Sometimes I think we were very naïve when we got married, but we weren’t really. There was no reason for us to think that we wouldn’t have children. We actually still have no reason as to why we couldn’t have children. We assumed that it would happen, just like it had for so many couples we knew.

We really had a fairy tale romance during those first two years. After so much time searching we had found each other. We bought a house together within three months, were engaged two months after that, and we were married within eighteen months of meeting each other. Our families got along so well, and I felt I belonged with Kirby’s friends immediately, as did he with mine.

Why would we even dream, when everything was so amazing and we knew we were soul mates, that we wouldn’t be able to have children?

Yet, here we are. Eight years later and we don’t have the children and the life we thought we would have.

We are happy with our lot. We have an honest, trusting, and loving relationship. We have wonderfully supportive family and friends. We have new dreams and plans. We have our crazy fur and fin kids. We have our nephews and nieces. We have our friends’ children. We have a lovely home, live in a beautiful area, and we have food on the table. Life, compared with those of so many, is good.

Still, I think it is okay to feel happy for our anniversary and wistful for our children every year on the 8^th of April.

I will be writing two more blog entries this week as there are two other topics I want to talk about. One will be about dates and the other will be about stars.

Before I end this blog entry I want to share something beautiful that happened in this past week. My friend was over with her three year old daughter. Out of nowhere the little girl threw her arms around my neck and said “I love you”. This is what makes life good.

Nothing good comes from giving up...

There is a fantastic website called Mama Mia, which has articles on many different issues – societal, health, fashion, relationships, etc.

One of the stories in the past week was on a celebrity who has had a baby after 20 rounds of IVF and at the age of 49. I wrote about this in a blog entry last year. She and her husband were interviewed after the birth of their child and one of the comments was “nothing good comes from giving up.”

When I read this I was deeply upset and angry at this comment. I wrote the following on Facebook to share my distress with my friends and family:

“Sorry - feeling hurt right now. I'm glad that Mary Coustas has had a healthy baby after 20 rounds of IVF, but her saying that "nothing good comes from giving up" is a bit of a kick in the guts to those like me and Kirby who have had no success in having children - even with IVF. I guess it's different if you have endless money...but we don't have a spare $70000 to spend on trying and trying again...and, yes, we still have lots of good in our lives, even though we "gave up". We have each other, we have our nephews and nieces, we have our fur-kids...we have lives that are different to what we thought we would have, but we still feel blessed. But we still hurt sometimes, and we do have the endless wound of "what if", and statements like this feel like someone is sticking a needle into that wound and jabbing it around. Okay - rant over!”

My distress has diminished greatly, and I have been amazed at how my comment has been received.

Many of my friends and family have shown their support through liking my Facebook post, commenting that it is not fair that we can’t have children, and even sending hugs over the internet if they are live far away from me. I realize just how blessed I am that I can speak my mind, from a place of pain, and receive comfort and love from my friends and family.

I also posted this comment on Mama Mia, and many of the responses to my comment, as well as many (though not all) of the comments by other people, have made me realize that I am not alone. Sometimes I feel like my thoughts are nasty – that I am terrible for thinking what I do, and that I am even more horrible for writing down my thoughts and making them public.

But, I’ve realized this week that what I write, what I have written above, speaks to many people who are struggling with the same thoughts and feelings.

Sometimes it seems like such a lonely journey in which I feel like a villain for what I think and how I feel, but I have realized I am far from alone. And I’ve realized that I am not a villain. I am just human.

Friendships...

Late last year I was working through some issues that were particularly painful for me. There were more than a few nights lost to tears and sleeplessness. I am very lucky that I have Kirby to talk to and share my thoughts and feelings with, but what I wanted most at that time was a friend to talk to. I wanted to go and have a cuppa with a girlfriend I had known for years and cry my heart out. But I didn’t. I couldn’t think of who to call, or rather I could think of friends to call but I never picked up the phone. I never let them know what was happening and that I needed them.

When we were younger it was easy to catch up with friends on the spur of the moment. A morning phone call, “Coffee?”, and we were ready to go that afternoon. This was especially the case with my friends who were also my colleagues early last decade. Around lunchtime, a head would pop through my office doorway and no words needed to be said – we headed out of the office for lunch or coffee or just a quick walk.

Now it’s different. Most of my friends, especially those I made in early adulthood, have children of their own. They are busy – and I mean really busy. They don’t have as much time as I do and their priorities are, as they should be, their families. Many of their activities and social outings are with other parents with children of similar ages. This is very important, of course, because parents need the opportunity to talk with each other and share the experiences, knowledge, joy, and frustration of parenting. Their main source of support in this time of life, in raising children, is friends who also have children.

But, sometimes I struggle with that, in that I feel I am not part of the group because I don’t have children.

I really hope that my friends with children don’t get upset at this, as I love them all dearly, but there are times when it is very, very hard for me. And I do feel excluded sometimes even though I know that is not the intent – and in thinking about it that exclusion exists solely in my own mind – it isn’t real. But, I’ll give you a couple of examples so you know what I mean. A few years ago we were trying to catch up with two families at the same time, both of who have kids, but it was difficult to come up with a date that we were all free. The months passed by, and we found out that the families we wanted to see had caught up together without us at the beach. We had no idea and at the time I wondered if we had done something wrong. Another example is that it is very rare for us to be invited to our friends’ children’s birthday parties. I sometimes think that if we had kids we would be invited. I do understand that there has to be limits to numbers at parties, and that many of our friends are torn about inviting us as they don’t want us to be reminded of what we don’t have – which, in thinking about it, really is thoughtful.

I guess, from all of this, I feel different to my friends who have children. They have a different type of life to me, and lives that are often far busier than mine. And that is where my problem lies – I say “my” problem because the problem rests entirely with me, and not my friends.

I didn’t call any of my friends last year when I was struggling because every time I thought I would call one or the other I thought they would be too busy, I didn’t want to burden them with my problems, I didn’t want them to think that I only wanted to see them when I was in difficulty, and I was afraid. It sounds ridiculous now that I have written it down. I can see very clearly how all of this is my issue and not theirs. I know that if I had called any of my beautiful friends they would have, if they possibly could have, been there for me.

I sometimes feel that because I don’t have children I should have everything sorted out – that I should be the one who provides the support to my friends, rather than the other way around. In a way this is an insult to my friends, who love me and don’t need me to put across the facade that my life is all good. I realise that I need to trust them more. That I need to remember that they are my friends – that they care, and that they are willing for me to call up and say “help” sometimes.

I need to learn how to ask for help. That is what friendships are for.

Empty arms and sweet cats…

The other day I was on Facebook and checking out the activities and latest photos of my friends.

It suddenly struck me that most of the photos I was looking at were of my school friends with their children.

There was one photo in particular where my friend was pulling a face in a photo with her son and daughter (they were also pulling faces). It was a gorgeous snapshot of an ordinary, but special, family moment.

My arms suddenly felt very empty.

It doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but sometimes my arms ache to hold our children. I feel like there is a heaviness in my arms where they should be, and I almost feel that if I held my arms out long enough they would come into being and smile up at me.

I could almost believe it if it weren’t for the heaviness that is in my heart because they are not here with us.

That night I went to bed and had a bit of a cry. Our cat, Minerva, was curled up on the pillow next to me as always, and then our black cat, Frankie, jumped up on the bed with a chirrup and stared at me. She then nestled her body and head into the crook of my arm and put her paw over my stomach (as much as she could anyway). I’ve never heard her purr so loudly!

Frankie

Minerva

My animals always amaze me by how they can pick up when I am upset and will sit with me and do what they can in their own ways to comfort me. It’s especially touching when I am missing my children.

I should add, though, that later on when I had stopped crying Frankie bit me because I wasn’t patting her in quite the right way! That’s my girl!

You won't believe this, but the song The Lovecats” by “The Cure” just came on!! Great song! 

You don’t know unless you have kids…

I get quite frustrated and upset when people say or write this statement followed by whatever it is that they think people who don’t have kids don’t know.

Okay – it’s true that because I don’t have children I can’t possibly know exactly what it is like to parent a child 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I know that. But I’m not totally ignorant about children either.

These kinds of all or nothing statements completely disregard the knowledge I do have about children and the feelings I have for the children, and other people, in my life.

There are many things people who don’t have children supposedly don’t know.  I want to mention a few of them:

Kids are gross and dirty. Trust me – I know. While changing my three week old niece’s diaper she did an almighty, runny, smelly poo and then stuck her foot in it. It’s not the only time I’ve changed pooey or wet diapers, or cleaned up snot, or wiped up vomit (sometimes all three substances end up on me…) And, oh my goodness, the smell of poo when children are teething! Nothing else quite like it…

Kids take their time. When you’ve sat with a child for an hour trying to get them to take a few more mouthfuls of their dinner, it’s not that far of a leap to realise this is a regular occurrence.

Kids need you. On many occasions when I’ve looked after children there have been times when whatever I was doing was put aside to hold a crying child, a child having a tantrum, a child who wants a cuddle, a child who is tired, or a child that really needs me to play with them right now.

Kids are too honest – meaning they may say things that hurt feelings. I’ve been told that I didn’t need that extra biscuit by one of my nieces. I ate it anyway - it was chocolate...

Kids break stuff and hurt themselves. Yep – we’ve lost ornaments and dishes to the hands of children, and the kids we love have taken tumbles and falls while we were looking after them. That’s why we have children’s paracetamol, Disney character band aids, sunscreen and insect repellent for children, cough medicine for children, and a dust pan and broom at the ready, in our own home.

As a parent you would put your life before theirs – you would plead that your life be taken in place of theirs. You would put yourself in danger to make them safe. I would do anything to make our nieces and nephews safe, even risking my own life – and I would do that for our friends’ children too.  I don’t have to be a parent to have that level of protective instinct and love.

Speaking of love – one of my least favourite sayings is “You don’t know what real love is until you’ve had children.” Seriously? So my love for Kirby, my love for my family and friends is not real? I actually find this offensive. I love my nieces and nephews with a love that is so tremendous that I sometimes feel like I must be shining with a boundless happiness. That is real love as far as I’m concerned. And, let’s face it; there are parents who don’t love their children. Parenthood isn’t a guaranteed path to knowing what real love is.

Nobody can know what it is like to live anybody else’s life. I get it that I don’t know what being a twenty four hour, seven day a week parent is like – but I do have knowledge and feelings and fears about the children in my life. These are real and I will not let them be disregarded. My experiences and feelings are mine. I feel deeply, I care deeply, I love deeply, and I know stuff.

Life passes by...

Twenty one years ago, almost to the minute, I was studying for my final high school exams which were being held the following day. My parents were both at work and I had books, pens and papers scattered over the dining room table.

Suddenly the roller door to the garage went up. I looked outside to see Mum and Dad in the car – Mum’s face was white and Dad’s expression was grim. Something was wrong.

Mum and Dad came inside and told me to sit down. I didn’t want to because I knew when I did I would hear words I didn’t want to hear. I had no idea what, and I didn’t want to know.

I sat down and Dad said “Ben was killed in a motorcycle accident last night.”

I remember feeling like I had been punched in the chest, I couldn’t breathe, and there was no sound from my mouth – no scream, no cry, nothing.

Ben and me

 Ben was (is) my older cousin. We actually didn’t know he was my cousin until after he died – Mum and Ben’s Mum found that we had a common recent ancestor about four years later. Even so, I had always felt that he was like a cousin to me.

Ben was only twenty one when he died.

Ben has been gone now for the same number of years that he was on the Earth. I wonder what he could have and would have done by now if he had lived. And, it’s made me reflect on what I’ve done in the past twenty one years, and who I am now.

I have done many things – got three degrees including a Masters, owned my own apartment, worked at different jobs, fought my way through different health conditions – even if it is to the point of living with them rather than getting rid of them. I’ve found my soul mate and got married. Obviously, with Kirby, I’ve gone through trying to have children and the hope, fear and grief that accompany that journey.

This is all important stuff, and I’m not dismissing any of it as every single thing I’ve done has brought me here and helped to make me the person I am.

The only thing I wonder about now is – if this is me, is this the me I want to be? Without a doubt I want to be married to Kirby, I love my friends, my pets, my family – but who am I really in all of this? What do I want to do with this life?

I think I’m going through the kind of crisis that most people go through when they are around my age – the kind of crisis that leads one to wonder, “Is this it?” A few months ago one of my precious friends said to me “this isn’t what I signed up for.” I can relate with this right at the moment. Life is good, don’t get me wrong, but I want to do something more – I want to be something more.

The only problem is that I don’t really know what something is.

I’ve always thought that since we can’t have children I would do something else – something that matters – with my life. In the past few years I’ve thought about it, talked about it, made some steps towards it – but then I seem to get a bit scared and run back to hide behind a rock or disappear behind a grove of trees.

My brother, Paul, me and Ben

Well – enough already. I need to get some gumption and start doing. I need to stop thinking and start acting. I need to stop worrying about whether I’m on the right path, what people will think, and anything else that is holding me back.

I need to do this for Ben and I need to do it for our kids.

What I wish for her…

There is a precious little eight year old girl in our lives who is the daughter of our friends. Her name is Jess. She is so bright, caring, and funny, and she has a keen interest in the world and everything in it.

Just recently Jess told me about the cans and bottles she was collecting from her home to take to recycling, and she asked me to guess what she would be using the money from the cans and bottles for. Before I could make a guess she said “I’m giving it to a tiger sanctuary, or was it lions? One of those.” She amazes me.

A few months ago I took Jess up to Monarto Zoo. It is an amazing place where all sorts of animals have large areas in which to roam in an environment as close to their natural habitats as possible. The zoo has cheetahs, African painted dogs, chimpanzees, meerkats, and many more animals. We met up with my parents and my nieces, and some friends of ours and their children at Monarto.

As we drove up the road leading to Monarto, Jess asked what the grass was which covered an open area alongside the road. I told her that it was native grass that goes grey when it doesn’t get enough water, but when it rains it will come all green again. Jess said excitedly, “I’ve never seen grey grass before!”

A few weeks ago Jess’s Mum and I were talking about her upcoming fortieth birthday and her plans to have a costume party where people come as what they want to be when they grow up. Jess joined in the conversation and said she would like to own an animal sanctuary. I said to her, why not? She is smart, she loves animals and other people do it, so why not her? I can see Jess doing something in conservation or in helping out humanity – something that will be really special.

On this past Saturday we had a BBQ at our home and Jess was there. We were talking about her Mum’s party again and I asked Jess what she wanted to come as, and she said a princess.

I must admit it floored me a little. I thought she was going to say a zoo keeper or veterinarian or something similar. It struck me as unlike her. But, then I remembered what childhood is really about.

Childhood is about exploring different things – interests, places, friends, identities. Children try on different selves, really, and see which ones fit and which ones don’t, and this is very important. There are so many paths for children, and one of the most common for little girls is an interest in fairies and princesses. It is quite normal.

The biggest hurdle, though, is for the child not to lose themselves in the process of exploring the options before them.

I truly believe that Jess’s heart and soul are in the realm of caring for the world – the environment, animals, people. Her face shines from the light that resides in her heart when she talks about these kinds of things.

So, what is my wish for her?

That she tries on different ways of being in the world. That she takes enough risks to find herself, with the sense to stay safe in her journey.

And, mostly, that she comes home to her true self when adulthood arrives.

I wish this for all of the children in our lives.

This is MY life...

One of the hardest things about not having kids is sharing your plans and dreams with those who do have kids. We’ve had to rethink our lives and create new dreams that don’t include having our own children. Our dreams include travel, me being a writer, Kirby developing computer games, doing volunteer work and pursuing other adventures. Many of these ambitions would be very difficult, if not impossible, if we had children.

A year or two ago we were out to dinner with a few friends (all who have children) and the conversation was mainly about children. Kirby and I had recently decided that we would like to go to Alaska to see the glaciers. I was very excited and wanted to share this with my friends and did so. It is a long term dream, but one we are steadily working towards. The response from the group was to say how they couldn’t do that because they had kids, and then the conversation turned straight back to being about their children.

I love hearing about the children our friends and family have, but it is not our life. The life Kirby and I have is different to what we thought it was going to be and we have worked hard through our grief at not having children and have worked hard to develop lives that have meaning, goals and happiness.

I want to share our anticipation about our plans with our friends and family, but sometimes it feels as though because we don’t have children our news and our plans are not interesting enough. Sometimes I want to share what’s going on in my life – and sometimes listening ears are not there, or they are there only for people who have similar lives to them  – in that they have children.

Don’t get me wrong – most of our family and friends are very keen to hear about our plans and excitement at those plans and we are very, very lucky.

Perhaps I’m just in a down mood today – you know – when you see the negative rather than the positive.

One of our babies would have been five in a few weeks. I can’t talk about him or her and their first day at school and their attempts at calisthenics or swimming or whatever else they would have been interested in. I can talk about all the children in our lives who I love so much. But, sometimes I feel very lonely in this life – so very different to most of those around us.

Next time I will be more positive – I promise…