Julia's Story
This is a story of a woman who wanted to be “normal”, but failed. So, she found another norm, and many others like herself. The story is simple: she wanted to be happy, have a family and raise her kids just as everybody else. It’s so easy, right? So normal…
Well, it is not. She never thought that what seemed easy for others wouldn’t be such for her – Becoming a mother.
She was raised in an ordinary family with traditional life values, and she didn’t ever think her future would be different. Childless future. Not by choice. Yes, this woman is me.
Hi, I’m Julia.
When I realized I would never be a mother, a world crushed down on me. The image of my entire life that I always had in my head, collapsed. It was scary to admit it to myself. I didn’t have a plan B simply because I never thought I would need one.
Everybody around me was having kids and their lives were becoming very different from mine. I felt alone, ashamed of my failure, and very scared of that unknown future I couldn’t even imagine. I knew nobody else who was childless: all of my and my husband’s friends have become parents. And we remained childless, no matter what we tried in terms of the medical help available to us. So, I saw our life not just different from others, but worse. We failed to achieve what others had no problem to achieve.
We will never be parents, will never know how our children would have looked like. Would our boy or girl have been dark haired brown eyed as my husband, or fair haired with grey eyes as myself? Nobody will ever call me Mom, I’ll never give the joy of a grandchild to my own mother, I’ll never become a grandmother myself.
Why?
What did I (or we) do wrong?
What didn’t we do that could have helped?
What else could we do? Or harder, or better, or differently?
And most importantly, what shall we do now? How will we live our life without kids? Is it even possible to live such a life, let alone be happy with it? Who would care about us when we’re old?
I’m the kind of person who likes to have a clear vision of things, and I desperately needed to find the answers to these existential questions. I didn’t know that there weren’t any. And here I am today, 7 years on, still asking myself, if I did something wrong.
And in the meantime, life is going on, and this is my only life. BTW, I believe in reincarnation because I like to think we all should get another chance. But this life, I want to accept it as it is, and be grateful for what I have. Like a famous quote that says, “Life is something that happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”.
I’ve gone through a massive inner transformation to be able to feel excited and enthusiastic about the future again, instead of looking back torturing myself with the most unnecessary “What if…” question.
I found out that there are many women like myself who are childless by circumstance, and the circumstances are limitless: physical and mental health issues, failed fertility treatments and miscarriages, ambivalence about motherhood during the fertile years, being single, being economically instable, ignorance about fertility issues, one’s own turbulent childhood or abusive family, miscommunication/misunderstanding with one’s partner about parenthood, etc … etc…
To my great surprise, I found that our childless group is numerous, we’re 20 to 25% of the global population!
I found the support communities for childless women, and amazing Jody Day, the founder of one of them. Jody has become my guiding light out of the darkness.
I managed to mentally reconnect with friends feeling no jealousy towards the dream that they do have, and I don’t. Our lives ARE different, but mine is not less worthy!
And most importantly, I’m starting to succeed in being kind to myself, and stop judging my past decisions.
Finally, I launched the Project that I called “Human Rocks”, emphasizing the strength and worthiness of my tribe, aiming at breaking the taboo and raising awareness about childlessness in the workplace, and in society in general. I can help businesses balance their family policies by taking care of the childless employees, whose interests are often underestimated and unrepresented compared to their colleagues who are parents, so very often we just suffer in silence having no one to talk to about our struggles.
https://www.youtube.com/@human-rocks
https://www.facebook.com/HR.humanrocks
I admit, I’d have preferred to swap all these for just a “normal” life of a mother. I didn’t choose being childless. But I still can choose to be curious, fulfilled, and happy. And I want to tell you, if you’re childless not by choice, you can do it, too.
Love,
Julia
