Can you really connect over childlessness?

This is often a conversation I have with clients, is childlessness really something people can connect over, in much the same way parents bond over their children. And like any question of this nature, the answer is complicated and not a one-size-fits-all, because it relies on us learning to understand ourselves a bit.

Let’s step back a moment though, because I never thought I’d be thankful for my childlessness, but as my life has grown around my grief and it takes up less of my thoughts and feelings, I’ve come to recognise that one of the things (yes, multiple not singular), I’ll always be grateful to my childlessness for is the friendships I’ve made in this community.

When I look back to before my childlessness, the one thing I notice is just how few friends I had. And by friends, I mean those people that made it into my inner circle, not the outer edges, or the dark fringes of vaguely being aware of who I was. I mean the ones that I allowed to get close and so really knew the real me, behind the mask, the alcohol, and the spikiness.

I have a group of friends that go way back, who mostly don’t have children, which is quite surprising, and they’ll always have a special place in my friendship group, but even they couldn’t always be there for me as I grappled with my identity and my sense of self during and after my fertility journey. In fact, there was quite a long period where I needed to withdraw from even them, because they couldn’t sit with the changes in me.

And I think that is part of the pain of childlessness, the withdrawal, the need to have space and time to ourselves, while we work out who we are, and how we want to rock up in life or even what that life looks like. So, it can be quite a lonely process, which led me (and perhaps some of you) to believe that I was always going to be lonely.

But that was what I loved about our guests on the Full Stop podcast Episode 53, Cecilia and Janine because they too have been able to form a friendship from their childlessness. I loved the way they talked about how they had been through a Gateway Women Plan B together and they had each other while they healed and that this was the springboard into their friendship. And it’s a truly deep and meaningful friendship too.

I really see this healing process in a less defined way with my friendship with Michael and Berenice. When I listen to the early episodes of the podcast, not only do I hear a lot of nervousness and uncertainty in how I turned up, I also hear a lot of anger around my childlessness. There’s no denying, I didn’t want to be in this community but at that point I was up to my eyeballs in my grief. There simply wasn’t any room for any other feelings, or experiences at that time. And if anyone had come at me with ‘gratitude’, they would’ve had their ears ringing from the tongue lashing that would’ve evoked, I can tell you.

Although it came out as anger, the truth of it was I was in a world of pain, too much to be able to see anything but that pain. But what I notice about letting that anger happen and be worked through, is that a softer more approachable me has come into being, which means I can let people get a little closer.

And that’s what I love about my friendship with Michael and Berenice, because they’ve seen me when I’m struggling, when I’m feeling on top of the world and everything in-between. More recently when I took an employed role at a bank, perhaps the biggest misstep I’ve taken since my trying for children, they were able to accept that I needed to take a step back, be alone for a bit and then come back when I was ready. They completely accepted what I could and couldn’t do when I was in that space and, it’s because of that, I know they’ve got my back.

I‘m also lucky that I have other friends in this community, who have also got my back too, and there are others that are parents (although I’m very choosy), and others that are child-free. But I get something special from all of them because I can open up and be me. This in turn means I’m finally able to offer these people the same back. I can do something I’ve rarely if ever been able to do in the past, I can be completely myself and vulnerable.

And this only came about because of my childlessness. That’s not to say it has come easy, because it hasn’t. I’ve had to work hard in counselling to be able to be me, but none of that would’ve happened had I become a parent. In fact, without my childlessness, I’d not be a counsellor, I’d not be a presenter on a podcast and I’d never have met Michael, Berenice or my other friends. In fact, I’d lay money on the fact I’d still be a lonely, spikey person, wondering why that was.

Which brings me back to that original question: can people connect over their childlessness? Yes, absolutely they can, but first we have to understand a little about ourselves and where we are in the process of our grief. Once we do that, we have room to understand that everyone is different and in their own grief. Once we can accept that we’re no longer who we were, we can start to connect again and recognise that there’ll be people out there in the community who get us, and that we can be ourselves with, as long as we’ve made the space in our grief to meet them where they are too.

Sarah, Co-Director and Presenter.