Grief.

It’s multi-layered.

Layer upon layer, stacked on top of each other, infused with memories that date back years, like ancient minerals threaded through rocks.

When we grieve for something in the here and now, this grief often triggers a deeper layer. Then this deeper grief triggers an even deeper layer and so on and so forth.

When we lose someone or something today, we grieve today’s loss alongside all the other losses from our past until the present day.

This understanding has proven helpful to me because often my grief can feel overwhelming. I’ve found it beneficial to untangle the past from the present and process the feelings respectively, rather than try and process them in one huge bundle.

This understanding has been especially helpful in relation to my childless grief.

My grief around not having children can be confusing because, unlike some childless-by-circumstance-not-by-choice women, I never really tried to have kids. I didn’t push it. I didn’t set my sights on it and go after it, like I have gone after other things in my life (careers, relationships etc.). I didn’t do my utmost to make it happen.

As I’ve shared previously on this blog and in my book, I’ve come to understand that I had huge ambivalence about motherhood, acquired in my own childhood, developed through studying my late mother closely, seeing her struggle, seeing how much she longed for freedom but bore so much responsibility (two young children to bring up on her own), seeing how much she yearned for a career, for adventure, for travel, but instead felt tied down, trapped, stuck, over-burdened.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t want that life for myself. I wanted what she had always wanted: adventure, independence, freedom and a career – and I went after those things with gusto.

When it came to babies, I didn’t go after them with gusto.

Like many women, I experienced a rude awakening in my late 30s – that shocking moment when I realised, all of a sudden, that I’d given my all to my career, that I was entirely single with no clue how to have a healthy relationship and that my fertility was hurtling towards a steep cliff.

I had my moments of panic when I desperately looked for a man with whom to procreate, paying little attention to whether he’d make a good long-term partner or not.

And I had another awakening in my early 40s – more of a slow dawning – when I began to connect with my ambivalence, with the push-pull, with the ‘I want this but I don’t want this’, ‘I want this but I’m terrified of this’, demonstrated perhaps by the way in which I fell for and kept falling for, despite my best efforts, a man who said he didn’t want children, a man I later chose to accept exactly as he was, love and marry and with whom I have found so much joy, love, laughter and contentment – with whom I have built a childfree life.

Now, in my early 50s, my childless grief stirs less and less. The decision to parent an anxious, active cocker spaniel called Layla Joy has given me a glimpse of what a struggle it would have been for me, for us, to care for children, to swap the freedom we’d both known all our adult lives for huge responsibility.

But now and then, another pregnancy strikes nearby, in my vicinity, in my neighbourhood, knocking me for six and my childless grief comes rushing towards me.

I let myself feel it, because it’s important to feel it, but I am also curious about it. I pause and I examine it carefully in the light of what I’ve written above – through the lens of my ambivalence about motherhood and my certainty that having children would have challenged me, challenged us, massively (alongside its undoubted rewards).

As I examine my grief, I ask these vital questions:

Is this my childless grief or my childhood grief?

Am I grieving the child I haven’t had or the childhood I didn’t have?

Am I longing for a child or longing for a different childhood?

Am I grieving the loss of a child today or am I grieving the multiple losses I and my inner child experienced in early life?

I think these are important questions to ask.

If I had been unaware that my longing for a child may, in part, be a longing for a different childhood, I may have pulled out all the stops to have a baby, only to find that the child didn’t fill the empty hole I felt inside.

That would have been a crushing discovery that no doubt would have triggered some form of post-natal depression, some kind of baby blues.

I would have been trying to fill the deep hole inside, the emptiness, with something that was the wrong shape, as I did with excess food and booze and work for many decades.

Round peg. Square hole. The round peg doesn’t fit and the hole remains.

The truth of this has become even more apparent since I began parenting our gorgeous pup, Layla. While I love her deeply and longed for a dog for years, one thing is now obvious to me: I thought she would be the missing piece in the puzzle. I thought she would fill the gap. I thought I needed a bigger family, more members in my tribe, in order to feel whole.

Now I see, with some sadness, that nothing was missing from my beautiful marriage. And the hole I was trying to fill with my furry dependant – the same hole I would have been trying to fill with a baby – remains, because it has a different shape.

It’s the emptiness I’ve felt ever since I was a tiny tot because certain vital needs weren’t met in my childhood, because there was a rupture, a disconnection, because I felt lost, unwelcome, unsafe.

The hole is on the inside, not on the outside. External fixes won’t work. It can only be filled from within, with self-love, self-care, self-parenting and connection, to myself, to something greater than myself and to others.

I wonder if these words resonate with you, dear Reader, especially if you are childless-not-by-choice.

If so, I offer you the following questions, as an act of service and an act of love:

Are you grieving the child you haven’t had or the childhood you didn’t have, or both?

Is your childhood grief amplifying your childless grief?

Is your longing for a child infused with your longing for a different childhood?

Is your loss of a child or of motherhood layered with all the other losses from your past?

If the answer is ‘Yes‘, or ‘Maybe‘, or ‘A little bit perhaps‘, I hope you receive this answer as good news.

In my case, this knowledge has helped to soften my childless grief, to lessen it, to spread it more thinly so it’s not so heavy, not so suffocating.

I hope it does the same for you.

This knowledge has also helped me to know, for sure, with absolute certainty, that the answer, the healing, is never on the outside and is always, always on the inside.

And, as I’m sure you know, that’s the same for you too.

Thank you for reading.

I send you love, compassion and healing and I welcome your reflections, in the comments below or to katherine@katherinebaldwin.com

Katherine x

Support Is Available

If you’d like my support on your journey of healing and growth, I am here for you and I have a number of offerings:

Finding Love as a Single, Childless Woman is a free online workshop I am hosting on Monday October 18th at 6:30 pm BST (a recording will also be available). Explore and register for free here.

I will soon be launching a membership community for women who are seeking support with self-love, finding and keeping healthy love and creating a life they love. Sign up to my love letters on my website and I’ll send you details in due course: www.katherinebaldwin.com

My first book, How to Fall Love, includes many tools to help you to connect to your feelings and overcome unhealthy patterns and behaviours, as well as the story of my personal journey of healing.

I have a series of transformational online courses to support you to build a healthy relationship with yourself and with others. Click here to explore my courses.

I work 1:1 with clients who are looking to create a healthy romantic relationship and/or build a fulfilling life. Explore my coaching offerings and book a free discovery call on my website.