I don’t have kids. So what now?

I'm exploring what makes my heart sing - and I bloomin' love it. I hope you can too

Photo by Chris on Unsplash

Not having children wasn’t an active choice for me: I always thought I would have them and the reason I haven’t is because I didn’t meet anyone I wanted to attempt to get pregnant with during the available window.

(Perhaps there was an element of choice there. I chose not to have kids with the ‘wrong’ man – for me, no relationship is better than the wrong relationship. Then, what I call the fertility headfuck approached in my early 40s I briefly explored trying IVF on my own and chose not to do it. I have also chosen not to pursue fostering or adoption.)

Anyway, I’m kind of a blend of childless and childfree – childless because I wanted children and don’t have them; childfree because now that I don’t, I have had to think about what life I want to create. And it’s one that I bloody love right now. (Caveat: I have mixed feelings about the childless/free terms. See this excellent Guardian piece by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett for an exploration of that.)

The reason I harp on about all of this stuff is because it’s COMPLICATED. And it can be highly emotional, experienced out of sight or felt to be embarrassing or shameful if you don’t have children but wanted them. And the more I/we talk about this stuff, the more out in the open it will be and the more people will feel understood.

I am kind of lucky because I am now, in my 48^th year, out of the other side of the fertility headfuck. I feel like Jennifer Aniston (minus the hairstyle, abs and bank balance), who said in 2022 of hoping for children and it not happening: “I have zero regrets … I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, ‘Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.’ I don’t have to think about that anymore.” Yes.

But I want you to know that if you are reading this and feeling in the middle of all of that I get it. I harp on about this stuff because we NEED more people saying I DON’T HAVE KIDS AND THAT’S OK. Why? Because I think the pressure to have children can be huge, so huge that it’s sometimes easier to listen to the voices around you than work out what the inner voice is saying.

My inner voice used to panic and say to me: “Hurry up! Get on those apps or you’ll be a spinster forever! What if you don’t have kids? Who will you be then? How will you be fulfilled? You won’t fit in with your friends any more because they have kids and you don’t! You’ll be an old maid shunned by everyone!”

This I now realise was me internalising what I perceived to be everyone else’s expectations. Nobody in my family ever asked or pressured me to try to procreate. My parents never told me they wanted grandchildren.

The overwhelming question in my head at that time was “What if?” but perhaps if I had been kinder and allowed myself to explore or imagine what kind of life I could create if I didn’t have children I might have been able to damp down all of those fears and not let them drive me to distraction. I might have been able to stop worrying and start letting things unfold naturally.

It’s only relatively recently that I’ve started to answer a different question. “What now?” Or, to paraphrase the poet Mary Oliver: What am I going to do with this one wild and precious life? It’s a question I think everyone should ponder and try to answer, kids or no kids.

For me the answer is: find out what makes my heart sing and do more of it. And I hope you can too.

This isn’t about eating fancy dinners and expecting fun all the time. It’s more about doing things that have meaning, or even applying joy to seemingly mundane things (even supermarket shopping: ooh Tesco, you’re full of ingredients I can buy to make myself delicious food. Get me a trolley!). It’s seeing the people I love. And tending to things. Nurturing my garden.

Turns out gardening on a cold, dull January afternoon - as I did today - is heart-filling. The sense of preparing for new life gives me joy. Noticing tiny buds on the hydrangeas, one of which was once in my grandma’s garden. Spreading my first batch of home-made compost on to the peonies. Pondering which bulbs are sprouting (it’s usually a surprise as I always forget to label them). Staying still, arms lolling, as two robins explored the flowerbeds for worms. I don’t know that much about gardening but what I do know I learnt from my mum, and I kind of do it instinctively.

Yesterday I got to hang out with my nephews. The younger one, aged five, was delighted that my mum had saved a miniature skittles set from a Christmas cracker. We made up a game where you had to blow the ball to knock down the pins. And, as we sat on the floor to play cards, my mum mentioned she was uncomfortable and my nephew got us cushions – on his own initiative. Then when the older one, seven, arrived from football we crept outside to see a wiry ginger cat waiting by the bird feeder. I treasured those couple of hours with the boys.

Since the start of the year other heart-singing things have included going to ecstatic dance events (I mentioned this the other week – like a sober rave where you dance like nobody is watching) and volunteering to be in the cast of an immersive theatre experience (You Me Bum Bum Train. Random title; life-changing show – read about it here – and sign up to volunteer here.) These things are fun in themselves, yet the sense of being part of a bigger thing is the joyful bit.

Dancing for me is a kind of spiritual expression that I couldn’t feel if the other dancers weren’t there. And the theatre is a charity initiative that actually changes the lives of those involved - including the audience. Last night I found out that some of the theatre people are also ecstatic dancers, and three of them have done retreats with the same person I did my new year one with. Heart-singing connections indeed.

I do not want these tales of my currently joyful life to seem smug, and I hope they don’t. And I do not want to suggest that if you’re a parent your life automatically has meaning, and if you’re not a parent you have to go and find it.

It’s FAR more complex than that. I’m also not saying things aren’t hard or emotional or tiring or boring or difficult for me sometimes. They are. But right now I am living a life I love, that I never thought I’d find or be able to create. I don’t have the answer to “What now?” but I’m just a little bit closer to it. I hope you are too.