Author: Suzanne Bearne / Source: Positive News
How do you cope if you want children, but discover you’re unable to have them? We find out how people who found themselves in this position are rethinking what gives their lives meaning
There were three days in between Stephanie Trussler hearing the news that she was infertile and starting her blog, Justovaryacting.
It was 2016 and Trussler was 26 when she discovered that she was already going through the menopause. She had been diagnosed with premature ovarian failure and the blog was a way to express her heartbreak.“It was really difficult to go through – I was psychologically distressed,” recalls Trussler, a support worker. “It’s a really isolating process, but the blog was a good way for me to get out how I was feeling without having to talk face to face with someone, and to raise awareness of something I’d never heard of before.”
The same year, she set up a dedicated Facebook page, which is now followed by 500 people from countries including Australia, the US and China. “It can be isolating, so reading other people’s experiences has been fantastic,” she says. “There’s a real sense of unity.”
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Whether due to fertility issues, being with a partner who does not want children, or simply not meeting the right person, many people who are involuntarily childless face deep grief: the mourning of a child or children they will never have.
Trussler’s project is not the only one. A host of organisations have emerged in recent years to support people in similar situations, including UK-based support project Ageing Without Children, which gives a voice to the millions of older people who are without the support of children; and World Childless Week, a focus on the mental health experiences of people who cannot have children.
The US has the NotMom Summit, billed as the only international conference for and about women without children by choice or by chance.Reading other people’s experiences has been fantastic. There’s a real sense of unity
A service was held the day before Mother’s Day last year at Liverpool Cathedral. ‘Mother’s Day Runaways’ was organised by the Revd Sonya Doragh, who is unable to have children as a result of contracting chlamydia after being raped at 17. Though she has gone on to adopt three boys, Doragh describes the “bizarre mix of grief and lament” that strikes her each year on Mothering Sunday and how the service, created in partnership with Lizzie Lowrie from Saltwater and Honey – an online group for people to share their experiences of childlessness – helps her acknowledge the “sadness in the background” of her and her children’s stories.
In the UK, some 17 per cent of women born in 1970 are childless, according to the Office for National Statistics. And childlessness in…
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