The Unrealised Woman

When the same question can elicit a million different answers and one very different possible life

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I’m a sucker for a personal recommendation.

So, when Tiny Beautiful Things was recommended to me by several women I love and respect, you better believe I was at my local bookstore and walking out with a copy of the paperback in my hands faster than most people take to pick out an outfit for the day.

My friend Jody saw my story sharing my latest read, and told me the series was something that I simply must watch. And so, I binged it in a single day. All eight episodes. What can I say? When I’m in, I’m all in.

There was a moment in the series where the main character was away on a writer’s retreat with her best friend, who had just secured a book deal and production rights. In amongst an emotional and heartfelt conversation filled with tears, confessions and raw truths, the best friend referred to herself as “an unrealised woman”.

This turn of phrase came about because she was a woman without children, through both personal choice and also life circumstances.

As she spoke those words, the energy of them hit me between the eyes like a lightning bolt and reverberated throughout my entire body like thunder.

I am 38 and childfree.

And I use that word (rather than childless) because it holds a frequency of empowerment and decision, rather than being a helpless victim of something out of my control.

And also because…

“When are you having children?” is a question that’s been asked of me a million times or more, and elicits a million different answers or more, depending on the day, my mood, and the person asking.

The most common answer I tend to give is the one that shuts down the conversation quickly and politely, while making the other person feel like they’ve just been given a glimpse into the inner workings of my inner world… and my ovaries.

I say that neither myself nor my husband have ever had an overwhelming desire to become a parent. But if that path is meant for us, then we will happily and gratefully walk it. And if not, we are enough for each other. Either way, we will live a full and happy and beautiful life together.

If I’m being honest, that answer (my answer), isn’t the full and complete truth.

But is any answer to any question the full and complete truth? I’d say not quite — it’s a momentary truth. True in the moment. That moment. Not necessarily every moment, of every hour of every day, always. Forever.

My story, my relationship with motherhood is a complicated one.

Let me start by saying I’ve never been the clucky type. I’ve always cooed and gone gooey at the sight of a cute dog, not a baby. And being in the company of a handsome and charismatic man will far more likely make my ovaries feel like they are going to explode than the sound or smell of a newborn.

For many years, I described myself as “not maternal” because that’s how I felt. I couldn’t connect to any kind of maternal feeling within me. I’d hold my friends’ babies, sure, and love them — oh how I love my friends’ kids. They’re awesome. And for some reason, kids are drawn to me. They seem to like my company and my cuddles, which is super cute.

But children? For me?

What really began to reveal itself to me in early adulthood was not wanting to repeat the past or replicate the family that I was born into.

I have scoliosis (curvature of the spine) which is considered a disease with no cure, hereditary and infiltrated my DNA via my father’s side of the family. There was no way that I would want to put a child through what I went through: over five years in a back brace worn 23 hours a day through incredibly tender and sensitive adolescent years followed by major spinal surgery at age 15. That shit is fucked up, let me tell you. Having to relearn how to roll over in bed, sit up, stand, walk and pick something up off the ground? Missing an entire term of school? Having to sleep on the couch with phonebooks under my pillow to get comfortable and becoming hooked on sleeping pills because of insomnia? Feeling like the world was passing me by and calling the Kids Help Line one day because I was seriously contemplating ending my life? I remember how that broke my spirit. And how I cursed my defective genes for it.

I also grew up in a verbally, emotionally, mentally and sometimes physically abusive household.

I lived my life treading on invisible eggshells. One wrong (usually innocent) word or move was met with being stood over and yelled at by my father with his big booming voice. I never felt safe to fully express myself or be myself or totally relax and it was exhausting. Home never really felt like a haven, it felt more like the trenches of the front line. A grenade could be thrown and a bomb go off at any moment without warning. It has taken me years to settle my nervous system, be able to breathe deeply, and for my shoulders to no longer reside up underneath my ears.

And this is not because I’ve chosen men or married a man who is just like my father.

The absolute opposite.

But you can understand how growing up in an environment like that might not be the most conducive to wanting to start a family of my own because of what was modelled to me for the first 20 years of my life living in my less than idyllic family home.

So the years passed, as they inevitably do. I moved through my twenties and into my thirties, adeptly never letting ‘one get past the goalie’ and remaining childfree.

And then it happened.

This is the answer that I will never give to the question, “When are you having children?”…

“I did. Once. Almost. For a moment.”

It was January 2016. I was 31 years old and had just left the familiar comfort of a cushy but incredibly boring government job, saying goodbye to nine years of blind loyalty, decent pay for unfulfilling work, and turning my back on the cusp of corporate leave glory — the 10 year milestone and the 10 weeks of long service leave that comes with it. Not to mention exceptionally paid and substantially long parental leave.

I had left that old job and embarked on a new adventure. I’d been head hunted to step into a newly created Communications Manager role. And on day one I knew I was in the right job at the wrong place. It had a toxic executive and board culture, but the people at management level and below were really good people. And the work itself was interesting and utilised my creative and writing skills. So I made the decision that very day to stay for a maximum of 18 months, learn all that I could, and then move on to the next thing — whatever that was going to be.

It was during that first week of that brand new job at that brand new workplace that I decided to take a pregnancy test.

My husband had already left for work, and I was about to slip on my sneakers and walk to my office.

But something compelled me to grab the test sitting in the box in my bottom drawer (a ‘just in case’ for ‘one of those days’ that I thought would never come) and I hurriedly peed on the stick, knowing exactly what the result would be before the line had even appeared to prove me right.

I burst into tears and immediately rang Chris.

“I’m pr-pr-pregnant,” I sobbed and sputtered.

“I’m coming home,” he replied. He’d known it too.

I remember collapsing into his arms, gasping for air through the unstoppable avalanche of tears. Eventually, I calmed down enough to be able to string a sentence together and start a long and in depth internal and external conversation about this timing, our lives, our feelings and what we both wanted for the present and near future that would lead to the decision that I (we) made. Me first. And then us together.

For reasons I won’t dive into just now, I decided not to go ahead with the pregnancy and I got to experience what it was like to be pregnant for a total of 6 weeks.

This time in my life is what Cheryl Strayed (the author of Tiny Beautiful Things) calls ‘the sister life’. Where you are living the life you have now while also briefly experiencing or imagining the life you could have had if you’d chosen that other thing and walked that other path.

Which means I could be sitting here, age 38, with a seven year old child. I would be a mother. A mum. With a human life walking around the planet that I had co-created, carried, birthed and was responsible for.

But I’m not.

I’m sitting here, age 38, with a seven year old memory of a child I didn’t have. I didn’t become a mother. I’m not a mum. There is no human life to show for that time in mine.

I am an unrealised woman.

Because there is an unrealised version of me that never became realised. That I am not living today. Because I chose this path, not the other one.

And it took me SIX YEARS to forgive myself for that choice.

I carried shame and guilt and sadness around like two heavy suitcases and a backpack full of boulders. I never spoke about it to anyone except Chris every now and then. I just couldn’t. For the most part, I didn’t want anyone to know what had transpired because of said shame and guilt and sadness. I knew they wouldn’t truly understand. And the close friends that I did tell? They didn’t truly understand. They just saw us as fantastic potential parents and between their words of love and support, I could hear the inaudible whispers of what they thought would have been the better choice. Because, all of my closest friends — the ones I told my secret to — are all mothers. They saw me as an unrealised woman, and they themselves, as realised women, wanted me to experience that for myself. I know this came from a place of love, but what someone else wants for me doesn’t always match up with what I want for myself. This was most definitely one of those times.

And so, after six years of deep inner work, kinesiology, reiki, energetic healing sessions, somatic therapy, countless tears and journal entries, and the inevitable passing of time, I finally reached the forgiveness place in 2022.

I forgave myself for making that choice, and I meant it.

I let go of all the imagined scenarios of what could have been. I let go of the repeated ‘what if’ and ‘why didn’t I’ thoughts, freeing them like a dove from a cage and allowing them to float up into the sky and be swept away with the wind. I stopped torturing myself over a decision that I’d made six years prior that was the best decision I could have made for myself at that time.

I was finally ready to be done with that burden.

This is the first time I’ve ever shared this part of me with anyone outside of my inner circle on any kind of digital platform. So I hope you appreciate the sensitivity of me sharing this with you and respect the sanctity of this space (this is the reason that this piece is for paying subscribers only and not every single person on Substack — trust and safety).

And it’s only now that I can share it because I know with every fibre of my being that I am at peace with it.

I have journeyed with my life and the sister life in tandem for six years, and I have chosen to live my life and let go of the sister life for the past year.

It’s interesting to sit with these memories and tell you this story now, one year post forgiveness. The emotions don’t stir like they used to. The tears don’t well up like they used to. And I feel no charge — instead I feel a calm, a tranquility, a knowing that I did what was right for me, regardless of what could have been.

I also know that despite my upbringing and my health, I’d be a really good mum. Loving. Open. Honest. Kind. Funny. Silly. Imperfect. And that thought alone makes my heart so happy, because it’s true. Plus, I’m 38. The door is not completely closed to that potential parenthood life. I’m just choosing not to dwell in the daydream of it day to day anymore because I have a very real and very happy and very beautiful life that actually exists in the reality of here and now, and that I want to live it and experience it and appreciate it. Whatever it looks like: today, tomorrow or next year.

So if the question ever gets asked again —

“When are you having children?”

— I’ll simply smile and say whatever is the full and complete truth to me in that moment, because that’s really all I can do.