Childfree

“I am child free. I just didn’t meet the right partner. I would’ve had kids if circumstances had been different.”

Sometimes the trust issues when you have been emotionally or physically battered by the world can be pretty insurmountable. You can’t trust that the world won’t harm a child too.

Sometimes it’s all about being at the right place at the right time.

But what would be the point in deciding, every single day, that something is missing? So you choose to see life is full. Because it is.

“I actually kinda hate men. Yes they’ve hurt me. But I also see what they’re doing to this planet. These men in charge, in industry and politics, are trashing the place. As if it’s their birthright.”

I almost wonder if subconsciously I didn’t want to bring a kid into this equation. There’s a movement in South Korea where young women are denouncing dating, marriage, children. This 4B movement is a collective trauma. It’s a natural response to misogyny. To rampant capitalism that has priced young people out of any quality of life. To hopelessness about the state of the world. To the state of childcare. And rent. To the climate emergency. To never being listened to.

Why would I bring a kid into this world when some days I’m not even sure I want to be in it? All I want is to blow it up. To deconstruct, not construct, something new.

“I didn’t bring kids into this world because I’m selfish.”

I enjoy my lifestyle and can’t imagine compromise. I just want to enjoy myself when I’m not working. I work hard and I deserve joy.

My friends with kids are struggling. Really struggling.

Kids have severe anxiety. They’re being bullied. They self harm. They can make a mother sob all of the water out of her body. Every day she feels like she’s throwing herself in front of a moving train. And she wonders if she has the strength to do it the next morning.

I don’t want that for myself

“I don’t have kids because I’m generous.”

I’ve been people pleasing my whole life, and somehow the momentum of this carried me forward into my 40s. Or into my 30s, but I found out that that was enough.

I give of myself to everyone, not just one.

I’m spread so thin I’m basically atmosphere.

I gave and gave and gave, there’s really nothing left.

“Maybe my body keeps rejecting these little growing beings.”

I’m sick and tired of people asking when I’m going to have kids because these kids have flowed through me into the toilet, a sea of red searing pain. Please stop asking.

And infertility rates are on the rise. Everyone knows a story. Everyone has a story. The hormonal intensity of Clomid injections trying to release your eggs. The gut-wrenching powerlessness of a period. The relentless tracking of fertile days, mechanistic sex. Will it ever feel connected again? How to separate the procreation from the recreation?

The shame. This was my one job. The world keeps telling me that this is what women are good for. Part of me knows different. But part of me, it’s a biological imperative. Why else would I have endured periods for decades?

“But I am still a mother.”

I birthed this really special project. I look after these young people. I am an aunt, a friend, a godmother, an elder.

I am a woman giving birth to ideas, to hope, to matriarchal power systems. I am a pregnant female spider, weaving my fertility into a silk network of possibilities.

“The world needs more of us women with time on our hands.”

To unleash our creative potential. To govern and rule, because otherwise motherhood strips of our energy. To lead this torn planet into the new systems that need born.

We are child free. Because we are burning and rebirthing the systems.

But we will need help to raise them. We will rely on the kindness and compassion that we teach each others. Yes, men too. Because we raised them.

Women, collectively, are still giving birth.

It just doesn’t always howl when it’s born.

I am childfree.

But I am not hopefree.

I have fulfillment. I have meaning. I have a legacy. I just can’t show it on a blanket on Instagram.