step-grandmother

He was an Older Man with kids…

Sue Fagalde Lick childless stepmothers, he doesn't want kids, marrying an older man , , , , ,

Today, as we sit breathing smoke and looking out at orange sky from wildfires burning all over Oregon and California, we have a guest post from “Kimberly.”

I just discovered the term for the grief that has been building up in my throat and tear ducts yesterday as I was scouring the internet for anything to define my current emotional state, and I finally found it: childless by circumstance. Finally a phrase to equate with this heavy unwavering feeling that pervades my soul.

I always wanted kids, since I first taught kindergarteners at Vacation Bible School at the tender age of 13. Sunday school followed that, and I even became a nanny at age 22 to an adorable toddler named Alex. My life was to be filled with kids—dirty diapers, tiny fingers grasping my thumb, wispy, sweaty baby hairs that I would tenderly wipe away and salty tears that would dry up instantly with my hugs.

But then I fell in love at age 27 with a man 10 years my senior, separated from his wife, with 10 and 14-year-old children. We dated on and off for years, a desperate and mesmerizing love story. I tried countless times to move on from him and start a fresh relationship with someone who could give me the safety I craved, complete with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. But he was my soul mate, so I followed my heart and married him finally at age 37. He never wanted more kids and told me so, but I guess I believed that love would eventually change his mind. It didn’t and I accepted that—or I thought I did because I grew to love his children, especially his daughter, like my own. I even bought Natalie her wedding dress.

Then Natalie got pregnant at age 26, and I grew so excited at the thought of becoming a grandmother at age 44. Except once the baby was born, the grief hit me like a tidal wave. Here was what I could never have. The loss of the life I dreamed about was amplified and triggered by her newborn, and I realized I had never told one person in my life how much it hurts to lose my baby dream. I never even whispered it. I just bottled it up into some tiny piece of my heart and hoped that being a stepmother and eventually a grandmother would be enough. No one knows how hard it is to walk in my shoes every day with a profound sense of loss—what a burden I feel—and how lonely it is to be childless by circumstance.

I have a friend right now who is almost 41 and actively trying to get pregnant for the first time. She too married later in life and was never sure if she wanted to have children. But then out of the blue it hit her, that yes, this is the path she wants to go down. Somehow I have become her confidante and the only one she tells about all that she is going through. It never occurs to her how much this might hurt someone like me, someone who never got the chance to have kids. How each time she calls me, I end up sobbing afterwards, how I do not think I am strong enough to support her in this journey, how much I wish that journey was mine.

Kimberly, we do know how you feel because many of us feel the same way. Thank you for sharing your story with us.

Well, readers, comments? Commiseration? Hugs?

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Please pray for everyone involved in the western wildfires, including the firefighters and the thousands who have had to leave their homes. The heat is extreme and the wind near-constant. Here on the Oregon coast, the sky is orange and full of smoke, and it’s almost dark at 10 a.m., but we are safe so far.

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Do you want to tell your story at the Childless by Marriage blog? I’m looking for personal stories, 500-750 words long, that fit our childless-by-marriage theme. You could write about infertility, second marriages, partners who don’t want children, stepchildren, feeling left out when everyone around you has kids, fear of being childless in old age, birth control, and other related issues. Tell us how you how you came to be childless “by marriage” and how it has affected your life. Or you could write about someone else. We love stories about successful childless women. We do not want to hear about your lovely relationship with your children or how happy you are to be childfree. Not all submissions will be accepted, and all are subject to editing. If interested, email me at sufalick@gmail.com.

Stepparents caught between two worlds

Sue Fagalde Lick childless stepfathers, childless stepmother, childless stepparents, mothering stepchildren, stepchildren, Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , ,

In response to my Halloween request for subjects folks want to discuss here, Evil SM commented last week:

In thinking about my biggest concerns as a childless woman that I’d love to discuss with other women who “get it”, I’d say it’s definitely the tension between feeling 100% childless and still having to reconcile the relationship with my stepkids. I’m not going to lie, I’m very resentful, and am trying to make my peace with it all. Sometimes I want to embrace having no children, and then there are my husband’s kids. I feel stuck between two worlds, and no matter how much I have given to them, tried to feel something parental towards them, I just don’t. But, I can’t say that. I have to put on a mask and pretend I feel a certain way about them and my role, or lack of, in their lives. Some days it eats me alive. I have most, if not all, the responsibility of a parent, and none of the warm feelings. Like you, Sue, we are custodial. My husband expects that if/when the kids have kids, I will feel like, or want to feel like, a grandparent, and that’s just not my truth. In the beginning of our relationship, I thought I wanted a baby, but for some reason that changed and now I’m almost completely on the other side of the fence, though I still have some of those baby blues days. I feel more childless with my husband and his kids than I would otherwise. It’s constantly in my face. Anyone else feel this way?

I do, Evil SM. My stepchildren are all grown now, and with my husband gone, I rarely see them, except on Facebook. But I remember those feelings. To be accurate, only the youngest of Fred’s three lived with us. Sometimes I felt like his mother. Sometimes I felt like I was co-parenting with Fred’s ex. More often, I felt like a babysitter who had no idea what she was doing. I loved him, but I’m not sure how he felt about me. I was always aware that he had a “real mom” who had first dibs on him.

As for the other two, we tried, but that warm fuzzy feeling proved elusive. I’m watching my words here because I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings or start a war. (We have enough problems with the fallout from the election.) They just didn’t feel like my own family. Even when I became a step-grandmother, it was like I was playing a role. I wish we could have made it one big happy family. I wanted that so bad. But they weren’t mine. So now I “like” their Facebook posts, send Christmas and birthday greetings, and pray for them every day.

To Michael, Gretchen, Ted (and Shelly), if you read this, I love you and miss you and feel so far away. You haven’t reached out, and I’m afraid that if I reach out to you, I will be rejected.

Oh, God, I feel as if I have opened myself up too much here. Thanks a lot, Evil Stepmother. 🙂 I used to call myself that, too. Thank God the kids laughed.

So, readers, it’s your turn. Many of us have stepped into relationships that include children from previous partners. Does the presence of these offspring make you feel worse about not having your own children or does it ease the pain? How do you get along? Can you love them like your own? What gets in the way of that?

Let’s open up this can of worms and see what’s inside. It might take more than one post. You can be as anonymous as you need to be. Me, not so much.

Thank you for being here and sharing with me.

 

 

 

 

 

Antidotes to the Childless Christmas Blues

Sue Fagalde Lick Childless holidays, Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

So, we’re drowning in Christmas. Even if you’re not Christian, it’s pretty hard to avoid the deluge of holiday music, TV specials, ads telling you to shop, shop, shop, and kids lining up in front of Santa to make their demands. The month is full of obligations. Send out cards; decorate; buy, wrap and send gifts; bake goodies for parties, gift exchanges, and bazaars; and do it all while the weather outside is just as frightful as it says in the song. Here in western Oregon, we’re underwater and getting battered by high winds, but the clock keeps ticking toward Dec. 25 anyway. I don’t know about you, but I just want to be teleported to another planet where it’s sunny and warm, and nobody gives a fig about Christmas.

What does all this have to do with being childless? I don’t know. Maybe that there’s no magic in the season without children, for whom all of this is new and exciting. Instead of a burden, it’s the most magical time of the year. Maybe Christmas shopping would be more fun if you were doing it for a child who will be ecstatic over his gift instead of aging adults who already have all the trinkets they can handle. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Yes, I have the Christmas blues. Too many rejections of my writing. Too many dark windy days with nothing to look forward to but a break in the rain to go outside to clean my gutters and pick up fallen branches. A sister-in-law who wants to stop exchanging gifts between me and her family. A step-great-granddaughter shown on Facebook praying to Santa, folded hands, amen and all, as if Santa were God. I can’t do anything to help her understand that there’s a real God and He isn’t Santa Claus because I have never met the child and probably never will. A wacko new priest who cancelled my singing with the kids at church tonight. The outside Christmas lights I was so proud of putting up not working now and I can’t figure out why. Daily pictures of my cousin with his wife and kids on a sunny beach in Mexico.

Maybe you feel the same way, but we have to find the light somewhere.  There’s this. My church, like many, puts out a holiday giving tree with tags for gifts desired by children and senior citizens who might not otherwise get any Christmas presents. Setting aside the whiny thought that my name should be on that tree because I may not get any presents, I perused the tags and chose an old lady named Gladys. I enjoyed shopping for Gladys yesterday. I avoided the kid tags because I was afraid I wouldn’t know what to buy. But next year, I think I should pick up a handful of them and adopt myself a family of poor children to shower with gifts the way I would my own if I had them. I’m not exactly overflowing with money, but if these children were mine, I would find the funds to make sure they had something good under the Christmas tree.

You can do that, too. Somebody somewhere is seeking gifts for poor families.

I think about my “Gramma” Rachel, who was actually my dad’s stepmother. His real mother died when I was a baby, so I don’t remember her. Rachel, who never had children of her own, was the only Fagalde grandmother I knew. She sent her seven step-grandchildren and four nieces and nephews packages of crazy gifts she had accumulated over the year: a sea shell, a book, a hair ornament, a coin purse, a cassette tape, a newspaper clipping with her favorite passages underlined. Not one thing advertised on TV or sold at Toys R Us, but all chosen with love and very little money. I loved these boxes, and I loved the fact that when she and Grandpa came for dinner on Christmas, Rachel went straight to us kids to see all our presents and talk about what was new in our lives. Mind you, our parents thought she was annoying and a little nuts, but we kids loved her, and I credit her with inspiring a lot of my writing and music today.

Rachel was married three times, but she never gave birth. I don’t know why. I never asked. By the time she married my grandfather, she was probably too old. But I didn’t think much about it because she was my grandma. I didn’t care about anything else.

Of course Rachel didn’t have to compete with a living mother and grandmother. She took over where Grandma Clara left off when she died at 58 of heart disease. But maybe somehow, some way, whether it’s through helping underprivileged people or showering young family members and stepchildren with special gifts, we can make this holiday season easier for them and for us.

There’s a way to make this time of year easier, if we look hard enough.

Okay, I feel better. Maybe I can make a wreath out of those fallen branches. After all, my home is surrounded by real Christmas trees.

How are you faring this holiday season? Please share in the comments.