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When I was 21, I got pregnant. I was absolutely terrified. The message I’d got was that having children when you are young ruins your life. I’d also had a tough upbringing including domestic abuse. So, for me, family life was something I wanted to escape.
I spoke to my lovely boyfriend about it and he was happy to support me whatever I decided. And I decided to have an abortion. He and my mum came with me. The overriding emotion I remember was terror. But at the time, it was the right answer, and looking back, now 53 and in a relationship, I don’t regret it at all. I would have been an appalling mother at 21. But I never conceived again.
My boyfriend and I broke up a few months later. Even though he was still committed to our relationship, it felt like the right thing for me to do.
When I met my future husband, four years later, I told him I wasn’t sure I wanted children. But by 29, I’d changed my mind. Children were no longer an abstract idea. They would be ours, and I realised they didn’t have to have the childhood I’d had.
I didn’t worry about conceiving: I was 29 and I’d been pregnant once already. But after three unsuccessful years of trying, I had an operation to see if the abortion had caused any damage. Luckily, it hadn’t. My diagnosis was ‘unexplained infertility’ and the only advice my husband and I were given was, ‘Go and have lots of sex!’
I hung on to the dream that I would become a mother for a long time, but I knew I would eventually have to let it go. Our marriage broke down when I was 37. I picked myself up, but at 44, after my second post-divorce relationship ended, I came out of denial and finally accepted that my dream was not going to come true. I was devastated.
People used to say to me, ‘Oh, but you’ve got your freedom.’ And I’d think, ‘This does not feel like freedom.’ At my lowest point there would be moments when I’d be on the motorway and I’d have little fantasies of driving my car into the path of a huge truck... the burden of my emotions was just so intense. It wasn’t until I realised I was grieving that I began to recover.
It was then that I decided to set up Gateway Women, a website and community for childless women like me. I was desperate to talk about my situation, but nobody in my world would listen. The first time I wrote my blog, women from all over the world started commenting. I would sit at my desk with tears of relief running down my face because they were saying things like, ‘How can you know the exact words that are in my head?’ I thought, ‘Oh my God. I’m not alone.’
I decided to try running a group and then, in 2011, I created my first 10-week course, which turned into the Reignite Weekend. Childless women are seen negatively in our society, so it’s about finding a positive identity, reframing it in a way that helps you to feel proud of yourself again.
In 2012, I had a really powerful healing experience. The organisation Saying Goodbye held an amazing service of remembrance at St Paul’s Cathedral – for babies lost at any stage, at any age – which I attended to support some Gateway Women who were grieving miscarriages and failed IVF.
It was incredibly moving and I suddenly realised I wanted to say goodbye to my baby too. I went up and lit a candle, and as the smoke went up to the ceiling, with tears flowing down my face, I just said, ‘I’m so sorry that I wasn’t ready to be your mummy.’ I grieved him and I let him go.
There’s so much shame around abortion as part of the childlessness story. Women who have had a termination don’t feel they’re allowed to grieve their childlessness. We think, ‘I certainly can’t put myself in the same bracket as a woman who had a stillbirth, or had failed IVF, or miscarriages. She gets to grieve, I get the shame.’ But that is wrong.
Until you open up about the pain of your loss – and face it – then you can’t move forward with your life.
The next Reignite Weekend Workshop is on 19-20 January. Visit gateway-women.com for more information
As told to Bibi Lynch
I don’t regret my abortion – even though I’ve never become a mother