How Someone Who Can’t Have Children Feels About Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day is almost here and even in a pandemic, we’ll find way to celebrate. but what about the women who aren’t mothers? In my new column for HealthCentral, I share my story of how rheumatoid arthritis blocked my dreams of being a mother (and what I’m doing instead):
“Somewhere in a parallel reality, I am the mother of two beautiful girls. Like me, their hair was white blonde when they were little, darkening as they grew older, and their noses freckle in the sun. Their voices and laughter fill my home and my heart. As all kids, they also fight and sometimes frustrate me, but always, there is a core of unconditional love. There, in that world, I am their mother first and everything comes after.
But here, in our reality, I am not a mother. In the annual ramp-up to Mother’s Day, everything that wasn’t comes back and haunts me. I hear the echoes of the laughter of those parallel girls of mine and the ache of what never was, can never be, overwhelms me again.
When I was 17 years old, my then-rheumatologist told me that my juvenile arthritis was the “genetic kind.” I’d been sick since age four in an era of no treatments and by the time I sat in his office, I was unable to walk and used a wheelchair. Having already lived with pain and inflammation for over a decade, I decided then and there to never risk passing this awful thing on to anyone else. To never have a child of my own. Today, we know that the risk of passing on autoimmune arthritis to your children is quite low and advances in treatment enable many women to have healthy pregnancies and children. But back then, I had to go with the information I was given.”
Tag: childless, chronic illness, illness, infertile, mother, mother's day, not a mother, parent, rheumatoid arthritis
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