Dear Liz:

“I am now 67 and have tried to accept the fact for more than 45 years that I will never know the joy of my own family” – meaning that you believed at 22 years old that you will never have children? Was it a medical event, at 22, that made it impossible to get pregnant and give birth?

You don’t have to answer, of course. Not this question or any other. Answer if you choose to answer.

“I have no friends or siblings in the same position and therefor feel that nobody TRULY knows my pain” – I wonder what your pain is truly about.

“I have had a good and happy life. I have a loving husband, we have travelled, we have a lovely home by the sea and in truth want for nothing material. But inside my heart I will never come to terms with the loss” –

– Do you mean that you had a good and happy life on the outside/ materially, but not on the inside/ emotionally?

“Being the admiring aunt eats me up every time a new family member is placed in my arms…   I recall an incident when his grandchildren were small being told by their ‘other granny’…’don’t try to pretend that they are YOUR grandchildren, because they are not’” –

– reads like you are angry, that you feel cheated out of happiness, envious of your nieces who are mothers, angry at your husband’s ex-wife for rubbing it in your face, so to speak, that you do not have children and grandchildren.

“The prospect of going into old age with no close family terrifies me” – if indeed your life was good and happy on the outside/ materially, but not on the inside/ emotionally, it may be that as you observe the natural deterioration of the material body, aka aging, you are becoming more focused on the unhappiness inside. Is this the case?

“My husband, I am sure doesn’t know how I feel but we never talk about it. I know he would get angry and say something like ‘it’s about time you got used to it’. He has children and grandchildren from a previous marriage” – He is aging too. His heart is aching too, as he experiences his own aging. The fact that he has children and grandchildren does not shield him from emotional pain. Just as if you had children and grandchildren, you’d still be in pain.

“Nobody TRULY knows my pain” – what is your pain truly about? I would like to know.

I am aging too, but my pain is not about the fact that I don’t have children and grandchildren. Much of my pain is about the sorry state of the world, climate change, rising autocracy, Ukraine being perhaps the beginning of World War 3. Scary things. Personally, I think that it’s a good thing that I didn’t bring new people into our world, with so much unnecessary suffering happening and yet to come.

anita