Happy Sunday morning to you. If you are awake, I hope this finds you with a cup of something warm and a slow start to the day. For those of you who saw my last newsletter earlier this week, I said that I plan to spend more time here in 2024….and here I am! Over the next few weeks, I am going to be exploring some ideas I have for this space, which I hope you will enjoy and find useful in some way. As always, I really appreciate your time in reading my words. If you have any ideas, suggestions or feedback, this is also gratefully received. You can send me a message or leave a comment below:
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this mini reflective piece and I will see you again later this week…..
I started drafting this piece in September and then promptly lost it in the chaos of my ‘to be filed’ folder on my desktop. It’s something I has popped into my mind a few times, but re-reading my roughly pulled together notes this week has been a helpful reminder of an ongoing theme in life after loss and particularly life parenting a single child.
It started with a reflection of the summer break:
“A mix of work, holiday clubs, local days out and days of not much at all, the summer passed in a blur. It was both long and short. Blissful and stressful. Fun and boring. Yet most importantly, it was enough.”
Enough.
Defined as:
As much as is necessary; in the amount or to the degree needed
As much as, or more than, is wanted
That sense of ‘enoughness’ is something that I have come to see as a rather familiar companion for many of us who have experienced reproductive trauma. Did I do enough to get pregnant, to stay pregnant, to make the most of my pregnancy or birth? Did I do enough in those early days, months, and years. Did I enjoy it as much as I promised myself I would?
And behind all the doing, the deeper questions about oneself: am I enough? When all is said and done, am I deserving enough of this coveted role as a parent?
I’ve noticed this in myself and others - peers and clients. The striving to be the best version of ourselves. To make the absolute most of what we know we are so lucky to have. Not necessarily to enjoy every moment, but to be the best version of our mothering selves in each one.
Because isn’t this what we so desperately wanted?
Earlier in the summer I wrote about our process of arriving at a place where we accepted that we would have no more children. I was struck by the conversations I had with people afterwards, at how lonely and ashamed so many of us feel when stepping away from a dream – or if not a dream, an unconscious assumption - of what our family would (should?) look like. In September, Jennie Agg wrote this beautiful piece about the assumptions that come with the decision to potentially stop trying to conceive. She captured the battle that has existed within me for many years now: the worry that maybe I just didn’t want it enough. And if I scratch this particular wound, what I uncover is a fear that I failed. Shame oozes from the darkness, telling me that I wasn’t able to do it, providing confirmation that quite simply I am not good enough.
It's made me think about how capitalism infiltrates this decision making. Because we are constantly sold the idea you can have whatever you want if You. Just. Work. Hard. Enough. If you try harder, throw more time, more energy - and ultimately. more money - at anything, you can have whatever you want. But it just doesn’t work like that.
To quote Jennie:
“I want another baby. But I don’t know that I want one at the expense of everything else.”
When parenting a single child, the theme of ‘enoughness’ seems to linger insidiously, sometimes flung by those who have strong opinions on what a family ‘should’ look like, but more often, seeping into conversations with people who seem blissfully ignorant of their unconscious ideas about single child families.
In many ways, the bombastic rhetoric is easier to navigate. Statements said with conviction such as: They didn’t give their child a sibling. How damaging! How selfish!”. “Let’s face it, they aren’t a proper family”.” You can’t really understand parenting until you have more than one”, can be challenged with confidence that these assumptions are outdated and unhelpful. However, it’s the more subtle comments, the ones that might be said about someone else to or around you, that seem to seep a little more dangerously under the skin.
“I don’t know why they’re so stressed, they only have one to look after!”, “Must be so nice for them to have all that extra time!”, “How can they possibly have anything to moan about?” “Yes, but s/he’s an only child” [insert knowing look, head tilt / eye roll optional].
In short: You do not have it hard enough. The barometer of enough strikes again.
Often these comments are delivered with a tone that I can’t quite work out. Is it anger that parents of a single child seem to have it so much easier? Envy? Disgust that this is not how they believe parenting should look? And what do they think of me if they can so freely say these things in my vicinity?
I remain curious. Because in all honestly, I cannot say with any certainty what my assumptions would have been about only children if I wasn’t raising one (and one who genuinely blows my mind and heart with how she challenges these fallacies every single day). The misconception of the only child is something I plan to spend more time on here.
What I do know though is that there is a lot of work to be done around the ideas of ‘enoughness’. Particularly those who have navigated reproductive trauma: Being childfree by choice or not. Parenting a single child. Parenting as a single parent. We are all enough.
More than enough.
Michelle x
This resonates so much as a parent of one child who faced a lot of loss and infertility due to two ectopic pregnancies in our quest for a second child. IVF was the only option, but after all we had been through and as time passed we thought… do we want another child enough at the expense of what could be more terrible trauma, loss, money, and heartbreak and also to miss the years with the child we did have in front of us whilst trying (and possibly not ending up with) another? We felt it in our hearts that our journey with trying for another was over and we were better off embracing what we do have. What made it harder for me was the total lack of representation on social media of happily having one child and how much joy it can bring. One and Done Parenting is a great account to follow to feel less alone. Thanks for this post Michelle ❤️
Thank you so much for writing for us Michelle. I think this value of enoughness is so hard to tie down but has such an impact. I know it has influenced so much of how I have acted and what I have done in the years spent trying to grow my family. I guess what it makes me wonder, and what you touch on, is how when living in this state of striving has been there for so long, how you change that narrative. That perhaps I don’t have, or have forgotten, another way to be. I also have this sense of this other side of me, perhaps the person I would have been if having children wasn’t so hard and so full of loss, if I hadn’t questioned everything in ttc terms for the last 10 years… I know it is fantasy, but I’m wondering if I’m ready to look at her, and that might be painful. And whether it has the potential to just be another type of striving eg professionally. I’m not saying all striving is bad, but I feel it will be hard for me to not do it in this way that feels so close to what you describe, always ‘am I enough’. I guess I worry if reproductive trauma has become a mindset I cannot free myself from.