The Elephant in the Room
Chris and I aren’t having kids.
I don’t think that comes as a great surprise to anyone, and people who know us well have known that for quite some time. But it has taken me years to type that sentence without completely falling apart.
Chris and I with our first nephew, Aiden. Christmas 2007
I hadn’t planned to write about this yet. But saying goodbye to our house has brought it up and when I have tried to sit down this week to write a blog post, I haven’t been able to write about anything else.
It’s not that I’ve kept us not having kids a secret. When I drafted our “About Us” section, I agonized over what to say. In the end, I settled on, “But then, kids didn’t happen.” It was all I could think of to say since I wasn’t ready to have the big conversation about us not having kids.
But the simple fact is that us not having kids is a huge part of our move. There are times when I feel like the prospect of “kids” has defined us. We bought our house because we thought we would have them. We’re selling our house and moving to Hawaii because we’re not.
Chris twinning with niece Adeline. October 2015.
While it may not sound like it, I’m at peace with this decision. Yes, it’s still an ongoing process, and likely always will be, but I am comfortable with the path we’ve chosen and the choices we’ve made and I couldn’t be more excited to sell our house and move to paradise.
But closing the door on this house means closing the door on a lot more than just a home. It’s closing the door on what our hopes and dreams used to be. Acknowledging that something you so desperately wanted for so long, just isn’t going to happen. Closing the door on the hoping and waiting and trying and wishing. Closing the door on everything we thought our life would be. And it’s really freaking hard.
Forcing a selfie with nephew Austin. Christmas 2016.
I’ve told close friends that this house feels like a weight around my neck. If we kept living here, I think it would eventually drown me. Because all I see when I think about the house or walk through it are the plans we had when we bought it. I’ve told the story of when and why we bought this house. But the truth is that we bought this house for the family we thought we would have. I so vividly remember touring the house for the first time and talking with Chris about which room would be a nursery, how we would renovate the upstairs to make it better for toddlers and bigger kids, how our teenagers wouldn’t be able to sneak out of the house because of the squeaky stairs. So closing the door and selling this house means we are officially giving that up and moving on with our lives.
And let me be clear: this is what we want. We’ve thought about this for YEARS and we are happy and at peace with where we are headed. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. And it doesn’t mean there’s not grief.
Because even though I am so excited about what is to come for Chris and me, letting go of what I thought would be for so much of my life is incredibly painful. Saying goodbye to dreams I’ve had since I was a little girl isn’t easy. At one point I believed that if this was truly the right choice for us then I wouldn’t be sad about it. Oh, how I wish that was true. It turns out that it might actually make things harder. Because yes, technically we still could take steps to have a child, but we are actively choosing not to.
Snuggling with baby niece Luci. December 2018.
For so long, I just assumed that one day we would restart the process that would end with a child. Whether it was more IVF treatments, or pursuing surrogacy or adoption - I just assumed that we would eventually resume that journey. But one day never comes unless you intentionally take steps to make it come. And we didn’t.
Well, the longer we waited, the craziest thing happened. Something I truly never expected. More and more, we realized how much we liked our life. We realized that we could have an amazing life without kids, just like we could have had an amazing life with kids. I say we realized it, because 10 years ago I truly didn’t know that an amazing life without kids was an option. I thought the only option was kids. But the longer time went on that we didn’t have them, the more I started to see that, if the kid door closed for us, then other doors opened. And I discovered that I really liked those other doors and what was behind them.
And so about 2.5 years ago, we had a conversation on our back porch. It was one night after work and I have no idea how it came up, but we agreed that we weren’t going to have kids. “Door closed”, I thought. I was glad it was done. I cried that night but went to bed thinking, “okay, well I’m done with that.” If only.
Chris with nephews Aiden and Austin. Christmas 2014.
After that conversation I felt lost. Because society tells you, especially women, that to have a purpose, you have to raise children. If I wasn’t going to do that, then who am I and what am I here for? What do Chris and I do if we’re not going to raise kids? What do you do when your fertility journey ends without a baby?
In June 2018, we took a trip to Edenton, NC. My sister found us a gorgeous AirBnB on Pembroke Creek and the sole purpose of that trip was to talk about what we wanted out of life and what we wanted to change. At that point, we only knew that the life we had built was not what we wanted anymore. But we didn’t know where we were headed.
There were 2 key takeaways from that trip for me:
I couldn’t imagine anything sadder than living the life we would have lived with kids, only without them. I knew that was a recipe for disaster, both for us and our marriage. We decided that we would live a life that we couldn’t have, or wouldn’t have, if we had children.
We wanted to take control of our life and stop just letting life happen to us. Chris and I have been together (almost) 17 years, married (almost) 11 years and the vast majority of that time, I think we were content to let life happen to us and treated it like we were along for the ride. No more.
That’s how Hawaii came about. I wrote a blog post about why we picked Hawaii. But the full story of how we decided to move there is because we knew it’s something we never would have done with kids.
I’ve known for awhile that this part was going to be hard. This house has become a physical representation to me of the life we didn’t have. And closing that door for the last time on moving day will be excruciating. But the grieving for the house and the life we didn’t have there has been going on for some time. I’m staying at a friend’s house - partly because it’s closer to work and easier and I don’t want to stay by myself - but partly because it’s really hard to be in that house right now. Knowing other people are walking through it and deciding whether they want to raise their kids there. Knowing that they’ve got the hopes and dreams we did, too.
Adeline and I at Peppa Pig Live. September 2019.
Some of the most beautiful memories of my life occurred during the most devastating events. When my grandfather, Chuck, died, all 5 of his grandchildren slept by his side so we were all there in the middle of the night when he slipped away. In the days before my aunt died, I remember sitting in a room in the hospital with all of my extended family, singing songs that she loved so much.
And I know that, eventually, I will look back on our time in this house the same way. I know that at some point, remembering our hopes and dreams as we thought about buying it won’t be so hard.
There are things we are giving up. I will never get to see Chris become a father, or wonder if my child will be as tall as his Dad. I’ll never get to hope my next child has red hair, or wonder if our kids will follow our footsteps and go to Clemson and play in Tiger Band. But I am incredibly grateful that I don’t have doubts. There is a lot of pain, absolutely, but I haven’t second-guessed our decision at all. I know in my heart that we are doing the right thing for us. And I trust that even with all we’re giving up, there are also wonderful things that we’ll get to experience that we wouldn’t have if kids had been part of our story.
And so I just keep looking forward to that moment when we are able to step out on the beach in Hawaii, free from any weights that are dragging us down, and know that we are building a new life. A life for us, for our new hopes and dreams, and a life that lets us focus on the future and all the amazing things that are still ahead of us.