Life Outside the Plan

Appears in the anthology 
Nobody's Mother: Life Without Kids
Edited by Lynne Van Luven

In this short piece, I explore my life experience as a woman who has ended up married, but without children. Here is small selection:

I have come to enjoy the freedom that comes without children. And I enjoy the children in my life that much more with such freedom.

One of the most important adults in my life when I was a little girl was my aunt, the children’s author, Jean Little. She had no children of her own, and she devoted a great deal of energy to her nieces and nephews. I loved my aunts who were mothers as well, of course, but an aunt without children was able to give something extra special to me.

I hope I can be an aunt like that.

I am, as it turns out, nobody’s mother, and I am sad to miss out on that experience. But there are many ways to replenish the Earth and there are many ways to live a full life. In the last three or four years, I have felt, for the first time in my life, that I am on the right path for me. I look forward to seeing where it leads.