REWRITING FAMILY

(and maybe that’s the kind of grief almost no one talks about)

When I was a little girl, there was something I absolutely loved. Playing house and playing parents and children. I would get together with my friends and we would spend hours imagining our adult lives. We would choose names for each other’s babies. We would argue about how many we would have. Who their father would be. Where we would live. How old we would be when we got married. All those things children do, innocently beginning to draw a future that seemed full of promise. And happiness.

I always imagined myself with lots of children. A whole bunch of them. A full house. Noise. Toys everywhere. Children running from one room to another. Siblings growing up together. Arguing over little things. Defending each other when they needed to. Building memories they would one day carry into their own families.

That dream never disappeared. Even as I grew up and started to realise that perhaps it would not be so easy to make it a reality. Because I was terrified of anything medical. Appointments. Tests. Vaccines. Blood tests. Hospitals. Health centres. Things that were completely ordinary to other people could leave me anxious for days. Just knowing I had an appointment coming up was enough to keep me awake for several nights. And perhaps that is why it took me so long to believe that dream could really be mine.

The father of my children knew that. And he knew how to wait. He knew how to be patient. He accepted a part of me that I know could not always have been easy to live with. And for many years, he showed me that I was not alone in that dream. That it was possible.

We had been together for around ten years before we seriously started thinking about having children. For him, they probably could have come much earlier. But I needed that time. I needed to feel that I could do it. That I wasn’t alone. That the fear didn’t have to be bigger than the desire.

And then it happened. I had my first child. And with him came a desire I didn’t know could be even stronger. To have another. Then my second child was born. And another desire was born with him. To have a third. We talked about it. We imagined what it would be like. The three of them together. In the same house. Growing up side by side. Sharing a childhood. Building that kind of bond that only siblings know.

A few weeks before the father of my children first spoke to me about separating, he actually suggested that we start trying for a third. And I said no. Not because I didn’t want one. I wanted it very much. But I was exhausted. I had just had a baby. I knew what it meant to go through another pregnancy, another birth, another postpartum period, more sleepless nights. And at that moment, I couldn’t imagine doing it all over again.

But the truth is, I wanted to. One day. Another baby. Another child. The three of them together. And then the separation happened. And with it, that future died too. It is strange to grieve someone who never existed. A child who was never born. A room we never prepared. A name we never chose. Three siblings who never got the chance to become three. A photograph we never took. A life that existed only in our imagination… but that, to me, felt completely real.

Today, I cannot imagine having another child. I cannot imagine going through another pregnancy and everything that comes after it. I cannot imagine risking another separation with children. And even less so, imagining three homes, more people, different families, different routines, different fathers.

And then there are questions that frighten me even more. How do you live with one child full-time and another only half the time? How do you explain to a child that their sibling can be at home all the time… but they can’t? How do you explain that some siblings can wake up together every day while others only get to on certain days? Just imagining it hurts.

But life may take us somewhere else one day. We might meet someone who also has children. Someone who comes from a similar story. Someone who understands what it means to have two homes, calendars, school bags and longing. And perhaps I could love someone else’s children. I believe I could. I think I could genuinely care for them. Look after them. Make space for them in my life. But recently, a friend told me something that stayed with me. She grew up with separated parents. And she told me that one of the things that hurt her and her brother the most was when their father started a relationship with a woman who had a child. Their father started taking that child to school. Spending time with him. Being there for him. And they saw it. They watched their father do things for a child who wasn’t his that, sometimes, he couldn’t do for them. And it hurt. It affected their relationship with their father for some time. I thought about that for days. Because I don’t want my children to ever feel that another child is receiving the time that was taken away from them. But I also don’t want any child to feel less loved because of the story of the adults.

And then there is the other side. What if it is someone without children? How do you explain to someone that they may never be our priority at certain moments? That there will be calls we answer in the middle of dinner because one of the children is sick? That there will be weekends that are no longer ours? That holidays will depend on schedules? That there will be days when our love for them takes up almost all the space we have available? Perhaps it is possible. I don’t know. Today, I know almost nothing about that future.

But there is something else that has been difficult for me. The people around me keep moving forward. And I am genuinely happy for them. I have friends who are pregnant. Some are expecting their second. Others are thinking about having a third. Some are buying bigger homes. Preparing nurseries. Choosing names. Making plans. And I look at all of it and smile. Because I am happy for them. But sometimes, after I smile… I feel sad. Not because they don’t deserve their happiness. But because their happiness reminds me of something I wanted too.

It is strange to be genuinely happy for someone… and at the same time feel a little ache inside. It isn’t jealousy. It is grief. It is watching someone take a step forward… and realising that it was exactly in that direction that we wanted to walk too. And perhaps that is what hurts me the most. Not feeling that my life has stopped. But feeling that it has stopped in a place where I never wanted to be.

While other people are buying bigger homes, I think about the two homes my children now have. While others are choosing names for babies, I think about the third child we never had. While other families are growing, I am trying to learn how to live with the family that became smaller. And perhaps one day this will stop hurting. Perhaps one day I will look at my life and no longer think about what is missing. Maybe someone will come along. Maybe they won’t. Maybe I will have more children. Maybe I never will. Maybe my children will always be two. I don’t know.

But there is one thing I am beginning to understand. Not all grief is about what we have lost. Some grief is about what we never got to have. And that kind of grief is particularly difficult to explain. Because no one died. There is no funeral. No photographs to keep. No final memory. There is simply a version of our life that stopped existing before it ever had the chance to happen. And perhaps that is what I am learning to accept. That some of the families we imagined stay inside us forever. Even the ones that never got the chance to exist.