Derechos Humanos

Given that the length of years after each participant stopped trying for a baby differs (one year to more than 13 years at the time of the interviews), all participants are still working to deal with their consequences. One of the motivational forces for

participants that becomes apparent is to refine one’s direction. Clare, who is ‘still on that journey’ says:

Clare: Yeah, I think I probably am still on that journey, yeah…to find some…something to...do with your time that gives you fulfilment.

Int: Time...?

Clare: You know. To…to find something in that…gives you fulfilment in your daily life. [ ] (17.32-39).

Her journey is to find something that makes everyday life fulfilled. She wants to spend her ‘time’ feeling satisfied. This suggests that she refines her direction to look for actions that provide purpose and make her feel good in everyday life, rather than searching for things or objects to make her happy.

Alana is on her ‘train’ and starting her journey:

I...I...I don’t want to fail again. The gardening didn’t work, the children didn’t work. And erm…this has…it has to work now [chosen vocation is to produce children’s books][ ] I’m not gonna get off…this…train. I’m going to stay on it until…until I succeed which is…is helpful…because it means there’s no

alternative.And I need…I think…psychologically I’m…I need it…I need a goal and a challenge. (17.31-37)

This account is powerful. Alana’s metaphorical expressions ‘train’, ‘not gonna get off’

and ‘stay on’ illustrate her strong willpower towards her journey she has taken. Her own understanding that ‘there’s no alternative’ also strongly captures her pursuit of this new departure. Considering Alana’s psychological needs of a goal and a challenge

to underpin her journey, she has started self-exploration to find her potential. So, regaining a sense of challenge in her own life appears as a way of reconstructing personal meaning and helping her get on with her life.

Similarly, Renee is working on refining her direction. Her account appears in the following short passage:

So, I think for me this…this…this sort of real thing I want to do things, make things, create things… (5.14-15)

She appears to be restoring her sense of self through creativity. Creation is the intentional action of ‘do[ing]’ or ‘mak[ing]’, hence producing something. Doing something intentionally has significance. Renee, who was ‘not able to produce’

(20.12) her own hoped-for baby, has no creation, leaving her in a less meaningful world. Now, she seems to have started refining what she ‘want[s]’, which will not end up unreal, but as a ‘real thing’. This for Renee as well will become a journey to gain self-fulfilment.

Emily feels that the fundamental construction of positives in herself is the same as when she was 25. She is restoring her sense of self by reflecting back to that point:

I think because er…part of me still thinks of erm…no I’ll rephrase that.

I…it…w…[long pause] when I was 25, I’m thinking, you know my thoughts were always about…erm…there’s still a lot I can do, and there’s still a lot that I want to do, and I’m interested in, and I’ve got enthusiasm, I’ve got energy and all that is still there. Even now that I’m twice that age. I still feel enthusiasm and still have interests and still have energy and…[a bit of breathing the air...] and I feel…I…I haven’t lost my sense of wonder…you know. That…that feeling that I have…you know… (18.39-49)

Emily explains here her unchanging qualitative feature of the self. Particularly, she sees her positives in her ‘sense of wonder’. Embodied experiences associated with this are powerfully re-experienced in her as she recounts ‘that feeling that I have…’.

Restoring a sense of self by curiously looking back at a time when she had all kinds of possibilities has helped Emily realise that there are still possibilities ahead.

Kelly’s account amazingly echoes Emily’s:

I’ve started to feel like the same person, like the positive things of the same person. So I feel that the same sense of adventure that I had when I was 25, and the same sort of curiosity for life and the same…erm…connections that I wanted to create…so I see, I fe...I feel…coming back is that same passion for life.

(15.15-21)

Reconnection with the old self seems to be a way of restoring a sense of self. While both Kelly and Emily regain positives through having the ‘same sense of adventure’

that they positively perceived in the past, Penny has just started searching for the positive sense of self she once had. She says:

There was a wise...there is a wise part of me, deep inside before I wend to this weird journey. It’s like I need to find the wise part and build a new life

that’s…fun and creative and spontaneous… (33.33-37)

Penny recalls what she was like ‘before’ this ‘weird journey’ started. She feels ‘there is’ still a wise part within her. So, regaining positives that remain ‘deep inside’ seems to provide her with a way of dealing with a life without children. Reconstructing her life, which is ‘fun and creative and spontaneous’ can give meaning to her existence.

Susie, in contrast, is restoring her positive sense of self by finding a difference in herself. She has now found possibilities in reconnecting with children. She can now

‘look’ at them:

I just didn’t know how I was gonna move on. And then this child [her nephew’s baby boy] was born, and everything changed.,,I suddenly realised that I could do those things [e.g. re-establishing love for a baby, picking a baby up]. So, in...in terms of impact, that’s the impact he had on me life. And I know I’m upset now…[a bit tearful] but it’s thinking of what I was like before…and what I’m

like now…[ ] It was like I’ve got a life…and I can start planning now…[ ] Cos, [ ] Like…you can’t even go into a restaurant, and you think, ‘Don’t sit near the table with the children?’ You’re sitting on a bus, ‘Don’t sit on the seat by the children?’ You’re going on holiday, ‘Let’s go on an adults’ only complex.’ It impacts on every aspect of your life and I thought…it was gonna be like that for the rest of our lives. And it’s not. It’s not. And it was after he was born that it changed. OK...gets on your nerves a bit but I can put up with it. I don’t have to not look. (13.35-14.5)

Her recent experience of physical contact with a baby makes Susie ‘realise’ that her ability to reconnect is possible and she can look at babies whom she used to try to hide from her sight. There are now opportunities to do things that she and her partner could not do before, because children are there in everyday life. In this regard, Heather similarly realised her potential in doing unfinished ‘befriending’ of children. Her positive sense of self appeared during the interview as she says, ‘it’s worth not having kids if I can help one child, you know’ (21.18).

7.4 Discussion

Each of the women in this study has started her own journey towards finding ways of alleviating emotional struggles. The inner-turmoil was first evaluated by reflecting on one’s own belief towards an “assumptive world” (Janoff-Bulman, 1992).

The assumptive world is an organized schema reflecting all that a person assumes to be true about the world and the self on the basis of previous experiences; it refers to the assumptions, or beliefs, that ground, secure and orient people, that give a sense of reality, meaning, or purpose to life. (Beder, 2005, p.258)

The acknowledgment of the loss of belief that one will have life with children seemed to activate a temporal perceptional shift within the self as Susie described ‘that was me then, and this is me now [ ] I’ve moved on’, and Penny similarly said ‘I didn’t want to own it, but it’s me’.

The concept of the self proposed by William James (1892/1961) considers that the self has two coexisting parts. He refers to them as ‘the self as known – the Me’, and ‘the self as knower – the I’. According to this concept, ‘the I’ is thought of as trying to maintain the self as a whole by trying to ‘know the other part, the Me, which is in constant engagement with the world’ (Hicks, 2001, p. 38). Both Susie and Penny seem to show their recognition of the Me, and are negotiating the Me as a part of the I. This recognition further allowed the women to accept limitations and help them understand ways of dealing with their internal struggles. Several participants needed to take part in talking therapies as a way of freeing emotion to ‘come out’, but this seemed to be a temporary solution. Two of the participants were still taking antidepressants as a way of relaxing themselves emotionally. In contrast, however, instead of accepting

emotional pain embedded within the loss of belief, two participants seemed to employ avoidance. Maggie decided to ‘think about’ her worries ‘later’, and Heather tried to

‘avoid changes’. These are their ways of dealing with the loss, by focusing on what they can ‘engage in’ now (Kotter-Grühn et al., 2009) rather than being concerned with the future.

Finding the ability to engage in something will bring happiness (Seligman, Steen, Park

& Peterson, 2005). However, more importantly, the ability to make choices will give the choice made a meaning (Frankl, 1946/2004). Choosing what matters to individuals will create ways of regaining a sense of self. Heidegger (1927/1962) remarks:

Looking at something, understanding and conceiving it, choosing, access to it – all these ways of behaving are constitutive for our inquiry, and therefore are modes of Being for those particular entities which we, the inquirers, are ourselves. (Heidegger, 1927/1962, p. 7)

For example, Clare said ‘either stay or get on with it [woe]’, and chose not to stay.

Maggie decided to ‘put[] the past behind’, and started to try to get her ‘core values’.

These are their conscious decisions that signify their ways of existence. The ability to make a choice seems to provide further potentialities that influence one’s perception.

Both Clare and Maggie seem to try to be “more uniquely individual” (Levinson et al., 1978, p. 33), and their ambivalent emotions appear to be meaningfully compensated (Kotter-Grühn et al., 2009).

In order to make positive perceptional shifts, more than half of the women described ways of self-affirming. This was illustrated as a way of finding reasons and helping to understanding emotional struggles that were ascribed to childlessness. Heidegger (1957/1991) in one of his lectures states:

The principle of reason is neither an assessment nor a rule. It posits what it posits as something necessary. It articulates this as something unavoidable through the double negation “Noting…without.” (Heidegger, 1957/1991, p. 6)

Emily asked herself ‘why’ she wanted to have children, and to answer this question, she needed to revisit the origin of her belief. Affirmation provided her with the ability to articulate that the loss of her old assumptive world was unavoidable, and was the reason for her emotional struggles. Self-affirmation brought her a ground “in the sense of a reckoning that securely establishes something” (Heidegger, 1957/1991, p.121) leading her to awaken from one’s dream. Emily perceived her hardship to be a ‘closed chapter’.

Frankl (1946/2004) refers to the notion that “the perception of meaning” arises when one is “becoming aware of what can be done about a given situation” (p. 145). Lucy’s positive self-affirmation led her to ‘look at what I’ve [she’s] got’ and take

responsibility for her life. The loss of a dream or an assumptive world was perceived rather meaningfully, giving her an opportunity to ‘see a very bright future’. Self-affirmation helps positively in regulating emotions.

Although ways of adjusting emotional struggles differ, all participants were working to deal with their lives. Renee seems to regain control over her emotions by exhibiting the courage to ‘start [her life] again’. In contrast, Maggie’s counterfactual reflection of her childless self seems to turn outward. In order to adjust negative emotions, she seems to transform her negatives into making a difference for other women who suffer.

This is compatible with Nouel’s (2007) concept of ‘empathic activism’ briefly discussed in a previous section.

One could argue that the emotional pain attached to involuntary childlessness as well as ways of adjusting to that sadness could have shared properties with those mothers

discussed in Nouel’s study who lost their children through tragedies. While existing literature often highlights a high level of grief or prolonged grief associated with fertility treatment or failed medical interventions in infertile women (Daniluk, 1996;

Johansson & Berg, 2005; Kirkman, 2003), little is known about the depth of grief that involuntarily childless women who could not achieve motherhood experience. In addition to Maggie’s emotional adjustment, all of the current participants showed a need to transform their pain through “empathic activism” (Nouel, 2007).

Showing selflessness is a way towards self-actualisation; but in order to be a fully functional self, one may also need to find ways of “fulfilling of the self” (Maslow, 1998, p. 9). Searching for fulfilment is found to be a motivational force that seems to activate the process towards self-actualisation (Cohen & Cairns, 2012). In the current study, most of the women seem to be in the process of self-exploration. There appear to be two ways of exploration: one is refining a direction; the other is restoring a sense of self by reconnecting with one’s old self.

Alana’s strong determination to find fulfilment appeared metaphorically in her saying

‘not gonna get off this train’. Clare described her ‘journey’ as trying to find

‘fulfilment’ through doing something in everyday life. For Renee, creating or making something demonstrated her need to feel fulfilled, since producing a ‘real thing’ would compensate for what she could not have. Renee’s desire to have children may be meaningfully replaced by engaging with what she can do, as a loss-based

compensatory form (Kotter-Grühn et al., 2009).

Some of the participants started to find positives in their old selves. This allows these women to recall the positive senses of self they used to have. Emily, for example, restored her ‘sense of wonder’ by revisiting the time she was 25; Kelly regained ‘the same sense of adventure’ she had when she was younger; and Penny was searching to regain the ‘wise part’ that she once possessed. In contrast, Susie realised a difference in herself by being able to ‘pick a baby up’, something she could not have done before, which allowed her to reclaim her positive sense of self. Regaining positives appears to provide different possibilities and ways of relinquishing an emotionally strained self while exploring a new self.

This chapter has examined the experiences of women dealing with emotional struggles.

The complex cognitive styles that emerged point to importantly interrelated functionalities in reconstructing one’s beliefs, one’s sense of self, and meanings of self-exploration. Additionally, this study has identified similarities in ways of dealing with emotional pain with those mothers who lost children, illuminating the depth of grief with which involuntarily childless women must cope.

Chapter 8

Reconstructing the self through relational reconnections

All participants have started to understand their need to move on beyond the way they had perceived their world to be. They have also started to work on reconstructing the world around them. This chapter explores how participants’ relational reconnections are manifest in and shape their lives as a whole. The three themes that emerged here are ‘Building new connections’, ‘Power of disclosure’, and ‘Connecting the self and the world’. Each of these feature interpersonal relationships. The women’s unique ways of building new connections are captured in the first theme; the second theme shows the positive influence that disclosure plays in establishing connections to people and society; and the third highlights the importance of making contributions to society as well as finding care and love in relational connections.