Yep! Also it is ok to not want (or ever have wanted) children. You can have a family of your own without ever having children (or partner).

You don’t need to ‘make peace’ or learn to accept it. You can and will be happy, loved, live a full life with much joy and no regrets. https://twitter.com/hallierubenhold/status/1283467836913061891

Multiple times in the past weeks, I have felt that we need voices of older women to tell you ger women this.

I was fortunate to have older women who told me this so passing on

It is also ok to feel conflicted, to question.

I spent a lot of my 30s wondering if I ‘should’ want a child, and a partner, and the full straight fantasy.

I constantly wondered if there was something wrong with me that I couldn’t make myself want those things.

Intellectually, I knew that the doubt was because of social expectations and constant messaging but it was still hard to accept it emotionally/psychologically.

And it was made harder by the constant judgement, advice, pity, etc from friends, strangers, wider culture

In my 40s, I realised I definitely did not want a child. Or a conventional partner.

But that still came with feelings of failure...of not meeting social expectations. I KNEW what I wanted and didn’t. I was loving my life.

But the message was still that I was failing.

Took until just a couple of years ago, and turning 50, when the guilt that I couldn’t MAKE myself want kids disappeared.

The patriarchy embeds this shit deep into us and keeps hammering it deeper ever second of every day

We need to hear from women who choose this. I did. And so did many of my friends, some of whom are my family.

We are happy. And looking forward to being happier as we age. Definitely happier than we were told we could and would be

Some of us aunty (yeah that’s a verb now)...biological niblings as well as emotional ones. We have a range of relationships, familial, erotic and more. We parent and mentor.

We laugh more now than we did when younger. We are braver, stronger, more loving and loved than then.

I wish that I had heard this more often from women who went before me. And not just in quiet friendly convos.

I wish the message had been louder, clearer, from a stranger.

I would have believed it sooner. And I would have then been freer, sooner.