The antidote to loneliness lies in allowing that enchantment to guide you in discovering the unique, community role you offer. Your role could be anything! As a childfree queer person you have the enchanted quality of understanding the world differently. Maybe your role is making playlists, buying gay baby books, or sending memes - infusing their life with art, representation, and humor. Maybe your role is taking them out for tea, going on long walks, or grocery shopping together - reconnecting them to the world outside the home. Maybe your role is making your friend yummy food or cleaning their house, thereby showing you are invested in supporting their immediate domestic space. But the truth is, you absolutely belong and have the agency to decide your involvement. This is so important because loneliness calcifies when we believe we don’t belong. Third, identify the role you want to play. A time will come when you both have the capacity to share, and you’ll be glad to have waited for the right conditions to truly connect. Someone other than the new parent! They are processing their own adjustment to parenthood, so it won’t serve your friendship to immediately flood them with your feelings too. Share what you’re feeling with a trusted friend who can honor emotional nuance. It’s natural to grieve when a relationship once built on mutual desires shifts. Joy, sadness, excitement, disappointment - all are okay to feel! This doesn’t lessen the happiness you feel for your friends, it only enriches the interconnected beauty of being in community. Second, normalize your feelings, no matter how intricate they are. It means their world has rearranged and honestly, you checking in with them probably feels soothing amongst the change. That’s okay! Expect to stoke the fire of friendship for some time, and remember just because they aren’t able to give as much, it doesn’t mean they don’t love and care about you. Whether your loved-one realizes it or not, they won’t have the space for friendship like they once did. It won’t be like this forever, but when a new human is brought into a family it’s a huge adjustment. So I’m sharing a few things I’ve learned with the hope that another queer childfree person might find refuge and feel less alone.įirst, when someone you love has a child, you should prepare to be the one putting more effort into the friendship.
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But I have a good therapist and a patient partner who have helped me learn how to stay connected. I’m certainly not pretending to be that queer elder for anyone else. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any queer elders who could guide me here, to the point where I could understand how to share community with friends across differing desires. So how is a childfree lesbian supposed to cope with that loneliness? As my community transforms, I’ve developed a curiosity on how to transmute isolation into connection.
And when it’s someone with whom I’ve always felt a deep kinship - a fellow writer or musician a person dedicated to their career a queer person who once said they’d never have kids and who I felt, in this way, would forever be part of my childless tribe - there’s a feeling that I’ve lost someone like me…Each time another friend has children, I feel a little more alone” (188). She says, “As more of my friends become parents, like the majority of the people in my life eventually will, I’m reminded that it’s an experience I’ll likely never share. Where does that leave me? One of my absolute favorite writers, Melissa Faliveno, describes this perfectly in her book Tomboyland. With each friend who initiates parenthood, I feel the same complicated feelings. And the longing to become a parent has never emerged.īut I’m at a point in life where many people I love are starting to raise children. Now, I am committed to cultivating a life that has abundant room for my desires. At twelve, I identified my first instinct that I was gay, but out of fear and spiritual abuse, I buried it for years. I think a lot about desire and how I can live a life that honors my cravings. There are a lot of reasons why, but the most uncomplicated one is it’s never been my desire. Sweat and glitter reigned as the contrast between our roles in the world sharpened. An odd mixture of fear and grief overwhelmed me. It felt like happiness was the only thing I was allowed to express, but it was hardly all I felt. In the name of celebration I took shots, a thing I never do. I thought this was where I wanted to be: somewhere queer and childfree. On a snowy Sunday while my sister was in labor with her first baby, I was drinking Bloody Mary’s at drag brunch.
The Autostraddle Encyclopedia of Lesbian Cinemaįeature image photo by Francesco Carta fotografo via Getty Images.LGBTQ Television Guide: What To Watch Now.
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