WE ARE CHILDFREE

I was an unwanted third child and my mother constantly complained how hard motherhood is. Same goes for my 16-years-older sister who had three kids very early. Why should I want that?

Another reason is my mental health struggles – depression and anxiety attacks. I had phases when I could barely take care for myself… how should I take care for children?

My first relationship broke up because of my decision. My now husband is very supportive unlike our families and society here in Germany. It was pretty difficult to finally get my tubes tied.. Because doctors didn’t trust me to know what I want I had to wait until my 40s. (Because I have maybe 10-12 years until menopause it makes still sense.)

I’m working as a nurse in old age care and in my free time I’m engaged in a human rights organisation and believe that this gives my live as much purpose as having kids.

Living my best childfree life means to me: being creative (painting, drawing, making junk journals) as much as possible, and helping others.

Being childfree gave me the opportunity to:

• spend my energy on healing and reparenting myself
• properly recharge after long exhausting shifts
• not to have to stay in a loveless marriage because otherwise my kids would grow up in poverty
• constantly improve myself physically and mentally because I don’t have to spend my free time and energy for somebody else than myself
• be the first women in my family that could achieve a GCSE because of not having a child before I could achieve it
• know that I’ll never pass on the gazilion health problems ( physical and mental) that all run in my family
• explore my creativity and learn something new as often as I want to
• be able to save enough money to go to Iceland in 2018
• be sure that my in-laws and my biological family will never have the chance to mess up another kid
• not have to share my husband’s love
• to cultivate a lot of hobbies: reading, painting, drawing, yoga, swimming, bookbinding, pen-palling, journaling
• it gave me the opportunity to finally get mentally stable