All I ever really wanted in my life was to be a mom and have all of the things that go along with it - soccer games, parent-teacher conferences, weekend family bbq's, college searches, grandchildren, etc.

I realize, at 36, it is still a possibility and that I can even adopt one day maybe, but I am not healthy enough yet to even consider those possibilities. That dream of being a mom, for me, was a sacrifice I had to make if I want to stay sober. If it happens, it happens, but I can't really even hold out hope for it.

Most days, I am okay with it because I am just grateful to be sober. Some days are just hard.

Thanks for letting me share.

I typed two replies to this and deleted them both.

Men and women have vast differences between each other, but there is usually a desire for children at some point in life (regardless of your gender).

It's not going to happen for me either Taradactyl (for a number of reasons). And I can sympathize with the way you feel, when all my friends are out doing things with their kids and I cannot relate to them.

I drank through my 30's and the thought never crossed my mind back then.......took me until my early 40's before I noticed.

But life still has a lot to offer and you (and me) still have a lot to offer to other people and even to other kids out there. I have a lot of good memories of adults that I could relate to better than my own parents. Maybe I can be one of those adults from time to time to another kid (I actually have been a few times).

Don't waste time trying too hard to be like others though. We have our own lives to live. And it's more satisfying to live your own life than someone else's.

I had to accept that my drinking was killing me in all kinds of ways. I finally faced it head on. Then I quit.

tara have you thought of adoption? sorry I know it is hard...Me never had kids either....not because of infertility but I guess I am just ugly ass drunk who nobody wanted to have life with....never been in long term relationship which could lead to kids...

I didn't care that drinking was killing me (slowly). I stopped because I didn't want to die of an overdose of alcohol or drugs or kill myself in drunken despair or blackout. I stopped because I did not want to devastate my family and friends with that outcome. I stopped because someone told me that life WAS worth living if I gave it a chance.

When I decided to "quit" I had to first accept my life as it was, especially those things that I could not control. I am not in control of whether I end up married with children or not. I had to accept this fact in order to stop escaping the reality that I did not want to live with. There were many other things I had to accept that I could not change - this was just the hardest on the list.

I shared this because I hear a lot of people who have "reasons" that that can't stop drinking. I believe those reasons are REAL and, without some level of acceptance, that reason will keep getting them drunk. Escape was my coping mechanism, and without complete acceptance of my reality, I was going to keep drinking. Escape is unnecessary when there is acceptance. Without acceptance, escape was my only solution.

Maybe I am overly sensitive today, ExJ, but "Then I quit" struck a little nerve. Did I overcomplicate it by having to find acceptance of my life first? I know quitting was not easy for you but maybe it was that simple. It is not that simple for most and knowing that it is killing them isn't enough for many to stop.

Anna, I knew for years that it was killing me. I watched my sister die, and I still drank.

"I finally faced it. Then I quit."

I know that sounds simplistic, and in a way it was. I don't really know how to describe it, especially since any description is through the lens of my memory and where I am today.

I had an epiphany, an internal shift, a cinder block fell on my head.

But it did not really happen all at once, gradually a lot of things came together, clicked into place. I finally faced who I was and what I was doing and I could no longer drink. So I quit. In a way it was that simple.

About a year ago, a friend with a drinking problem asked me, "What are the reasons you finally quit?" I truthfully answered, "I have no idea."

My reasons for quitting seem as unimportant and besides the point as my reasons for drinking.

I had to accept me before I could quit. I had to be willing to see the light inside, the light that I was extinguishing by drinking.

Ugh. That sounds a little preachy.

Let's try again -- I had to accept that I am okay.

I understand it better that way ExJ. Thank you for elaborating. I'm sorry for getting defensive.

I know I am sensitive about all this. I still can sob at the drop of a hat on this topic and few things bring me to this level of sadness. I am barely holding it together at work today because it is difficult to stay in this acceptance. It was hard to get here and it is hard to stay here. I know in the end I have one choice -- I either accept my life or I will die. Still hard.

I know everyone has difficulties and I believe mine to be minor in comparison to what most people deal with. My problems were not the reason that I drank but they were part of the reason I had trouble getting sober. I had to change what I could (divorce among other things) and accept what I couldn't change (infertility - childlessness, past trauma, etc). After acceptance, sobriety became a possibility for me.

Sometimes words don't write right.

I hear ya and thanks for sharing.

We sure do all have similarities in one way or another.

Peace to you and.....the good thing...we get a daily reprieve. I remain grateful for what I have today :)

Tara I know how you feel. TMI warning.....
I misscarried, then tried to get pregnant for years and years. We tried all sorts of things and I was pretty sure we'd have to adopt.
I never wanted to be a mom, until I wanted to be a mom, when I misscarried. Then it was like it was my lifes only mission/ goal. I too was horribly crushed everytime a family member or friend would tell me they were pregnant. I wanted to be happy for them, but honestly I couldnt. Finally we went to a great fertility DR who said IVF/ ICSI was the only way we'd likely get pregnant. We had twins on our first IVF cycle. There is another drama in early delivery, etc. but all that paled with the outcome. Two healthy amazing kids.
But guess what? I started drinking in earnest AFTER I had them. My drinking was social before, but after, being a mom broke my heart. Or so it seemed. I coudlnt be the mom I wanted to be. So I drank. Alott.
Fast forward and we had another child, also through IVF/ same DR, and after nursing for a year my drinking got even *worse*. I finally got sober at AA 7 months ago.
I guess my point is that kids won't keep an alcoholic sober. I would have sworn they would --- and in fact I promised god I'd stop my eating disorder to have kids. I did! But then I started drinking.
We have to fix ourselves fully for ourselves. At least that's how its been for this alcoholic.

Good luck. You are 36. I have friends who are pregnant NOW at 41. I had my twins at 33, my 3 year old at 37. Having a baby is a real possiblity for you, with or WITHOUT a partner (my friend is 46, and has 5 year old twin boys, she conceived with donor sperm -- just saying) anytime in the upcoming years. Expecially sober now that you can BE a mom.

In early June of '93, when I was 53 and 4 1/2 years into recovery from alcoholism, I had a bout of severe congestive heart failure which, unlike a heart attack, is a chronic condition. In my case the early prognosis was quite poor, and the cause of it subsequently turned out to be a vascular birth defect, a type of aneurysm called a dissecting or separated aorta and it runs the whole length of the artery. For the next two years or more I struggled with acceptance, which ironically was much easier when death seemed moments away in the ICU than it was in the daily grind later on, with mixed and basically very unsatisfactory results. I even toyed with returning to the church I'd been raised and even been a monk in, but somehow that seemed even more depressing than where I already was.

Then in 1995 or so I saw Lesley Stahl on "60 Minutes" doing part of a series on a children's cancer ward. During that second installment, she again spoke with a nine year old girl. In the intervening few months, this child had lost her best friend on the ward, and her own bone marrow transplant was at that point apparently a failure. By anyone's standards, this kid's future looked very grim. Yet remarkably, her whole demeanor was calm and matter-of-fact as she updated her story.

"You know, dear," said Lesley, "you're really taking all of this very well."

I braced myself for the tear-jerker I was sure was about to unfold-- how she'd be meeting Jesus and Grandma on the other side, etc. But instead the little girl frowned with the impatience of someone who was clearly tired of being patronized and in no mood to sugar anything over for anyone else's benefit. "Well, Ms. Stahl," she retorted rather sharply, leaning forward and looking Stahl square in the eye, "maybe I just haven't lived long enough to have as many regrets as you do." Stahl looked as if she'd been hit by a truck, and I'm sure I did too!

That was my wake-up call. I knew right then that I had to either grow up fast or the self-pity would kill me even if I didn't drink again. That finally goaded me to re-examine my life so far in a whole new way, and one very tangible benefit was that I started feeling better almost immediately. I dug up and re-buried some old hatchets I'd conveniently forgotten-- old grudges left over from my own childhood, hurt feelings over humiliations and those injustices that kids take so seriously, and other stuff like that. Frankly, I was amazed at how much subconscious possessiveness, fear, resentment, defensiveness and desire to retaliate were still shaping my personality 40 plus years after the fact and a few years after I thought I had done thorough the 4th and 8th step inventories as AA suggests.

I'd covered the stuff my drinking had aggravated, of course, but I hadn't taken the AA suggestion to cast the searchlight back over my whole life-story as far as memory would take me. So I'd never really gotten down to causes & conditions, and I saw my fear of death as proof of that. But at the same time I had this awful feeling that I was killing or at least betraying a source of energy that had sustained me most of my life. Yet at the same time I knew I had to do it, or the combination of heart disease and negative emotions would kill me for sure, and then that old identity would just be in the casket with me anyway!

So I plowed through some very unpleasant memories like an archaeologist on a dig. Some instinct told me there had to be a treasure under all that crap, and I just couldn't get that little girl's calm acceptance and her remark about regrets out of my mind. Then I set out to live the dream I'd always had for my life since childhood as best I could under the circumstances I was in at the time, which was about a mile and a half below the poverty line. I simply started each day with the assumption that it was my last, then asked what I really, really wanted to do with whatever time I might have left, and then I did just that. Strange to say, with no self-improvement projects, the results have been far more gratifying than anything I could have possibly imagined in '95.

You might even say that my illnesses have been my greatest blessings, teachers and motivators, because the life I've had since has been the fulfillment of the dream I had for it when I was about 10 or 12 years old, and I certainly wouldn't have gone looking for it until I was up the proverbial creek with no other paddle. A strange and paradoxical thing happens for many of us when we completely commit ourselves to a course of action and say full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. But it isn't only about acceptance as resignation or admitting defeat, as the commitment actually creates a new reality, not just in the space between the ears, but in the realm of facts and the direction our lives actually takes. As an old AA clich goes, if I had achieved the goals I wanted to set for myself in early sobriety, I would have sold myself a mile short.

Hello Taradactyl..I thought exactly how you felt about not being able to have children...so why stay sober. I have had 2 miscarriages and will probably never be able to have kids. I have always wanted kids. I drank heavy for 8 years because I just gave up. But now that I accepted that I can't have kids has helped to keep me sober. It is very difficult being a woman who can't have kids...it seem like im not a real woman. I have been sober about a year. I have anxiety and depression, which makes it extra difficult to handle things...but I try to hang in there. I also still have trouble being around friends or family with kids. My cousin has 5 year old twins (I always wanted twins) and sometimes I just can't spend time with them. Hope this helps you!! Hang in there!!!

Thanks everyone for sharing.

A few of the posts remind of a key part of my acceptance...

I got married chasing after my dream. I wasn't sober, and had I been given an ultimatum then, I would have chosen alcohol. I did not know how to live without it. My marriage was a wreck with my daily drinking and 24/7 binges, but I still tried and tried to get pregnant, even spending thousands on various treatments, I am sure sweating out alcohol as I sat in the doctor's office. At the time I thought having a baby would fix everything.

Had I not been through the infertility, I may have never gotten sober. Not being able to stop during that time was what brought me here and then to AA. When I first joined this group, I still had another account in the infertility group. I finally quit that group only a few mos ago.

I am GLAD I didn't get pregnant. Nothing was going to stop me from drinking until I was ready and sick of it all. The last thing I would have wanted was to put a child through all of that. I wasn't fit to be a mom or a wife and God knew better.

While in treatment, I got distance from my marriage and realized what a wreck my life had become. It was undeniable that I had no idea how to function to live out my dream. It was a fantasy. I lost the last 15 years of my life chasing unicorns while sabotaging everything else I had that might have been good.

My life is good today. I don't hold out hope for a baby. As far as adoption, I would choose to have a spouse first, and before I can have a spouse I have to be capable of a healthy relationship. I am not there yet. I may be sad at times but I don't feel sorry for myself anymore.

When I say I have accepted this, I mean entirely. I have accepted that whatever I receive in life is meant to be and whatever I don't receive is not meant to be. God knows better. What I do have hope for are the surprises yet to come that I will have a clear mind to be grateful for. I don't have expectations today - I can't.

For me, the entire process of accepting things as they are and having faith in a positive outcome are a big part of what keeps me sober.

I think it's a natual instinct for women to want children. My sister and I talked about this very thing not to long ago.

I have my nephews coming over this weekend. Kids are good times, they are, but they are a huge responsiblity.

I have friends that popped them out like nothing, having them with multiple women. I feel bad for the kids, their had for the wrong reasons.

Sucks life is so short. I try not to dwell on the past, but it's tough at times.

I read all the young ones on here in their 20's trying to get sober, man, do it, it doesn't get easier and the consquences get worse each day

Nemo, u the man

What stood out for me Tara was "Escape was my coping mechanism, and without complete acceptance of my reality, I was going to keep drinking". I'd used escape to effect when I was younger and it did it's job then, but it also kept me in that safe place I'd built and I didn't grow from that.

Acceptance was a major key for me. I had to accept a lot of my life, not just where I was at but where I'd been as well. Before I could accept I had to acknowledge parts of my life existed and that was hard to do at times.

The things I've needed to accept apart from being an alcoholic is what happens in each and every day. It's one of the reasons I keep the Serenity prayer handy because I don't know what's going to happen in the next moment and I want to be reminded to do the legwork where I can and hand the rest over to God when that's done and hosed.