I am 47.  I never had any babies or pregnancies.  Menopause started three years ago.

When I was 18 I had an ovary removed because of a (thankfully) benign tumor.  I was married at 22.  We started trying to have a baby immediately.  Months went by and I got more and more anxious.  I got so much advice.  Stop trying and it will happen.  Visualize your baby and it will happen.  Start getting your house ready and it will happen.  I read books.  I tried to learn everything.  I cycled between anticipation and despair in fourteen day increments.  I was tested and found that there was a lot of scar tissue.  The doctor said unlikely but not impossible. I clung to those words like a talisman.  I had a moment of spectacular joy when I thought all my dreams were coming true.  I was in the bathroom watching a pregnancy test (even though you aren't supposed to do that).  It started to look positive. I yelled for joy calling my husband into the bathroom just in time to realize it was negative. He had been building a model car and knew what I was doing and he had the same exstactic moment of spectacular joy running into the bathroom.  Our dreams crashed in. He never finished building the model car. The marriage ended at 26.  

I told myself having babies wasn't in the cards for me.  I was going to art school and building a new single life and honestly it was a fantastic time.  i was learning about myself and there was no reason to think about whether i would have kids or not.  it wasn't even a possiblity.  i convinced myself that i was actually better off than mothers because i could make a life that was all for me.

except to do this...to press down the lifelong dream of being a mother...i had to actually deny that i wanted it.  i had to become critical of mothers and motherhood.  i had to build a wall between my heart and any stories about babies and any babies that I came into contact with.

noone in my life even knew that i ever wanted that because i never brought it up.  i thought if i didn't admit it i wouldn't have to feel it.  i could make myself into someone who didn't care.

but everytime someone i knew got pregnant or mothers day rolled around and filled the stores and airwaves with beatific images of motherhood my heart broke all over again.

so when later i fell in love with a man who had a daughter i thought well - maybe i will get to be a step mom.  i had images of step families in my head from movies and tv.  flawed but making it work and eventually falling into a kind of closeness. i thought i could get to do that.  except his daughter's mom didn't want that.  she made a rule about not having their daughter around a significant other until marriage. that meant there was no chance I would get to build a relationship with his daughter and it also meant it was harder for him to think about the three of us being kind of a family because he always had to keep us apart.

so when we got married i did meet her and we get to see each other occasionally but not enough to build a relationship.  she has a mom and doesn't need me and isn't interested in coming to stay with us.  it would be difficult anyway because we live in different states.  she is fourteen now and i'm running out of time for us to have that kind of family.  i have been so sad because she loves to go and stay with my husbands parents but won't come and stay with us.  there is this raw pain and disappointment that comes from having an expecation that was largely selfish and didn't consider reality.

i told my therapist about my stepdaughter last week but not about the infertility.  she asked why i wanted that and said that i should get a dog to fill that hole in my life.  

so i realized that i can't just decide not to feel something by refusing to feel it.

it's too late for me to have a baby and i wouldn't have been able to afford the treatments anyway.  adoption is expensive too.  i don't want to get obsessed with trying to do something to become a parent that might not work.  i don't want to drop a ball of sadness and tragedy into my marriage that could erode it from the inside.

she said i need to grieve.  i don't know how.  how do you grieve?