“Until the day it's not a possibility, it remains possible. So, stay hopeful.”

In this heartfelt episode of 'Endings,'  Business psychologist and executive coach Hazel Showell shares her own experiences with child loss and the complex journey towards acceptance and peace. 

With the support of her friend Charlotte Ashton, Hazel delves into the emotional and generational impacts of choosing a life without children. Through candid conversation and a powerful family systems coaching exercise, they uncover the costs and hopes intertwined in the lineage of motherhood.

This episode is not just a tale of loss, but a tribute to the strength found in hard decisions and the hope in building a child-free life.

Places to go if you have lost a baby or can’t have one:

Miscarriage Association 

Tommys.org (miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy support)

Mind (Mental Health support)

These resources have links for different types of support if you are affected by this issue.

More from Hazel: 

Visit her website: Just Hazel

Or connect on: LinkedIn

[00:00:27] Hazel: Welcome to Endings. [00:00:30] Now, at the end of each series, I turn the tables on myself. And that's because if my guests are prepared to share some of the hardest moments of their life, to be vulnerable and brave, then I earn a [00:00:45] part of that trust. In this episode, I'm sharing my own story of endings that I've had to navigate. In particular, that of child loss and ultimately choosing not to have children. This is a [00:01:00] story of acceptance. It's also a story of how there can be a beautiful serenity in making peace with hard decisions. I hope you can apply some of the learnings from these experiences to an ending [00:01:15] you might be facing.

[00:01:43] Hazel: Charlotte is one of the most positive [00:01:45] people I know, but like me, She knows what it means to find hope in hopeless places. Later on, Charlotte and I work through an exercise that's all about accepting the cost of passing on life [00:02:00] and that it can be high in many families. When you understand your own ancestor's story, you can choose how to live your own life story.

Sadly, the first time I had a, a pregnancy, uh, was with my first husband, who, and we had a, [00:02:30] you know, a very difficult end to that wedding, to that, to all that marriage, rather.

[00:03:21] Hazel: That had to, unfortunately, be removed surgically. So, I think we can use those cold terms, but that's not how it felt at [00:03:30] the time, because I've lost Another one. And, and so I was kind of 32, something like that. 33. Yeah. When I got divorced, obviously very quickly from that went into having a brain tumour.

[00:04:07] Hazel: And I was starting to imagine what that might be like. I mean, I'd got a business, so it was a bit, this'll be interesting, this'll be [00:04:15] fun. And We'll find a way to make it work. You know, come from a long line of arsey women. It's fine. I'll find a way. Just need to get my head around it. But it was something I needed to get my head around, which is why I was like, well, let's go and get advice and find out [00:04:30] with my history and my health. Is that going to be possible? Went and saw the gynecologist and he was said, if I have to make you rattle with pills, I will get. You threw a pregnancy and the baby's still in you for nine months. We'll [00:04:45] do this. It's okay. Because he was very pro women trying to have children because I had endometriosis.

[00:05:18] Hazel: He said, so if you want him to raise your child, go ahead. quite a lot of sarcasm. So it was made very clear from a medical point of view that it just wasn't going to be possible. [00:05:30] We were looking at each other, and I thought, do I have to give him the option to say, if you really want children, then you can't marry me.

[00:05:45] Charlotte: Just talk a bit more about, you know, you referenced your brain tumour then, um, you'd obviously had the experience with previous pregnancies, this massive thing that had happened to you in the brain tumour and the recovery.

[00:06:13] Hazel: It wasn't, you know, and it's really [00:06:15] interesting that, you know, especially as a woman of childbearing age, there was no conversation about.

[00:06:39] Hazel: So we're just going to do it. And yes, it'll damage heart, kidney. all sorts [00:06:45] and it's worth it. So you do it. You don't think about it. And I don't think no one was talking about fertility, but because I got endometriosis, I was, I was going to see a gynaecologist, but his, he was almost the opposite. [00:07:00] Like not thinking about the fact that I had a brain tumour, just thinking about me as a, a woman of an age that could bear children, their children think he'd got eight loved kids.

[00:07:40] Charlotte: But how did you come to make the decision?

[00:07:45] Hazel: My thought process was, I was blacking out a lot and it's why I don't drive. And the sense at the time, we think there might be a link with hormones. So also the benefit of the womb is, well, we'll [00:08:00] stop the hormones. You might not back out as much. And it's also, it's quite debilitating.

[00:08:23] Hazel: I paralyzed, I can't move. Yeah. So I thought if I could stop that, that would be one of the [00:08:30] legacies of the brain surgery I would love to get rid of. Yeah. And I thought, so am I prepared to give up, you know, my capacity that I don't think I've actually got, but my secret hope to have children in order. [00:08:45] to get rid of that part of my brain injury and I did that deal.

[00:09:10] Hazel: The sheer enormity of what you're doing to [00:09:15] handbrake turn into menopause at 42 was not really explained. I kind of, we sort of, they said, oh, well, of course, at that point, you know, normal periods will stop. But I don't think the, the, not at any, any consideration for the emotional side of [00:09:30] that is the end of hope.

[00:09:47] Hazel: It's over. That was a really hard grieving process and it hadn't hit me at all. But as a consequence of understanding the emotional impact, that's when I started to get more [00:10:00] interested in things like family systems. I was always, already trained as a systemic coach. And, you know, one of the activities I'd love for us to do together is something I learned then with John Whittington.

[00:10:55] Hazel: And it doesn't matter how many weeks we're not medicalizing emotion. [00:11:00] It's saying, if you feel it, you feel it. Yeah. If you felt like a mother so that there can be motherless children and childless mothers, it's that, that's the complexity of life. And I thought that was such a beautiful concept of the honors.[00:11:15]

[00:11:22] Charlotte: It is irrelevant because it's it's a life. It's a life in your mind

[00:11:37] Hazel: It's like still lived for a while. So they said you find something that honors it and it allows you to, for it to not be a [00:11:45] shameful hidden secret. You don't need to pretend it didn't happen. You can honor it. And so I picked these two tiny little stones. It was like these two tiny little things that had become almost like a hard, um, It's a hard thing to talk about at the time.

[00:12:17] Hazel: And easily broken. And inside it, one is fossilised, because it's like, somehow it's set up

[00:12:28] Hazel: Um, one, [00:12:30] because I thought this one is something very old. Again. existed, this little thing. And I just imagined this tightly curled little ball and I thought, yeah, this feels right.

[00:13:07] Hazel: It can be in my home where it's fine. I don't normally bring it to work. But I thought, because of what we were talking about, [00:13:15] Yeah. I wanted to say that that ability to have something to represent is also a really human quality. It says so that we can say that represents this.

[00:13:37] Charlotte: But actually what, what struck me then about how you described the, okay, so, you know, fits in my hand as well. [00:13:45] You sort of gradually let it go and then, and then it's in the glass heart and it's almost talking about as a mother myself, sort of the separation that you have to go through when you have a child.

[00:14:17] Charlotte: It's obviously very different situation, but the way you describe that is very much in the way that a mother will describe their child, you know, and the process they have to go through to let go, to let go, to separate and, and [00:14:30] let that, that golden thread, Get further and further away from them, but still be attached to them.

[00:15:16] Hazel: And actually if I talk about it, it's not shame anymore. It really isn't. It's just simply, this is something I experienced, it's part of being a woman, and I know for some people they don't experience that, and that's still, they're still a woman. And some people have [00:15:30] many, many children. I think we've both come from very different backgrounds.

[00:15:54] Hazel: It's like like what like I wouldn't want to see pictures of people's children because I don't have children. [00:16:00] I still feel like a childless mother. And yet there was this almost assumption. Oh, you won't want to see it. You won't want to hear about my child story. If it matters to you, of course I want to hear it.

[00:16:11] Hazel: So it's inviting people to share, how [00:16:15] do I want to engage with children? Because the one thing that Ian and I discovered is, we are okay most of the time. Occasionally things that can trigger us, and it's upsetting. And it's usually kids of a certain age, and it's toddlers, [00:16:30] when they're just discovering their personalities.

[00:16:52] Hazel: We accepted that. There's no choice for us. We now have a child free life, but that's how we frame it. And so we do all the [00:17:00] things you cannot do with kids. It's really hard to do with kids because we can just, at a moment's notice, go, we'll go away for the weekend. Yeah, the hardest thing we have to find is a cat sitter.

[00:17:16] Charlotte: So there's, there's, there's, there's four houses on the, uh, on the drive that we live on. And the first three have young children. At the fourth. were childless, they've just, they've just recently had a baby and we would text each other as they were all walking down the [00:17:30] drive at 7, 7.30 saying look at them walking out the house at 7 o'clock at night. Free as a bird. Free as a bird, going for a drink.

[00:17:47] Hazel: We've made it work for us. by celebrating what you can do without children whilst being totally okay. Yes, sometimes we'll really miss it. That we've missed out on lots of things. So I think it's the being [00:18:00] okay. Life's really complicated. But it isn't this natural assumption that Everyone's going to become a parent.

Charlotte: Yeah, it's a really, really high proportion.

Hazel: if you add that to the people who are making active choices about the environment and the world and worried about, you know, their children and their children.

[00:18:51] Hazel: So, you know, this idea of you can build your career and then have a child because you build your career. And if you go into your early forties, for example, and your fertility is [00:19:00] dropped off a cliff and suddenly you find you can't conceive, it's not easy. And then you have to decide, do I go down the IVF route, which again is fraught with emotion and difficulty and physical challenges at the time when you're [00:19:15] probably at your peak of your career. I think it's such a challenge, particularly for women and for men. And that's the other side, I suppose, I wanted to talk about was that, um, this is also about men too, you know, it's, it's not just a women's issue. [00:19:30]

[00:19:43] Charlotte: But as you were going through, [00:19:45] you had your hysterectomy and all of that. What was Ian's experience of that and how did you see him kind of, you know, how explicit was he about how he processed it and how it affected him? Obviously, you've talked about it both affecting when you go into, into places where there's [00:20:00] toddlers. But you know, what, what was, I don't think men get anywhere near enough credit for the process they have to go through around anything to do with, with loss.

[00:20:21] Hazel: And that idea of it being a woman's issue, and that's why, you know, a woman can, if it's lost, shame, hide it away, don't talk about it. And yet, I think there's an [00:20:30] enormous grief that's unspoken for men. Almost like they have no right to talk about it. It's not their loss. And yet, you think how men often talk about pregnancies, of like, we're pregnant.

[00:21:14] Hazel: So he [00:21:15] was sharing all this knowledge, and I watched his eyes fill up, and it's like, oh no. It, it, it isn't over for him, you know, and he will continue to have to deal with this and chooses to, but it is almost like a [00:21:30] continuous choice. So it's like, I always made a silent promise to myself. I was going to make sure he had a lovely life because of the choice and what it cost him.

[00:22:14] Hazel: Because [00:22:15] it's just too hard on the heart. Yeah, absolutely. And then there's other times where we think, well you did cheerfully, baby, it's not for anybody. It was lovely. Um, now we've got our different families, a different structure, but I think this importance of the man's [00:22:30] role and the man's loss or the man's gain and fear and all the other different hopes.

[00:22:46] Hazel: I think there's films and TV make it look like full makeup, couple of pushes and you're done. And then when a guy has to watch the woman he loves most in the world go through a couple of days of screaming.

[00:23:18] Hazel: Find a way to, to share all of it. You know, it's, it's a part of being a human. Well, I think that, that's probably the way I see it now. That if we can be okay, that losing a baby can [00:23:30] mean you grieve the whole life. It's like you grieve the whole life. Sunset, not the dawn, it's like the whole thing, and it doesn't stop.

[00:23:57] Hazel: That would have been nice But it's more [00:24:00] wistful, not dagger in the heart stuff.

[00:24:27] Hazel: Well, I think the first stage is always [00:24:30] do you really want children? Because I think this real assumptions and pressure that that is what you want and you're just figuring out how rather than. Maybe I'm okay. Maybe I don't want them. And then it's simply, right, let's build a child free [00:24:45] life. Well, that's the easiest first step. Yeah, you know, but if you do want children, again, my advice would always be to hold it as a possibility. I think when people start to expect children, that's when it's a lifetime of really [00:25:00] poisonous, bitter disappointment.

[00:25:21] Hazel: You know, the difficulties of raising a child is it's kept alive by, yeah, I had the hope for this little thing and I hope I will hold my baby in my arms [00:25:30] and I hope I will raise a good human being and I have hope for that. And if it's not possible, well then. What I've let go of is simply a possibility.

[00:25:59] Hazel: [00:26:00] And can we also hold in our heart the possibility that we won't, because I think actually that ability to both hope and not hope, it's a both and situation won't rip your heart apart

[00:26:32] Charlotte:And. If then the right person, the right situation to open to it, then fantastic. But if it doesn't work out, it's not the end of the world because your life's fantastic anyway. Exactly. So it's kind of [00:26:45] what sounds like what you're saying is kind of make, make a really great life.

[00:27:11] Hazel: Um, I got a really strict talking to my one of my friends. Think of all [00:27:15] of the people. You support and have helped over the years and almost that's your act of creation in the world.. It's the energy, the, you know, what you can change. You know, my business, which I often talk about as the baby, was my actual act of creation.

[00:27:48] Hazel: And I think, yeah, it's finding what your act of creation could be in the world and what is possible. You know, and I know you've building businesses because that that's also actually quite, um, I'm interested that [00:28:00] people often use quite maternal language, male or female, to describe businesses. Definitely.

[00:28:23] Hazel: One of the reasons I love my job is the work I do with families. And [00:28:30] here's an example of an exercise that is used in many different ways to understand the cost of passing on life. How I used it was to make peace with all my experiences and decisions and the [00:28:45] consequences. But this is an exercise I learned as part of my family systems training with a wonderful woman called Lynn Stoney and I've also covered it with John Whittington.

[00:29:42] Hazel: So it goes back to great grandma that [00:29:45] allows us to explore the line of women in our family and understand for them the cost of passing on life. So we're going to start with our great grandma. So I'm going to share stories. And I think what we will often find is there's many [00:30:00] similarities and patterns emerge, and then we're going to step forward.

[00:30:35] Hazel: If you don't have children, there is a lovely concept in systems work that says emotions flow through families until someone's prepared to feel it. So today we're [00:30:45] going to feel it. And the reason I wanted to do it is because sometimes we think of our Our mothers, our grandmothers, our great grandmothers, they become names in a story, but we don't remember [00:31:00] the real human beings.

[00:31:22] Hazel: And it's a very physical exercise. And the reason we do that is because when we're telling stories, sometimes we get a bit in our head [00:31:30] and we forget to connect with the real emotion. And so, we walk through the stories of the women in our family. discussing patterns and traits that had flowed through those and the behaviours that had been passed on that we recognised in [00:31:45] ourself.

[00:32:08] Hazel: And Charlotte and I did just that. But then when we turn to face the future, [00:32:15] we'll talk about yours first, because obviously you have a daughter.

[00:32:20] Hazel: and when you think about what what would you want for her that comes through your line? What are the things you'd say, what are the things to learn, [00:32:30] things to do differently and actually strengths she could take and build on?

[00:32:58] Charlotte: And [00:33:00] through that had a much kind of better sense of, um, what was involved in having children, especially because I spent a lot of time looking after my little brother. Um, and he really put me off. Yeah, thanks mum and Charlie. [00:33:15] Um, But what can I, I mean, what, what I can take is the strength, resilience, absolute pig headedness around.

[00:33:26] Charlotte: Um, but you know, I'm actually, this is what's right for me. [00:33:30] This is what I need. And I'm going to, you know, I'm going to work really hard, do all of these things and wait until the point where I feel like I'm ready. But I think more than anything, the, probably the biggest lesson is that, um, that where I don't feel like there was a lot of genuine love [00:33:45] and affection in my, you know, in my kind of family line, that's absolutely something that, you know, is you will play forward.

[00:34:30] Charlotte: Not much of what they did was a choice. And, you know, I've. always been very stubborn in that this is my choice.

[00:34:41] Charlotte: And I will choose who I have a child with, and I will choose when I have a [00:34:45] child, and I'm very lucky in that we, we were able to, um, uh, and, and I will also make a choice that I don't want to have anymore.

[00:35:03] Hazel: don’t want 14. And that's, what's so interesting. Cause you have choices, you make choices and that's so important, but it also allows you to decide.

[00:35:35] Hazel: But the moment, Your line continues. And that's the bit when I first did this with somebody who couldn't have children, that we'd been talking about this cost of passing on [00:35:45] life and what it can be for women. And the friend and I who can't have children, we went and talked to the facilitator to say, so what do we do?

[00:36:10] Hazel: Well, actually, with everything that's gone before, yeah. [00:36:15] Because the cost of passing in life is so high in my family, it's, we've paid enough. Time to stop. So that's why I see it as, I'm the person that can stop this. Because it wasn't good. You've done it a different way, been able to take the lesson, [00:36:30] convert it and say, well, I will be loving as a mother and present as a mother.

[00:36:42] Charlotte: Yeah, I think. Yeah. And I think it's, um, [00:36:45] I think it's self awareness as well. Yeah, because you, unfortunately, as I've learned from you very well, you can't You can't avoid passing certain things on, but you can be aware of them and you can see them more. And you can [00:37:00] apologise and correct and, you know, and try and improve and be better and do all of those things. Um, but for me, that's a hard enough job with one. I don't want to replicate it. Um, you know, I can, selfishly or not, [00:37:15] um, that feels like the right thing to do.

[00:38:07] Charlotte: Yeah, definitely.

[00:38:09] Charlotte: Yeah.

[00:38:13] Hazel: My thanks to [00:38:15] Charlotte so much for having this conversation with me and listening to my story. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Endings. And if you'd like to share your thoughts or your experiences about your maternal family line, [00:38:30] I really would love to hear them. And if you want to reach me on LinkedIn, I'm Hazel Showell.