There is a book called The Go-Between, and its opening line is one with which many people are familiar.  "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there." If you substitute the word "parenthood" for "the past", that describes very well how I looked at the world for many years, and I often felt inadequate because of it.

Having gotten only as far as a line on a pregnancy test stick, a prescription for prenatal vitamins, and an eight-week sonogram image, I have but the vaguest understanding of what it means to be a parent. Those rare times when I did get to hold an infant, I was always afraid I would drop it. It amazed me how people could be so matter-of-fact around these creatures. Parents occupied a secret land that both mystified and enthralled me, but I was never able to get a passport, and those sunny shores remained just out of reach. They would send the occasional postcard. "Wish you were here," they shouted. "Wish I was too," I whispered back.

The sense of personal failure that comes with the inability to conceive or to carry a pregnancy to term is visceral and deep. If you have kids, even if it was a struggle, you don't really know it. If you never wanted kids or never tried to have kids, you don't really know it.

Infertile. Sterile. Barren. There is a feeling of harsh judgment in those words. You are an outsider, not privy to one of the great mysteries of life.

Whether it's logical or not, there is an elemental shame associated with not being able to accomplish this most basic of biological tasks. The ability to create and nurture life is supposedly the essence of being a woman, and so I often felt like an impostor. Having all of the right parts that didn't work seemed like a sham, a mockery of womanhood. Still, there were many times when I caught myself thinking, of someone who was being an über-mother, "What makes you so special? Anyone can pop out a kid." But then I had to stop myself.  "Oh wait...I can't."

After the intial losses, the ongoing frustration, played out month after month, began to make me feel that I was powerless, at the mercy of malevolent forces completely beyond my control. How could I be trying so hard and doing everything right, only to fail time after time? It all went against what I had been taught, that if you followed the rules and did what you were told, you would realize your dreams.

Eventually, though, to save my own sanity, I began to realize that I had to do something and that, if I looked closely enough, I actually did have choices. The decision to end infertility treatments and all of the humiliation involved was a liberating one. And then, after the decision not to adopt, I wondered if I was becoming more "childfree" than "childless". After all, I was voluntarily passing up two options that could have resulted in having a child.

Some may see that as a distinction without a difference, but to me, the difference was substantial. After feeling powerless for so many years, the act of making decisions (even decisions that were contrary to my goal) gave me back a sense of control over my own body and my own life.

Even so, I was still without that which I wanted - a child that we had created and that I had given birth to. But would I have to spend the rest of my life in mourning over this? Who would benefit from that? Or could I learn to live with the loss and fashion a life that had room for joy? Did I have control over this too? That was a little trickier.

My loss was of a potential person, someone I didn't really know, someone who existed only in my imagination. So the grieving process was somewhat different, harder to quantify. I didn't miss specific laughter or smells or touches. There were no clothes hanging in a closet that would need to be sorted through. No photo albums. No rituals to be observed. No grave to visit. Learning how to say goodbye to a possibility, rather than an actual person, involves much more nebulous feelings. 

And so I gathered up those moments that I had anticipated experiencing - no elaborate fantasies, just fleeting images - and sent them out into the universe. Seeing her for the first time. Watching her sleep. First steps. Walking on the beach. Going off to school. Family dinners. Holidays. Everything. I just let them go. I came to believe that "it would have been a good life" was good enough. No bitterness. No regrets. No apologies. 

Of course, there are still times when the feelings I thought I had buried come back to life like a George Romero zombie to eat my brain once again. A recent story in Salon about the funniest and saddest scenes in recent movies resulted in a discussion of the opening montage of the movie Up. So, like a dummy, I searched for it on YouTube and, sure enough, my eyes welled up at the scenes of the young Carl and Ellie, looking up into the sky and seeing clouds turning into babies, fixing up the nursery, and then sobbing in the doctor's office. Yeah, been there. Sometimes it's surprising how "only yesterday" it can still feel.

You know what, though? It's all a part of who I am. So in that sense, it's not a completely bad thing, because all of my experiences have helped shape the person I have become. I can't change it, but I no longer let what I'm not define me. True, I'm not a mother. But I'm also not a doctor, or a figure-skater, or a musician, or an actress or a teacher, or a whole host of other fulfilling and exciting things. The same is true of anyone, isn't it? However, the many things that I am have brought me great joy, and are of no more or less value than the things that make up anyone else's life.

I am a whole person. I am a whole woman. To anyone on the outside looking in, this may seem like a ridiculously obvious conclusion. But it took me a long time to get to this place. It's not necessarily the place that I had planned to be, but it's my own country. I do things differently here.

I wish there was a map for this kind of thing. Everyone has to find their own way, though. Sometimes that involves circling back and covering the same stretch of road over and over again. Other times there are quantum leaps, arrived at only after long periods of intertia. No two people are going to take the same route.

All I know is that, after all my traveling, it's just so nice to have finally arrived.

As a final postscript, I think that maybe my journey can be summed up in two simple sentences.

Not every infertility story ends happily with a baby.

Some end pretty happily without one.