To renounce motherhood, when one is a woman and one feels the desire for children, it is an unnatural exploit.

But the following testimonials prove precisely that it is possible. That one can be a woman without being a mother.

Totally, without bitterness or regrets.

When sterility seems to remove all femininity

"When the verdict came down, I realized that my life was going to rock, I was going to be part of another category of women, those who can not give life. 'we are fleeing,' says Corinne, one of our interviewees.

This is a difficult reality for these women who live in a society that normalizes having children and denigrates women who choose not to enjoy the joys and constraints of motherhood.

Of course, this is not obvious. This diagnosis, terrible, often emerges now after a long journey of the fighter and years of struggle to thwart the fate, using the techniques of assisted procreation ...

Until the day when these women, ready to do anything to become mothers, understand deep down that they will not be able to go further.

That it is time to put an end to the false hopes, to draw a line on the promises that science, always more powerful, had awakened. After growing up with the idea that they will be mothers one day, they first live their infertility as a disability, a disability, in a society that promotes triumphant maternity.

"Women are under enormous pressure today," says psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Muriel Flis-Trèves *, who accompanies infertile couples at the Antoine-Béclère hospital in Clamart, and it is society that is guilty because in glorifying the pregnancy, she compels the woman to think that the essence of the feminine lies in motherhood, and sterile women feel banished, out of the ordinary.

It is a long way, painful and difficult. The price to pay is very high before you can mourn the motherhood.

But we can learn to overcome this failure, to live with this injustice. It takes years of inner work. Those who have agreed to tell us about their journey through the desert. Then the light.

How to deal with infertility?

You have to go through a phase of depression, sometimes losing your companion, getting lost yourself ... These women could have chosen to persevere, by appealing to a surrogate mother for example, or, of course, by adopting .

Those who have agreed to give up affirm themselves as women 'anyway', 'despite everything'. They convey a message: 'I listen and I give myself the right to define myself differently than as a mother.'

But it is because they have gone through this loss that they will succeed in rebuilding themselves, that they will be reborn on their own.

Transform this test by realizing something other than a child. Yes, we can be a happy childless woman. We can sublimate his life.

The proof, with these three unadorned stories of women who have managed to tap into their desire for a child a wonderful energy to realize themselves.

Catherine: "I went through all the states"

"I had always imagined that I would have children, the women of my family are very fertile, I naively thought it was a hereditary 'gift', but my body said 'no'. ready for anything: an operation for an endometriosis, then a series of in vitro fertilizations. "

I went through all states: euphoria, disappointment, hope, fear, despair ... I hated myself. "

"I started a therapy, I was afraid to make a child 'repairer', I did not want it to become my crutch.

"And then one day, I understood: I had reached the end of my fight, I did a physical and psychological evaluation, and I realized that there was too much suffering for me and for my couple I did not want to be touched, to be slaughtered in every way, I resigned myself to nature.

Of course I thought about adoption. But it was too heavy for my husband, older, already father of three children and extremely solicited by his work ... As for the idea of ​​the surrogate, she touched me but I quickly gave up. But in renouncing my childhood dream I lost taste in everything.

I found myself at the bottom of my bed, crying over my life. Then came the anger. I needed a manager. My mother ? My husband ? I blamed him for not suffering as much as me. I blamed him for anything and everything.

Faced with an unfair situation, we become unfair. I realized that I was going too far. "

I said to myself: It's a cancer that will win our couple.

"He was right, I looked at myself in the mirror and said," What are you becoming? "I started looking for solutions, I read a lot, but the real turning point was was doing my skills check with someone fabulous, I experienced it as a psychotherapy.

This wonderful woman made a click in me, telling me that I had an artist's soul, that I had nothing to do in an office. That as long as I do not try I would not know. And that especially I had nothing to lose ...

I suddenly saw myself as a little girl, admiring of my father, crooning. As soon as I got home, I told my husband that I was going to fulfill my childhood dream of becoming a singer.

He replied, 'Go on, I'm here!' I became friends with the son of the pianist who accompanied my father! Two years ago, he said to me, 'We are putting up a repertoire.' With covers of Boris Vian, my father ...

Then I met my author, who fits me totally and is inspired by my moods. He also wrote 'I waited', a song about my desire for a child not answered. Today, I'm 45 years old and I'm a singer. I create because I could not procreate. My album is my baby.

He looks like me. Besides, everyone thinks that I wrote it. On stage, I dare and have fun. And the public makes me a hundredfold. It's a slap of love! My job allows me to transmit, to give joy to people.

On stage, I'm the leader, the boss. I said to my psychiatrist, leaving him: 'Sorry, I changed my therapy: now I'm singing!' "

Corinne: "We have reinvented our couple, my family is him"

"While going to consult, I had prepared myself for bad news, but not for this implacable observation: I will never be a mother." Ovaries too damaged "," mediocre mucus. "The words of the doctor echoed in me for a long time. It was the vocabulary of failure.

The failure of a couple, a body, a femininity too. At first I wanted that man in a white coat who had told me the news, then the whole world. And it was especially to Paul, my husband, that I made my suffering pay. A height, while it was me the 'culprit'!

He took the news and endured my seizures for months. I told him horrors.

It was he who chose not to tell our entourage who of us was sterile.

I saw strollers everywhere. I wanted to steal the children, I was going crazy. Then Paul left me. "I do not want, I can not, we can not do it anymore," he told me before leaving. Without slamming the door, without me answering anything. I understood that I had done everything for him to go away.

I was so scared that he abandons me for a young girl, a 'fertile' belly ... I think I also needed to 'victimize' myself. I was not worthy to be loved.

Alone without children at 42 years, I lived a kind of crisis of adolescence. I went out a lot, I had a lot of lovers, to whom I announced very cynically that at least, with me, the question of the biological clock would not arise. I did not risk making them a child in the back!

In short, I filled my life as a sterile woman with sterile relationships ... But I missed Paul. I was told that he was working like crazy, that he had lost weight. I thought I was preserved, expecting each time to be told that he was in a relationship again, crazy in love with a thirty already pregnant!

Finally he reminded me. He still loved me ... And when I found him, I realized that the worst was behind us and that the best was yet to come.

We were so afraid of getting lost that today we enjoy everything we can share together. I am 44 years old and I am happy. "

We will never be parents. But we are lovers. My family is him. I spoil him, he spoils me.

"When our friends buy a family wagon, we opt for a convertible! We do not deprive ourselves of anything, we offer improvised weekends, mornings under the duvet .. Obviously no one is fooled, we are become too dependent on each other.

And all this love, it does not replace the happiness of having a child. But over time we learn to multiply the pleasures, to create new ones. Above all, we savor our present, we who have waited so much for the future.

We now know that we are together for real good reasons. "

Isabelle: "What is the mourning of motherhood in the mourning of a child?"

"Yes, you can be happy without being a mother, but you have to go through a mourning process to accept this idea, because there is no stronger than the failure of the body." I fought for two whole years before to give up, but there was really a point of no return when I realized that I could not go further.

I have always loved children and imagined becoming a mother someday. But I had my first miscarriage at 28 years old, it was the beginning of a chaotic path that ended with several IVF attempts, all failures ...

During the crossing of this long tunnel, I repeatedly left Mathieu, my companion, who himself had a tortured relationship to paternity (two girls left to live in Sweden with their mother, and a son he saw little and which, in my eyes, did not support me enough.

At the time of my attempts of IVF, our history had taken again, but I made the steps alone in Brussels, because in France IVF for single person are prohibited. On site I met a psychologist who enlightened me on the behavior of Mathieu, and tried to warn me of the journey that awaited me. But I was decided. "

I did everything, all endured ... until the fourth IVF. There I was exhausted.

"It takes a point of no return, I had crossed it, luckily Mathieu was there, it was he who helped me to stay calm, and our story softened. resigned me, but above all for me, to realize that he was still here, after all these trials, all these years, proved to me that I was worth something, that I was worthy to be loved, even with my sterility .

As I had not been able to fulfill my dream of a little girl, I realized another: I asked Mathieu to ask me in marriage. Strangely, while we have always been a very "out of the ordinary" couple, it was suddenly important for me to enter into this social convention.

And then gradually I learned to love my role as stepmother. And grandma!

With Mathieu's children, I have a relationship without the harshness of the responsibility.

Today at 46, I am happy, I feel much stronger and balanced than before. But I will always have in the bottom of me this sadness that comes back in waves. In fact, I relativize. I love, I am loved, I love my job as a journalist, which allows me to travel everywhere, to have a thousand lives.

I feel that I am very spoiled. I have friends who have died, others who have lost their child. What is the mourning of motherhood in the mourning of a child?

I sorted out my surroundings, freeing myself from those whose judgment hurts. And most of all, I learned to look at my belly button. Finally I am just a woman without children. "

Everything is not in maternity.

"We must give up an obsession, move on to something else, stop looking at women without children with pity or guilt, just try to understand their reasons, their career, their history. I explain.

In any case, I am very proud to have never been jealous of those who have children. "