Crying on the radio

Sharing personal stories in public

Last month, I cried in front of 366,000 people.

It wasn’t, like, sobbing crying. It was more ‘oh shit, there are tears in my eyes, my voice is going all wobbly’ crying. But it was definitely crying. I had to take my glasses off and rub my eyes. I wished I had a tissue. But I didn’t have a tissue because I was in a studio in RTÉ, our national broadcaster, being interviewed very sensitively and thoughtfully by the lovely Dearbhail McDonald about my book Our Song (you may have heard me mention it. Once or twice). Dearbhail was the guest host of The Brendan O’Connor show, whose Sunday episode (on which I was appearing) regularly has roughly 366,000 listeners which, given that the adult population of the country is roughly 3.7 million, is about 10% of all adults in the country.

So ten per cent of all adults in the country heard me talk to Dearbhail about the fact that, like Laura in Our Song, I had wanted to have children but I couldn’t get pregnant and now I know I will never be a mother. Until the book came out, I had never talked or written publicly about this fact. I told some of my friends and family over the years, but not all of them, not by a long shot. More people I know found out in 2020 because, the year we both turned 45, my husband published a book of essays called Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea. It included an essay, written with my full approval, called Something Else, about realising that you weren’t going to have children after all when you always thought you would, and the complicated grief and sense of loss that comes with that. 2020, by the way, was also the last time someone told me they were pregnant and I held it together in front of them and then cried in the car all the way home.

It may be hard to believe, given that I had a Livejournal in the early ‘00s, but I’m quite a private person. In my professional life as a writer, I’ve never really written hugely personal stuff. But before Our Song came out, I knew I was going to have to do it. Infertility is an element of Our Song and that’s because I felt, on a very deep level, that it was important to write a story in which a character can’t have children and gets a happy ending that doesn’t involve magically becoming a parent. From the very beginning, before Tadhg and Laura were even called Tadhg and Laura, Our Song was always going to be a book in which the characters were, very explictly, going to live happily ever after without children.

And that was because I needed to see that story myself, and I felt wasn’t seeing it. I kept encountering stories, true and fictional, in which couples who couldn’t have children were eternally heartbroken by the grief and sense of loss, or stories in which they miraculously got pregnant or adopted a child. All of these things happen in real life, of course. I don’t want to belittle that reality, and that long-lasting pain, or the huge joy people experience from long-wanted parenthood. But I never saw my own experience, as someone who wanted to have children and couldn’t and who went away and cried after every single pregnancy announcement for years and years, but was now genuinely happy with her life and how things had turned out. I knew I wasn’t the only person in my situation. I have friends who are in the same boat, and we all felt we didn’t see ourselves in the public narratives around fertility and parenthood.

Well, I’m literally seeing myself now. Last month a photo of me appeared on the cover of the Sunday Times’s Home section with the caption “Author Anna Carey on child-free marriage”.

Inside was a very sensitive, thoughtful interview by the brilliant Aoife Barry in which I talked about all of this stuff. A few weeks later I was interviewed by Sinéad Moriarty in front of an audience at the Dalkey Book Festival, and the next morning I was on the Brendan O’Connor Show. A few weeks after that I was interviewed live on Ireland AM, and the following week I was on All About Books on Dublin City FM. In all of these interviews, I talked about infertility, the narratives around it and my own personal experiences. I was and am very glad to have the opportunity to talk about these things publicly, and every time I get a message from someone saying it makes them feel seen reminds me why I’m doing it. I have absolutely no regrets about any of it.

But… it’s weird.

Sometimes it’s very weird.

My parents in law came to the event I did in Dalkey. I had actually asked my relatives not to come to events or listen to interviews because I knew I’d be asked about personal stuff and it made me self conscious, but it turns out people thought I was joking. I was not! Anyway, my parents in law - whom I adore, by the way, and with whom I have an excellent relationship - were there while I talked to Sinéad about my inability to have children with their son. A couple of days after the Brendan O’Connor show interview, I was walking home from the local shops when I passed one of my neighbours. My neighbourhood is a friendly place and we’d always greet each other in passing, and this time they said, ‘You were great on the radio the other day.’ A few weeks ago I was at a concert and afterwards my husband and I were talking to a few of the performers, who we know slightly from singing sessions in Dublin. We were chatting away and then one of them said he’d heard me on the Brendan O’Connor show. Another man said he’d heard it too. They were both lovely about it and it was really nice to hear but it also kind of freaked me out. It all kind of freaks me out.

In the normal scheme of things, I would never have talked to any of these people about my fertility issues. I would never have cried in front of them. But now… well, now I basically had. Like I’ve told all of you. I should stress that I was under no pressure to do any of these things - my publishers asked me if I was okay with talking about fertility issues in promo interviews, all the interviewers were extremely sensitive, and crucially, I actively wanted to talk about it for the same reason I wanted to write a book about it. I wanted people to feel less alone.

I wanted to feel less alone.

And I do. The single most moving thing, the single most important thing that has happened to me as a result of this book coming out is the fact that I’ve received lots of messages from women who don’t have children who felt seen by it, and who felt moved by the ending. Every single one of those messages has made me cry. Every single one of them has made me very, very happy. Just one of those messages is worth all my neighbours knowing about my unproductive reproductive system. It means so, so much to me. Knowing it’s not just me who has experienced this, and who feels this way, and who needs to see other women in the same situation. Who needs to see other stories.

That’s what made me cry on the radio, by the way. Not the fact that I don’t have kids, that I didn’t get close to having kids, that I couldn’t get pregnant. I cried when I talked about a scene towards the end of the film Up. Everyone who’s seen it remembers the devastating opening sequence of that film, the wordless montage of a young couple getting married and setting up home and planning a family and then losing a baby. We then meet the husband as a cranky old widower and there’s an implication that this lack of children might have blighted his whole life.

But near the end of the film, he finally looks at the rest of the scrapbook his wife left behind when she died not long ago.

And it’s not sad at all. It’s beautiful. It’s the story of their long and happy life together without children. It’s the only time I’ve seen such a relationship portrayed so beautifully, and lovingly, and happily. It’s the only time I’ve seen what I needed to see.

That’s why I cried on the radio. And I don’t regret any of it.

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You can order Our Song here or Bookshop.org in the UK. If you like it, please rate and review it accordingly! And spread the word to people who might like it.