Guess there ARE others like me in the Bay Area...

Mirror, mirror on the wall...will I never be a mommy at all?
By Jessica Yadegaran, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
http://www.insidebayarea.com/bayarealiving/ci_7117081

JULIE ARCHIBALD loves kids. A youthful and lively 33-year-old, she is godmother to a 7-year-old and a 10-year-old and pseudo-aunt to two toddlers. In June, the Oakland shoe buyer visited a psychic who told her she is going to have twins. Archibald, who has been in a relationship for four years, is ready to be a mother. Her partner, she says, is not.
"I'm at the perfect age for it, but it might not happen," she explains.
While Archibald knows she has time, she says she won't be distraught if she never has children.
"I want it because I'm a maternal person and would like to raise a child," she says. "But I'm so happy and fulfilled already inside."
Archibald is in a good place. But others in her situation struggle.
Blame it on the marriage delay, divorce or the increase of women in the work force, but 27 percent of those 30 to 34 and 19 percent of those 35 to 39 are childless, compared to 15.6 percent and 10.5 percent in 1976, respectively, according to the 2004 U.S. Census.
Still, many of these women grew up with a "white picket fence" scenario that involved a man, a house and kids. For whatever reason, their lives took a different path, and now they're faced with the tick of their biological clocks.
Although it's a choice to remain childless for some women, others yearn for kids and feel out of sync with their friends who have families.
Despite their own happy, fulfilling lives, the women are trying to cope with the reality that life may go on, without kids. Experts say it's important to address and grieve this as a loss, but few women do.
"Grief in its simplest form is unresolved emotion," says Bobby Rodriguez-Havens, executive director of the nonprofit Open Path, formerly Resolve. Open Path offers grief counseling to women who, as Rodriguez-Havens explains, lined up their ducks expecting a child to be automatic, and it didn't turn out that way.
"They question, 'Why haven't I met anyone? Should I have not gone for the MBA? Should I have married that guy in college?,'" she says. "When you don't deal with these emotions you end up replaying the grief in your life in different ways."
Lauren Edwards of San Lean-
dro deals with her grief. A successful corporate writing coach, Edwards never wanted children, at least not in her 20s. So, at 22, she met and married a man who shared the sentiment. At 31, things began to change.
Edwards' biological clock went off, she says, and every lovely sunset made her yearn for the experience of sharing its beauty with a baby.
The phase ended, however. And six years ago, so did Edwards' marriage. Now, at 46, she says she has healed from the divorce, but the memories of pain and sadness are reminders of her decision:
"At the time of the divorce, I felt that choice had been robbed from me. Had I been married to someone else at 31, I'd probably have a child now. And I'd never guessed I'd feel so alone."
Edwards copes by volunteering Fridays at an elementary school in Oakland. She works with third-graders who fill her up, she says. It's her favorite day of the week.
"I'd volunteered in the past, and knew I'd do it again, but when I reflect back on my thinking at 21 and 32, I'm struck by the impossibility of foreseeing that I would need these third-graders a whole lot more than they needed me,"
Edwards says.
In her Berkeley practice, psychologist Judith Beemer says she sees many women who reach the end of their reproductive cycles and become depressed, realizing they are the end of their family line. But if they begin coping with the possibility and the grief earlier, depression is less likely, she says.
"You have to be fairly psychologically sophisticated to be doing the work in your 30s, but it happens," Beemer says.
Judy Levitt, a Montclair marriage and family therapist, begins by exploring why a client yearns for a child, including expectations, family history of motherhood and what the woman thinks will happen if she does not bear children. At the end of the exploration, Levitt says, she might realize she's perfectly happy the way things are:
"Today, women of childbearing age have so many more opportunities. They have permission to be so autonomous that they could feel conflicted between living this fulfilling life and also feeling the pull of nature as they see time passing."
Levitt's approach also mimics grief counseling, from acknowledging and experiencing the loss to meditating on it and eventually letting it go.
"Being in therapy is good because someone is sitting with you bearing witness to your process and helping you to the next step," she says. "The idea is to let go of expectations and dreams and embrace new dreams and plans."
For Teena Massingill, it was about embracing a lifelong decision, and doing it alone.
The 41-year-old public relations manager always planned to adopt a child. In her mid-30s, a job brought her from Ohio to California, and she assumed that, from there, everything else would fall into place.
"A lot of it has," Massingill says. "But I never found the right partner for me. So I was completely resolved that all the things I wanted in my life I was going to have even in the absence of something else."
Massingill still wanted to travel, own her own home and have a family, whether she gave birth to the child or adopted. So she bought the home in Concord and traveled to Italy and Hawaii with friends.
"I'm so glad I didn't wait for Mr. Right to come along and sweep me off my feet and take me to those places," she says. "I think if Mr. Right eventually finds me or I find him, I'll be a more interesting and happy person because I'm enjoying
my life."
The biggest enjoyment — the light of her life, Massingill says — is the 14-month-old she's been fostering since April. She expects the adoption to be final next year, and says she reached a point when she realized, traditional path or not, she was going to be a mother.
"Marriage is one aspect of a fulfilling life and there are many many others," Massingill says. "When you are busy enjoying life, you don't have time to be sad over what isn't there."