As women, we have to decide, at some point in our lives, whether or not we want to have a child or children. It’s a huge decision, and of course it’s sometimes taken out of people’s hands. But when it isn’t, it involves much lining up of things – the right partner at the right time. Things like career and finances and health and age come into it. And yet, looking back as a mother of two children aged eleven and nine, I don’t remember considering all those things at all. I don’t remember making a conscious decision. I think I sleepwalked into motherhood to a certain extent, just thinking it was what people did and it was surely something I wanted. Perhaps that’s why I’m fascinated by it now, and create characters like Anna in The Life She Could Have Lived, who are torn on this matter.
I have a friend who’s a couple of years younger than me and who doesn’t have children. I hadn’t spoken to her for a long time until recently. She told me that she’d always remembered what I said to her about having children. I had no recollection of this and asked her what I’d said. Apparently, I told her that unless you really want to have them, I would suggest not doing. I probably said it when I was deep in the fog of sleep deprivation, but I stand by it. It’s such a hard thing, mothering, and I think if you’re ambivalent you’re probably better off coming down on the side of not doing it.
In The Life She Could Have Lived, Anna lives two lives, one with children and one without. And readers can make their own minds up about which life is the more fulfilling, the more complete. But that’s a privilege we don’t have in our own, real lives. We make this utterly life-changing decision, and then we get on with things, never knowing what might have been if we’d gone the other way. The impact that decision has had or will have on our relationships, our career, our friendships. Our whole lives. And that allows us to think our ‘other life’ would have been terrible, when we’re having a good day, or that it would have been wonderful, when we’re having a bad one.
It’s probably for the best that we can’t know what a different future would have been like. Because we only have this one life to live, as far as we know, and all we can do is make the best decisions we can and live accordingly. It’s totally normal to think about the live we could have lived, as long as we put most of our focus into living the one we have.