Jessica Hepburn wrote 21 Miles when she was forty-three and had spent around £100,000 on eleven rounds of IVF plus therapy and other expenses related to infertility. She had ended up broke and desperate, still prepared to have a twelfth cycle of IVF if she could. She had been trying to conceive her own biological child for nearly a decade.
21 Miles is the story of Hepburn’s attempt to ‘do something big‘ to deal with the fact that she’ll probably never have children – she decides to swim the English Channel instead of pursuing more treatment. This is woven around 21 interviews with very successful, high-profile mothers and non-mothers; the impossible question she sets out to ask them is:
Does motherhood make you happy?
It’s a fast read and Hepburn is likable and engaging. However, I’m a fairly unambitious late-forty-something who has (more or less) made peace with both non-parenthood and a flaccid career, so certain aspects did give me slight pause.
The motherhood question is posed to the interviewees with varying degrees of success and of course, no clear consensus is achieved. Hepburn does come to several interesting conclusions, some of which I like more than others. She thinks that there may be three categories of women in the world:
In the first category are women who are driven by a vocation, who are either not interested in having children or not particularly disappointed when they don’t.
In the second category are women who are purely driven by a maternal instinct, for whom becoming and then being a mother eclipses all other desires.
And in the third category are the women who want both a fulfilling job and motherhood in roughly equal measure.
Does this mean that all happily childfree women are driven by a vocation, or does the first category contain three different types of women? Am I misreading it? If I’m not, then I don’t really fit anywhere: I’ve never had a particular vocation, and I was always very ambivalent about motherhood. Anyway, my impression throughout the book is that you need to have a fulfilling vocation, aka ‘something big’, if you don’t have children. I suppose this stems from the fact that Hepburn and all her interviewees are exceptional or high-achieving women: mediocrity is not an option.
One of the women interviewed, Fiona Mactaggart MP, says
If you can’t have children you might as well try and change the world instead
Please god, no. Pressure. This idea threw me into a downward spiral in my late thirties that took a few years to work through. Later, Hepburn thinks about what her highly successful interviewees have told her and muses:
Some have shown me there are alternative routes to motherhood that can genuinely make you happy; others have made me think about alternative ways of contributing to the world if you can’t be a mother
In other words, get a child somehow or ‘do something big’. I need the reassurance that it is OK to just be: to not have children and also not do anything especially remarkable to compensate for it. That there are myriad other tiny ways to find contentment in your life.
I also think the pressure to do something amazing is there because Hepburn wasn’t fully ‘resolved’ when she wrote 21 Miles – she still entertained the possibility of having a baby. I’m wary of women who are desperate to have a child at all costs, as if the alternative is some sort of arid, monochrome hell. At one point, whilst interviewing the founder of Mumsnet and discussing a potential equivalent for non-mums, Hepburn says:
The truth is, I don’t want to listen to the voice of the ‘non-mother’; it’s not a voice I ever wanted to be.
That sentence chilled me a bit. Some women in Hepburn’s position make the older non-parent feel like the the grim reaper, the harbinger of doom. A pitiable outlier. This line reminds me of that: there’s a touch of dread in there.
Hepburn redeems this in her later conclusions and I don’t believe from her current activity that she feels the same now. I love what she says below – human connections are immeasurably important and they certainly don’t have to be with children:
Being a mother is so important because humans are happiest when they have connection with other people. Parenthood is often the quickest route to that connection but it doesn’t always work and it doesn’t mean that you can’t create the connection in other ways, with other members of your family (up, down and across)
I wanted to hear that you can be ordinary and average, without kids, and still be happy with your lot. That once you’ve got your groove back, you’ll be fine. You will find contentment and fulfillment again in simple interests, small bouts of creativity and daily pleasures. The book does get close to this, but aims a bit higher:
… there’s also something else I’ve learned, and that is that people are most fulfilled when they have a passion. Sometimes your children can be that passion but many people need something else as well. It might be ballet dancing, making films, running your own business or saving lives. It might be going in search of wildlife around the world, skiing to the North Pole.
Hepburn’s passion? She is now an ‘Adventure Activist’ and her next challenge is the Death Zone: Mount Everest in 2021. No simple hobbies and daily pleasures for her. (That’s not true: she loves food and fetishises cake, which is great.)
Luckily for me 21 Miles didn’t make me feel like I have to do something big because I don’t have kids. I can’t relate to most of the interviewees because I’m not driven or particularly talented, and I have a humdrum office job. But Hepburn stayed with me. She’s made me think about whether I make enough effort with human connections, and whether I do the things I enjoy often enough. These are my big things.
I think it’s possible that the process of writing 21 Miles helped Hepburn come to the realisation that it isn’t only the big, grandiose actions that count. She said after the book came out:
Everyone has something in their life that isn’t the way they want it to be. Life is about trying to get over that, and finding the good stuff
I also know a lot about Channel swimming now: mostly that I never want to do it, but also that it’s bloody interesting. Her description of that is superlative and quite moving when she completes it; I truly hope she does an Everest memoir.
I was so scared by this: “The truth is, I don’t want to listen to the voice of the ‘non-mother’; it’s not a voice I ever wanted to be.” Although, to be honest, before I was entertaining resolving child free mentally, I felt that way a bit, but thankfully had people ahead of me that showed that it’s NOT grim reaper harbinger-of-doom to be older and childless. I’m glad she evolved, because I love this: “Everyone has something in their life that isn’t the way they want it to be. Life is about trying to get over that, and finding the good stuff.” That’s pretty much my philosophy right now, finding the good stuff. The flower blooming out of the pile of steaming shit. 🙂 I don’t think I’ll read this book, it sounds like it would make me feel like throwing it across the room too often to be redeemed by the nuggets you mention that didn’t make me mad (how, how, HOW can there only be THREE categories of women? That’s just plain asinine). I love your review though, and your thoughts on the whole philosophy of if you can’t have kids (significant thing that isn’t necessarily the pedestal it’s made out to be) you need to do some other significant thing. Pressure, pressure, as you said. Great thought-provoking post!
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Thanks so much Jess. I did enjoy the book and would recommend it – I was moved when she did her swim… but yes, I think women are much more complex than those categories (and I still want to know if category 1 refers to three types of women – I think it must, in which case: punctuation!).
I struggled a lot with thinking I had to make a big mark in some way because I didn’t have kids when everyone else around me did: I had 4am sweats about my ‘failure’ at everything. What was I? What was I for? What milestones did I have ahead of me? What had I produced? I was hurtling towards nothingness. My career was embarrassing. Etc etc. I can’t say when it resolved, it just suddenly did after a few years – one day I got the old buzz of excitement and pleasure about going to the sea, and I thought ‘there it is…’, capture it. My philosophy became: what can I do to make daily life ‘nicer’? Remove as many of the crap things as I can and add more of the things I like. Sounds lame, but that’s it! Jody Day circulated something ages ago that went something like: “What if, instead of doing that one big thing, you start by making small changes to your life ..”. That’s my motto, really. A friend of mine the other day texted me “the happiest I’ve ever been was when I realised I really don’t have to write the bloody book I always thought I’d write” – I know what she means. When you think about it, it’s weird that the urge to do something big & impressive after infertility is often catalyzed by failing to be like everyone else (ie have 2.4 kids) – I suppose we’re scared of looking like lonely failures. Also important to remember that plenty of parents think ‘is this it?’ on a regular basis. It’s a really interesting topic, the way we all react to things.
Take care!
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I also wanted to add that I really like writer Elaine’s approach to adding ‘the good stuff ‘ to your life in lots of small ways – it basically encompasses what I’m trying to say.
Examples here (Google translate needed by some..):
https://www.elaineok.com/ablenkung-und-so/
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Hi Different Shores, thank you for mentioning my blog!
I am not sure I would want to read “21 Miles” either, but then I must confess it is mainly because I am not reading that many books on infertility and life without children anymore at this point. I have quite a pile from a few years ago though ;-). And I still think every story and book counts as it breaks the taboo a little further.
Thanks for sharing and my very best wishes!
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Thanks Elaine! I know what you mean.. I generally try to only read writers that I know are fully resolved in their lives without children. I definitely couldn’t read Jessica Hepburn’s first book. Like you say, I’m grateful, though, for every book that is written on the subject and that gets out there into the wider readership… Greetings to you!
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These are interesting thoughts. I even have less to contribute than you, because I don’t have a job. I’m perfectly contented with taking care of a home, my husband and myself. However, I did decide to stay home in order to fulfill my dream of writing, which was a dream I had long before I decided to try to have children.
I used to question myself when I read travel blogs. I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t want to go on these exotic and sometimes dangerous adventures that I read on their blogs. Then I switched to wondering if those adventurers had some kind of hole in their lives that they couldn’t fill, because every trip they went on didn’t seem enough. They always had to find another.
Eventually, I came to realize that we all experience exactly what is meant for us. I’ve gone on lots of adventures in my life, but they’ve all been inner journeys rather than outer. I find the psychology of the mind fascinating, in both myself and others. I like trying to figure how and why we are each so unique in our behaviors. It’s like solving a mystery to me, and it’s why my fiction writing shows the psychology of relationships.
Thanks for sharing this thought provoking post.
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Hi Lori, thanks so much for that. I like the concept of going on ‘inner journeys’ … after all, if you’re not at peace inside, the big showy adventurous journeys aren’t going to be much fun anyway… I’m valuing simple pleasures and inner contentment above everything at the moment
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I’m all for just becoming a ‘human being’ rather than a ‘human doing’. I don’t want to change the world. I don’t want a high flying career. I want to be gainfully employed and to enjoy my job, which I do – but I don’t want to be a manager nor have the stress. I just want to be able to walk away from the working day and chill out. After I knew I wouldn’t have kids, I had years of sadness, grief, anger, sadness again so I chose to find happiness in doing things that made me happy. Going on holiday, making nice food, tending my garden, walking the dog. Entertaining friends. Singing. Music. Reading. Writing. Supporting other women who are CNBC.
We are already remarkable women for just living each day and finding happiness in the simple things we do after our dreams of having a family are over, I don’t want to climb mountains. I’ll leave that to someone else 😉
Great post, as always!
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I love every bit of that, thanks Bamber.
I agree 100% re work: I have no desire to ever be a manager and I love when I hear other people say that – it’s always assumed to be the path that everyone is expected to take whether they want to or not. Annoying. And yes, just doing more of the things that make me happy, that’s pretty much my ambition.
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I love this review – both your annoyance at the beginning, and your understanding at the end. I haven’t actually read her book, so I can’t really comment on that, but I do remember reading some of what she was saying before and around the time of her swim.
I’ve written a bit about this – there doesn’t have to be a next big thing. It is insulting really, to assume that we are not enough just being who we are. You are enough. And if you want a next “big thing”, maybe yours is writing great posts like this!
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Thanks Mali .. I like how you word it, the ‘next big thing’… I think it’s an amazing relief to understand that you can just be, and just let go of the striving for success and the eternal comparisons … I’m glad that it is finally sinking in with me
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I looked up my post on this. I don’t know if you ever saw it – https://nokiddinginnz.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-next-big-thing.html
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Just seeing this now Mali after a terrible week with work so I’m going to go on over and read it
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Hi Shores, great book review! I definitely think there are more than those three categories of women. Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of examples that aren’t included in those three groups. Although category 1 does make a good case for using the oxford comma!
Honestly? I am not interested in changing the world. I don’t want to do anything big. I just want to enjoy the little things and do good in my little spot.
I disagree when you say you are not particularly talented. I think you’re a great writer, photographer, and thinker.
So, in the end, I can repeat your words back to you and mean them. 🙂 I am ordinary and average and happy with my lot. And like you said so perfectly, I find contentment and fulfillment in simple interests and daily pleasures. (And I don’t take any of that for granted!)
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Hi Phoenix, thanks so much for the kind words! And I love this: “I am ordinary and average and happy with my lot. I find contentment and fulfillment in simple interests and daily pleasures.” – this is perfect, I feel more serene just reading it….
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This book has been in my TBR pile for a while now, so I was curious to read what you thought of it. Like you, I’m perfectly happy to leave the channel swimming and mountain climbing, etc., to others. 😉 But I am fascinated by what motivates the people who do these kinds of things, so I think I will probably like this book if I keep your caveats in mind. Thanks for the review!
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I did enjoy it, I rarely finish a book these days so it must be half decent!
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