I remember exactly when I decided to forgo motherhood. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but it happened all the same. I was six and had just been given a new doll. It was a doll with an appendage in the form of a belly – if pressed in, then pulled out, the piece would detach. One side was a full moon, the other was flat. Inside the cavity above the doll’s pelvis was a tiny baby. I traded the baby for a pencil and the doll for butterfly stationery. On one of the sheets, I wrote what I wanted to be when I grew up: banjo player, pony trainer, story maker. Mother was not one of them.

Then came the teen and young adult years moulded by the women around me – my mother, grandmother, stepmother and the female friends who had chosen names for their unborn babies. No woman I knew rejected motherhood, so I inched closer to that life in total darkness with only my intuition as a guide. Suspecting the road ahead would be miserable, I imagined dying alone in a decrepit house without anyone noticing for days.

Stereotypes of women without children in the media hadn’t helped. You know the ones: the crazy cat lady, the sorrowful barren woman, the selfish child-free woman, the overambitious career woman, the child hater, the pitiful spinster, the immature woman, the incomplete woman, the cold-hearted woman, the unnatural woman and so on.

Only in my mid-20s did I question childlessness as a destination. But the questioning didn’t come naturally to me; it surged out of love for someone else. Now that I was married and my intent not to have a child would also shape my husband’s future, it felt urgent to understand why I longed to live that way for the rest of my days.

On the winter solstice of our second year living together, my husband and I were in our flat in Lund, and I was alone on the windowsill, just inches from our bed, watching the snowfall. Eyes swollen almost shut, arms wrapped around legs and head buried into knees, I sat, my mind stuck in one endless loop as I asked myself the same question again and again: Do I want to become a mother?

I was no longer sure of what I wanted or didn’t want and I started doubting what had brought me to that frozen archipelago in the first place. Outside, a total whiteout swallowed the landscape. Inside, my husband had just revealed a newfound wish. He wanted to become a father. What about what I wanted? I kept prodding the emptiness in my womb.

At 26, I still had not met a woman who intended to circumvent motherhood. Not a single one. How was that possible? And how was it that I felt scared, yet compelled, to follow that dimly lit path?

When I could no longer feel the cushion beneath me, I got up, opened our bedroom door and returned to the living room. I found my husband still sitting on the red sofa. His eyes were swollen, too. He reached for my hand as I sat beside him, gazing at our pictures on the wall. We interlocked fingers.

Feeling his openness, I then rested my head on his chest.

“This caught me by surprise,” I said.

“Same here.”

“Have you been wishing for a baby for long?”

“No. Not for long.”

“I don’t know if I want a child.”

He said nothing but tilted his head slightly to meet mine, so I continued.

“Right now, it feels like … ” I stopped, worrying I’d hurt him if I said it.

“Like what? I can take it, Nic,” he said.

“Like trying to grow a third arm.”

The sharp edges of my words shut us both into silence for a while.

“We should go to bed,” he muttered.

“We will. It’s just that … ” Scraping my last trace of energy, I tried to finish the thought.

“I need time to figure this out.”

“I’m not going anywhere, amor,” he said, bringing me back to his chest.

There and then, I remembered why I had crossed to his side of the world: I felt the most loved I ever had held within the curve of his arms.

I had been at the height of my discontent at being a 23-year-old who still lived with their mother when I met Erik – a charming, introverted and erudite Swedish cellist. Through an online forum about movie soundtracks, we slid into each other’s DMs and started video calls that lasted for hours. Very quickly, we entered a secret space that made us forget we were in different hemispheres, and we knew we wanted to be together. So we kept reaching for it. In the spring of 2008, after he visited me in Brazil three times in less than a year, I boarded a plane to Sweden. Fifteen months later, we married in the ruins of a castle. Just the two of us by a lake, reciting the vows we had written the night before, blessed by the mountains.

On that winter solstice, Erik and I had been watching a movie about a grief-stricken man who had to learn to care for his daughter after his wife died and I had noticed him crying. I knew which scene had hit a nerve: the one where the man consoles his little girl and realises that his bond with his child is stronger than the bond with his wife. Comforting Erik in my arms, I stayed silent. So did he. No words were needed.

There had been signs before, subtler ones. But I had brushed them off, certain that the case was closed. We had talked about it from day one, the first time we heard each other’s voices and talked about all the big things in life, including families – the ones we came from and the one I didn’t plan to have, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. He asked me why. I told him that I wanted a different way of life. I then asked how he felt about parenting and he said he had never felt strongly about it. At the time, I interpreted this as a confirmation that he didn’t want children either.

Since that first call, we had spoken a lot more about parenthood but rarely had we discussed it as a real possibility. “Oh, they look so tired,” we’d say after spending time with our friends with kids. “If we had children, there’s no way we’d be flying overnight to Helsinki for a Bruce Springsteen concert,” we’d say on our way to the airport. Or maybe I was the one saying it, and he was the one listening? I was no longer sure.

There was never any paper agreeing to this, but in my mind it was an agreement from the start. So now I told him I didn’t understand what was happening. Why had he gone to such lengths, literally moving across the world several times, to be with me when he knew I wanted no children? Did he conceal his true wish, thinking I’d change my mind? Did he believe back then that he would never want a child, so we’d be fine?

Life, of course, is in no way that simple. I had changed a great deal in those three years. Wouldn’t it be only fair to accept that he had changed, too? We both sobbed when he admitted that the desire to become a father, though not there when we met, had since crept into his mind and grown bigger and bigger until he no longer knew how to expurgate it. It wasn’t his fault. It was nobody’s fault. But realising that we now wanted such different things was devastating for both of us. He felt guilty and conflicted, and I felt forced to reconsider something I thought was already settled.

I held him close until the movie was over. Was our marriage over, too?

That was the night my mind started spiralling as I watched the snowfall from our bedroom window while he sat alone on the red sofa in our living room. The snowfall would stop by springtime; the spiralling wouldn’t.

Many times that year, I examined motherhood from different angles, imagining it could be a positive experience. I was an educated woman in my late 20s married to someone I loved, trusted and respected, and who reciprocated my feelings. I lived in a cosy flat in a modern, secular country that supported new families in many ways. My husband, who did his fair share of household chores and cooked better than I did, wanted to become a father and had pledged to be hands-on in all aspects of parenthood. He had even mentioned he’d be up for being a full-time stay-at-home dad if I wished to prioritise my career. These were not circumstances in which my mother or grandmother ever found themselves.

I tried to imagine someone who would be “the product” of our love, “the glue” that would keep us together and “the legacy” we’d leave behind. I thought about how watching someone grow so closely could be a journey filled with endless tasks but also with immeasurable moments charged with bliss. I thought about the daughter of a friend of ours who had come to our house, and when I offered her the ice-cream and cookies I had bought for her, thinking that’s what a three-year-old would want to eat, she asked me for cucumber and plucked leaves from my basil plant. Would we have one of those cute cucumber kids, too?

Still, whenever I tried to envision what it would be like to bring another human being into this world and become half of the duo meant to raise, protect and love them unconditionally until death did us part, I felt no inkling of interest or excitement to move in that direction. Not once.

The peaceful days we spent attending to our work and each other were everything to me. And I was happy with things exactly as they were. But Erik was older. Twelve years older. So my 28 was his 40. His clock was ticking, while I just wanted to make time stop.

At my local library I had searched for months for books about women without children. There were a few, and as happy as I was to get my hands on them, they ended up being like fireworks that brightened my dark sky only for a moment – dense with traumatic miscarriages, stillbirths and abortions written in torturous technical terms, filled with numbers but no insights about what it was like to have no children by choice or circumstance; melodramatic testimonies that made motherhood sound like the only thing worth living for; and anti-natalist books on the verge of referring to children like the plague. They were too academic, too dogmatic or too radical. I had no use for any of them.

I Googled “famous childless women”. The results seemed endless: Dolly Parton, Oprah Winfrey, Stevie Nicks, Billie Holiday, Maria Callas, Helen Mirren, Katherine Hepburn, Billie Jean King, Eva Perón, Carmen Miranda, Yayoi Kusama, Coco Chanel; Mother Teresa!

Running a new search to narrow the results down to female authors, my mouth hung open as I read the names on my laptop screen: the Brontë sisters, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, George Eliot, Christina Rossetti, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Zora Neale Hurston, Edith Wharton, Octavia E Butler, Elizabeth Bishop, Gabriela Mistral, Hilary Mantel, Bernardine Evaristo, Arundhati Roy and more.

All this time, they had been there, lined up on bookshelves like an army of goddesses, and I had not noticed. I had been walking around thinking I was following a secret path unknown to all humans before me, when in reality some of my favourite authors had been-there-done-that many decades, even centuries, ago. The only way to redemption was to read their books back to back. One by one, I reread them, this time with new eyes. I felt less lonely. And, for a while, that was all I wanted.

In the two years since that first night by the window, I had told Erik I didn’t want a baby and Erik had repeatedly said he wanted me more than a baby. At first, all seemed well enough, but I gradually sensed a deep sadness in him. The sadness extended into withdrawal and I didn’t know how to bring him back.

Longing for a resolution and assuming the reason for our marital discontent was the limbo state of not knowing if I’d change my mind in the future about having a child, I started considering permanent contraception options. One made available about that time was Essure, a non-incisional birth control system that used small devices to block the fallopian tubes.

My mother, Yara, came from Brazil for a visit. We exchanged tales about her life before and after my birth as we strolled through the botanic gardens and picnicked at the Sofiero Palace. On her last day, we took a train to Karen Blixen’s house in Denmark. Blixen is the author of the memoir that inspired one of my mother’s favourite movies, Out of Africa. Diagnosed with syphilis soon after her wedding, she never had children. We took pictures of each other under her apple trees and Mom wrote her a note and pinned it to a message board.

At some point, sitting on a bench next to the cathedral and sharing a ham and egg salad sandwich, I mentioned that I was considering going through a procedure that would permanently implant a birth control device in my body but that I wanted to do some more research after reading about a campaign by women who reported side-effects the implant was having on their health, sex life and ability to work.

“What kind of side-effects?” she asked.

“Skin rashes, joint pain, fatigue, hair loss and in some cases perforation of the uterus.”

“Oof … It sounds dangerous. Why would you risk any of it?”

“Because I’m tired of trying to convince myself I want to have a child.”

“What’s the latest from Erik on this?”

“He said he no longer wants a child.”

“Doesn’t that alleviate the pressure?”

“I don’t believe him.”

“Why not? Why would he lie?”

“He’s not lying. He’s sacrificing his wish to have a child to be with me.”

I had grown up hearing my mother list all the ways in which she sacrificed herself for me: to feed me, to shelter me, to send me to the best schools and to university, and to allow me all the privileges she never had. I could acknowledge them and be grateful for them. But I also knew where that road led: to resentment on both sides. And I was terrified that one day Erik and I would have a conversation ending with him saying he had given up on fatherhood for me because he loved me and that he now regretted that decision.

After a long silence, my mother asked for my left hand. I laid it over hers. She flipped it and started running her fingers across my palm. It took me a second to understand what she was doing.

“This is the life line. Yours is long, see? It curves around the ball of the thumb and ends at the base of the palm. This is the heart line: yours splits in two. See the split here? Up to here, it could be Erik. After that, who knows? Your head line is long and curved. You’re creative, a dreamer, someone who adapts easily to situations, a sponge that picks up and retains emotions from those around you. You must learn to shut your body to other people’s energy.”

“I want to shut my body to sperm,” I said.

We both laughed. “Look, fifi, you may feel that having a procedure that would stop you from having a child is a good idea, and maybe it is. Not having a child doesn’t make you less of a woman and had I had the chance, maybe I’d have chosen the same. I understand that not having to think about this any more can seem like a relief. I’m just not sure that will be the case. You are only 28 and a lot can happen that could change how you feel. You could both be happy without a child; you could break up; you could meet somebody else. If you are certain you don’t want a baby now, use contraception, but give yourself time to let life happen to you. If you feel this way five, 10 years from now, try something permanent, but why shut a door you are not using?”

After she left, Erik and I agreed that the way forward was for me to believe him when he said that I was the family he wanted and that if I didn’t want to become a mother, a life without a child was right for us. There was no need to undergo risky procedures. We would be fine. We would go back to each other. But wishful thinking wouldn’t be enough to glue us back together.

We moved to Ireland, where I could communicate easily, as I never really got beyond the basics in Swedish, and started working as an in-house translator right away. However, as a cellist in a country with fewer orchestras, Erik had to travel back to Sweden for freelance work, which meant we spent weeks apart. Despite our best efforts, 2015 was destined to be the last leg of our journey side by side. After eight years, we reached the peak, saw the abyss and came crashing down. I stayed in Dublin and he went back to Lund. Once we signed the divorce papers, our life paths disentangled.

After the breakup, illness struck me like never before. I’d wake up being sick and go to bed with a raging fever. Bedridden, I’d devour books and movies about writers, philosophers and travellers without children – they were the only antidote to my hunger for purpose.

Then I sought them out in real life so that I could ask the burning questions in my brain. For the next four years, I met women from all over the world without children of their own. Among them was the first Turkish woman to climb Everest, a Peruvian anthropologist who fought to have a tubal ligation and a British nurse who values her solo time above all else.

They were complex and captivating. Their answers were varied and nuanced; their reasons for not having children were never the same, nor were the ways they lived their lives or derived meaning. Nothing I heard matched what had populated my mind about lives that didn’t include motherhood. And I felt ready to start writing my own book. For six weeks, I let memories of their journeys and mine rest on the pages and just when I started to think I was flying, I hit a wall.

Erik. How was I to write about Erik? Which parts should I reveal or conceal?

I pondered whether I should call, send a letter or an email, or do anything. Our last contact had been in November 2018, when he wrote to say he wished to sell our flat in Lund and I sent him the paperwork. How was I to start a conversation with him after a year and a half? Not knowing what else to do, I returned to his Instagram account, shame and all. The only window left open to his life. A picture posted three weeks earlier showed him sitting on the grass next to the most heavenly baby girl. And she looked a lot like him.

A father. He was a father of a baby girl now. He always wanted a girl. My legs weakened.

I surrendered to a dizzying array of emotions – I was rejoicing and grieving, not only for Erik but for his family, which had been my family, too. I was happy for them and sad I had lost them. There was space for it all in me.

What stayed with me was an enormous sense of gratitude and relief. My instincts were right: he wished for a baby; I didn’t. Freeing each other’s paths for the versions of ourselves that we truly wished for – he a father, me a writer – had been the right thing to do.