I’m Glad I Never Wanted Children
Recently I have found myself sunken into deep gratitude for the many, many years I lived my life believing that I would never become a Mother.
Gratitude for a maidenhood of spontaneous travel and too much red wine. Of following whims and chasing freedom. A lifestyle of maidenhood that I envisioned would last forever, truthfully.
Early on in my teen years I saw it: I’d be unmarried, well-traveled, wise through a wild life, deliciously-lived. I would eventually accept the role of the cool auntie. The elder your kiddo would go get their first tattoo with, the one who would pour them their own glass of champagne before their 21st birthday - our little rebellious bonds.
I wasn’t worried about dying alone, but of course then I met my person at the impossible age of 18 years old, so I never really had to think that far ahead.
I should have known the moment Joel showed up that life had a very different plan for me.
Oblivious to what would unfold years later, I followed the #childfree accounts, I shared openly about my husband’s vasectomy and encouraged my other voluntarily childless friends to look into it as the best option of birth control - despite the reversal procedure we had to undergo, (which was thankfully successful), I still stand by that choice we made because it was true for who we were when we made it.
I invested in myself, studied what I wanted to study when I wanted to study it. Said yes to opportunities that took me to new places, unbound from any real responsibilities holding me back. I lived so very presently because there was no particular image of a future I was striving for. Just me and my man, a dog or two, and whatever we wanted life to look like in the moment.
Enter Compassion
Alongside this grand sense of gratitude, compassion has also bloomed.
Compassion for those of you reading this, those of you walking your own way towards your babes, specifically those of you who have always known.
You’re the woman I didn’t relate to for the longest time because I wasn’t engaging in the conversations theorizing when it might happen, what it will be like. I wasn’t vetting potential partners for the Fatherhood gene. I wasn’t thinking about where I’d want to raise my family. I never had baby fever.
I didn’t have the expectation that motherhood would be a welcomed inevitability, a transition I knew I would face when the time came.
Unlike you. You who have always known you were a Mother in the making.
Part of me wonders what that would have been like - to have always known. But when I reflect on my mere three years of holding this knowing in my body and heart, I become even more grateful for the mystery of my path. The ways that it has followed me sneakily in the shadows until it deemed me ready to fully receive its truth.
For in these past three years my knowing has manifested as many things, including the suffocation of wanting. The human desire of a linear timeline, an explanation and understanding of: I see you, I want you, so why not now?
I can’t imagine how you may have been holding this wanting for decades, my friend. How amazing you are with your pure and nurturing heart.
In the face of my own wanting, I’m listening to an intuitive nudge inviting me to sit back and pour a glass of wine for my inner Maiden. Realizing that while I am in this liminal place between who I was and who I am becoming, she carries wisdoms I have forgotten. Her love of freedom stifled by my striving. Her spontaneity hindered by my tight grasp on a future I’ve been trying to squeeze into the now.
So here we pour a good red, get comfortable, and do our best to keep our older and wiser mouths closed as we indulge our inner Maidens - let her take center stage. And while we might cringe at what we see as unembarrassed self-centeredness, we hold space for her to fully express her truths.
So we might remember what we have lost in the name of growing up.
1. Fuck it
I say this with complete sincerity. I have reached a deliciously refreshing stage of this journey. One I never would have expected to come across: the fuck it stage.
The one where I wholeheartedly and finally, after lots of self-inflicted turmoil, understand that I have absolutely no control over any of this. The timing, the initiations, my desired alignment of physical and spiritual. None. No control. It is not up to me in any of the ways in which I have been pretending, (hoping), that it is.
And no one says fuck it better than my completely fearless, stubborn, and unapologetic younger self.
I am finding this expression of surrender to be incredibly empowering. A reclamation of my many selves. The remembrance that I am a multifaceted being, rather than a woman solely wanting to be pregnant. And to be clear, I am the one who has unconsciously been forcing myself into that singular box.
So as I say fuck it, with her help, what’s released are the many sneaky expectations I’ve been consumed by in the background of my lived experience. The ones that whisper: I’ll get pregnant when…It will happen once I…The timing is perfect, I have to get pregnant this month…The Stories. The stories that pull us so far out of our centers that we can hardly remember how to get back.
Fuck it! This is your invitation to dismantle the grand vision you’re holding so tightly onto. Even if just a little bit. Because what we forget in our beautiful hearts, full of longing, is that holding this tightly leaves no space for surprises, or fun, or deeper breaths, or all of the unexpected blessings coming our way.
What would happen if you let go?
What would it feel like to loosen your grip on the stories of how and when?
What part of your experience could use a little infusion of fuck it?
2. Live More
A natural extension of our newfound fuck it energy - the invitation is to live your life, babe. When we turn to really examine and dissect the holding of our vision, it is not surprising to find that somewhere along the way we’ve started living differently.
Maybe a bit more reserved, more careful, perhaps almost too aware of our cycles, of how we’re feeding and fueling our bodies, of tracking and updating our apps. Rather than rose colored glasses, we’ve been looking at everything through the lens of fertility: I can do this, I can’t do that, I shouldn’t, I’m going to stay home.
And yes! it is incredibly beautiful to become in-tune with our body’s rhythms, and yes it is empowering to love our vessels into vitality, and yes it is delicious to feel harmonious in our ways of being, but where is the line and when did we cross it?
How many of these experiences are familiar to you?
monthly cycles of anxiety and fear around the two week wait
scheduled, business-like sex surrounding ovulation
a general inability to soften, rest, slow down your mind, be still
feeling like the keeper of your body rather than living with your body
no longer recognizing the beauty and the magic of the journey you’re on
The Antidote? Live more.
I think back to myself in college - I was always creating something. Making and crafting with my hands late into the night. I was still dancing, taking weekly classes. I was constantly exploring new music, reading new books, daydreaming about my next trip, spending loads of time at the yoga studio. The erotic and sensual energies of pleasure-seeking, embodiment, and creating were abundant and freely flowing. Always.
The conception portal can perhaps convince us that all of our life-force must be reserved, stockpiled for the arrival of our children. Therefore we dam up entire waterways of our being, ceasing our inherent flow of life. When actually, the magnetism of our lives well-lived, draws even more life to us.
I’ve shared this before, but the potent reflection Spirit offered me on a day I found myself incredibly stagnant and paralyzed was this:
How can you expect to create life if you aren’t living your own?
Go live, and do it beautifully. If that part of you feels very far away right now, here are some gentle suggestions :
Go on a date with your partner, make love solely because you want to and without the goal of pregnancy
Take up a relaxation practice in addition to your movement practice: restorative or yin yoga, gentle breathwork, find guided meditations to help recalibrate your nervous system, go get a massage or book an acupuncture session
Move your body for fun! go out dancing, take a kick-boxing class, move in ways you never have before, be silly and play
Rediscover your joy. Get curious about what would feel cute and light in your heart and in your body, do that.
Prioritize beauty. Start dressing intentionally, adorn yourself in pieces that make you feel beautiful. Bring beauty into your home with flowers, new art, candles. Start to notice beautiful things and beautiful moments when you’re out in the world. Come back to the gorgeous and magical simplicity of Womanhood.
3. Be Present Now
The list above includes quite a few presence practices. Anchors to remind us to be here and now, wholly, rather than living in a future that isn’t ours yet.
When we find ourselves lost in striving for anything - baby, a new job, the perfect partnership - that has not yet arrived, how much of our life are we letting ourselves miss? The simple and mundane moments we barely acknowledge because they don’t look like how we want them to look.
To come into the present moment is to simplify. To be with what is, exactly as it is, because love, it will never be exactly like this again. We grieve not having our baby in our arms to one day perhaps grieve the quiet moments of solitude we took for granted before they were born.
If we stopped trying, if we stopped grasping, what would our present moment experience feel like?
What would it look like to be in service to yourself right now?
What is your body, your heart, your spirit asking of you right now?
The more we pause, ponder, and align, the more we will see how tending to ourselves in the now builds a solid foundation upon which our future will naturally blossom in an authentic and sustainable way.
To Our Inner Maidens
All of the women we have ever been come with us into Motherhood.
We may be grateful for all of the ways in which we have grown, but the wisest of us will admit when we’ve strayed a bit too far from who we are. The girl we have always been.
So thank you to my fierce and stylish inner maiden. The one who didn’t have even a fleck of Motherhood on her mind. I’m grateful for how you lived those years and I’m grateful to have you to call upon as I sink back into who we are.
Drop into your own reflection with my article, I Wrote a Letter To Myself. To pause in acknowledgement of your growth and your healing. And to pause in celebration of all of the versions of you that you have met so far.
Read on, Mama
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