Another Reason Why I Waited
Me: “What’s your biggest aspiration—your wildest dream?”
Friend: “To make sure my child grows up into a good person.”
I was still years away from having kids—years, even, from considering it—when I asked a new mom the question that terrified me. Her answer was like a clamp on my already shackled uterus.
It’s true my fears of raising a child read like a manifesto of someone who had no business procreating. But there was something far deeper lurking beneath concerns over my inability to control everyone and everything, which made it nearly impossible to pull the proverbial “goalie” and get pregnant.
I was terrified that I would lose someone I never truly had: Myself.
“Parenting will require all of you; please parent with your mind, body, and soul. Parenting is your new religion, within which you will find salvation. This child is your savior. Convert or be damned. We will wait while you cancel all other life endeavors.”
I’ve seen it before. Women get lost in their children. We’re taught that mothers are selfless and if we bring a kid into the world, our orbit must shift to revolve solely around them. If we don’t give up everything for the little bundle in our overburdened arms, we are considered selfish. Why even have kids if you won’t give them your whole self? You should love them so much you’d die for them. Giving up your life is just what moms do.
Dying for them I could understand. Dying for them while still alive didn’t seem fair.
And I didn’t want to “die” when I’d barely begun to live.
When a friend told me that her biggest aspiration was to make sure her child grew into a good person, my fears were confirmed. It’s not that her goal wasn’t mighty or honorable, but it wasn’t about her. Her sense of self-worth was wrapped up in another person. What happened when her “good person” became an adult and left the nest? Was she relieved of duty? Then what? Would she have anything left of her own to pursue now that she had the time?
Or what if—god forbid—despite her gallant efforts, the kid was a shithead? Did that make her a failure? And how would she cope?
More than that, who was she in her world without her child?
Then, because I was making it all about me, I wondered: what would be left of ME if I had a baby?
““What a terrible burden for children to bear—to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living.””
Mothers are the givers of life. Why did it seem to follow that creating new life came at the sacrifice of their own?
I didn’t trust myself to survive. After spending years hiding from myself, I knew who I wanted to be but not how to see her in the mirror. If I had a kid, all dreams of looking my true self in the eye might be lost forever. What if I spent the rest of my life in ratty pajamas in servitude to my son, never writing another sentence because he occupied the lion’s share my of time, and I was too damn exhausted to do anything but watch bad reality TV in a wine-soaked stupor with the precious few minutes that were left?
Unlike the parents who gladly laid down their passions for the ultimate love of a child, I wouldn’t quietly fade. I’d very loudly and dramatically fall apart, succumbing to death in an angry flourish of resentment and regret. I’d hate my husband, hate my child, and—mostly—hate myself (or what was left of me). Life as I knew it would end.
How could I ever be a mom if having a child meant selling my soul for a dream I didn’t want more than the ones I was already chasing?
When implosion—of my heart, marriage, whole world—seemed imminent, things started to shift. I became aware of other women whose children enriched their lives rather than became the epicenter. They were women first, moms second, and no one suffered. In fact, it seemed to instill independence in the kids and set an example of lives well-lived.
What would happen, then, if I decided to love my child and myself? Honored my son and my own heart? What if I behaved like we both deserved as much from life as we could get? What would that look like and could I pull it off?
“What if love is not the process of disappearing for the beloved but of emerging for the beloved? What if a mother’s responsibility is teaching her children that love does not lock the lover away but frees her? What if a responsible mother is not one who shows her children how to slowly die but how to stay wildly alive until the day she dies? What if the call of motherhood is not to be a martyr but to be a model?”
Eventually, after years of fierce contemplation and serious inner work, the only thing missing in my life was the kiddo who wasn’t in my lap when I looked down. The desire to know him and feel him in my arms was finally stronger than my fear of disappearing in the shadow of a child.
Now I know it has always been my choice—and the choice of every mother and father before me—to love my child without losing myself. Maybe once upon a time the patriarchal dynamic shackled the wrists of women who didn’t even know they were in chains, but that’s not my reality. If I get lost it’ll be because I forgot to pause and remember that the only way to be a good mom to my son is to show him what it’s like to live a passion-filled life that includes him but isn’t exclusive to him. With any luck, my kiddo will see a father and mother who love him and have other loves too that we can’t wait to share with him. He’ll know he has permission to follow his own dreams and aspirations because his parents did the same. The bigger I am in my own life, the bigger my son will know he can grow. And some day, many years from now, maybe he’ll even look for a partner brave enough to do the same.
What is my biggest aspiration—my wildest dream?
To quote her—again—I think Glennon Doyle said it best: “I burned the memo presenting responsible motherhood as martyrdom. I decided that the call of motherhood is to become a model, not a martyr. I unbecame a mother slowly dying in her children’s name and became a responsible mother: one who shows her children how to be fully alive.”