I’m going to be 40 soon. Until now, I never wanted to be a mother. Now the question comes to me: yes or no? like a slab What if I miss something? What if I miss it and regret it later?
Estibaliz
— reader of elDiario.es
Some of us never actively wanted to become mothers. It was not an imaginable reality for us, both as children and as adults, the fantasy of pregnancy seemed too foreign and strange to us, just like that of childbirth and parenthood. Our body never felt its own curiosity about these processes, we felt no particular interest in experiencing them, nothing in us, no supposed instinct or clock even told us that such experiences were possible, could not happen.
There is something truly uncomfortable about every “woman” being called directly or indirectly to answer the question about motherhood, especially when it is social expectations, and not her own curiosity, desire or love, that pose it. It seems impossible to exist as a woman without having to face this question, always doubting our own answer if the one we give is negative: Are you sure I don’t want to be a mother? What will happen if I regret it?
It seems impossible to exist as a woman without having to face this question, always doubting our own answer if the one we give is negative: Are you sure I don’t want to be a mother? What will happen if I regret it?
When a man in my family once asked me, perhaps in the hope of prolonging the time of his blood in the world, “but even if you’re a lesbian, don’t you still want to have children?” I instinctively replied. replied: “Can you imagine being pregnant?” And I added to his refusal, his face of stupor: “Me neither.” It was true, even though my culture had prepared me to associate my body with pregnancy and motherhood, even though I had been told that this excess of love that was in me, this passion and sensuality and desire to give myself were a guarantee of a future motherhood, nothing in me had ever felt like a mother. The abundance, the excess of love had made me feel like a lover and a friend.
Then I was thirty and a little puppy recognized me as a mother, even though I didn’t consider her my daughter and didn’t want to have one. She was very young and sick and I discovered in my body an unknown repertoire to protect her life and help her flourish. I realized that those resources of love and care, which had awakened in the face of her vulnerability and tenderness, were very similar to those recounted by some of my friends who had had children. I thought that these resources were also in me to accompany the living, and that their purpose was care and gentleness, not reproduction. These loving resources, with which to avoid the hunger of others, to confront cruelty or to mobilize an ecological and pacifist resistance, could and should be directed far beyond the learned objective: to create a life that descends directly from us.
Patriarchal history has told us that the vital and loving power of women must be oriented towards the reproduction of the family line: I think it is urgent to build together broader stories where we can tell everything that is possible to do with tenderness.
In SeductionA woman in her fifties who has never been a mother looks back and writes:
I was maternal, yes, as I am now. With all kinds of animals: young offspring and old slow ones. With all my body, I take care of them. Is it maternal? Lovingly remove the dog’s feces and vomit when they occur. Sleep on a bed full of little fallen hairs. Accept their constant interruptions of my work time with enthusiasm, without anger. When she was a puppy, I wanted to see her grow up. And as an old woman, I will wish her a life without pain. I care above all for your well-being. And I put my body, immediately, to achieve it.
Excess love exists to participate in the world; if we do not relate it to something beyond ourselves, this excess often frustrates our body, so that our creative and emotional forces are transformed into anger and sadness. Patriarchal history has told us that the vital and loving power of women must be directed towards the reproduction of the family line: I think it is urgent to build broader stories together where we can tell everything that is possible to do with tenderness.
To live is always to activate powers and powers develop in many directions: what we fail to experience is not lost and, if we allow it, love will always find a place to express itself.
In We are born of womenAdrienne Rich quotes Audre Lorde:
“What do we expect from each other after telling our stories?
We want to be healed, we want a mossy calm that grows on our scars, we want the all-powerful sister who doesn’t scare us, who will make the pain go away, for the past not to be like this.
The question of what we want, beyond a “safe space,” is crucial when it comes to the differences between the individualistic narrative of nowhere to go and a collective movement that empowers women.
I believe that a work of awareness and expansion of the loving imagination could soothe the anxiety generated by the obligatory question of motherhood and its inscription in productivist and identity logics. When it comes to the body and my own life, I like to ask questions about the present rather than about the idea of the future. What do I feel now? What do I feel possible or desirable now, no matter who I will be tomorrow? We have a life, and even if it is sometimes vast, we will never develop all the powers that our body possessed. Motherhood is part of it. Living always means activating powers and powers develop in many directions: what we fail to experience is not lost and, if we allow it, love will always find a place to express itself.
