on choosing life.
I used to say, convincingly, I don’t want kids. The truth is, often times I felt unlovable. Still do, sometimes, I suppose. That narrative followed me since childhood, plaguing relationships and destroying my own sense of self. I was afraid a child would surely see right into my dark core and reject me too.
Because of this, when I found out I was pregnant, my first call was to an abortion clinic. By divine intervention, they couldn’t offer me an abortion due to an inability to confirm pregnancy. I guess he hadn’t yet nestled himself into my womb - maybe hiding - so I spent a tempered May afternoon sitting on my patio with Paulo Coelho, one of the greatest writers I’d ever read.
Lost, I read,
I am no longer in control of where i place my feet, the island is being revealed to me, I am being propelled along its paths, finding things I have never even thought or dreamed of.
Paulo Coelho, The Zahir
In that moment, tears flooded my eyes, the wind swept the sweetest melody through the trees, and deep in the shadows of my soul, i felt a whisper of light. For the first time, as far back as I can remember, I trusted the sensations within rather than the logic of my mind. I let go of control, trusted my feet to lead me down an unknown path, unsure of the journey ahead. Yet, i knew it was the way home.
My son was a homecoming to the purest love I had ever known.
The love a mother has for her child is holy.
When I became pregnant, my mother was so happy and told me that I was now on my way to becoming a woman. As a self-identified feminist, I was offended. Was I not a woman before? am i not a woman now?
Now, years later, I understand what she meant. Though motherhood I discovered what it means to be a woman. Being pregnant was like standing on the edge of a dense forest, impossible to see through the lush landscape. I had no idea what I would find as I stepped beyond the edges of where I felt safe. Before I entered the portal, forging my own path through the tall grass and I thought I knew all about love and life. I was so certain; and with that came a self-righteousness and stubbornness.
I arrived in womanhood like I arrived in nature … humbled with moss-stained knees.
The woman I was, shaped by stories I was told, inherited, and tried on as a young girl needed to shed for the mother to rise. My hips had moved mountains. My body had opened as a portal for a soul to experience this shit show of an adventure we’re on. I was discovering things of myself I had never even thought or dreamed of. I met my most powerful self when I became a mother, and it’s been guiding how i show up as a woman ever since.
when August chose me, I started the journey of unfolding and learned to choose life fully and wholeheartedly. Motherhood has made me a whole woman, and has offered me to the most potent lessons on how to live.
