Musing the Mother I Never Became.

That she bear children is not a woman’s significance. But that she bear herself, that is her supreme and risky fate.” ~ D.H. Lawrence

I was not the woman who went starry-eyed when I saw a baby. However, I always thought I would be a fantastic mother. My maternal and caretaking instincts were honed. The comment “You’ll be a great mom” was shared amongst friends, and in my mind, I knew it to be true.

I romanticized being an extraordinary pregnant bikini-clad woman walking on the beach, a beautiful and smooth nine-month blip in time.

So what happened that I did not fulfill this apparent destiny?

Raised by a liberal single mother, her focus was not on grandkids. She confessed that although she was happy to have had my brother and me, if she were to do it again, having children would not be in the picture. Instead, her concentration would have been on her career and her sense of spiritual and personal fulfillment.

The freedom from her lack of pressure allowed me to make my own decisions regarding motherhood. Her lead took me down the path she had wished for herself.

I am the generation of women who believed we could have it all. We bought into the propaganda we could get an education, have successful careers, and put off having children well into our 40s. No problem.

It was not entirely true.

They forgot to mention our eggs become less viable the older we get, and the ease of conception diminishes exponentially. Many of us faced a race to conceive before it was too late.

In my early 40s, with my career flourishing, I was involved with a man ten years my junior who held the potential to be the father of my children. Having witnessed many female friends struggle with actualizing their deepest desire to become a mom, I knew it was a now-or-never situation. I told him that if he wanted kids, we needed to do it sooner rather than later.

Aware of the challenges to conceive at that age, I immediately went into action. Visiting my OBGYN, I had my hormone levels checked, and it was good to go. So, we tried, to no avail. My doctor suggested my partner come in for some tests; maybe he was shooting blanks. At this time, he revealed that he didn’t want kids, and if I didn’t want them, let’s stop trying.

Wow, it hit me like a ton of bricks. How did I feel about this?

Taking a serious and honest look within, I considered the proposition of going childless, backward, and sideward; I looked at it from every angle.

The possibility of not being that amazing mom struck me in my core. Who would I pass on to my life’s knowledge? What about everything my mother, my two grandmothers, and my great-grandmothers had passed down to me? Who would care for me when I was elderly? Never to become a mother or a grandmother—how did that look, how did it feel? My genetic legacy would end. Sometimes,y unwarranted and out of the blue, pangs of sadness hit me when parents spoke about the love they felt for their child, unlike any love one could ever experience. Or the exclusion from the discussion, even from my closest friends, with sideward comments, “You wouldn’t understand; you don’t have kids.”

It was a time of deep introspection. For three years, I processed the new design of my life. I realized I was mourning the child that I would never have. My womb would remain empty, and motherhood would allude to me.

It was during this period that I became keenly aware of society’s expectations of having children. Aside from “Are you married?” which I wasn’t, the second question was, “Do you have children?”. An awkward silence and shifting of the feet always followed my response of “No.”

Time heals all. As more of it passed, the picture of what my life was beginning to morph into continued to evolve.

The pangs became less frequent until one day, it was clear: the transition was complete. Gone was the pressure of the biological clock ticking or the weight I had once allowed perfect strangers to place upon me. Gone was holding on to any of the old pictures of what life could have been. In its place, I found lightness, freedom, and endless opportunities and possibilities.

The world of childless women is enormous, with more younger women choosing never to bear offspring. Although the reasons for not having children vary and the process of how we experience our mourning is different, the outcome remains surprisingly similar. Most of us feel fulfilled and cherish our lives as they are, often with the comment, “I would not change a thing.”