Yearning for Motherhood
Not yet a mother in the physical
I am not a mother in the physical. That’s what I say sometimes when people ask. It’s not that I am not a mother, because I am. I am a mother in the Spirit, I am a mother emotionally, and I am a mother to a pet. I am a godmother to two beautiful girls, I am a mother to my friends, the mom figure of the group, I am a mom to the young LGBTQIA community around me, to the house-less people I used to work with, and sometimes to my own mom. None of those get mother’s day cards though. Every year that holiday rolls around I call my own mother and then spend the day crying. I am a mother. I just don’t have the child yet.
I want so desperately to be a mother, to give birth, to raise a child. It’s my dearest and deepest passion. I cannot wait to have life growing inside me and how holy I know I’ll feel. What a beautiful miracle. It’s not that I cannot have children, and I deeply feel for the women who desire it but for medical reasons cannot. I am told that I can adopt, foster, and get inseminated. All of which I have spent a lot of time thinking about. It usually comes down to the money or practicalities like adoption agencies not renting to single women who can barely afford their own lives. I could foster but then at any time that child could be taken and my heart with them. Insemination will be costly and I don’t entirely want to be a single mother but it may be my only choice at some point.
I am 31. I know it is still young but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like if I keep waiting I’ll be an old mom, I won’t have the energy I would have younger. It feels like I better get on this before I lose my chance, the metaphorical clock is ticking by just as fast as it can and screaming alarm bells in my head.
Every day and week and month and year I see my friends, younger and older, have children and start families and while I rejoice in their miracle, I feel the lack of my own. My grandmother and father ask frequently when they can have grandchildren and great-grandchildren, they hint and poke and say things like “I’ll be so happy to give this antique blanket to your child someday” and I stutter holding back tears that I don’t know, tell them to stop asking because I want it more than they do.
I’m not deluded, I know it will be incredibly difficult, more than I can imagine now. I know that there will be pain and discomfort and heartache. That my nipples will chap and sore, that I’ll be sick, that my body will grow, that my back will ache. I know that having a child means bending your life to theirs and the immense sacrifice it is and being constantly concerned for their safety. I also know that I want the ups and downs of that life.
I don’t even know where to begin on that journey. I think weird things like asking my guy friends to give me a child that they don’t even have to be responsible for, or sleeping around and just praying I get pregnant, robbing a sperm bank for example. None of these ideas are ever a really good idea, turns out robbing a sperm bank would be a lot harder than it sounds. I’m just no closer and no longer know what to do about it.
Being a single mother would be especially difficult, I see my friends and loved ones that are and I see their immense strength and am awed, I also see their pain. How difficult it is to not have someone to grow and nurture that new life with, to not have someone to buy you pickles at 3 am, or rub your feet. I don’t want to do this alone. I know that I have an amazing group of women, and a community that would rally and hold me up and help, but it wouldn’t be the same and I’m not quite ready to do it on my own.
I made a deal with myself that if I am not in a serious relationship headed towards family, or pregnant by 35 I am having one on my own. It’s terrifying but I am just so done not being a mamma. 4 years...less than four years...that seems possible...I think.
I am ready to be a mother in the physical and when people ask I can give a solid yes without feeling like a fraud or telling them I am, just not in the way they understand.
About the Creator
Acasia Tucker
A traveler, a people person, a writer, a coffee addict, Born to Be Loved. Currently: Colorado
Instagram:: @alittlemaebird
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