Kids or No Kids, You Can Nurture
I find Mother’s Day hard.
It's become a particularly sore occasion since my arduous journey of being diagnosed with — and then treated for — endometriosis, coupled with turning 30.
I'm not a mother, neither am I child-free by choice. I'm undecided; suspended at a crossroads, wavering between two paths.
If that weren’t daunting enough, there’s the paralysing sense of urgency induced by social pressures. I feel like I have to determine which path to take — now.
Whether it's doctors who incessantly nudge me to get pregnant or friends and their stories of long and difficult journeys to becoming parents, the weight of making a decision feels inescapable.
And then there's the invisible cloak of society’s expectations resting on my 34-year-old shoulders. Rather than inching towards a chosen path, however, I find myself stuck in the middle, terrified of a misstep.
I’m afraid of deciding to go in either direction and regretting it. Even worse, I’m scared of taking my partner and family on either of these paths with me and, in the future, being the one to blame when things don’t work out how we imagined they would.
If that isn’t enough, I’m also uncomfortable being stuck in the middle, angry at myself for being weak and unable to take a stance.
Over the past few years, my unease around the topic of motherhood has grown stronger, triggered by pregnant women and young mothers I see in my day-to-day life. It got to the point that bumping into pregnant friends or ones with babies would make me terribly anxious.
Once, I even ended up sobbing uncontrollably — I had my PMS to thank for that one. With my mental health deteriorating, I wanted to help myself and see what I could do to lessen my fears.
Rather than looking ahead to the future, I started by examining my current life. Perhaps, even at this crossroads, there was something to be cultivated?
I realised that there was a quality that motherhood offered, one that wasn’t very present in my life. That quality was nurturing: taking care of somebody or something, and seeing it grow.
I was enjoying my life and the relationships in it, but that motherly, nurturing energy — which I had heaps of inside me — didn’t have an outlet. I tried releasing it onto my cat, but he wasn't very interested.
What I’ve understood over time, is that I don’t have to wait to become a mother — a huge decision and undertaking — to cultivate more nurturing in my life. I could start exactly where I was, taking care of the present moment, cultivating my life as it was, and embracing the unknown instead of being paralysed by it.
I started to nurture my relationships more and poured the remaining resources into tending to plants, and myself. Somehow it didn't cross my mind before that I could be the recipient of my own nurturing energy.
At first, I felt stuck in the middle, between trying to become a mother and embracing the decision to be child-free. Over time I’ve learned I can still be undecided while creating space for love, care, and nurturing in my life.
I also don’t have to wait for my fears and anxiety to disappear. Instead, I can embrace them. That doesn’t mean I’m running high on my attachment to them but, rather, that I can learn to tame them.
I can be in charge of how I feel, rather than allowing the negative spiral of social pressures and fear rule my thoughts and actions.
That's how I learned to nurture my life in the present moment. I’m confident that by quieting those external voices, I’ll know which one of the contentious paths to choose — eventually.
But the choice is mine to make. And for now, I’m not going anywhere.
This article and illustrations were commissioned by Knix and first published here.
