Motherhood

Does one become because motherhood shaped them? Or do they become so they can step into motherhood as the most whole version of themselves?

I became a mother before I became a woman.

There was no rite of passage, no circle of elders guiding me through the threshold. Just the sudden ache of a new life forming inside me while the life I had unraveled. My body stretched into a future I didn’t yet know how to carry. My soul, still unfinished, tried to become a shelter before it had ever been safely held.

No one asked if I was ready. There was no space for the question.

So I did what women do. I endured. I folded away the parts of myself that screamed for air and leaned into the ancient rhythm passed down through bloodlines: nurture, provide, protect.

Even while breaking.

I mothered through cracked nipples and the sting of betrayal. I mothered with trembling hands and sleepless nights. I mothered while silencing the scream inside me that whispered, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

And then, years passed. Seasons changed. The children grew. My spine straightened. My voice, once timid, returned louder, clearer. I walked away. I healed what I could. I built a life from ashes.

But even now, at forty, I find myself returning to the question:

Am I done?

Not with loving, no, I will always know how to love. Not with nurturing, I mother people without even trying. But am I done being a mother to a newborn soul? A child made not from obligation or entrapment, but from reverence. From mutual choosing. From joy.

I never got to know what it felt like to be pregnant with someone who looked at me like I was sacred. Who rubbed my belly not out of duty, but out of awe. I never got to watch someone fall in love with the idea of us creating them.

I never got that kind of motherhood.

And now, years later, with my body softened by time and my spirit sharpened by fire, I ask the question again: am I done?

Am I done mothering new life into the world? Or is there still something unbloomed inside me, something that longs not for a baby, but for the experience of creation untethered from survival?

I don’t ache for diapers or lullabies. I ache for wholeness. For a motherhood born from abundance, not necessity. For a chapter not written in crisis, but in reverence.

There’s a strange grief in knowing the body may be finished before the soul is. That the window for one kind of creation closes just as we become wise enough to open it with intention. That legacy is not always a child, it might be art, or healing, or truth. Still, there is a tenderness in asking: what if?

What if I never knew the kind of motherhood that was gentle?

What if I never knew what it was to carry life in a body that was worshipped, not worn down?

What if the deepest mothering I will ever do is of myself?

I’ve begun sleeping without longing. Waking without ache. I’ve started painting again, breathing again, becoming again. And maybe that is the clearest sign: that I am no longer waiting to be chosen. That I do not need a child to complete me, nor a partner to sanctify the choice. That whatever I decide, tie the thread or let it hang, I am no less woman, no less divine.

Maybe becoming is the birth.

Maybe motherhood was never just about the child.

Maybe it was always about the woman.