I realized I had lost something I hadn’t had before, after touching base with my new neighbor, years after I had lost it.
She was mourning the news of the loss of her fertility.
She was kissing her chances of ‘natural’ motherhood that her newly ‘mothered’ friends had recently become exclusive about. They had made it clear the only motherhood they held true was one that included gestation.
She was mourning the loss of her soon to be gone uterus and her chances of bringing a human into the world whose genetic traits might remind her of the mother she lost last year.
In the moment, my instinct was to go where I did when I went through it: to focus on how much better she would feel sans the uterus that had made her feel like a shell of herself. Of course I hugged her and said I can be that motherless friend. I shared that my fertility also had to be given up for my own life to continue. And then, that night over dinner it hit me. I had never truly mourned it’s loss.
Despite the fact that I had never really had the desire to become pregnant, it was hard. Yet I found hope in the fact that I do love children, and motherhood isn’t just about genes and gestation and pushing or going under the knife. I didn’t have to mourn the loss of my own 'potential' to become a mother at all. There were still plenty of chances at that.
Those women that seem to promote the heartbreaking idea that motherhood is unattainable without growing your own; Those friendships were already long gone, too. But that was a mourning that was more like a celebration. I choose to birth supportiveness & inclusion instead. I am fertile & ripe with a love & strength that doesn’t depend on DNA.