My Mother's Day Confession

Dear Mom,

One of the things I struggled to understand when I was younger was why you wanted me. I guess I never understood how you and Papa, such different people who have such different opinions, would think that it was a good idea to have a child. I thought this for several reasons. First of all, we both know you have trauma, and though years of therapy has definitely helped you sort some of it out, you were aware that you would pass some of it on to me (hence the child therapy fund). I thought that it was terrible to bring a child into the world when you were consciously aware that you would hurt me and pass on trauma. Another reason (and perhaps a less dark one) was that I remember watching birthing videos in tenth grade biology class. These videos, in which children come out screaming and covered in blood and the mothers are torn from the vaginal opening to the anus because the child’s head won’t pass, may have traumatized me just a little bit and helped fix my resolution that having children was simply a bad idea. My third reason was mostly caused by the fact that I am an overthinker. I couldn’t help but look at the problem from an existential point of view. Why would you give birth to a child who would live, suffer, try and find happiness (perhaps successfully, perhaps not), and eventually die and fade to dust, leaving nothing behind. How could YOU live with yourself knowing that I would face so much pain in my life; watching grandparents, parents and friends die, experiencing heartbreak and trauma, and unable to definitively expect a happy ending after all my struggles.

I had decided that it was out of selfishness. That you only wanted to make yourself happy by having a child. I decided that I would never have children of my own. I thought it would be cruel to bring a being into a world where it risked experiencing so much pain, and I believed that it was selfless of me to not force a being to exist in a world that they did not wish to be born into. I guess at the time my views were somewhat pessimistic, but they were my views, nonetheless.

One day, I don’t know if you remember, but I asked you about it. I asked you why you had wanted to have children so bad, and why you thought that this world was a good one to raise children in. You told me that it was because of love. You wanted to experience the joys of being a mother, but more than that, you wanted to give me a chance to have that experience as well. You told me that the love that mothers bear their children, and the love that these children will grow to experience is worth all the pain that they risk facing in the world. You told me that in your mind, this love outweighed the all the possible negative experiences because love is a constant in life, and pain is not.

And the truth is, Mom, maybe you changed my mind. Because despite my determination to never go through childbirth and despite my existentialist thoughts and despite all of my fear and worry, when I think of the life that I want to have, it is a life with kids in it. It is a life in which I can witness the love that my kids will experience, with parents who will adore them, grandparents who will spoil them, and cousins and siblings to play and grow up with. It is a life in which I recognize that we may experience pain, but I know that my children will always have people who love them and who will help them through hard experiences.

The truth is, I guess you were right. There is a lot of good in the world, and although one can choose to only look at the bad, the good typically far outweighs the bad, and the love that people find in life is what makes everything worth it.

Mom, you changed my perspective on the world, and I hope that some day I will be able to give you the grandchildren that you have always wanted.

I love you