Every time I talk with people in my family about my friends’ children or future children I hear the glimmer of hope in their voices that one day I will use the love with which I describe them to describe children of my own. People look at a woman who chooses not to have children like she’s a magician refusing to cast a spell. That gaze can call a lack of desire into question. Women have been writing forever about the tension between the pressure to become a mother and the desire not to. Throughout the course of a lifetime the tension wraps and unwraps us until the moment when motherhood ceases to be an option. Then the tension dies. It sits in the field of life like a petrified tree.
magicians
magicians
magicians
Every time I talk with people in my family about my friends’ children or future children I hear the glimmer of hope in their voices that one day I will use the love with which I describe them to describe children of my own. People look at a woman who chooses not to have children like she’s a magician refusing to cast a spell. That gaze can call a lack of desire into question. Women have been writing forever about the tension between the pressure to become a mother and the desire not to. Throughout the course of a lifetime the tension wraps and unwraps us until the moment when motherhood ceases to be an option. Then the tension dies. It sits in the field of life like a petrified tree.