Diana- I appreciate this open and honest interweaving of all things personal, physical and mental, and how external policies and even socioeconomic factors impact one’s life. Very affecting writing. 🙌🏼
Reading this essay a month after the US Election makes me so sad and mad. The authoritarian playbook always includes an attack on women's reproductive autonomy, in all its forms... I too had an abortion at 21 that I do not regret, as I was too terrified to have a child and to mother as I had been mothered. As Rebecca Solnit writes in her essay about choosing to be childfree (The Mother of All Questions) "People lock onto motherhood as a key to feminine identity in part from the belief that children are the best way to fulfill your capacity to love, even though the list of monstrous, ice-hearted mothers is extensive."
By the end of my 20s, I felt confident/foolish enough to try to become a mother, and faced 'unexplained infertility' (not connected to the abortion, that was checked out). And by my 40s, having tried and failed to have a child for 11 years, my marriage ended and my grieving began.
The story of childless/free women is never a straightforward binary of 'didn't want/couldn't have', but patriarchy and fascism have never been about nuance...
Thank you Diana for being a Nomo (not-mother) Elderwoman, and a role model for all of 'crazy cat ladies'.
Diana- I appreciate this open and honest interweaving of all things personal, physical and mental, and how external policies and even socioeconomic factors impact one’s life. Very affecting writing. 🙌🏼
Right on! Excellent writing. Thank you!
Reading this essay a month after the US Election makes me so sad and mad. The authoritarian playbook always includes an attack on women's reproductive autonomy, in all its forms... I too had an abortion at 21 that I do not regret, as I was too terrified to have a child and to mother as I had been mothered. As Rebecca Solnit writes in her essay about choosing to be childfree (The Mother of All Questions) "People lock onto motherhood as a key to feminine identity in part from the belief that children are the best way to fulfill your capacity to love, even though the list of monstrous, ice-hearted mothers is extensive."
By the end of my 20s, I felt confident/foolish enough to try to become a mother, and faced 'unexplained infertility' (not connected to the abortion, that was checked out). And by my 40s, having tried and failed to have a child for 11 years, my marriage ended and my grieving began.
The story of childless/free women is never a straightforward binary of 'didn't want/couldn't have', but patriarchy and fascism have never been about nuance...
Thank you Diana for being a Nomo (not-mother) Elderwoman, and a role model for all of 'crazy cat ladies'.