“Wow, that’s different. I wouldn’t think a woman your age would have no kids,” said one of the fellow Mobilize Recovery participants I was sitting with after telling her I don’t have children.
I felt my heart race and my body go into a bit of a panic as I quickly fell into an old pattern of justifying my current circumstances.
I rambled, “Uh, well, you know, all those years that I drank, I worried about getting pregnant. I didn’t have the right partner. I didn’t want to have to change my drinking for someone else…” and honestly the list goes on of how I vomited at the mouth to try and defend my position as a woman with no children today.
I wish I had said, “Why does it matter to you if I have kids or not?” or “What are you making it mean that I, as a 38-year-old woman, don’t have children?”
But I didn’t.
And you know what, at this point, I’m better off asking myself these questions because she’s moved on with her life, and I’m still sitting here reflecting on this moment. I need to acknowledge, like Don Miguel Ruiz so often shares, if something in that woman’s words hurt me, it’s because she happened to touch on a wound that I already carry. So, what I need to do here isn’t worry about her remarks but pause, look at this, and ask myself what I need to learn about myself from this incident that disturbed me.
So with that:
Why does it matter to you, Jessica, if you have kids? And what are you making it mean that you, as a 38-year-old woman, don’t have children? As part of my socialization, I was taught that having a child is, in a sense, the pinnacle of womanhood and a necessary life experience. As a 38-year-old, when I look at society and lean on these external beliefs that I was given, I can quickly feel that I’m “behind” and that I haven’t “checked off all the boxes” of what a woman’s experience “should” be like.
And there it is, that word “should.“
That dangerous word that many times I shamed myself with and drank over. Anytime the word “should” comes out, that’s a sign that I need to evaluate the validity of my thoughts. It’s okay for me not to have kids today. It’s also okay for me to want children. However, having them or not does not make my life any more or less “complete,” and it certainly doesn’t take away from my lived experience as a woman.
So the next time someone makes a statement toward you that stings, if “don’t take it personally” doesn’t work for you at that moment, get curious and ask yourself:
- What can I learn about myself from this incident?
- Why does this statement bother me?
- What am I making this mean about myself, and is it even true for me or is it true by an external standard?
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