Unscripted

To whom this may concern,

I want you to know that the level of self-awareness of a parent can render the act of childrearing one of the most selfless acts, or one of the most narcissistic. My mother made no bones about wanting to look into the mirror I held up and see herself reflected. “I had you because I wanted a doll,” She remarked one day without irony. In her imagination, having a child meant having someone she could dress up, have tea parties with and show off to her friends. Someone who would easily strive to check the boxes of socially approved life accomplishments. Someone who would soak up dogmatic religious programming without questioning it. Someone she could wind up, sit back and watch, with minimal effort or self-reflection, like a favourite tv program. It’s no wonder she fumbled the ball so badly when I failed to follow through with my side of the prescribed script. My big, complicated feelings must have been the surprise of her lifetime. Looking back, the suicide ideation I experienced at fifteen was an apt metaphor. She’d been trying to kill off my individuality since I was old enough to express a different opinion.

While I obviously didn’t end my life, I did spend the rest of it searching for, and finding, myself. Whatever bits of self-love remained became fuel for a ferocious fire that illuminated my wounds, taking them to ash so I could reconstitute myself, as myself. Many of the roads I took were fruitful, some had me doubling back, and some were so winding I got lost for a while. They all revealed something of me though, and I hold those illuminations close to my heart now, like
precious stones.

The thread that wound through all those chapters, and what enabled that journey for me, was my determination not to have physical children in this lifetime. I would not subject another human to the kind of parenting I experienced, no matter how diluted by years of therapy. This choice gifted me something that feels far more rewarding – the opportunity to bring an indefinite number of other kinds of creations into the world. I’ve birthed businesses and writing and workshops and mentored and counselled thousands. I’ve been an auntie to other’s little ones and a stepparent to teenagers and get to nurture animals and plants and the planet. Now in my mid-forties, it feels like my essence is refracted into a myriad of beams of life-giving light, instead of concentrated into one or two souls. And the only biological clock ticking is my own mortality.