Motherhood

I’m gonna need to get something off my chest.

Mother’s Day was this past weekend. But amidst the cards and the candy and the wind chimes and flowers and plants and the little handmade gifts that were given, there is a undercurrent as well. The holiday was started as a movement to recognize WOMEN in an era that deemed them second class. It was a time when women didn’t even have the right to vote or open a credit card in their name, where men could assert their right to “marital duties” and wives could not say no, where owning property as a woman was capricious and working outside of the home in any sort of career was frowned upon for higher class women.

Even now, in this day and age, in the twenty first century, there are some very vocal people on the fringes of society that are advocating for a return to that era. Others are concerned about the SAVE act and the possibility that it could remove the ability to vote from married women (myself included, since my legal name now does not represent my birth name and I don’t currently hold a passport).

Anywho, I digress.

I am not a mom in the very literal sense of the word. Due to circumstances, I never birthed children. But I am a stepmother. I am a caretaker of felines and plants. I am a mentor to others. I am part of the village that raises others. But I am looked down upon by some because of my childlessness. This day is a mixed bag of emotions for me every year as a result. I am celebrated because I have contributed to helping raise the village around me. But I am not a mother regardless.

But the world needs women who are not mothers, whether it be by choice or by circumstance. It needs people willing to help be part of the village even if they don’t understand the pains of childbirth or the feeling of that unconditional love one might have for that part of you that was created. And we must not be looked down upon because choice or life caused us not to be mothers in the very literal sense of the world.

Again. I am a stepmother. I am a cat mom and a plant mom. I am a second mother to a number of young people in the world. I am a auntie who loves. I am willing to be part of the village. And just because life dealt me some bad hands and motherhood was not part of the adventure of my own story doesn’t mean that I need to be regarded as second class in the ways of womanhood.

Because this is my story. This is what I have written. And it’s just as magical as anyone else’s.

Stay magical, friends.

Write your own story.