to be or not to be a mother

how surviving trauma complicates the dream of raising children

by the time i turned eighteen, i had already been forced to mother myself through pain no child should know.

i remember the exact moment it felt like my childhood ended. it wasn’t at a graduation ceremony or birthday celebration, but in a quiet room where someone i trusted decided my comfort mattered less than their desire. i've been taken advantage of in ways that stripped away pieces of my innocence, my trust, my sense of safety in the world. the kind of experiences that teach you far too young that your body isn't always your own, that your "no" doesn't always matter, that adults don't always protect the way they promise to.

i've navigated trauma that aged me beyond my years, forcing me to develop strength i never wanted to need and wisdom that came at too high a price.

and yet, or perhaps because of all of this, i am consumed by an insatiable desire to be a mother someday.

the vision that haunts my dreams

it doesn’t need to be the motherhood in the hallmark christmas movies. in fact, i don’t even want it to be. i yearn for the real thing—the exhausting, beautiful, terrifying responsibility of shaping a human being who will one day walk out into this broken world.

i want it because i know, with every fiber of my being, that i could raise children who make it better.

late at night, when the world is quiet and my thoughts are loudest, i see him: the boy i might raise. he's maybe seven, asking me why his friend seems sad lately. i can see myself kneeling down to his eye level, holding his hands, and explaining that sometimes people hurt in ways we can't see, that our job is to be gentle and kind. i can see him nodding, really listening to what i’m saying, already learning that other people's feelings matter just as much as his own.

i see him at sixteen, watching his friends make jokes about a girl who's had too much to drink at a party. i see him being the one who says "that's not funny" and walks her home safely. not because he’s trying to get cred with the girls, but because the very idea of taking advantage of someone vulnerable is foreign to everything i've taught him about what it means to be human.

i think about the daughter i’d raise too. i can see her growing up in a house where "no" is a complete sentence, where her boundaries are respected from the moment she can speak them. i see her learning to trust the voice in her gut that says something isn't right, because unlike me, she'll grow up knowing that voice is sacred and should never be ignored.

i see her at eleven, getting her first period, and instead of feeling shame or fear, celebrating. we'll have already talked about it—not in hushed tones or with embarrassment, but openly and honestly. that day, i see myself buying her her favorite ice cream and letting her pick a movie for us to watch together, marking this milestone not as something gross or shameful, but as her body doing exactly what it's designed to do. she understands that periods are normal, that her changing body is beautiful, that she has nothing to hide or be ashamed of.

i see her looking in the mirror and seeing strength instead of flaws. loving her thighs for carrying her through sports games, appreciating her smile because it comes from joy, accepting her acne as temporary and normal instead of something that sets limitations on her worth and beauty.

when she's seventeen and her first boyfriend tries to pressure her into something she's not ready for, i see her confidence as she says no. not the apologetic, explaining kind of no that i learned to give, but the firm, self-assured no of someone who has never doubted her right to set boundaries. and when he responds with "but if you really loved me...", i see her walking away without a second thought, because I will have taught her that real love is not conditional on putting out.

she would never doubt her worth the way i learned to doubt mine. she would never apologize for taking up space in the world. she would never learn to make herself smaller to make others more comfortable.

i think about teaching my children to question everything, especially the voices that tell them they're not enough or too much. to think critically about the messages they receive about their worth, their purpose, their place in the world. not because i want to raise rebels, but because i want to raise people who can't be easily manipulated or fooled.

when they see someone experiencing homelessness, i want their first thought to be about failed systems, not failed people. when they encounter someone different from them, i want curiosity, not judgment. when they have advantages others don't, i want them to feel the weight of responsibility that comes with privilege.

these aren't abstract concepts to me. i know the isolation of carrying pain that others can't or won't understand. i know what it's like when the system fails you and you have to find a way to survive anyway.

the weight of knowing too much

my trauma wasn't random—it was systemic. it happened because someone, somewhere in the chain of raising the person who hurt me, failed. failed to teach empathy, failed to model respect, failed to interrupt the patterns that create predators.

i know this because i've spent many hours analyzing it, picking apart every moment, trying to understand how someone becomes the kind of person who looks at a child and sees opportunity instead of innocence. the answer always comes back to the same thing: someone failed to raise them right.

i think about the adults in my life who saw the signs—the way i stopped laughing as much, the way i, as a frequent hugger, suddenly despised physical touch, the way i learned to make myself small and invisible. they saw, but they didn't know what to look for, didn't know how to ask the right questions, didn't know that silence in a playful child is more telling than a loud scream.

all of that knowledge, regardless of how much i hate how i acquired it, is sacred. and it’s my responsibility to use it for good.

the fear that follows me everywhere

but then the other voice speaks up—the one that knows about cycles, about patterns that repeat across generations like poison passed down in family recipes.

what if i'm wrong? what if the very experiences that i think would make me a better mother are actually what disqualify me? what if my emotional reserves, already depleted from surviving my own childhood, run empty when they need me most?

the signs of infertility feel like another layer of cruel irony. irregular periods since i was fourteen. cervical pain that doctors dismiss as "normal." test results that make my OB frown and use words like "concerning" and "we'll need to monitor this."

to want something this desperately while my body might be saying no feels like the universe's idea of a joke. sometimes i wonder if this is some cosmic message—that i shouldn't pass on whatever broken pieces i'm still carrying, that some cycles are too dangerous to risk continuing.

sometimes i wonder if i'm being selfish: if my desire to be a mother really is about the children i’d raise, or if it’s about trying to heal the child i once was. am i simply imagining that i could give them the childhood i never had, the protection i never received, the unconditional love i'm still learning to give myself?

the patterns i'm terrified of repeating

the generational trauma runs deep. my grandmother, who never talked about what happened to her but carried it in the way she always sat with her back to the wall, eyes constantly scanning every room she entered. i see it now in old photos—the way she stands slightly apart from everyone else, arms crossed protectively over her chest, smile never quite reaching her eyes. she lived her whole life as if she was still bracing for the next blow.

my mother, who loved me fiercely but also passed down her own unhealed wounds in the way she taught me to be ashamed of my body, to not talk about my issues and limit my exposure to boys. i remember her yanking down my shorts when i was seven because they showed "too much leg," her voice sharp with an anxiety i didn't understand then. the way she'd go silent and tense whenever i mentioned a boy's name, even in elementary school. the messages weren't spoken directly, but they landed anyway: your body is dangerous, boys can't be trusted, keep yourself small and maybe you'll stay safe.

she thought she was protecting me, but instead she was teaching me that i was inherently unsafe in my own skin. that my existence was somehow provocative just by breathing. when the worst happened anyway, i already knew not to tell her—not because she wouldn't care, but because somewhere deep down, i'd absorbed the message that it would somehow be my fault for not being careful enough.

sometimes i catch myself reacting to things in ways that mirror the adults who failed to protect me, and it terrifies me. the way anger flashes through me before compassion when someone makes a mistake. the way i sometimes want to control every variable instead of teaching someone to navigate uncertainty. the way i still struggle to believe i deserve gentleness, even from myself—how many times have i called myself stupid for things that weren't even my fault?

last week i snapped at a friend for being ten minutes late, and in that moment i heard my grandmother's voice coming out of my mouth—sharp, suspicious, assuming the worst. the look of hurt on my friend's face was like looking in a mirror across time, seeing myself as a child trying to understand why love felt so much like criticism.

what if i'm not as healed as i think i am? what if i repeat patterns i swore i'd break? what if my good intentions aren't enough to overcome the programming of my own damaged childhood? what if i think i'm protecting a child but i'm actually teaching them the same fear that was carved into me before i could even speak?

the uncertainty i'm learning to hold

i don't know if i'll be able to have biological children. the doctors use words like "challenging" and "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it." i don't know if i'll find the right partner or if my body will cooperate or if my heart will be healed enough.

but i know this: the world needs more people who were raised by someone who understands that children are not possessions or projects, but whole human beings deserving of respect, protection, and unconditional love.

maybe motherhood is how i transform my pain into purpose. maybe raising children who make the world more compassionate, more just, more safe for vulnerable people is how i make meaning from the meaningless trauma of my youth.

or maybe i'm eighteen years old and still figuring out who i am, what i want, what i'm capable of. maybe this desire will evolve, deepen, or take a different form. maybe there are other ways to channel this protective energy, other ways to nurture and heal.

but right now, in this moment, i believe that love can be learned, cycles can be broken, and trauma can be transformed into wisdom instead of just passed down like a curse.

and right now, that feels like enough to build a future on. even if that future looks different than i imagine, even if the path there is harder than i hope.

the children i might raise—biological or chosen, my own or others who need what i have to offer—they deserve someone who has done the work, asked the hard questions, and chosen healing over harm.

i'm choosing to believe, that for right now, i could be that someone.