🌹 Motherhood, Rewritten: My Wild Detour from the Expected 🌹

Growing up, I never really thought much about having kids. It wasn’t something I craved, like other young girls seemed to. I didn’t spend time fantasizing about the perfect family I would create. I didn’t even desire marriage.

There was a longing inside me to be wildly free.

Truth is, I already felt like a mother before I was even of child-bearing age.

In many ways, I felt exhausted from parenting my own Mother (our roles of responsibility often reversed), and helping to raise my younger siblings while dodging the torrent of alcoholism and unaddressed mental health issues.

I felt I had to grow up too fast. Shouldering way too much at such a young age. Wanting my mother to be everything she was not.

I rebelled hard… partied my ass off for a lot of years. Shaking it off in the only way I knew how at the time.

Fast-forward to my late-twenties when I suddenly found myself trying mightily to become the anti-thesis of my Mother, on a mission to prove I was NOT her.. that I could do it ‘right’, ‘better’.

I would create the white-picket-fence life my mother could never give me.

I married (against my deepest intuition) and we bought a house together, started making future plans. I had a successful career in corporate media production, and a blossoming yoga/ mindfulness practice.

For a year and a half my then-husband and I were trying to start a family. It wasn’t happening…

We visited fertility doctors who confirmed there was no biological reason why it wasn’t happening.

On the surface everything was fine.

But beneath the surface, I knew. My body was preventing me from going down a road I didn’t really want.

I took some space to tune into the wisdom that was bubbling up from within me.

To finally listen.

To understand my core truth at the centre of what I thought everyone needed me to be, and what I thought I had to be to prove myself worthy.

The truth was… I didn’t want children. I didn’t want marriage. I didn’t want the house. I didn’t want the career.

I wanted to walk my own wild path.

To lay down the burdens that I had picked up so long ago, lighten my load, and turn my own Mothering love inwards, to the wounded parts of me that had felt unseen.

At the time, I didn’t know where I was going, nor did I have a name for what this journey was.

Along the way, step by step, I came into relationship with my own womb. I started to speak to her, commune with her, love her, care for her, feel and honour her deepest desires, sense her magic.

I allowed myself to get so freakin’ honest… to entertain all the possibilities, free from societal constructs and expectations.

I lovingly let go of my potentiality to birth children, knowing in my bones it’s not for me.

There was grief…. And then a giant exhale. A sigh of relief in.. finally.. being… ME.

I turned my nurturing and creative energy towards my expressions, my service, my offerings.

My womb danced in celebration as I poured her power into all that was ready to be birthed through me.

I came to a place of appreciation and understanding for all that has led me to this moment.

Trusting that every pain and challenge has birthed and re-birthed me, shaping me into a more resilient and compassionate and connected being.

I am in awe of mothers who bring children into this world.

And I am also so happy to walk a different path.

While travelling through lands where motherhood (in the traditional sense) is the only path for most women, I’m often asked why on earth I would choose not to marry and have kids. I receive blank stares or looks of pity. And that’s OK. I know that I’m content with my choices.

In fact, I’m grateful to exist in a moment in time and privilege where I, as a woman, can make these choices for myself.

And I offer my whole heart to all who have felt forced into choices that were not their own.

…. Why am I sharing all this?

I guess I felt the tender nuances of the many feels that come with Mother’s Day.

And I offer my story as an acknowledgment to all who feel that motherhood can mean many things...

… and perhaps most importantly, a reminder to TRUST THE WILD WISDOM WITHIN, always.

🌹❤️🙏🏼

With love,

Stephanie

#MotherhoodUnfiltered #mothersdaylove #wildwisdom