Birth, Uncontrolled

Cultural baggage on the threshold between Maiden and Mother

We want the same thing... let's make a Startup

When our baby was still the size of a bean, my partner Calvin and I joked that we were approaching this family like a startup.

He laughed: "You're Biotech, and I'm BizDev."

We've embarked on a fast-paced, value-centered, game-changing, disruptive mission: growing a human.

It's the biggest responsibility—one I've been taught I should not be taking on at this stage in my life. I should only have a child after I'm financially stable, after I have a career and a time-tested marriage, and a fully lived free 20s.

But looking at my prospects, this puts me guarded against the possibility of starting a family until my 30's or 40s... and even then without certainty.

I learned that a child comes after I live my life.

In the culture of my birth, children are raised away from where life happens. My own child will be the first baby I have a real relationship with.

For a while now, I've been slowly disentangling myself from the tendrils of this culture. I'm listening to myself instead, the quiet voice inside my soft woman body. And she, I, want to be a mother. She, I, know I am supported.

A decision like this isn't something I take lightly. It has already changed me beyond what I can know.

Dharma teacher Trudy Goodman shared an insight that stuck with me, in an interview with Duncan Trussell that later became an episode of The Midnight Gospel. Sometimes the most important decisions in life you make are saying "yeah, okay" to God.

So when I met a man who wanted the same thing, a family, I said, yeah okay. Let's do a startup.

Birth Controlled

It used to make a lot of sense to me, the narrative that says wait until you're ready, the trend of long-delayed motherhood.

At 15, I was the Peer Advocate for Planned Parenthood at my high school. Our mission in the program, Teen Council, had an underlying current: preventing pregnancy. Ensuring kids are very, very planned.

I could name, and still can, the many different types of birth control available to women and girls, their potential risks and benefits. I handed out free condoms like candy. It was fun.

Every week our leader, a young social worker who I swear is an angel, led us in discussions of topics about sex, intimacy, and sexuality. I was young, horny, and very intellectual - it was heaven. Becoming a resource for my peers was a great outlet for my encyclopedic brain. I shot off facts like a semiautomatic sex fact rifle.

During this time I was also at the height of my queerness. I changed my name, ("Eileen" was too feminine); I ran my school's Gender and Sexuality Alliance; I fell in love with a woman with whom I had my first kiss and first heartbreak; I cut off my beautiful long hair as my mother, supportive yet heartbroken, cried. I spent a lot of time in the dark on Tumblr.

I hated myself. I did not want to be a woman. But I did not know what I was.

By the time I turned 18, I had grown my hair to chin-length and changed my name back. I'd also undergone the initiation into womanhood: choosing a birth control method to prevent fertility. I had an IUD inserted, painfully, into my uterus. It would emit synthetic hormones to keep me infertile.

Gradually, I stopped menstruating. I was free of this messy nuisance of my woman-body. But a little voice said... this seems off.

Once I started meditating, the voice got louder and louder. Eventually it said get this thing out of me right now. So I pulled it out and took my cycle back. After a year or so of regulation, I even synced up with the new moon.

Listening against logic

After some years I started feeling the very normal urge to have a child as a strong, strange, antilogical knowing. I didn't have the typical symptoms of baby fever: excess urge to coo, going "awww" at tiny little baby clothes, compulsion to smell baby heads, etc. But due to some impactful mystical experiences, I am highly attuned to the voice of the Earth that comes through my body. And she was insistent.

I was a single maiden of 24 with the world in front of me. Chronically nomadic, I still had so much of the world to explore. Why not Taiwan for a few months? Morocco? I could return to Brazil, surf by the jungle and eat Acai bowls in Paradise. I could be a Digital Nomad, discovering and consuming the world. That was the dream, right? Endless exploration = maximum beauty.

But something had killed this desire. Running around as best I could during Covid-times had led me to this sensation that endless exploration was empty, that I was only capitalizing on my prerogative to forever pursue have more shiny things. I wanted to be somewhere where I had purpose. And, now this thing with a baby... I had visions and intuitions and a strange knowing that this was a part of my purpose. I didn't want to wait. My body said, settle for a bit. It's a good time.

And the best argument by my body and mind in concert:

I have already been in my prime childbearing years for a decade. It’s insane that none of my peers have had children by now. It's a phenomenon of the last 20 years. It's not natural. We are missing something.

I became, secretly, increasingly uncomfortable with this dissonance. I wondered not what was greener on the other side of the fence but who I would become embedded in partnership and family. I wished aloud for a husband, a dog, and a baby.

UnReady

As far as I knew, none of my peers were considering kids. But it was also normal for young women to desperately wish that they were "ready."

Oh, someday. In a few years. When I have enough money, when I meet the right guy.

There was a similar narrative from my family.

I shared my desire with my parents in a safe, backhanded way, with the question: "what would you do if I got pregnant?" Both of them, surrounded by riffs on well I'd be happy and supportive of course, had one big BUT: "How would you afford that? Children are expensive!"

I didn't have a good answer. I wasn't ready. But I couldn't unhear what I had heard.

My desire became a rebellious secret. I refused to quash my wish. It was the only one left alive.

A Winter of Shifts

In November,

I shared my secret aloud for the first time at a Jew-ish Women's circle (At the Well) in Austin TX. My secret wish was painfully normal to the women there, many of whom were already mothers or had the same desire. It felt like visiting another planet. No one asked me how I would make enough money. They just prayed for me.

Then I shared my secret with a man, a coworker, as we took a walk through the desert forest. He asked, "What about the guy?" I considered for a moment and replied, "someone I want there to be more of, I guess."

In December,

I got on Hinge and a guy who picked me up in a Porsche told me he was looking for a partner to stay home with the kids. For the first time I seriously considered this option.

Becoming a homemaker felt both right (I’m a total homebody) and terrifying: it was like I was giving up on all the qualities that made me valuable. My conditioning says, my value is in my intellect and education. My value is in my ability to work. My value is to produce Powerpoints and spreadsheets and ideas for a company, to live by my intellect, to make a lot of money.

In January,

Instead of flying to Taiwan I found a 2-month sublet in Port Angeles, a few hours from Seattle where I grew up. I rested for the winter next to clearcuts and old growth, pure clean lakes and the sheltered shimmering sea.

One normal Thursday night I met Calvin in a tavern that he hates and I like. He asked me out and we soon discovered uncanny commonalities. We are both in the tiny tech niche of “web3" and love being in the city but living in the woods. We also share a lot of values about parenthood. We both want to not only have children now, but to give them a wild, free, and unschooled childhood.

On our third date we waded naked into the Elwha River under the moon and stars. This is my kind of date, I thought.

In February,

I say, you can if you want to. He does. It sticks. No trying here. Like I said, my body had been ready for a while now.

Cozy Scared in the Dark

I move in with Calvin, who lives in a little off-grid no-address cabin in the forest on a farm. It goes uncommonly well between us. Calvin starts to adjust to his income being the support line for not one but soon three people, then loses his job. We're both sent into worried job-application spirals.

I try to run back towards Career, towards that Job, Salary, and Stability and all that false empty glory. Even worse, after my efforts I wind up response-less and empty-handed again. I have tried and failed many times to find the right Job fit in the last three years since I graduated, and this is a great way to make myself feel hopeless again.

Plus the house is full of mouse poop because we live in a shack in the woods.

The demon of how are you going to pay for that? Grows bigger and bigger. I feel sick and emotional and scared. I feel happy to sleep next to my husband and dog with my baby in my belly. It has not been very long since I wished for them. Calvin cooks for me and takes me on walks. He builds me a new kitchen. We read to each other.

When I tell them, my parents come alive with excitement and support and lots of worry, and I'm wracked with guilt and joy and humility. I feel closer to them than ever, and I need it. They know more than anyone that I am ready, but I am not ready. They will be there for me anyways. I am so lucky.

The only way I am not ready is the money.

I thought I had it - I thought we had it. But it turns out that startups move quickly to cut people out too. And our startup is too precious and too wanted to cut. Even if we lack funding.

So, it's been tough. We are scared. We are freaked out. And yet, we trust.

One thing Calvin and I share is a found-in-ourselves trust in God. We weren't raised this way, but we both found it regardless. Which is why, to us, this doesn’t feel like rushing into anything, doesn’t feel like a careless YOLO. We’ve both been preparing for parenthood for years already. It is good timing for us.

Ends, transitions, transformations

As I transform from Maiden to Mother, I grieve my bodily independence. I battle mountains of doubt. I feel so, so creative. I glow.

As I start to share my news, I enjoy a variety of reactions. Some mothers celebrate my induction into the club with a twinkle in their eye. (you’re going on a looong journey dear). A friend is the first one to whisper straight to my belly. ("We're going to be friends!"). A woman a decade my senior looks at me with love, sadness, and a little bit of envy. (“I wish I’d had a kid then, when I had more energy. I’m ready but I don’t have the guy yet”)

Well, it can all come together very fast, I reply to the hopeful woman.

I wish I could give advice to those whose love and birth lives aren't working in different ways to mine. How do I find the guy, or conceive, or what have you? I don't know. I just asked for it, I said yeah okay, and here it is.

On average, arranged marriages last longer than “love” marriages. In frustration with my solitude at the beginning of this year, I had been mulling this fact over and over, thinking, well, it could be any number of guys. We can work with what there is. As long as he works with me.

The night I met Calvin, I was thinking about this. It could be any guy. There are so many cute ones out there - like that one, with the scruff! He’s cute. (It was Calvin. He came over).

It is and it isn’t this simple. I ground myself and get into my body and trust my heart with the important parts—the parts binding me to a person I still barely “know.”

Sometimes I’ll look for evidence that it’s not right, that I’m crazy, that I’m actually ruining my life. That I’m acting like an idiot, giving away my power and independence. That I should cut it all off and wait, that I should run away and start again, again.

I calm down, I make contact, and I feel the soft love and appreciation for these beings that God has brought into my life. I am grateful for this partner in parenthood, philosophy, and home. I relax into the way he holds me. In his arms, I don’t feel afraid like I do around most men. It couldn’t be anyone - it could only be him. Because it is.

I don't know how. I'm not ready. But I am, and I'll learn. We'll learn together. Just like it's been done countless times before. And soon I will be the mother saying, like my mother says to me, it’s all gonna be okay.