The Motherhood Multiverse

“The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.” — Eihei Dōgen

There were a lot of reasons I didn’t get married until 40 and didn’t have a baby until 42. Some were the usual ones: I hadn’t met the right person, I wasn’t ready, life just kept unfolding the way it did. There were also deeper barriers—ones that took years of therapy to even name.

But because I had such a long run in adulthood before having my son, I feel I am uniquely qualified to speak to both the child-free and the child-full life, and I have news for you—they aren’t in competition with each other.

For a long time I believed I could think my way into knowing whether I wanted kids or not. I thought I should be certain, one way or the other, before I made a choice. I even posted on Facebook asking friends how they knew. The responses poured in—some public, some private in my DMs—and all they did was make the question blurrier.

The most helpful thing anyone said came from a friend who’d gotten pregnant by accident. She told me: “There is no logical reason to have a baby. If you rely on logic, you’ll always come out on the side of not having one. And…I love being my kid’s mom—not a mom, but my kid’s mom—more than anything in the world.”

So we tried. And we had our son.

Now I understand what I couldn’t possibly have understood then: that parenthood is the greatest paradox in the world. I have never been more tired, less groomed, or further from a sense of self. I have never needed a break more. So many of my passions are gathering dust.

And yet, I would never undo it. My son is the most interesting thing that has ever happened to me. I love being his mother, his Sherpa, his safe place. I will love it until the day I die, no matter how old we are.

And yet … if I hadn’t had him, my husband and I would still be saying we made the right choice. We’d be traveling the world, eating delicious meals at inconvenient restaurants, remodeling our home, exercising more, reading more, meditating more, fucking more. That alternate life would have been beautiful too.

And the hard truth is, I know there are people with regret. I know folks who chose not to have kids and later wished they had, and I know parents who chose to have kids and later wished they hadn’t. There’s no moral high ground in either path—just the life that unfolds, and the tenderness (or ache) of living inside the one you have.

Fifteen years ago, I had an abortion. That means a third, un-lived timeline—one where I’d have a young teenager today. I don’t regret my decision not to become a mother then.

That doesn’t mean I don’t grieve it—it was hard and sad, but being hard and sad doesn’t make it wrong. I knew then that I wasn’t in a position to give a child a stable, healthy life, and because I had the right to make that decision, I’m now able to give my son the stability he deserves with a partner I trust.

Because I had that choice, and because I made it with love, I carry her differently—not as absence, but as presence, a quiet knowing that love can take many forms.

I believe deeply that the baby I wasn’t ready for understands. Spirit is not bound by the limits of form; she abides in the compassionate truth of emptiness (śūnyatā). There is no separation between us, only the vast field of love that holds all beings as they become.

Every timeline in this motherhood multiverse teaches me impermanence (anicca)—the truth that nothing stays the same for long. On my chosen path, every milestone, every meltdown, every night of sleep lost or found is a dharma teaching on change.

And so, the “me” who wasn’t ready to be a mother, the “me” who was, the “me” who doubted, the “me” who now mothers—they all arise and pass away, each dependent on myriad causes and conditions, including each other.

Comparing paths unwalked requires a kind of cosmic leap of imagination. All timelines are whole. And none of those versions of myself gets to have every experience. Maybe that’s what my choice really was—not the end of ambivalence, but the willingness to live with one life’s renunciations in exchange for another’s abundance.

Parenthood, like abortion, like being child free, like all turning points of life, isn’t separate from that truth. To live with choice is to live awake to consequence, to meet the ache and the awe without needing them to cancel each other out.

I aspire to mother from this place of awareness, imperfection, and impermanence—as both a living amends and a living vow: to stay, to care, to love the timeline where I am, and to honor the ones where I am not.

In spiritual solidarity,
🧿 Constant Craving ✨

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