I Am A Woman Made Mother, Not The Other Way Around
Written by Kelly on March 4th, 2009My children made me a mother, but they did not transform me from little girl to woman.
When I lay spread-eagle in metal stirrups, house lights dim, and stage lights blasting womb deep, there was no mythical transformation from youth to seasoned age. I was already wizened. I fucked and fed and laughed and lived my womanhood long before my babies clung to my pant leg every early morning begging for bottles and toasted bread. To claim any different would be an affront to women everywhere who can’t, or don’t, who are not going to have children.
Come on! Wouldn’t I activate your gag reflex if I said,
Oh, you silly little girls, childless wretches. Don’t you know you are not woman until you’ve changed shit in the dark of 3 a.m. with your breasts dripping milk and your partner sonorously snoring at your side?
Preposterous!
I can tell you exactly the moment I became a mother. It was the minute my son burst into this world from another women’s body. Oh yes! I was a mother then, even though the law would deny me that right until 45 days after. I became a mother for the second time when I pushed my daughter out from between my own vaginal folds.
Woman becomes a Mother. The first can and does exist without the other.
I know when I became a mother. I wonder about the serpentine timeline that bred my womanhood.
Was it at 13, when I started menstruation and placed a chunky pad between my legs still thick with adolescent fat? Was it at 19, when I bent my back against a baseball diamond and gave myself away under the stars? I had breasts by the age of 11, did they grant me permission into the club we call womanhood? What about all those chicks who are still flat-chested?
I can not pinpoint the exact minute I turned from girl to woman. I do know that I did not have to depend on the birth of my children for this to happen. The only birth necessary for this becoming was my own.
Don’t believe me? Well, go read her or her, woman who tell it far better than I tell it myself.
4
AM
I think that I’m still working on being the person that I can be. Thanks for a great post.
4
AM
Wow, this is so powerful, I’m afraid to fuck with it!
I’m also afraid to say, I don’t think I’m quite woman yet. Really. Truly. I feel girl.
4
AM
Oh Erin, such a perfect response. Yes, sometimes I’m still a little girl too. Aren’t we all just virgins, maidens, crones all wrapped up together? All this regardless of full or empty wombs.
4
PM
Actually, I became a woman when I left my parents house and “went out into the world” to earn a living, right after high school. I didn’t become a mother when I gave birth to my firstborn; I became a mother days later, when that baby I had pushed out in pain became my son.
4
PM
Beautiful post. I am a complete woman, and my woman-ness is no less “whole” simply because I have not had children.
4
PM
I gotta tell ya, Kel. i just never grew up, really. I’m still the twenty somethin full of piss and vinegar. i don’t know who that bastard in the mirror is! I wish I could do it over. I might do it right this time. Good stuff~Rick
4
PM
Ok, wait a minute…I was supposed to be grown up by then wasn’t I? Jeez, now I’m not sure what grown up is or the difference between man and boy! And I’m with you, Kel on Erin’s stripping post-I had nothing! Started typing and nothing came out bout what was under. What’s up with that? Thanks for coming by, your visits mean a lot. ~Rick
4
PM
“Aren’t we all just virgins, maidens, crones all wrapped up together?”
YES. A hundred times yes. Gorgeously put, as always.
5
AM
I posted a huge apology on my site – you are totally right and I was wrong, and a complete jackass for not editing my stuff before turning it in.
http://themommyblog.net/blog/comments/mea-culpa-mea-culpa-mea-culpa/
5
AM
I kind of hate the thinking that women are primarily designed to birth children, and you can’t fully become a woman until you fulfill that role.
So thank you for showing us that womanhood can come long before motherhood. I appreciate it.
5
AM
This was SUCH a powerful post! So true…
How do you begin to pinpoint when it was that you changed? I don’t think you really can until years later when you realize that it has happened under your nose, without your permission- without your input- but that you have turned out all right regardless of that fact.
Thanks for this post, great one!
5
AM
Just as inside every Man, there is Boy – and that Boy is a very necessary component of the Man, so inside every Woman should there be the Girl. We become very different – and I think not very nice – people when we allow the Boy/Girl inside of us to die.
5
PM
Mindy, No apology necessary, my friend. We all have our own views. Let’s not be afraid to disagree.Don’t let anyone make you feel bad for having a voice. I just shared my thoughts, but by no means is it a critic of you.
5
PM
Like Erin – I’m still girl, wondering what I’m going to be when I grow up.
Beautiful, well said post. Danke.
7
PM
I loved this. Very very eloquently put. I did not become a woman b/c I had a child, I became a woman when I left my husband after 14 years together.
8
PM
Kelly: You tell it beautifully yourself. No need for me to go elsewhere.
8
PM
i’m really, really late to this and to getting my own thoughts out on the subject too. but i liked reading yours.
9
AM
motherhood DID make me a woman, but that was my own experience, not necessarily universal.
10
PM
Your are a strong writer and bring things together in a unique way. So often I try to explain these matters to myself and don’t have the right words. You do.
11
AM
You’re so right, and what a wonderful thing for me to start the day wondering, thanks to you: when did I become a woman?
Did you seriously lose your virginity under the stars on a baseball diamond? Girl, that’s a movie.
18
AM
Interesting to think about. And as always, exquisitely written.