Words by Andy Reyes // photo by Hrant Khachatryan
I had a dream I was pregnant. The contractions began, and I started to push, bringing a part of myself into the world. I held a baby in my arms, crying against my chest. What followed filled me with a strange sadness, because I didn’t recognise the child I had carried. I didn’t feel the unconditional love I was supposed to feel. Instead, I felt hollow. I looked at my little son and wished he would disappear. I wanted to wake up from that nightmare. I gazed at him with compassion and sorrow but not love.
I’ve known since I was fifteen that I didn’t want to be a mother. It wasn’t a slow realisation, it was immediate, instinctive. Even with my limited sexual education at the time, I remember the terror I felt after a boy touched me. I bought the morning-after pill and cried, begging for my period to come. It did, right on schedule. Still, I told myself that maybe in my twenties something inside me would shift. That maybe the maternal instinct everyone talked about would finally appear. It never did.
This past year, I’ve grieved quietly. I’ve cried and questioned myself over and over. Why don’t I want to be a mother? I’ve lost sleep searching for answers. I adore babies, even their tantrums feel endearing. I wished I had the desire to become a mother, to feel my belly grow, to give life to a child and watch them grow. But I don’t. And I’m learning to accept it.
A few months ago, I worked across three aged-care homes as part of my job as a carer, rotating between facilities due to staffing shortages. That experience shifted something in me. I saw residents with children who never visited, and others who had no children at all. Loneliness doesn’t discriminate. That’s when I understood: motherhood isn’t a safeguard—not for me, not for anyone.
People often assume that not wanting children means not wanting a family. But that’s not true. I do want a family—just not the traditional kind. I want a partner I can grow with, someone whose hand I can hold through grief and joy. I want long walks with our golden retriever, and a cat waiting for us at home. I want a life built on companionship, not obligation. Love, not expectation.
After all this questioning, grieving, and searching, I’ve realised something simple but profound: not wanting to be a mother doesn’t make me incomplete. It doesn’t make me less of a woman, or less capable of love. It just means my life will take a different shape—one that is still full, still meaningful, still mine.
I no longer see my choice as a void, but as space. Space to build the kind of family I do want. Space to love in the ways that feel natural to me. Space to grow into the person I am, not the one I was told I should become.
I may never feel the pull of motherhood, but I feel the pull of my own life—of the future I’m choosing with intention and honesty. And that, finally, feels like enough.
