As I’ve written here before, my conception was an
accident, while my parents were still in college. Her family’s Catholic faith
mean that she had no option of abortion. She was coerced by her family into
marriage at the age of twenty. Throughout my childhood, in the worst of times,
she told me that her marriage, which included both verbal and physical abuse and
marital rape, was my fault. Because I was a child when I heard that accusation,
I had little choice but to believe it, and even after decades of hard inner
work, a tiny fragment of my heart believes it still.
Though it’s the central pain of my existence, that
dual sense of unwelcome and responsibility is also a huge gift. It fuels my
drive to make the space around me safe for those who have less power and to
push back against coercion and sexist norms whenever I can. My background
compels me to do whatever little bit I can so that someday women won’t be
forced by religion, family pressure, or tradition to give up control of their
own bodies.
For large swaths of my life, I’ve simply hated my
mother, almost thought of her as a monster. (My dad, of course, deserves as
many paragraphs, and he’s had them.) She and I have spent four painful decades
trying to make friends with each other, and to both of our credit, we now enjoy
an uneasy peace. But I never truly empathized with twenty-year-old her until
the pope’s visit to the U.S. unlocked a treasure trove of anti-Catholic fury in
my heart.
It wasn’t right for my mom to take her anger out on
me, but she was absolutely right and justified in being angry. In that forced
decision, her autonomy was taken away, and only now, as I’m learning to relish
my own autonomy, can I begin to fathom that loss. She lived, we all lived, in a
tyranny in which chaos and violence could rain down at any moment if, for
example, she hadn’t washed, matched, and put away the correct pair of brown
socks. What’s more, she thought that she deserved the abuse, because
Catholicism and sexism had taught her that she was less than he was, period.
Even long-divorced, she told me that she should have
just shut up and obeyed him better, that that would have kept us safe.
But what about existing, you ask? I really love
existing, and I wouldn’t trade my family for another in a million years. But
what if, in that momentous moment, she’d felt empowered to choose? I think she
might have still had me, but if I hadn’t been the product of coercion, she and
I may at least have had less of a struggle to make a relationship. I do hold
both of us accountable for our own actions, but what would it have been like to
grow up in a world where my mother’s body was her own?
I’m sure that some little-kid part of me thinks that
by advocating for choice, I can go back in time and repair that essential
wound, but I can’t. What I can do is hope to give other mothers a better chance
at deciding their own lives, and give more children the chance to be genuinely
loved and wanted.
Electing Hillary Clinton send a clear message against
misogyny and oppressive gender norms, and she is also the Democrat who is most
vocal in her support of Planned Parenthood and women’s (AKA everyone’s) health.
I am voting my mom’s life, for my own, and for children of all genders, that
they may be wanted, loved, chosen, and safe.