My Path

My path in life is not a traditional one. So you can call me the Nontraditional Traditionalist. I have tried hard to live a traditional life, but it never seemed to fit. Maybe it’s because I have bucked tradition without knowing it since birth.

I was born to a single mom in a small German-Catholic town in Missouri. My biological father has never been a part of my life. Instead, I had three amazing dads: my grandpa, my uncle Willie, and Tom (my stepfather). These three men stepped up to be strong male figures in my life. I have been pitied and insulted because I didn’t have a traditional dad at home. However, those three men were the best dads a girl could have. Just because my home life was different doesn’t mean it was less than another’s.

My mom raised me in the Catholic tradition. I received the sacraments at the appropriate ages. I attended 8 years of Catholic school, which set a solid educational foundation. She didn’t teach me to follow religion blindly. She taught me to think about what I believed and accept it because I believe it, not because someone told me I should.

She also taught me to be independent. She knew her job was to raise a responsible, functional, and resourceful person who would contribute positively to society. She wanted me to rely on myself to operate daily.

I was also raised in a community that included my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and neighbors. Mom knew she could be everything to me. However, no parent can be everything to their child. I saw how a small community works and learned from those around me. While my mom was the one most responsible for my well-being, she wasn’t the only one who raised me into this moment.

These teachings and experiences would shape the rest of my life.

By the time I graduated high school, I was looking for a different religious tradition to call mine. I wasn’t spiritually fulfilled in the Catholic faith and was turned off by their homophobia, misogyny, and the sex-abuse scandals. I couldn’t follow a religion that I didn’t see as acting as Jesus did.

In college, I tried other Christian denominations but ultimately never found one that was much different from Catholicism. They all appeared more focused on worshipping Jesus as a god than living like he commanded – love one another. They just didn’t fit me. I questioned things. I didn’t blindly follow what the preacher said. I also didn’t fit the view of womanhood they portrayed.

Shortly after my then-husband and I joined Northside Christian Church, the pastor asked me if I “work outside the home.” I was the breadwinner for my husband and me since he was still in college. This question really struck me as weird. Something out of the 1950s or 1960s. I vividly remember one Sunday morning when several of the older married couples in the church talked to the young marrieds group (that was us) about how to arrange for the woman to stay home and tend to the family while the man worked to support them. While they said several times that the woman didn’t have to stay home, I also don’t remember a single one of those couples talking about how the woman had a career and the family supported it. The message was clear, and it didn’t work for me.

I stopped attending that church around 2008 and walked away from Christianity, though I never stopped following the teachings of Jesus. I am part of the 36% of US people living in the US who don’t identify as Christian.

I married 2 weeks after graduating with my master’s degree. I tried traditional marriage. I put my all into it. I would have loved to have 2 kids and experience traditional motherhood, but that wasn’t in the cards for me. I wanted motherhood as part of a package that included a loving, supportive partner and resources such as paid maternity leave and affordable childcare that supports motherhood. I watched my mother struggle to raise me on her own and I didn’t want that for my child or me.

None of this occurred. My husband and I divorced in 2009 when I realized I wanted a partnership and relationship that grew deeper with time, and he wanted something else. I have never had a job that expressly offered paid maternity leave. It’s only paid if I save up enough sick leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act only guarantees 12 weeks of unpaid leave in a 12-month period for pregnancy. The US is one of few developed countries worldwide that don’t offer paid maternity leave. Mexico offers more paid maternity leave than the US.

The only woman in the US who can take maternity leave are those who can afford to take it. Unless you are employed full-time and have saved up enough sick leave (if your employer even offers paid time off and allows you to accumulate unused leave) or bought short-term disability insurance to cover pregnancy, you do not have paid maternity leave.

For as much as some proclaim motherhood is essential, we don’t put our money where our mouths are in the US. We don’t support mothers here, and we don’t help children once they are born.

After my divorce, I moved to Minnesota and eventually started what would be a 4-year relationship with a man and a now 10+ year relationship with his three beautiful children. They call me their aunt because that’s easier to say than explain how we know each other (that’s another blog series). I am also their bonus mom. Their mom and I have a wonderful friendship. While I didn’t grow and birth them myself (thanks for doing that work, Meredith), I have had the joy of watching them grow from childhood/adolescence into the incredible humans they are today.

The old proverb says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” I have chosen to be a part of that village. Not everyone can or should be a biological mom or dad. We need adoptive parents, aunts and uncles, and the older neighbor man who is there for kids like a grandpa. Unfortunately, we don’t value the village in this country. Instead, we scream how every woman needs to be a mother and then do nothing to support that tremendous labor.

This is my motherhood path. This is what womanhood looks like for me. It’s not a traditional path, but it is mine.

Our definition of motherhood and womanhood is tied up in antiquated religious dogma. We, personally and as a society, need to broaden our definition of these terms. They don’t look the same for every woman or every mother. They certainly don’t look the same as they did 20, 50, or 100 years ago, and they shouldn’t.

Not everyone should have kids. Not everyone should be a parent.

Not everyone who became a parent is happy they did. Parenting is hard. Birthing a life into the world and then caring for it physically, emotionally, mentally, financially, and spiritually, as motherhood demands, is an enormous responsibility. It should not be entered into lightly. It is not just the next thing someone does in life. I specifically call out the demands of motherhood in this way because a man can’t make the same commitment to that child that the mother has to. He isn’t literally putting his life on the line to birth that child like a woman does.

For the past 3 weeks, I have told the story of my decision to not be a biological parent. All of the experiences and information I have shared here informed my choice. Between rape culture, the lack of societal support for mothers, and the outrageous challenges a woman faces in general in life, traditional motherhood is not a path I could choose.

There are women out there who can relate to my experiences; however, none of them have had exactly my experiences, and vice versa. It is a waste of time and energy to judge other people’s life choices since we haven’t had their experiences. We only have our own.

I hope that in sharing my story, I plant a seed of understanding and acceptance in all who read it. Since we each have our own life experiences, we can’t all follow the same predictable path. A path declared by some unknown person ages ago was the “right” path. We all have a right to live our lives in a manner that works best for us. Hopefully, our path will be full of love, kindness, and compassion, leaving this planet a bit better for all.