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There is something I have never felt comfortable saying out loud.
I never wanted to be a mother.
I knew that long before I ever became one.
When I was younger, I remember telling friends I didn’t want children. They thought I was joking. They told me I would change my mind.
I didn’t.
In university, when I started getting serious with my first boyfriend, he told me he couldn’t have children. He said it as if he was disappointing me.
I remember letting him believe that.
Not because it was true, but because I thought saying I didn’t want children at all might make him think less of me.
So I stayed quiet.
And eventually, I followed the same path most people do.
You date.
You get married.
You have children.
My husband and I did the same.
Years later, we talked about it and realised something neither of us had said at the time.
Neither of us had strongly wanted children.
If we had been honest with each other then, we likely would not have had them.
But we weren’t.
So we did what we thought we were supposed to do.
When I became pregnant, I wasn’t excited.
There was no emotional moment, no overwhelming sense of anticipation.
Even then, I knew.
After she was born, I took care of her. I did everything I was supposed to do.
But the role itself never changed for me.
I didn’t enjoy the “mother” parts of life.
I’m not a hugger.
I was the one who thought, if you’re not bleeding, you’re fine.
I avoided field trips whenever I could.
I didn’t take photos at every event or occasion.
I didn’t get emotional when she started school, went to camps, or left for university.
Those moments never felt like losses to me.
They felt like things moving forward.
That never changed.
Recently, she was home for about a week and a half over spring break. She had surgery while she was here, so I was taking care of her — making sure she was eating, taking her medication, and that she was comfortable.
And I did all of it.
But it was exhausting.
By the end of that time, I was ready for her to leave and go back to university.
Not because I don’t love her.
But because being needed in that way has always felt like work to me.
Now that she is grown, I enjoy our relationship more than I did when she was younger.
I like talking with her. I like hearing about her life.
I like the parts that feel more like friendship.
But there is still something added to it because I am her mother.
And that part has never felt natural to me.
For a long time, I thought something must be wrong with me.
Because no one says this.
No one admits they never wanted to be a mother.
But loving your child and wanting motherhood are not the same thing.
I love my daughter.
But I never wanted to be a mum.
And that has always been true.
— Kate
I married young.
Twenty felt grown at the time. It does not, in hindsight.
We did not have a dramatic love story. There were no grand gestures or cinematic moments. No lightning bolt when our hands touched. I was attracted to him, yes — but our beginning was steady, not electric.
If I’m honest, I used to wonder whether that meant something was missing.
I’ve read the novels. The ones that describe a spark so strong it feels almost violent. The kind of chemistry that consumes the room. I’m not sure we ever had that. What we had was conversation. Laughter. Ease. A shared sense that life together would be calm rather than chaotic.
Over twenty years, that steadiness has held.
We have never had a disagreement so sharp that I thought we might split. There have been seasons of distance. Moments when I wondered if we married too quickly. A period, around ten years in, when I quietly questioned whether I had mistaken comfort for compatibility.
Those thoughts did not linger. But they existed.
What we have built is something less dramatic and, perhaps, more durable.
We talk. Constantly. The best parts of our holidays are often the drives — long stretches of road where conversation unfolds without effort. We were careful, even when our daughter was young, not to lose ourselves entirely in parenting. We did not want to wake up to an empty house and realize we were strangers.
Now, with twenty years behind us, I can say this:
I am still myself.
Marriage did not swallow me. It did not shrink me. I have always known I could stand on my own two feet if I needed to. That independence has never threatened him, and his steadiness has never confined me.
Do I sometimes wish for more tenderness? Yes. I wish he would come up behind me in the kitchen and wrap his arms around me without prompting. I wish for small, unasked-for gestures. Not grand passion — just quiet closeness.
But longing for more does not mean lacking love.
It means I am still human. Still wanting. Still alive to the idea that marriage can continue growing, even twenty years in.
There is something deeply reassuring about choosing one another, again and again, without fireworks. Without spectacle.
Just two people who talk well. Travel well. Think similarly. Believe similarly.
It may not be the sort of love written about in novels.
But it is ours. It has grown with us — quieter, deeper, more certain.
And after twenty years, that feels like something rare.
– Kate
I used to assume that if I ever had a daughter, she would be like me.
Quiet. Independent. Capable of sorting through her own problems without much fuss.
Instead, I was given a girl who feels everything.
She cries at sad films. At kind gestures. At disappointment. At things I would have simply swallowed and moved on from. She talks through her worries. Replays conversations. Questions herself in ways that leave me tired simply listening.
For years, if I’m honest, I mistook our differences for weaknesses — hers, not mine.
I didn’t understand the drama of secondary school friendships. I didn’t understand the tears over boys who hadn’t earned them. I didn’t understand the anxiety over grades when she was already doing well.
At her age, my friendships were uncomplicated. Mostly boys. Very little emotion. I made good grades without much effort — and when I got bored, I simply disengaged. Life felt rather straightforward.
Hers does not.
She sets impossibly high standards for herself. All A’s or nothing. Certainty or failure. Love or rejection. There is very little middle ground.
I encourage. I reassure. I tell her she is capable. Sometimes she believes me. Often she doesn’t.
And I have had to learn something uncomfortable:
Just because I do not experience the world the way she does does not mean her experience is wrong.
It is simply different.
She is in her second year at university now, eight hours away. Brave enough to build a life far from home. Strong enough to navigate things I never had to. Sensitive enough to care deeply when others might not.
I am proud of her — not because she is like me.
But because she isn’t.
Perhaps part of motherhood — even for those of us who never quite felt the instinct the way others seem to — is learning to raise someone without trying to remake them in your own image.
She is emotional. I am measured.
She is social. I am reserved.
She doubts herself. I rarely have.
And yet, somehow, we fit.
I am still learning her.
And perhaps she is still learning me.
Maybe that is the quiet work of raising a daughter — not shaping her into who you would have been, but standing steady while she becomes who she already is.
– Kate
Kate Alderwick 