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I was sitting in a waiting room while my daughter was in surgery, passing the time on my phone, when my mum sent me a message. She asked if my husband was there with me. He wasn’t. Then she said, “You shouldn’t be there alone.”
I remember chuckling to myself and asking her why not. She said I should have support, and I understood what she meant. For many people, waiting rooms are the sort of place where you want someone beside you, someone to talk to while the time passes. But for me, being there alone didn’t feel wrong at all. It felt completely normal.
What I thought, reading her message, was something I have thought many times before. Not unkindly, just honestly. Mum. You have known me my whole life. Why do you still not know this about me?
My grandmother had the same reaction when she found out. She rang and asked if I was all right, and I could hear the concern in her voice, genuine and sweet. She has never liked being alone in her own house, and I understood that she was speaking from that place. It was tender, really. I wanted to reach through the phone and reassure her that I was perfectly fine, that I was quite enjoying the quiet if anything.
This is not a new quality. It has been part of me for as long as I can remember.
When my father passed away, I was nine. I didn’t cry in front of anyone, not because I was holding something back, but because I genuinely didn’t feel the need to. Later, on my own, I cried quietly, and that felt far more natural than doing it in front of other people would have. Years later, when my stepfather died, my mum collapsed when she got the call. Someone had to stay steady, and I did. Not because I chose to take on that role, but because that is simply how I respond. I carried on through the flight, through the family gatherings, and through the funeral without falling apart. Not because I felt nothing. Because I don’t experience things the way most people seem to.
When my husband has been away for stretches, my grandmother would always ask if I wanted to come and stay with her so I wasn’t alone. Every time, I would thank her and tell her I was fine. Every time, I meant it. My mum never questioned it in the same way, perhaps because she understood from her own experience that a woman can manage perfectly well on her own when she needs to. But my grandmother couldn’t quite accept it, and I never once held that against her. She asked because she would have hated it. I stayed home because I didn’t.
Over time, I’ve noticed the way people respond to this quality in me. There is often a look, a slight pause, as if they are trying to work out whether I am holding something back or simply not feeling what I am supposed to feel. It isn’t usually said directly. It is just there. As if I am a bit odd.
But there is nothing missing. I am not covering anything up, and I am not trying to appear unaffected. This is simply how I am. I process things quietly and then I move forward.
Sitting in that waiting room, watching people come and go, I didn’t feel anxious or unsettled. I didn’t feel the need to fill the silence. I didn’t feel that I should have someone beside me simply because that is what people expect in that sort of moment.
I was exactly where I needed to be.
For some people, being alone like that would feel overwhelming. For me, it feels like space. Space to think, space to sit quietly, space to let things settle without noise or interruption. That has always been enough for me.
So when someone says I shouldn’t be alone, I understand what they mean. They are speaking from what would feel right to them.
But that isn’t how it feels to me. And after all this time, I have stopped being surprised that people find that surprising.
— Kate
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 and told friends as much, they thought I was joking. They told me I would change my mind. I didn’t. In university, I started getting serious with my first boyfriend. He told me he couldn’t have children, delivering the news as though he were disappointing me. I remember letting him believe that. Not because it was true, but because admitting I didn’t want children at all felt like something that would make him think less of me. So I stayed quiet.
And eventually, I followed the path most people follow without particularly questioning it. You meet someone. You marry. You have children. My husband and I did the same. Years later, when I brought it up, he looked at me and said, “Then why did we?” Neither of us had a satisfying answer. We did what we thought we were supposed to do, and we did not stop to ask whether we actually wanted to.
When I became pregnant, I wasn’t excited. There was no overwhelming sense of anticipation, no emotional moment when everything shifted. I knew then what I had always known.
After she was born, I loved her. That was never in question. But the role itself never felt natural. I took care of her. I kept her fed and safe and attended to. I did everything I was supposed to do, and I did it willingly, because she was mine and I loved her. But I am not a hugger. I was the one who, when she came to me with some minor injury, would ask, “Are you bleeding?” She would say no. I would say, “Then you’re fine.” I avoided field trips when I could. I didn’t photograph every occasion. I didn’t get emotional when she started school or left for university. Those moments never felt like losses. They felt like things moving forward, as they ought to.
When she has been ill or needed looking after, I have done it. But I will not pretend it doesn’t exhaust me in a way that other things don’t. Being needed in that particular way has always felt like work. I don’t think that makes me monstrous. I think it makes me honest.
I have never been one of those people who goes soft at the sight of a baby. I don’t feel the pull to hold them or coo over them. I can acknowledge that a baby exists, offer my congratulations, and move along quite contentedly. It is not that I wish them any ill. I simply don’t feel the need to perform an enthusiasm I don’t have. When we were attending church, I quietly asked not to be put in the nursery. It seemed the honest thing to do for everyone involved.
What I have come to understand, over time, is that loving your child and wanting motherhood are not the same thing. They are quite separate. I love my daughter. That has never been in question. But I did not want the role, and no amount of time or tenderness has changed that fundamental truth.
What I do want, and what I find I am beginning to have, is something that feels less like motherhood and more like friendship. She came home recently to vote. We drove across town together, talking about the candidates, what we liked, what we didn’t. No drama, no weight. Just easy conversation between two people who happen to know each other rather well. That is the relationship I was always hoping we would find our way to. One where she knows she can bring me her troubles if she truly needs to, but where most of the time we simply enjoy each other’s company without the machinery of mother and child getting in the way.
I never wanted to be a mum. That has always been true, and it remains true now.
But I find I quite like the person my daughter has become. And I think she might feel the same about me.
— Kate
The first time I realised I might be different from other mothers, we were standing in a driveway on prom night.
Our children were dressed up, awkward and beautiful, posing for photographs before heading off to dinner. I was chatting with another mum about university plans, where her son was looking, where my daughter was considering.
She mentioned a school in Florida her son was thinking about, a local community college her daughter might attend. Then she said, almost wistfully, “Honestly, I hope they both decide to stay here. I’d be perfectly happy if they never left home.”
I remember nodding politely and thinking, why on earth wouldn’t they leave?
I love my daughter. Fiercely. I am proud of her independence, her ambition, her willingness to move eight hours away and build a life entirely her own. But I have never quite understood the desire to keep her close simply because it makes me feel better.
When her final year of school approached, other mothers spoke about the coming emptiness as though it were a tragedy. They asked if I was ready. If I would cry. If I would miss her terribly. I smiled and said I would miss her, which is true, but I did not feel devastation. I felt readiness.
I have always believed children are meant to leave. Not because we want rid of them, but because we have raised them to stand.
When the time came, we drove her up, helped her move into her dorm, and drove home. She was happy. We were happy. It felt exactly as it ought to. She has since chosen to stay at university over the summer rather than come home, and some people seem to expect me to be heartbroken about that. I find I’m not particularly. She is building her life. That is rather the point.
I did not build my entire identity around motherhood. I did not centre my world on her schedule or her presence. Even when she was young, I encouraged sleep-away camps and independence. She thrived. So did we.
I sometimes look at mothers who struggle enormously when their children leave and find myself quietly wondering about them. Whether they have poured so much of themselves into their children that they no longer quite know what they are without them. Whether they don’t entirely trust their children to get on without them. And for those who are married, I find myself wondering quietly about their husbands. Surely an empty house has its appeal.
I don’t say any of that out loud, of course.
Loving your child and being ready for them to go are not opposites. They can exist quite comfortably side by side. Pride does not always look like tears. Sometimes it looks like dropping them off, driving home, and feeling nothing but glad for them.
— Kate
I have been content on my own for as long as I can remember.
My grandmother likes to tell a story about me as a toddler. I was in one of those old wooden playpens, happily occupied. If I wanted out, I would remove a slat, climb out, have a look about while my mother was napping, and then climb back in.
Not because I was trapped.
Because I was content.
My mother says I didn’t cry much. I didn’t fuss. I wasn’t dramatic. I was observant. Quiet. Self-contained. She says this as though she is still slightly puzzled by it, even now.
For most of my life, I never thought much about it. I did not feel misunderstood or wrong. I simply assumed everyone processed the world internally the way I did. It took some years to realise that was not quite the case, and a few more to understand why some people found that surprising about me.
Friendships were uncomplicated, which was perhaps made easier by the fact that most of my friends were boys, both growing up in England and after we moved to the States. There was very little emotional analysis, very little drama. We talked, we laughed, we moved on. When something hurt, I thought about it privately and then got on with things. It wasn’t suppression. It was regulation. And it suited me perfectly well.
As I grew older, I began to notice how differently some people move through the world. Some need to speak their thoughts aloud to make sense of them. Some need regular reassurance. Some need visible affection and affirmation in quantities that would exhaust me simply to think about. I do not say that unkindly. People are wired differently. I have simply always been wired rather quietly.
I have always needed very little of any of that.
That independence has served me well. It has made me capable and resilient. It has allowed me to stand on my own two feet without placing much demand on anyone else. I am not a worrier. I do not spiral. I am rarely overwhelmed, and on the occasions when something does land heavily, I process it quietly and move forward without much fuss.
But I sometimes wonder what it costs, being the steady one. People assume you are fine because you present as fine. They assume nothing hurts because you do not make it visible. They assume you prefer to handle things alone because you always seem to manage it.
And honestly, they are usually right.
Being reserved does not mean being empty. It simply means the waters run deep and still, rather than loud and visible.
People rely on me, and I don’t particularly mind that, up to a point. There is something straightforward about being trusted to hold things together. But steadiness, I have noticed, has a way of becoming an expectation rather than a gift, and I am not infinitely patient with that distinction being lost on people.
The girl in the playpen did not need rescuing. She was content in her own company, curious about the world on her own terms, and perfectly capable of letting herself out when she chose to.
The woman she became is much the same. She loves the people in her life fully and without reservation. And she knows, quietly and without drama, that whatever comes her way, she would be alright. There is a particular kind of freedom in that knowledge. Not coldness. Not distance. Just the steady, certain understanding that she was built to stand.
— Kate
There is a particular kind of day at work that I genuinely enjoy. When I follow my boss out to a property and walk through someone’s home with a clipboard, noting the details — the dimensions of rooms, the quality of light, the things a photograph might miss. I move quietly while she speaks with the owner, measuring and observing, turning what I notice into something useful. Later, when I sit down to build the listing, having been there myself makes all the difference. Those days feel like work worth doing.
Then there are the other days.
The ones where I sit at my desk with nothing urgent in front of me, trying to look occupied. Watching the clock in the way you only do when time feels like something being spent rather than used. I manage an office for a local estate agency. I am not underpaid, not overlooked, not mistreated. If anything, I am valued, trusted with details that matter, asked for my opinion, relied upon. Twice a month I work on the adverts for local magazines, and I find I look forward to those days more than I probably should. Occasionally there is a listing presentation to put together, or a meeting to run, and those feel purposeful in a way the quiet stretches do not.
But many days, if I am honest, I am simply filling time until it is acceptable to leave.
It is a curious thing, to be genuinely grateful for a job and quietly restless within it at the same time. I know how fortunate I am. I know many people would be glad of the steadiness, the respect, the reliable pay. I do not take any of that lightly.
But there is a part of me that wants more autonomy than appreciation.
I want to decide what the day will ask of me. I want to work because I have chosen to, not because the clock says I must. I want to leave in the middle of the afternoon without calculating how it looks. If money were not part of the equation, I would have left already. Not out of anger or rebellion, but out of a quiet pull toward something self-directed.
Perhaps this is what happens somewhere around forty. You begin to notice the difference between security and freedom, and the gap between them starts to feel wider than it once did.
I think about what I would do with four hours back each day. The cooking I never quite get round to. The painting that sits waiting. Time with my grandparents, who are not getting any younger and neither am I. And this, the writing, which I love and rarely make space for because the day has already been given to someone else’s schedule.
I am grateful for the life this job supports. Truly.
But somewhere underneath that gratitude, there is a small, persistent voice asking whether it might be possible to build something of my own. Something that earns its keep and still leaves room for a life.
I don’t have the answer yet. But I have started to take the question seriously.
— Kate
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Kate Alderwick 