haikufeels

matriarch
absorbed in meaningless tasks
she is forgotten

I often depress myself by thinking about all the wonderful things I could be doing if I wasn’t looking after all these children 24/7. A society where women are separated from each other by design means each woman must care for her children almost entirely on her own, do endless housework alone, suffer alone. The imposed immorality of birth control makes this a lifelong subjugation for many women. While I chose to have (most of) my children, I have been the victim of coerced child bearing. The life I can imagine, what my potential could have allowed (all else being equal), haunts me. Each interruption to my daily writing is another mote of potential lost. I love my children (as I am obliged to assert), but raising children is certainly not a pleasant vocation. Many millions of mothers before me had the potential to offer society brilliant works in all fields, but were forgotten in history as menders of clothes, cookers of meals, and servants of men. There is a cruel brutality in preventing women from making history and then pointing to the lack of women making history as evidence of our inferiority. If the potential of aborted babies can be lauded as the source of cures for cancer and unimaginable technological innovation, what consideration is reserved for the potential of their mothers?