#104. Motherhood is a door

You get to decide whether you want to open it

The door to the cabin creaks gently as I push it open, stepping over the threshold into a place I’ve never been before and will most likely never return. Paul and I are here for a few days to get away from the noise of the city, the schoolhouse red door a portal into a quieter world. The cabin is quaint and cozy, just a few steps from an ice cold river surrounded by gangly matchstick trees stripped bare of all their leaves, waiting for spring.

I, too, feel like I am waiting for spring. New beginnings just beyond my reach.

I tuck my legs underneath me on the battered leather sofa, thinking about new seasons, transitions, and the opening and closing of doors. Nostalgia flutters somewhere in the back of my mind until I realize: this cabin reminds me of one of my last apartments in L.A.

Everyone opens and closes invisible doors throughout their lifetime. Every major change we experience, choose, or consider involves these mysterious portals with the ability to transport us into a life that looks slightly different than the one we left behind. Going to college. Beginning or ending a relationship. Getting a new job, or leaving one. Moving across the country. Buying a house. Getting married (or not). Having kids (or not).

We open a door having an idea of what’s on the other side – but never really knowing for sure – and we close them in the same way, only hoping that we’re heading down the right path, wherever it might lead us next. Some doors may lock behind us after we walk through, or slam shut in our faces; others might close gently by our own hand or be left slightly ajar. Maybe we find ourselves standing in two doorways at the same time, for one reason or another, trying to decide whether to push or pull.

But what about the doors themselves?

I look at the red door of the cabin, its rectangular pane of smudged glass a window to the outside world, dressed in drab shades of brown and gray. I see a door that offers me its protection. The cabin is my oasis for these three sacred days during the last dregs of winter, my safety. I hide behind this door willingly.

I am fascinated by the fact that two people – or the same person, at different times in their life – can look at the same door and see something totally different. Someone else might look at the red lacquered paint and see danger, like the door to this cabin is an oppressive force rather than a protective one. I’m reminded of the essay I wrote almost exactly five years ago – the one about what it was like being alone in quarantine. I wasn’t sure, then, if my apartment was a sanctuary or a prison.

Looking now at this other door, five years and a different world later, I don’t interpret it as wanting to trap me inside. But who am I to question what another person might see? What a different version of me saw at the time?

I read a lot of colorful comments sections about motherhood, and one thing has become very clear to me recently: So many women view parenthood as the opening of a door. Beyond the threshold is a world of joy, love beyond comparison, and an expanded worldview.

I believe the women who look at the door – the one marked “motherhood” – and see it that way. I just know I’m not one of them.

I look at the door to parenthood and see a different universe behind it entirely. The handle is hot to the touch, a world of uncertainty, stress, and restrictions appearing beyond the doorway when I peer in.

I see an invisible string attached to this door that is connected to another one across the hallway of my life. If this door opened, it would swiftly tug the other one shut.

Another woman might look at the system of interconnected doors of her existence and say what string??? while I can’t see anything but the string.

Not every door opens or closes easily. Some are harder than others, especially when they slam shut or refuse to open.

What do you see when you look at all the possible doors of your life?

Some doors might have opened and shut behind you already, growing so small you can barely even see them in the rearview, but what other doors are still ahead? Some may open and stay that way forever; some doors that are shut can never be re-opened again.

But it’s not just the door that’s important – it’s our perception of each door. The ones we never open, we’ll never truly know what was on the other side. That’s true of motherhood, but parents will never really know what it’s like to open the door marked “child-free by choice” and walk through it, either. Even if it looks like the life they had before children. They’re not the same.

If you see other people walking through one of life’s most popular doors, that doesn’t mean you have to, too. And just because a door looks closed doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep trying to open it if you really want what’s on the other side.

Not every closed door is locked. Sometimes you just need to push.

“20 Women Share Why They’re Child-Free” by Hailey Bouche for The Everygirl

I loved this list of 20 little anecdotes from Everygirl readers on the reasons they’re child-free. As a person who also “simply did not come installed with the motherhood software” (lol), it’s actually cool to read stories from women who made the same decision but for completely different reasons:

“Building a whole person from scratch is a huge responsibility that scares the living shit out of me.” – Kassie, 33

“I simply did not come installed with the motherhood software.” – Sammie, 36

“Being a mother is something I’ve wanted my entire life, but due to my age and inability to afford egg freezing, I just don’t see it as being a realistic possibility.” – Tate, 34

I can’t imagine having to meet the physical and time needs of a child with our lack of support for working parents… If I had a little girl, I would have to explain to her one day that I had her knowing her rights were slowly being stripped away.” – Alex, 32

“Defect, She Said.” by Veronica Roth on Substack

Somehow I just discovered Veronica Roth has a newsletter(??) and last August she wrote a scene from an alternate Divergent where Tris chose to stay in Abnegation. I have never been so thrilled by any other piece of bonus content in my life!!!

Veronica said readers often ask why Tris chose Dauntless, and I found her answer both illuminating and well themed to this issue: “And for awhile that felt like a nonsense question— she chooses Dauntless because that’s the only way the story could exist. But now that the story does exist— now that I’ve written it the way I needed to— I can see the choices I didn’t make, and I’m interested in exploring them, to see how they change the story and the characters and the world.”

Defect, she said, and I didn’t do it because she told me to, because I had learned my lesson about doing things just to please my parents after the Choosing Ceremony. I defected because the idea of remaining in Abnegation, doing all the choreography of selflessness without any of the conviction, made me want to scream.

“On the internet, nobody knows you’re pregnant” by Caitlin Dewey for Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends

Loved this essay from one of the Substack greats, Caitlin Dewey, who is about to head out on maternity leave:

“It’s not that I set out to keep a secret, per se — but the news has felt too vulnerable, too exposing, too complex. And in delaying the announcement, I’ve joined a quiet movement of soon-to-be parents who concealed their pregnancies from the internet. Some are motivated by a growing social awareness of infertility and pregnancy loss; others by privacy concerns, post-Roe anxieties or a distaste for performative social media mommy culture. On TikTok alone, thousands of posts now celebrate what’s known as the baby “hard launch”: announcing a new arrival only after they’re born.

“The new pregnancy announcement is no announcement,” the journalist and commentator Fortesa Latifi declared in a viral TikTok last December. In one recent-ish study, researchers called reluctance to post pregnancy reveals an “under-investigated” wrinkle of digital culture.”

Not to beep my own horn or anything but I am really killing it with super on-theme book recommendations lately??? The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young is about a woman with a cursed family who has the ability to walk through a mysterious red door into another time of her choosing, but she can only walk through it three times before the door closes behind her forever. Absolutely recommend if you’re a wistful reader who can get down with time travel as a plot device (in a book that is very much not science fiction – think The Time Traveler’s Wife vibes.)

Ellen Pompeo went on Call Her Daddy this week to talk about literally everything, but mostly her time on Grey’s Anatomy. They talked about so much and spilled enough juicy tea I may actually write about it more in-depth next week…

If you were as feral for Grey’s as I was back in the day, this episode is a must-listen. Ellen wasn’t sure if she wanted kids, but was finally convinced at age 38 because her husband wanted them so badly. She repeated the familiar notes on motherhood being incredibly expansive, and how she’s “evolved into a completely different person” after becoming a parent. On the flip side, she also talks about how she was able to have a really full home life by choosing to stay on Grey’s for nearly 20 years, shooting 10 months out of the year (she has three children with her husband, Chris Ivery), but it came at the expense of her chasing other parts that would have required her to travel a lot:

“All actors, you want to chase the trophies, you want to chase being relevant. You want to chase the new, sexy, hot shiny thing and work with this director and that director. And I didn’t choose that for several reasons. But the fact that I didn’t, you know, it’s always in the back of your mind. I mean, I’ve had a really full home life as an actor, which is probably something I wouldn’t have normally been able to do if I had taken a different, more creative path.”

Tell me about your doors! And your obsession with Grey’s Anatomy!