#biological clock

New Pierre Poilievre ad just dropped

They have a uterus: this is the truly irrefutable proof that women ought to have children, right? We appear not to have advanced an inch since the eighteenth century, when the entry for "Femme" ("Woman") in Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopedia comprised a description of a woman's physical appearance and the conclusion that "all these facts demonstrate that the purpose of women is to have children and to feed them." We continue to believe unshakeably that women are programmed to want to be mothers. In earlier times, this was put down to the independent volition of their uterus, a "formidable animal," "possessed with the desire to create children," "lively, resistant to reason, working in the interests of fearsome desires to dominate over all." The self-motivating womb has now relinquished its place in the collective imagination to that mysterious organ known as the "biological clock," which no X-ray has yet managed to locate, yet whose relentless ticking is easily detected by putting your ear to the belly of any woman between thirty-five and forty. "We are used to thinking about metaphors like 'the biological clock' as if they were not metaphors at all, but simply neutral descriptions of facts about the human body," observes essayist Moira Weigel. The term "biological clock" was first used to refer to women's fertility in 1978, in a Washington Post article titled "The Clock is Ticking for the Career Woman." In other words, this expression was an early harbinger of the imminent anti-feminist backlash, and its dazzlingly successful integration into the female anatomy makes it a unique phenomenon in the history of evolution—it would have given Darwin pause for thought. Since women's bodies give them the option of carrying a child, of course Nature would prefer that women also change the resulting infant's nappies, once born, that they attend all meetings with pediatricians and, while we're on the subject, that they mop the kitchen floor, do the washing-up and remember to buy loo roll for the next twenty-five years. This is known as "maternal instinct." Yes, Nature orders precisely this, and not, for example, that, in order to thank women for taking on the major task required for perpetuation of the species, society do its best to compensate them for the inconveniences they thereby suffer; nothing of the sort. If you thought that might make sense, you haven't really understood Nature.

April 8 11:47 PM Somewhere between wanting and waiting

Tonight we talked about babies.

It started with something simple — my brother and his girlfriend are expecting next month. And then he said it. He wants kids with me. I don’t know why that hit me the way it did. Maybe because I haven’t allowed myself to think of that possibility in a long time. Not since everything fell apart.

I asked if he meant now. He said, in two years. And that sounded okay — two years gives time, space. Two years sounds like something I can hold without panicking. But then he asked if there’s a “cut-off” — if there’s a point where it becomes too late for me.

I told him what I’ve heard — 35, they say. I’m turning 32 this year. I tried to sound casual, but my heart dropped a little.

Then I asked him, “What if I can’t have kids?” And he said, “I want to have kids.” And I understood.

I told him I do too. But I also told him about my hormonal imbalance. About how maybe my body won’t make it easy for me. And he just said — “We can work it out.”

That one line undid me. I cried.

Not because of him, not entirely. But because I suddenly realized how much I had buried. How much of me still aches for a family. How I once believed it would come easily, naturally — and how my past taught me otherwise. I thought I had given up on that dream after my last relationship. It felt like something I had to let go of just to survive. But now it’s coming back — cautiously, like a flower blooming in late winter. And that terrifies me.

Because I know now: no matter how much I want something, I can’t control how it all turns out.

I want to believe in this. In him. But I also don’t want to drown in expectation again. So I’m learning to stay in the present. To breathe in what is, not what might be. And still — there’s grief. Grief for the time I lost. For the version of me who thought she’d have a child by now. For how my body might betray me. For how love once did.

But tonight, I also felt something else: relief. That someone wants what I want. That someone sees me, and still says, “We’ll work it out.”

I’m scared. I’m hopeful. I’m healing. And I’m still here.

健康の礎と花粉症🌸