01-21-2010, 03:19 AM
(I wrote this up for submission to a website for former evangelical christians who come from quiverfull type movements (movements where birth control is not allowed or not practiced). I thought I'd share it here.)
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I grew up catholic, but not your run of the mill catholic (sorry, I can't capitalize it and I won't). We were DEVOUT catholics... evangelical, fundamentalist catholics, and we thumbed our noses at "Sunday catholics" as they were not living the religion the way it was meant to be lived: daily, wholly, completely. How anyone could KNOW something was a sin, and do it anyway, never mind go to church on Sunday and get the communion was beyond me.
And don't even get me started on the xmas and Easter catholics. They were even worse.
But let's not forget that catholics were the original quiverfulls. Catholic families of 10+ kids was the absolute norm in most cultures and eras that either didn't have birth control (1800s) or outlawed it (Ireland).
I was an easy sell to fundamentalism, I guess. As a child, I took to it like a duck to water, and took pride in my convictions. I remember when we were about seven years old and preparing for our "first holy confession" we were supposed to come up with a list of sins we'd committed. I was seven. And an evangelical christian. I didn't sin. I did everything god asked of me. I was a good kid. So I racked my brain and came up with one. And I was overcome with guilt, because I was a sinner and I knew it.
I remember making a mistake with pencil and I was in the classroom alone. I saw a pink eraser on the desk next to mine, and no one was there. I used it. I remember looking at the crumbs of erasure on the paper and I KNEW I'd stolen it. I'd used it without asking and those crumbs were the stolen remnants that I could never return. I remember being racked with guilt. Ahh, yes. Guilt. The mainstay of the catholic church. You don't have to control the parish when you outfit them with the mindcontrol tools to control themselves.
Another time I remember playing with my friend Sabrina. We got into an argument about something stupid and I (as a good catholic) didn't typically swear, never took the lord's name in vain and never wished harm on another person. Because in catholicism, THINKING it is as bad as DOING it. So you really do brainwash yourself into not even thinking bad thoughts. On the whole, I was very good at this. I'd been brainwashed well, and was raised by (thankfully) loving and bleeding heart liberal parents who instilled in me a sense of goodwill towards all. I guess I should be grateful, I didn't get the fire and brimstone god like some escapees did. I got the good one. The loving god who loved the poor, the mean, the downtrodden. I know it could have been a lot worse.
Anyhow, I remember the words were out of my mouth before I knew it. I screamed at Sabrina "YOU ARE A FOOL" because I didn't know what else to say. Then suddenly it hit me. I was going to hell. I knew somewhere in the bible it said "and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire" (Matthew 5:22). I remember running home and hiding under the bed and crying and confessing it as soon as I could for absolution. But 30 years later, I still remember this like it was yesterday.
I wasn't one of those kids who thought I could commit sins and then just confess them and then everything would be alright. I was a rabidly dogmatic fundamentalist, even at a tender age, and I knew that a lot was expected of me because I was smart enough to know better. And I knew the rules. So the few sins that I can remember committing as a child really really rattled me. Having to go to school confession quite regularly, we HAD to make up lists of our sins quite a bit and I remember that being a struggle for me. Usually had to do with fighting with my sister or disobeying my parents, but in retrospect it was VERY minor stuff. You are trained as a catholic, though, to consider yourself a constant sinner and to be constantly taking inventory and confessing your sins. It's like there is no reprieve from this... you never stop sinning. So even when you don't sin, you have to come up with sins to confess, so you convince yourself you've sinned when you haven't. And if you think you haven't sinned, you suffer from the sin of pride, so there you go. You can confess that.
So there was a girl in my class named Danielle. She was the second oldest in a family of about eight kids, each child a year apart. I remember her mom spitting out a baby every year, and we didn't think much of it, it was just how her family operated.
Then one day it was neighbourhood news. Mrs. C. (Danielle's mom) had had her tubes tied. The whole neigbourhood knew it. It was big news. I must have been around 10, and I remember asking my mom what 'tubes tied' meant. She explained to me that it's when you undergo a medical procedure so that you can't and won't accept anymore blessings and children from god. She told me it was a mortal sin, and that catholics were NOT ALLOWED to ever do this, and if you did it you were going to hell. You HAD to accept as many children as god gave you if you were married and catholic. There were no exceptions. I understood. I likely didn't even know what sex was or how babies were made, I just knew you HAD to have as many as god gave you. That much was clear. She told me Mrs. C. was catholic and had done this willingly, so it was quite likely she was going to burn in hell for eternity.
And yet in our own family, there were just the two of us -- my sister and I. Am was born 9 months to the day after the wedding, and I was born a year after that. Mom had medical problems and had had a hysterectomy when I was about 9 or 10. I remember my mother going on and on and on about she couldn't have anymore children after the surgery. She seemed oddly happy about it, like she was bragging. It honestly never dawned on me that there were no kids between me and the hysterectomy. There were ten mysterious years where she never got pregnant, and I never thought to ask why not.
That came up much much much later.
But I vividly remember the conversation about Mrs. C. That explanation of what a tubal was coloured my opinion for years to come. It was a sin. Plain and simple. A bad and sinful decision that destined a woman to an eternity in hell.
It also never dawned on me to question where the father was in all this. Why he didn't get to burn in hell, too.
***
So when I was 17, I worked in a movie theatre. I often worked a split Sunday shift -- matinee from noon to three, and evening from 6:00 to 10:15. I was a typical teenager, sometimes getting up at 11:30 AM an racing to the theatre. One day, I did just that and missed breakfast, and lunch, too. By 3:00 PM I was famished, but I knew I had to fast an hour before communion and mass didn't start until 4. I had to go to mass. I'd never missed mass in my life. I had to race to the church, then race back to work my evening shift, and I knew I wasn't going to get a chance to eat at all, and I couldn't take it.
My coworker was going to go for supper and he offered to buy. I told him there was NO WAY I could go, I would miss mass. I said I was catholic. He told me he was catholic too, and he missed mass all the time. Of course, the judgmental fundie in me immediately put him into that class of "not real catholics" but then something strange happened.
The hunger overtook me. And I agreed to go for supper.
They say that every civilization is five missed meals away from complete anarchy and I believe it. You saw it with Katrina. It was about noon the following day after the flood when the guns came out. My tolerance for hunger is a lot lower. I had missed two meals at that point, and I was willing to throw away my soul for a meal.
You know what is funny, if you'd have told me that morning that I was never going to go mass again, I wouldn't have believed you.
But that's what happened. I missed mass. I went to supper with my friend. At the end of the day, I knew I'd committed a terrible sin. I'd WILLINGLY sinned, too, which is worse than accidentally sinning. I'd chosen to not keep holy the sabbath, I'd chosen to miss mass for the first time in my life, and I felt (in my black and white world) that I was done for. That was it. I guess I wasn't catholic anymore. Real catholics wouldn't choose food over church. Real catholics don't choose sin. And in my mind was a category of people who were weak, and sinned from weakness, and I wasn't one of them. I was strong. I knew better. So my sin was a complete and utter disregard for the church, for god, for everything.
I was no longer catholic.
I don't remember the following weeks or months. I do know that I never went back to church, and my mother was devastated. My sister had long stopped going and I was the good catholic daughter, the one who would never 'lose her faith'.
And truth be told, I hadn't yet 'lost it'. I was still fundie in my brain and in my heart. I still believed. I just didn't go through the motions of a catholic, because the scrupulosity I suffered from wouldn't allow me to be a half-catholic. It was all or nothing, and I couldn't do the all, so it had to be nothing.
Flash forward about a year. I was living on my own in my first apartment, I was 18, and working full time in an army surplus store. I remember talking to my sister who was then 19, on the phone. I remember it like I was in a tunnel when she told me the news.
"Did you know mom had her tubes tied after you were born?"
I told her she was mistaken. It was not possible. Mom would not and could not have committed a mortal sin because that would have meant that she chose hell over heaven. I didn't believe it. I told Am the story about Mrs. C., and what mom had said. She told me to call mom and ask her myself.
I did. My mother and I had a HUGE blow out arguement. It was true. She had had her tubes tied after I was born. I remember calling my mother every name in the book. I remember my mother sobbing and trying to explain herself. I remember her story held ZERO weight with me because it was excuses, excuses, excuses and god didn't accept excuses. Either you were catholic or you weren't. Either you sinned or you didn't. You didn't get your tubes tied and call it 'a mistake'. A mistake is when you slip and fall. Scheduling a surgery then going through with it is not a mistake. It's a decision. A conscious decision.
She spun a fantastic tale about how after she was married and got pregnant almost immediately, she was happy. She wanted kids, lots of them. She said my father was quite sex-obsessed though, and wanted it all the time. She had gone to a priest, and he told her that it was her wifely duty to put out and give her husband sex whenever he wanted it. That's what she'd signed up for when she got married. Further, the priest told her that if she refused him and he masturbated, his sin of masturbation would be on HER shoulders and therefore HER sin because he didn't have to masturbate if not for her denial of him.
She said after Am was born, she suffered post partum depression and was suicidal. Dad wanted sex all the time and she had an infant in diapers and didn't think she could cope with another one so soon. She begged a priest to allow her to go on the pill but he said no. She must accept as many children as god would give her in the time frame that god wanted.
Mom went on the pill anyway. She said she was on it for six months after Am was born, and every single day she took it, she knew she was committing yet another mortal sin. Each day was a sin.
She stopped out of guilt. Went to confession and BEGGED for forgiveness. And got pregnant with me almost instantly. I am your garden variety catholic guilt baby.
After I was born, the same scenario repeated. Dad wanted sex all the time, mom was suffering with post partum, and now she had two babies in diapers. She was suicidal but not allowed to go on the pill or refuse her husband sex. She said she went on the pill anyway, and it was a hellish time in her life. Never during this time was birth control ever discussed and never did my father offer to leave her alone, never mind offer to wear condoms or get a vasectomy and be the one to commit the sin and go to hell. Never once. It all fell on mom.
I'm not sure of the timeline, but after I was born and after all that, she had the tubal. She told me that she begged god for forgiveness, begged the priest for forgiveness, but that she knew she'd committed a mortal sin and she was probably going to hell, but what was done was done all all she could do was beg god for mercy every day. She believed god was merciful. I told her if god was that merciful, there would be no rule about tubals being a mortal sin... everyone would be having one, then going back the day later to confess and receive absolution. He couldn't possibly be that merciful. These were mortal sins we were talking about. I was gobsmacked she'd done it.
I reminded her about what she'd said about Mrs. C., so many years after her own tubal. She said she coped the best she could. Tubals were still sinful. Mrs. C. still had committed a mortal sin, just as she had. She was unwavering in her staunch attachment to the dogma.
She said she was so happy when she'd had the hysterectomy becasue now she was no longer sinning... had a legitimate reason to be barren.
That was the day I lost my religion.
It was a slow thaw, and I think another full year passed before I realized that I was officially now done with the religion and with catholic/quiverfull dogma.
I remember telling her a few years later that any god who would damn her to hell for choosing to be a mother to her existing children instead of dead or suicidal or mentally ill in the name of children not yet born... well that god could kiss my ass. Any god who could put a woman through this -- and millions of women, worldwide... EVERY SINGLE WOMAN on this planet has had to make reproductive choices, and that god, in essence was banishing them ALL (except for maybe a few dozen quiverfulls) to hell. That god could kiss my ass.
And never mind that the men were all conspicuously absent from all this. The men never had to make the childbearing decisions. They never had to put their soul on the line. Dad could refuse to get a vasectomy and mom could have kids until it killed her. Or she could choose to get a tubal and get to go to hell. Those were her options. Dad got sex as often as he wanted it. And got to know he was going to heaven in the process.
When I was 19, and still new to freethought, I moved to Toronto and met a woman named Angela at my new job. She was 40 and full of life and the coolest person I'd ever met. I asked her if she was married or had kids, and she laughed HEARTILY and said, "Hell no! I had my tubes tied when I was 22. I never wanted marriage or kids."
I remember thinking, "You can't do that. You can't just CHOOSE to have no kids." I kind of understood tubal ligations for (non-catholic) women who were done having kids, but to have NO kids? NONE? To never be a mother? I didn't get it. It didn't compute.
Around that time I remember waking up. It was like your first bite of chocolate. You think to yourself, "This can't possibly TASTE THIS GOOD. It can't possibly!"
I didn't know life could be about choices. I never knew you could CHOOSE LIFE, choose your own life, choose to be authentic and true to yourself, and that sometimes that means choosing to never be a mother, because you were born to follow a different path. I never knew any of that until I met Angela.
I wanted another bite of chocolate. I wanted what she had. I wanted a big smile on my face, lotsa friends, a funky nightlife, lots of good nights' sleep and no guilt, no harassment, no bullies telling me that if I did or didn't do this or that, I was going to burn in hell for eternity.
I wanted to write, hike, travel, socialize. I wanted a job, money, the satisfaction of knowing I was beholden to no one.
I also knew I didn't want children. I knew that was the life for me. It was a calling of sorts. A vocation.
***
I was 26 before I was able to get my own tubal ligation. Doctors love to tell young women that they might "regret" having tubals, yet they never ever tell them they might regret having children. When I finally got the referral to the gyno (after years of asking around), I was 26, and I was so terrified he was going to send me packing, I prepared a manifesto. I wrote up four full pages of why I didn't want kids. I listed financial, spiritual, family history of alcoholism, mental illness... I rambled on and on. In the end, when I got to the office, the doctor asked me a few cursory questions. One was that I was currently living with a guy who had three kids who came around on the weekends. He made some blanket remark that my mothering instincts were fulfilled (as if having none at all was not possible) and signed the form.
I think it's positively sick that the vast majority of people only think you are complete as a person when you have children, or at the very least, children in your life, but I was grateful enough that if that's what he needed to believe to tie my tubes, then fine. He could believe that my mothering instincts were fulfilled. I was never any kind of a mother to those kids, but he didn't need to know that.
***
My mother and I are still very close, but we argue about religion A LOT. She's still staunchly and dogmatically attached to the ideas that she's touted her whole life. It's funny, because I joke around and tell her since we both have had our tubes tied, I'll see her in hell, and she laughs and takes it in stride. She still believes god is merciful. I still believe my life is awesome since I ditched that god.
+++++
I grew up catholic, but not your run of the mill catholic (sorry, I can't capitalize it and I won't). We were DEVOUT catholics... evangelical, fundamentalist catholics, and we thumbed our noses at "Sunday catholics" as they were not living the religion the way it was meant to be lived: daily, wholly, completely. How anyone could KNOW something was a sin, and do it anyway, never mind go to church on Sunday and get the communion was beyond me.
And don't even get me started on the xmas and Easter catholics. They were even worse.
But let's not forget that catholics were the original quiverfulls. Catholic families of 10+ kids was the absolute norm in most cultures and eras that either didn't have birth control (1800s) or outlawed it (Ireland).
I was an easy sell to fundamentalism, I guess. As a child, I took to it like a duck to water, and took pride in my convictions. I remember when we were about seven years old and preparing for our "first holy confession" we were supposed to come up with a list of sins we'd committed. I was seven. And an evangelical christian. I didn't sin. I did everything god asked of me. I was a good kid. So I racked my brain and came up with one. And I was overcome with guilt, because I was a sinner and I knew it.
I remember making a mistake with pencil and I was in the classroom alone. I saw a pink eraser on the desk next to mine, and no one was there. I used it. I remember looking at the crumbs of erasure on the paper and I KNEW I'd stolen it. I'd used it without asking and those crumbs were the stolen remnants that I could never return. I remember being racked with guilt. Ahh, yes. Guilt. The mainstay of the catholic church. You don't have to control the parish when you outfit them with the mindcontrol tools to control themselves.
Another time I remember playing with my friend Sabrina. We got into an argument about something stupid and I (as a good catholic) didn't typically swear, never took the lord's name in vain and never wished harm on another person. Because in catholicism, THINKING it is as bad as DOING it. So you really do brainwash yourself into not even thinking bad thoughts. On the whole, I was very good at this. I'd been brainwashed well, and was raised by (thankfully) loving and bleeding heart liberal parents who instilled in me a sense of goodwill towards all. I guess I should be grateful, I didn't get the fire and brimstone god like some escapees did. I got the good one. The loving god who loved the poor, the mean, the downtrodden. I know it could have been a lot worse.
Anyhow, I remember the words were out of my mouth before I knew it. I screamed at Sabrina "YOU ARE A FOOL" because I didn't know what else to say. Then suddenly it hit me. I was going to hell. I knew somewhere in the bible it said "and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire" (Matthew 5:22). I remember running home and hiding under the bed and crying and confessing it as soon as I could for absolution. But 30 years later, I still remember this like it was yesterday.
I wasn't one of those kids who thought I could commit sins and then just confess them and then everything would be alright. I was a rabidly dogmatic fundamentalist, even at a tender age, and I knew that a lot was expected of me because I was smart enough to know better. And I knew the rules. So the few sins that I can remember committing as a child really really rattled me. Having to go to school confession quite regularly, we HAD to make up lists of our sins quite a bit and I remember that being a struggle for me. Usually had to do with fighting with my sister or disobeying my parents, but in retrospect it was VERY minor stuff. You are trained as a catholic, though, to consider yourself a constant sinner and to be constantly taking inventory and confessing your sins. It's like there is no reprieve from this... you never stop sinning. So even when you don't sin, you have to come up with sins to confess, so you convince yourself you've sinned when you haven't. And if you think you haven't sinned, you suffer from the sin of pride, so there you go. You can confess that.
So there was a girl in my class named Danielle. She was the second oldest in a family of about eight kids, each child a year apart. I remember her mom spitting out a baby every year, and we didn't think much of it, it was just how her family operated.
Then one day it was neighbourhood news. Mrs. C. (Danielle's mom) had had her tubes tied. The whole neigbourhood knew it. It was big news. I must have been around 10, and I remember asking my mom what 'tubes tied' meant. She explained to me that it's when you undergo a medical procedure so that you can't and won't accept anymore blessings and children from god. She told me it was a mortal sin, and that catholics were NOT ALLOWED to ever do this, and if you did it you were going to hell. You HAD to accept as many children as god gave you if you were married and catholic. There were no exceptions. I understood. I likely didn't even know what sex was or how babies were made, I just knew you HAD to have as many as god gave you. That much was clear. She told me Mrs. C. was catholic and had done this willingly, so it was quite likely she was going to burn in hell for eternity.
And yet in our own family, there were just the two of us -- my sister and I. Am was born 9 months to the day after the wedding, and I was born a year after that. Mom had medical problems and had had a hysterectomy when I was about 9 or 10. I remember my mother going on and on and on about she couldn't have anymore children after the surgery. She seemed oddly happy about it, like she was bragging. It honestly never dawned on me that there were no kids between me and the hysterectomy. There were ten mysterious years where she never got pregnant, and I never thought to ask why not.
That came up much much much later.
But I vividly remember the conversation about Mrs. C. That explanation of what a tubal was coloured my opinion for years to come. It was a sin. Plain and simple. A bad and sinful decision that destined a woman to an eternity in hell.
It also never dawned on me to question where the father was in all this. Why he didn't get to burn in hell, too.
***
So when I was 17, I worked in a movie theatre. I often worked a split Sunday shift -- matinee from noon to three, and evening from 6:00 to 10:15. I was a typical teenager, sometimes getting up at 11:30 AM an racing to the theatre. One day, I did just that and missed breakfast, and lunch, too. By 3:00 PM I was famished, but I knew I had to fast an hour before communion and mass didn't start until 4. I had to go to mass. I'd never missed mass in my life. I had to race to the church, then race back to work my evening shift, and I knew I wasn't going to get a chance to eat at all, and I couldn't take it.
My coworker was going to go for supper and he offered to buy. I told him there was NO WAY I could go, I would miss mass. I said I was catholic. He told me he was catholic too, and he missed mass all the time. Of course, the judgmental fundie in me immediately put him into that class of "not real catholics" but then something strange happened.
The hunger overtook me. And I agreed to go for supper.
They say that every civilization is five missed meals away from complete anarchy and I believe it. You saw it with Katrina. It was about noon the following day after the flood when the guns came out. My tolerance for hunger is a lot lower. I had missed two meals at that point, and I was willing to throw away my soul for a meal.
You know what is funny, if you'd have told me that morning that I was never going to go mass again, I wouldn't have believed you.
But that's what happened. I missed mass. I went to supper with my friend. At the end of the day, I knew I'd committed a terrible sin. I'd WILLINGLY sinned, too, which is worse than accidentally sinning. I'd chosen to not keep holy the sabbath, I'd chosen to miss mass for the first time in my life, and I felt (in my black and white world) that I was done for. That was it. I guess I wasn't catholic anymore. Real catholics wouldn't choose food over church. Real catholics don't choose sin. And in my mind was a category of people who were weak, and sinned from weakness, and I wasn't one of them. I was strong. I knew better. So my sin was a complete and utter disregard for the church, for god, for everything.
I was no longer catholic.
I don't remember the following weeks or months. I do know that I never went back to church, and my mother was devastated. My sister had long stopped going and I was the good catholic daughter, the one who would never 'lose her faith'.
And truth be told, I hadn't yet 'lost it'. I was still fundie in my brain and in my heart. I still believed. I just didn't go through the motions of a catholic, because the scrupulosity I suffered from wouldn't allow me to be a half-catholic. It was all or nothing, and I couldn't do the all, so it had to be nothing.
Flash forward about a year. I was living on my own in my first apartment, I was 18, and working full time in an army surplus store. I remember talking to my sister who was then 19, on the phone. I remember it like I was in a tunnel when she told me the news.
"Did you know mom had her tubes tied after you were born?"
I told her she was mistaken. It was not possible. Mom would not and could not have committed a mortal sin because that would have meant that she chose hell over heaven. I didn't believe it. I told Am the story about Mrs. C., and what mom had said. She told me to call mom and ask her myself.
I did. My mother and I had a HUGE blow out arguement. It was true. She had had her tubes tied after I was born. I remember calling my mother every name in the book. I remember my mother sobbing and trying to explain herself. I remember her story held ZERO weight with me because it was excuses, excuses, excuses and god didn't accept excuses. Either you were catholic or you weren't. Either you sinned or you didn't. You didn't get your tubes tied and call it 'a mistake'. A mistake is when you slip and fall. Scheduling a surgery then going through with it is not a mistake. It's a decision. A conscious decision.
She spun a fantastic tale about how after she was married and got pregnant almost immediately, she was happy. She wanted kids, lots of them. She said my father was quite sex-obsessed though, and wanted it all the time. She had gone to a priest, and he told her that it was her wifely duty to put out and give her husband sex whenever he wanted it. That's what she'd signed up for when she got married. Further, the priest told her that if she refused him and he masturbated, his sin of masturbation would be on HER shoulders and therefore HER sin because he didn't have to masturbate if not for her denial of him.
She said after Am was born, she suffered post partum depression and was suicidal. Dad wanted sex all the time and she had an infant in diapers and didn't think she could cope with another one so soon. She begged a priest to allow her to go on the pill but he said no. She must accept as many children as god would give her in the time frame that god wanted.
Mom went on the pill anyway. She said she was on it for six months after Am was born, and every single day she took it, she knew she was committing yet another mortal sin. Each day was a sin.
She stopped out of guilt. Went to confession and BEGGED for forgiveness. And got pregnant with me almost instantly. I am your garden variety catholic guilt baby.
After I was born, the same scenario repeated. Dad wanted sex all the time, mom was suffering with post partum, and now she had two babies in diapers. She was suicidal but not allowed to go on the pill or refuse her husband sex. She said she went on the pill anyway, and it was a hellish time in her life. Never during this time was birth control ever discussed and never did my father offer to leave her alone, never mind offer to wear condoms or get a vasectomy and be the one to commit the sin and go to hell. Never once. It all fell on mom.
I'm not sure of the timeline, but after I was born and after all that, she had the tubal. She told me that she begged god for forgiveness, begged the priest for forgiveness, but that she knew she'd committed a mortal sin and she was probably going to hell, but what was done was done all all she could do was beg god for mercy every day. She believed god was merciful. I told her if god was that merciful, there would be no rule about tubals being a mortal sin... everyone would be having one, then going back the day later to confess and receive absolution. He couldn't possibly be that merciful. These were mortal sins we were talking about. I was gobsmacked she'd done it.
I reminded her about what she'd said about Mrs. C., so many years after her own tubal. She said she coped the best she could. Tubals were still sinful. Mrs. C. still had committed a mortal sin, just as she had. She was unwavering in her staunch attachment to the dogma.
She said she was so happy when she'd had the hysterectomy becasue now she was no longer sinning... had a legitimate reason to be barren.
That was the day I lost my religion.
It was a slow thaw, and I think another full year passed before I realized that I was officially now done with the religion and with catholic/quiverfull dogma.
I remember telling her a few years later that any god who would damn her to hell for choosing to be a mother to her existing children instead of dead or suicidal or mentally ill in the name of children not yet born... well that god could kiss my ass. Any god who could put a woman through this -- and millions of women, worldwide... EVERY SINGLE WOMAN on this planet has had to make reproductive choices, and that god, in essence was banishing them ALL (except for maybe a few dozen quiverfulls) to hell. That god could kiss my ass.
And never mind that the men were all conspicuously absent from all this. The men never had to make the childbearing decisions. They never had to put their soul on the line. Dad could refuse to get a vasectomy and mom could have kids until it killed her. Or she could choose to get a tubal and get to go to hell. Those were her options. Dad got sex as often as he wanted it. And got to know he was going to heaven in the process.
When I was 19, and still new to freethought, I moved to Toronto and met a woman named Angela at my new job. She was 40 and full of life and the coolest person I'd ever met. I asked her if she was married or had kids, and she laughed HEARTILY and said, "Hell no! I had my tubes tied when I was 22. I never wanted marriage or kids."
I remember thinking, "You can't do that. You can't just CHOOSE to have no kids." I kind of understood tubal ligations for (non-catholic) women who were done having kids, but to have NO kids? NONE? To never be a mother? I didn't get it. It didn't compute.
Around that time I remember waking up. It was like your first bite of chocolate. You think to yourself, "This can't possibly TASTE THIS GOOD. It can't possibly!"
I didn't know life could be about choices. I never knew you could CHOOSE LIFE, choose your own life, choose to be authentic and true to yourself, and that sometimes that means choosing to never be a mother, because you were born to follow a different path. I never knew any of that until I met Angela.
I wanted another bite of chocolate. I wanted what she had. I wanted a big smile on my face, lotsa friends, a funky nightlife, lots of good nights' sleep and no guilt, no harassment, no bullies telling me that if I did or didn't do this or that, I was going to burn in hell for eternity.
I wanted to write, hike, travel, socialize. I wanted a job, money, the satisfaction of knowing I was beholden to no one.
I also knew I didn't want children. I knew that was the life for me. It was a calling of sorts. A vocation.
***
I was 26 before I was able to get my own tubal ligation. Doctors love to tell young women that they might "regret" having tubals, yet they never ever tell them they might regret having children. When I finally got the referral to the gyno (after years of asking around), I was 26, and I was so terrified he was going to send me packing, I prepared a manifesto. I wrote up four full pages of why I didn't want kids. I listed financial, spiritual, family history of alcoholism, mental illness... I rambled on and on. In the end, when I got to the office, the doctor asked me a few cursory questions. One was that I was currently living with a guy who had three kids who came around on the weekends. He made some blanket remark that my mothering instincts were fulfilled (as if having none at all was not possible) and signed the form.
I think it's positively sick that the vast majority of people only think you are complete as a person when you have children, or at the very least, children in your life, but I was grateful enough that if that's what he needed to believe to tie my tubes, then fine. He could believe that my mothering instincts were fulfilled. I was never any kind of a mother to those kids, but he didn't need to know that.
***
My mother and I are still very close, but we argue about religion A LOT. She's still staunchly and dogmatically attached to the ideas that she's touted her whole life. It's funny, because I joke around and tell her since we both have had our tubes tied, I'll see her in hell, and she laughs and takes it in stride. She still believes god is merciful. I still believe my life is awesome since I ditched that god.
I lost my faith 5 years ago when our beloved Misty Died