Sometimes I wonder: can sex, arousal, desire, and motherhood exist all together? What is even more strange is that there is no way, on a very simple biological level, that they cannot. They are by their very existence related. So why the question? Why do I cut off one to have the other and vice versa? Why do I try to make something already inherently connected separate, so that I can then figure out how to bring them together?
Maybe it's arrogance, maybe it's pride, maybe it's boredom, or maybe it's bluster—the busyness of running myself at a task that doesn't need solving. An avoidance of the intimacy that it requires to admit and acknowledge that these things belong to each other, are each other. Because to admit their connection would mean admitting the truth of my choices, the depth of my desires, the rawness of what I actually wanted.
The truth is messy. The truth doesn't fit into neat categories of "good mother" or "sexual woman." The truth requires me to hold contradictions without needing to resolve them, to sit with the complexity of being a woman without trying to make it clean.
I would have to admit that from the very moment I saw my son's dad, I had decided on him. That when I had sex with him, I knew what I wanted. I wanted to get pregnant and I did. That I wanted that child for myself, for something to belong to me, to need me and not be able to leave me, at least for twenty years. And in that moment, I in no way cared about what he wanted. There is an intimacy there that is hard to face—the intimacy of owning my own calculated desire, my own hunger for something that would fill the void I felt inside.
I hear words from other mothers like, "It was just a one-night stand.” “My baby was just determined to come.” “I didn't plan it." I hear mothers everywhere telling these stories of accidental conception, of surprise pregnancies, of children who "chose" them. But underneath these narratives, I wonder how many of us used our sexuality, our creative power, as a tool to solve what we perceived as broken in us. How many of us made calculated choices but find it easier to speak of fate and accident than to own the rawness of our actual desires?
Just like there's an intimacy in years later admitting that in all reality, at the bottom of everything, when I admit that I am whole and sufficient and not acting from a place of filling a void, that I actually would not choose to be a mum. That I actually took one of my greatest gifts of drive and passion and creation, and used it to solve a perceived lack inside me. My solution to that perceived problem was to have a child to fill the gap.
This realization doesn't make me love my son less. It doesn't make me a bad mother. It makes me honest. And in that honesty, something beautiful happens—I can love him for who he is rather than for what he fills in me.
As I have filled up, as I have OMed, practiced, followed Eros into all the places where I do not admit, hijack, or do not cultivate my inherent power in myself and with others, I realize in a very neutral way: oh, I see what I did there, and I would likely choose differently given what I see now. This path of erotic awakening has taught me that desire and truth are not enemies but allies towards knowing myself.
What's even more wild is that it is also true that being an erotic mum, practicing admitting my perfection and sexual freedom, is exactly what got me here. My son has been the greatest reflection of the importance to never leave. I used to think that my issue was that everyone left me and that I must have something that cannot leave me, but really it was me who left myself again and again. Motherhood became the container where I finally learned to stay—with myself, with the uncomfortable truths, with the complexity of loving from wholeness rather than need.
In owning my erotic nature as a mother, I'm not splitting myself in half. I'm not compartmentalizing my sexuality from my maternal love. I'm showing up as a whole woman who happened to become a mother, who still has desires, who still feels arousal, who still wants to be wanted. And in doing so, I'm giving my son permission to be whole too—to not have to fragment himself to fit into narrow definitions of what's acceptable.
What's truly stunning about Eros and this path is that it really includes and welcomes all. As a powerful woman, I know I had a child to cover my own insecurity. I know I would not choose it now. I know that I chose my son's father and that I don't actually wish he doesn't exist. I know that I would not be where I am, feeling the kind of freedom and wealth that I do, were it not for the both of them. I also know that I am meant to be a mother, or I wouldn't be one.
All of it is true.