When childhood trauma shapes your relationship to safety, motherhood decisions become infinitely complex. This is my journey through fertility struggles, and learning to trust my body’s wisdom about whether I was ready to become the protector I never had.

Can I trust this man NOT to hurt my children? I think he’s a more honorable man than I’ve encountered, but am I missing something about his character that would exploit kids? I grew up in domestic violence. Then I was sexually abused by an “upstanding” man. Those experiences clouded my read of men.

Did I miss something about his personality that’s an indicator that he’ll secretly abuse our children? But the deeper question haunting me was, can I trust myself to protect my own children when I couldn’t protect myself? These loops ran through my mind constantly when marriage made motherhood a real possibility. How do you contemplate bringing a child into the world when your own childhood taught you that the world isn’t safe? When no one protected you from abuse, how do you trust yourself to protect someone else?

My Body Knew

I spent my 20s and 30s trying not to get pregnant. So when I got married, it was weird shifting from prevention to actively trying to conceive. But my body felt wrong for motherhood. I always felt like I was too fat to conceive – a shame that ran deeper than weight, rooted in years of learning my body was something to be criticized, controlled, and violated.

My husband kept saying, “let’s get healthy,” which back then kinda felt like code for me to lose more weight, which might ensure a safer pregnancy. We talked a lot about safe pregnancy because Black women’s maternal death rate was (and is!) awful. Black women in the U.S. face a maternal mortality rate three times higher than the rate for white women. Most maternal deaths are deemed preventable, but they still happen, so that sobering reality was also lingering in the background, causing my hesitation about pregnancy. But I wonder now if my body was protecting itself, protecting a potential child from a mother who wasn’t emotionally or mentally available yet.

We tried. He took tests to confirm fertility, and I did too. Despite trying, we had no success. He was neutral about kids and never pressed me/us to try aggressively. Plus I was career-focused and invested in climbing the corporate ladder. Not becoming a mother wasn’t a fully conscious choice. It just quietly didn’t happen. I didn’t force the issue, and neither did my husband. We let circumstances decide for us, which felt easier than confronting the deeper questions, like did I actually want children, or was I following what society expected? Or was I capable of being the protector a child needs?

Later, we saw friends dealing with the emotional toll and labor of parenting, and kids seemed expensive. Then I watched a Netflix documentary about microplastics and environmental toxins affecting fertility. Many of our bodies are suffering from modern poisoning, so even though tests confirmed functioning body parts, we weren’t easily able to conceive. Perhaps our bodies knew something our minds weren’t ready to face.

As I was grappling with my own motherhood question, three different friends asked, “Will you be the godmother?” I agreed, but I never really knew what it meant to be a godmother. What was I supposed to do? I didn’t have a godmother myself, just another example of not having additional support or guidance from another loving adult.

Because I didn’t understand the role, I was a shitty godmother. Sometimes I’d buy Christmas gifts and maybe call on birthdays. Was that enough? I envisioned the godmother role as being there when the parent dies, I’d kick in and pick up during a crisis. Trauma had taught me to prepare for disaster, not to nurture during calm.

The godmother role taught me about my capacity for nurturing and my limitations. I probably would not have been a good mother during my twenties and thirties. I don’t think I would have had the emotional bandwidth to nurture a child because I had so much of my own healing to do. Being a godmother helped me understand where I was emotionally, and helped me realize why my body might have resisted pregnancy.

I think when you’ve experienced childhood trauma, the decision to become a mother carries extra weight. You’re not just choosing to have a child—you’re choosing to become the protector you never had. That’s a profound responsibility that requires honest self-assessment.

My sexuality and my maternal instincts were both affected by unresolved trauma. I was disconnected from my body, unsure of my judgment about people, and carrying wounds that hadn’t healed. How could I advocate fiercely for a child when I was still learning to advocate for myself?

Not having children meant I could focus entirely on my own healing and pleasure. Many mothers I know are so depleted from caregiving that their sexuality becomes an afterthought, and their trauma healing gets postponed indefinitely. My path allowed me to prioritize my body’s needs and do the deep work of reconnecting with myself.

If you’re facing pressure about motherhood while carrying your own unhealed trauma, I want you to know that asking hard questions about your readiness shows self-awareness, not weakness. The same protective instincts that are making you wonder if you’re capable might be exactly what would make you a thoughtful parent. Or they might be telling you that healing needs to come first. Either choice is ok.

You don’t have to be perfectly healed to be a mother, but you need to be honest about your emotional capacity. Sometimes, not becoming a mother IS the protective choice for you and for the child who doesn’t exist yet. Sometimes the most loving thing is to break the cycle by choosing differently.

Now at 47, I could be mentally and emotionally available to a child, but that ship has likely sailed unless I adopt or foster children. My mom desperately wants grandchildren and still asks, but the timing of my healing didn’t align with my fertile years. There’s grief in that, but also peace.

Making Peace With My Choice

This isn’t about judging mothers or claiming my path is better. It’s about recognizing that when trauma shapes your relationship to safety, the decision to create and protect new life becomes infinitely more complex.

I may not have become a mother, but I’ve become someone who understands her own capacity, who has healed enough to trust her body, who can finally tell the difference between real danger and trauma responses.

The question isn’t whether trauma survivors can be good mothers—many are extraordinary parents because they understand vulnerability. The question is whether you’ve done enough healing to trust yourself as a protector, to be present in your body, to break cycles rather than repeat them.

Sometimes the most radical act is choosing healing over society’s expectations of motherhood. The key is choosing consciously, from a place of self-knowledge rather than societal pressure or unexamined wounds. That conscious choice, whatever it is, becomes part of how we heal the world.

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