Motherhood is often whispered as destiny. As an inevitability. As proof of worth stitched into the lining of our names. But there are paths carved by absence, by aching, by an invisible longing that reshapes the soul.
Some destinies miss the womb. Some destinies find us in the quiet—in the ritual of hope lit by trembling hands, in the stillness after another prayer floats unanswered into the night. Infertility is not just a word; it is a thinning of dreams, a folding of futures into smaller and smaller corners of the heart.
In our communities—where motherhood is seen as legacy, as survival, as tribute to ancestors who crossed oceans with nothing but faith—infertility can feel like betrayal. It wraps itself in silence, in shame, in sentences that begin with "just have faith" and end with "God's timing."
But those who know this journey know something deeper: that love is not measured by the bodies we create, but by the worlds we build from our brokenness.
To navigate infertility is to live in two worlds at once: the world of what is, and the world of what might have been. It is to mother dreams, to cradle griefs no one else can see. It is to bless each small survival—each refusal to let go of tenderness—as a sacred act.
In the Caribbean, in diasporas braided with both resistance and reverence, there is an old knowing: that motherhood is not always biological. It is ritual. It is guidance. It is the quiet mentoring of a niece, the tender hand offered to a community child, the laughter stitched into the fabric of a life shared with others.
We honour here:
The altars built in the heart for children dreamt but unseen.
The redefinitions of family forged by will, not womb.
The fierce choice to remain open-hearted in a world that valorizes only certain kinds of creation.
Motherhood is not a checklist. It is not a verdict. It is a spirit.
And in the unseen spaces—in the rooms where no cribs are built, in the arms that remain empty but outstretched—something sacred lives.
You are not less. You are not lacking. You are part of the radical, abundant chorus of those who mother hope itself.
