There is no single way to mother.
Some mother by cradling a child. Others mother by cradling their own lives first. Some build families in cribs and cradles; others build futures with the raw, shaking hands of survival. All of it—every act of protection, every decision to say "not yet" or "not this way"—is mothering.
Abortion is so often framed as an ending. A political battleground. A scarlet letter. But inside real lives, abortion is more often an act of fierce beginning. It is the refusal to sacrifice oneself on an altar built by strangers. It is the choice to mother your own becoming.
Across the Americas, as legal protections crumble, and across the Caribbean, where stigma sits heavy on every clinic door, the decision to end a pregnancy is rarely simple. It is a decision forged at the intersection of survival, sovereignty, and self-worth.
In communities where oppression runs deep—where Black, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, disabled people have always been asked to carry more than their share—abortion is not just healthcare. It is resistance. It is a reclamation of the right to decide when, whether, and how to bring new life into a world still learning to hold it with care.
Wellness and abortion are kin. Agency is wellness. To say "no" is as vital to survival as any "yes" could ever be. To choose yourself is to choose the possibility of a future still shaped by your own hands, not handed down by someone else's expectations.
Mothering oneself—choosing preservation over depletion, healing over compliance—is not a failure of motherhood. It is the blueprint of it.
In Trinidad and Tobago, in Jamaica, in Kenya, in Nigeria—there are whispered maps. Aunties, friends, clinic workers who pass information hand to hand like precious contraband. There are networks built not on judgment, but on love: how to survive, how to heal, how to say yes to yourself without apology.
No headlines tell these stories. Not of the student who walked into a clinic alone, carrying generations of hopes and traumas on her back—and chose to carry herself out whole. Not of the survivor who chose to rebuild her life before risking another's. Not of the mother-in-waiting who paused, rebuilt, rose up stronger, and chose to thrive before choosing to nurture.
These choices are not footnotes. They are blueprints. They are the evidence that life—one's own life—is worth saving too.
Abortion can be an act of love, and for many, it's a profound expression of it.
Motherhood, too, is multifaceted – nurturing others and oneself.
To mother oneself is not selfish. It is sacred. It is survival. It is a love story we are finally learning to tell out loud.
