{"id":2442,"date":"2019-01-03T19:23:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T00:23:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2019-06-14T11:10:44","modified_gmt":"2019-06-14T15:10:44","slug":"rachel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/curtsiesandhandgrenades.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/03\/rachel\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It is difficult to know within the deepest pits of your body that you\u2019re supposed to be a mother, but you cannot conceive. It\u2019s living with a whirring dissonance whose volume depends on the circumstances of any given day. We by and large don\u2019t consider that trans women may want children. We are told that we should be happy having the physical and many of the same biological characteristics of cisgender women, but we never ask trans women questions about pregnancy. In my case, being an intersex trans woman with an underdeveloped, non-functional uterus and incompatible genitalia, I feel particularly close to something just out of reach. The need to be a mother and my inability to act on that overwhelming, heavy, internal desire, with my own body is my own cross to bear. I\u2019ll never get pregnant. I\u2019ll probably never have a child of my own. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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But I have this image of myself as a mom that I carry around with me on harder days. I have a daughter. Her name\u2019s Rachel Erin Maclay. I can\u2019t give her life, but I can give her space in my own mind. I can carry her with me, and even if I can\u2019t manifest this idea of her into flesh she still resides within my own body. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s nothing. She is a fragment, an idea, a possibility, and through all of this I can see her. She exists here, in my heart and soul, and if that\u2019s where she always is, then I will be thankful that she has given me that much. As her mom I know I will have done all that I can, having rammed up against the edges of the limitations of my own body, and still kept the idea of her alive. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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This little girl inside me pulls a white rose. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is difficult to know within the deepest pits of your body that you\u2019re supposed to be a mother, but…<\/p>\n

Continue readingRachel<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[194,195],"class_list":["post-2442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-infertility","tag-personal","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/curtsiesandhandgrenades.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/curtsiesandhandgrenades.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/curtsiesandhandgrenades.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/curtsiesandhandgrenades.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/curtsiesandhandgrenades.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2442"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/curtsiesandhandgrenades.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2611,"href":"http:\/\/curtsiesandhandgrenades.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442\/revisions\/2611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/curtsiesandhandgrenades.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/curtsiesandhandgrenades.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/curtsiesandhandgrenades.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}