The Invisible Cradle
The Invisible Cradle Here, in my part of the world, a child’s arrival doesn’t begin with a nursery or a registry. It begins when the baby is in our arms. We buy a few clothes, a mat, some diapers. We don’t overprepare — not because we’re careless, but because we’ve been taught it’s unwise to get too ready for something before it happens. Anything can go wrong. And maybe that’s true. But lately, I’ve been realising there’s another kind of readiness we never talk about. The invisible cradle. At 35, when people ask me, “Do you have kids?” and I say no, they follow it with, “How long have you been married?” They assume my answer is temporary, not a choice. They assume I’m ready. But I’m not. Not in the way I wish to be. What they don’t see are the years of therapy, the slow, messy work of healing the parts of me I didn’t even know were broken. They don’t see the grief I carry — for my parents, for myself, for every child born to parents who don’t know how to love themselves. My parent...