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Cristina Crescenzo (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

There’s something I’ve been quietly afraid to admit: not because it’s shameful, but because it feels too vulnerable to say out loud. I’m afraid to become a mom. More specifically, I’m afraid to have a daughter. It’s not the physical tasks that scare me, due to my disability. I’m not worried about sleepless nights or teaching her how to tie her shoes. I would pick her up every time she fell and love her with everything I had. What truly terrifies me is something deeper: the emotional inheritance, the pain of girlhood that I know all too well.

I know what it’s like to hate your reflection so much you wish mirrors didn’t exist. I know the sting of being left out, the ache of hearing your name whispered behind doors you were never invited through. I remember falling for someone who didn’t like me back, and crying myself to sleep night after night, my tears soaking into the pillow like a quiet watercolor of heartbreak. These memories aren’t distant. They’ve shaped me. And while I know my mom watched those moments unfold, I sometimes forget that she may have experienced many of the same things when she was young. I forget that she once stood where I stand now, looking forward, unsure of how to protect a child from the world’s quiet cruelties.

However, there’s a truth that’s harder to say: part of me is afraid of what will happen if everything goes right for my daughter. What if she becomes everything I wasn’t? What if she’s confident, loved, popular and happy every day in ways I never felt I could be? What if she has the courage to chase the dreams I was too afraid to pursue? As much as I want her to thrive, I worry the girl I once was and still carry with me to this day might quietly resent her for it. That unspoken jealousy feels like a betrayal, and I hate that it lives somewhere inside me.

But what scares me even more is the thought that I might give her everything I have and still fall short. What if she sees my flaws, my fragility, and turns away from me? What if she grows up to hate me, and stays mad longer than I can bear? I honestly don’t know if I could handle that kind of pain, and I might wither away.

That’s why I’m afraid to be a mom. Maybe the answer lies with my own mother. Maybe I need to ask her how she did it. Did she carry these same fears? Is there anything she still holds in her heart, left unsaid, to the girl she once was? And if she does open up, I hope she’ll let me thank her, not just for loving me through everything, but also for surviving girlhood and motherhood all at once. Maybe that’s where healing begins: in understanding our mothers, not just as parents, but as women who once feared, hoped and hurt, just like we do.

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I am just a 24-year-old finishing her English bachelor’s degree at Simon Fraser University who loves to read and write in order to help someone in some small way. I will also always advocate for mental health and disabled causes through the written word and Low Entropy lets me do just that.