Day 64: When I Started to Feel Like a Mother
The Psychological Weight of Awaiting Pregnancy Test Results
Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault
——
When I first realized I had been drugged & assaulted, pregnancy didn’t even cross my mind for the first few days. My immediate fear was STIs. The first thing I did was go to a clinic to get tested. The second thing I did was text the hotel, asking them to review the CCTV footage for the entire night and confirm that no one else had entered the room except him. That confirmation gave me a small sense of control - at that time, I just needed to know who had violated me.
After the shock of the CCTV footage and STI tests wore off - by day four or five - I became a mom.
What Do I Mean by That?
Let’s clear the first question: I didn’t become a mother because I had a positive pregnancy test.
I became a mother because I realized that it happened while I was ovulating. I don’t use birth control, and as that reality settled in, my mind began shifting. I opened up the Flo app and it read “chance of pregnancy - high” on the day it happened. And I started thinking as if I were a mother.
(Now I know there are probably lots of mothers reading this thinking - how could you possibly know what it’s like to be a mother from a few weeks of thinking you’re pregnant? I know, I don’t know the full extent of motherhood. But this is what the last few weeks felt like:)
I used hormonal birth control for years when I was younger because I was terrified of becoming pregnant in my teens/twenties. In my sobriety, I stopped using any hormonal birth control due to the harmful effects of hormones on women’s health. Since then, I’ve tracked my cycle carefully, using the Flo app, avoiding intercourse during ovulation. (I also don’t really date a lot of people so there aren’t a lot of chances to be pregnant, lol). And yet, in an instant, someone took that choice away from me without my knowledge or consent.
And I became a mother as soon as I knew there was a possibility of a baby’s existence.
As soon as I realized this, I started to feel as if I were pregnant. I could literally feel my belly cramping every time I sat down to meditate. I wasn’t sure if it was real or psychological. I would place my hands on my tummy and try to figure it out. But what truly convinced me I was a mother was when every thought I had shifted away from myself and how this would effect me and toward him and how this would affect him - my hypothetical baby.
I felt certain that if I were pregnant, the baby was a boy. I thought about him, this hypothetical baby, constantly.
I had a few main fears about having this hypothetical child, and every single one revolved around his safety.
The Genetics of Psychopathy
I worried about whether psychopathy could be inherited. I dove into research, watching videos of children whose parents were psychopaths. They seemed like normal, well adjusted people, and ultimately, I concluded that psychopathy isn’t genetic. I think, like addiction and other mental health challenges, it’s created by trauma. With that fear aside, I thought about two other things:Legal and Physical Safety
If I were pregnant, I would never tell my attacker I was pregnant, but I knew because I live my life so publicly on the internet that he would find out. And then I wondered…could this man get parental rights? Could he come back to Bali and harm this baby? Would we be safe here? Or would he just creepily stalk this child and watch him grow up from afar, pretending he didn’t know about his existence but watching every move?The Weight of His Origin Story
The last thing that really scared me was talking to my child one day about it. What would it be like for my child to grow up knowing his father assaulted me? Would he feel shame knowing how he was conceived? Would people be cruel to him because I have been so open about my story (which I realized was his story too)? I even decided what I would say when he was old enough to ask about his father: “Dad is not safe to be around.”
Despite all of these fears and worries, I had already begun to love him.
When my sister found out this happened, she said if I wanted to come home I could stay with her and her husband for a while to process and recover. I said, “I have too much work right now in Bali - and I don’t think it’s a good idea to stop working. I can’t cancel everything coming up in the upcoming months. But I guess if I am pregnant and I decide to have an abortion then I might have to come home to Canada. Which would mean I have to cancel many of my upcoming events and retreats. But I guess we need to cross that bridge when we get to it.”
That was about a week ago. A friend over breakfast asked me a few days later when I told her I thought I was pregnant, “How do you feel about that?”
And I said to her - “Thank you for asking me. Because most people don’t ask me. Most people who I talk to about this just hear my story and assume that I feel how they would feel, and that I would do what they would do. Which is that they would abort this kid because of how he or she was conceived. But I know, 100%, if I’m pregnant I am going to keep this kid. Because I already love him.”
The first home pregnancy test I took came back negative, and I felt relieved. As much as I would love to be a mom, the thought of this eighteen year unplanned commitment initiated by a psychopath also terrified me. So the relief of not being pregnant according to the home pregnancy test is actually why I felt safe enough to post about the incident publicly last week for the first time - I thought that worry was behind me.
But then, days passed. My period, usually like clockwork, never came. Panic set in.
I finally went to a doctor for a blood test. The results would take four days. Each day, I waited, consumed by the weight of two possible futures.
If the test was positive, I decided I wouldn’t share it online. Not out of shame, but for safety. I had no idea what this man would do if he found out I was pregnant.
Would he be angry if I chose to abort?
Would he try to claim rights if I kept the baby?
I didn’t even understand how his mind worked, so I had no way of predicting his response.
If I aborted, where and how would I do it? Was it even legal in Indonesia? I looked it up and found that for rape victims, first trimester abortion is legal. But the next hurdle was that I didn’t have enough evidence to file a police report. (By the way - this is why people drug their victims. Because the drug leaves the body in 4 hours, and the victims can’t remember, and have no evidence to prove that the sex wasn’t consensual. So that’s why drug-facilitated rape is so f-ing frightening and dangerous. It’s impossible to prove it happened). So it wasn’t even legally seen as rape. Would they still let me abort even if I wasn’t able to legally file a report that it was rape? (I don’t know the answer to that question).
If I kept the child, would I see my attacker’s face every time I looked into my son’s eyes? Would it be traumatizing for me?
Would my family be able to accept him or would they be disturbed knowing he was conceived in violence?
I called the Canadian Embassy a few days ago, about the case, trying to get some help, any help. After discussing lots of the details with them, and them unfortunately informing me that there’s basically nothing they can do for me, I told them, “I still don’t know if I’m pregnant. My period is late. I’m waiting for the blood test results from my doctor. If I have this child and he has his DNA, will that prove that he raped me?”
“Unfortunately,” they said, “We can’t prove it was non-consensual.”
“So what if I have a child - how can I protect my baby from this man? This man cannot be a father. He can’t have any access to this kid. I’m worried he might come to Bali and hurt us.”
Their answer: “Unfortunately, we cannot do anything to support you in this instance.”
I got off the phone and I wasn’t frustrated with the lack of support. I honestly expected it. But instead, what I thought to myself was,
Holy shit.
I am a mother.
Because I was already fighting for this kid’s safety.
This kid that doesn’t even exist.
I spoke to my counselor yesterday afternoon and told her I was extremely anxious about the test results that I was still awaiting. She told me:
"Have compassion for yourself. It makes sense that you’re anxious. This isn’t a normal situation where you have a boyfriend, and your period is late. You were attacked. Your fear is natural.
"Tell yourself: It’s normal that I’m worried. I still don’t know. But I trust that I can handle anything. I trust that everything is working out for my highest good."
And then, as I finished writing this essay, my blood test results came back on WhatsApp from my Doctor.
According to the beta HCG result, it said that you are not pregnant.
Your period delay can be caused by stress.
I’m going to accept the doctor’s test as true that I am not pregnant. And I feel 90% confident that I am not pregnant. I think I will feel 100% when my period starts again for the first time. But I also understand my period could be delayed for several months due to the trauma. And I’m glad I will not have to be worrying about the decision to keep or abort this hypothetical child whilst in India (thank god).
As much as I would love to be a mom, relief washed over me. I will never have to co-parent with a rapist. My child will never have half his DNA.
And yet….
I still feel like this has made me a mother.
This experience showed me something profound. I have known I’ve wanted to be a mom for a long time - but this experience solidified that so strongly. I literally feel like I turned into one the past few weeks.
My love for this hypothetical child was immediate and deep, despite the circumstances of how he was possibly made. I said that to so many women I was talking to during this time. “The idea of becoming a mom right now terrifies me. But I also don’t think I could ever abort this child - because I already love him.” (I am still pro-choice and still think women legally should be able to have abortions if they want to and need to, in all circumstances. But I just know that I am now a mother.)
I have been thinking and talking about IVF and sperm donation for a long time to become a mom - but after this experience, right now it feels real and something I actually want to do and something I feel like I know I’m ready to do soon. And I feel excited about the idea of bringing a child into the world with the DNA I have chosen and on my terms, not my rapist’s terms.
My counsellor asked me today why I wanted to have a child, and I said, “I used to teach grade one and three and I love kids. I’ve been talking about wanting to be a mom since I was 24 and got married. But I’m glad I didn’t do it when I was that young because I would have never been able to build the life I have now, my business and my retreats. I travelled all around the world for the last ten years, And now, I feel ready. I want to have a home here in Bali, and I want a kid because I just want a chance to keep rewriting generational traumas. I want my child to grow up barefoot in Bali and go to the Empathy School and live lightly and in nature and feel all their feelings and be who they are. I watch my sister raise her kid, and it’s healing for me. And I want to do that too.”
She said that it sounds like I’m moving out of the wind element and into the earth element. I thought about how this is true. It’s a shift from feeling scattered, restless, and constantly in motion to becoming more grounded, stable, and present. It’s like I’m transitioning from chasing ideas and change to embracing steadiness, structure, and deeper embodiment. After so much movement, both physically and mentally, I can feel myself craving roots, routine, and a sense of home within myself. And once I have that I can create it for my child, too.
I became a mother when I felt the shift inside me—the pull of unconditional love and protection for a hypothetical, imaginary child.
And after this, I really feel that something is changing within me. I am starting to feel like I am a mother.