Motherhood is something I've dreamt of since I was a young child. Not because I thought it was all I could do, but because it's what I wanted. I wanted to share the same love my mother gifted to me with someone else.

But it wasn't just love that was passed onto me, years of self hatred are burned into my mind. My mom was the most beautiful person in the world to me and to grow up hearing how much she hated herself, made me believe that's how we should feel about ourselves.  Would my self doubt be passed onto my children?

Will I even be able to have any?
And if I did, would I make a good mother?

The cruelest punishment is to dream of a sweet baby with blonde curls with her mama and freckles dancing across her cheeks. Her belly laughter the best medicine around and loving something that was completely mine. No one could take her from me.

Until I wake up and there is no little one. It's just me and my wife.

And there's the years of trauma eating away at my mind and remembering the panic of when I realized I hadn't had my period in months. My life flashed before my eyes and I wondered if there would ever been a time where I held a little one in my arms who was mine.

Would I stay long enough?

Is a life without my baby worth living?

Why should my babies be punished with a mother who is so fucked in the head she can't even hold it together enough to eat more than once a day? Why should they be subjected the horrors of watching Mama dying each night just to rise again in the morning?

I have lived many lives and each of them my biggest dream was to be a loving mother. Am I even capable of that? Do I exude warmth, love and compassion?  Or do I come off as rude, harsh and wanting to make others feel badly about themselves? I'll never forget being so deep in my eating disorder and being told it was just a ploy to make my friends feel bad about themselves.

Am I capable of that? I would never wish the way I felt on anyone. Let alone my dearest friends who I hold close to my heart.

The same friends who heal something in me each time they call me "Momma Maddie" and remind me exactly why I would make a good mother. But the doubt still lingers.