Jaycee Woods

I try to make each of my draft stories different from other authors with something unexpected or original.

In one story, a young woman had a dream about having a family in her future, but when she woke she didn’t have the reality of that dream; this made her distraught. Yes, that is a foreshadowing of the potential future experienced by single childless middle-aged women grieving loss while trying to come to terms with a future in Boxed-Wine-and-Cats-Land.

To comfort her, as this character is still young with a future of choices before her, she is told that all her future children are with her in that moment, in her ovaries. Thus, she isn’t alone and never had been as her future children have always been in her. Further, whenever she longs for them before they are born, she can hold her future children by cradling her own belly.

I thought that a nice way to concretize that the seeds of a young woman’s future are with her in the moments she makes the choices that creates her future.

Consider the hedonistic young woman riding the cock carousel, living her best life ever in a repeated cycle of hot 304 summers, binge drinking, experimenting with mind altering substances, and destroying her ability to form a trusting relationship with a partner. During all of those bad choices, part of her children are in her in that moment. Enough of those bad decisions and those children are never born no matter how much she wanted them because she didn’t prioritize her children in her choices. All of this in an effort by her to evade adult responsibilities, so she can remain an overgrown adolescent.

Women aren’t obligated to have kids; about 5% don’t want kids and 5% can’t have kids. Meanwhile forecasts predict soon half of women won’t have kids. That is a lot of failure on an important life goal. Especially when one accounts for the single moms whose choices deprived her kids of the privilege provided by an actively involved dad.