They're All Silent
I sit in a circle of women every Tuesday morning and none of us talk about it.
We talk about everything else. We talk about curriculum and screen time limits and whether the co-op field trip to the nature center is worth the drive. We talk about gluten-free snack options and how to get a seven-year-old to stop interrupting and whether anyone has a recommendation for a good pediatric dentist. We talk about our kids like they are the most interesting thing about us, and honestly, most days they are.
But there is this other thing. This whole other dimension of being a woman that just hangs in the air between us, and nobody reaches for it.
The thing is, I love these women. Every single one of them.
The granola mom with the kombucha and the linen and the canvas tote with a book about regenerative farming peeking out the top. She speaks in a voice like warm tea and her kids are gentle and curious and she has built a life that looks exactly like what she wanted it to look like. I admire her so much. She knows who she is. She chose it deliberately, piece by piece, and she wears it with this quiet confidence that I genuinely envy.
And I wonder how she got here. Not what she left behind, because I don't think she left anything behind. I think she grew into this. But I want to know the whole arc. I want to know what she was like at twenty-two, not because I think that version was better, but because I want to see the full picture. I want to know if she fell in love slowly or all at once. I want to know the moment she knew her husband was the one, whether it was something he said or something he did or just the way he stood in a doorway. I want to feel what she felt, the rawness of it, the newness, the part before the kombucha and the linen and the life she built so beautifully.
Then there's the organized one. She has a binder for everything. Her kids' schedules are color-coded. She once emailed the co-op group a spreadsheet about snack rotation with conditional formatting. And I don't look at her and think she needs to loosen up. I look at her and think: this is a woman who cares so deeply about getting things right that she turned it into an art form. That kind of intensity doesn't come from nowhere. That kind of devotion to detail, that need to hold everything together, I think that same energy shows up everywhere in a person's life. And I wonder where else it shows up for her. I wonder if her husband knows what it feels like to be on the receiving end of all that focus and attention when it's not pointed at a spreadsheet.
The quiet one in the back who knits while her kids play. She barely speaks, but when she does, it's something sharp and funny that catches everyone off guard. She is comfortable in her own silence in a way that I find beautiful. She doesn't need to fill space. She just exists in it, steady and sure. And I think about her at home, in her own space, with the person she chose. I wonder what their quiet looks like together. I wonder if their intimacy is like her personality, understated and surprising and deeper than anyone would guess from the outside.
And the loud one, the one who always has a story, who fills every room she walks into with warmth and laughter. She talks about her husband in punchlines. He left his socks on the floor again. He forgot the chicken in the freezer. He fell asleep during the movie. She makes everyone laugh and I love her for it. She is generous with her energy in a way that makes everyone around her feel lighter. And I wonder what happens when the performance stops. Not because I think it's fake, but because I know there is a version of her that is just as real and just as full, the one that doesn't need to make anyone laugh. The one that is just a woman with a man she chose, in a room with the door closed.
They are all so different. That is the thing that amazes me.
Every single one of these women made completely different choices and ended up in the same Tuesday morning circle. Different parenting styles, different politics, different ideas about screen time and sugar and how much independence a six-year-old should have. We disagree about everything from bedtimes to vaccines to whether homework matters in elementary school.
We are wonderfully, loudly, sometimes frustratingly different about everything.
Except this one thing. About this, we are all exactly the same.
Silent.
And I want to stand up in the middle of this circle and say it. I want to say it so loud that it rattles the folding chairs.
We are all doing it. Or we all did it. Or we all want to be doing it. Every single one of us. Sex is the reason we are here. Sex is the reason every child in the next room exists. Sex is the reason for this co-op and these field trips and these conversations about snack allergies and this entire life we built on top of the fact that we once wanted another human being so badly that we let them as close as two people can physically get.
We made entire new people out of that closeness. We made families. We made this circle.
And then we act like it never happened.
I want to scream it. I want to scream it because nobody will even whisper it. Not the granola mom, not the organized one, not the quiet knitter, not the loud one. Not one of them. We will sit here and discuss the merits of different math curricula for forty-five minutes but we will not spend one single second acknowledging that every woman in this room once wanted a man so much that she pulled him into her body and made a life.
Do you understand how insane that is? Do you understand what we are not saying?
We are not saying that we desired. We are not saying that we burned. We are not saying that there were nights when we couldn't think straight, couldn't sleep, couldn't stop reaching for someone in the dark. We are not saying that we chose our husbands with our whole bodies, not just our minds, that there was a time when his voice alone could make our skin feel like it didn't fit right, when a look from him across a room could hollow out our stomachs.
We are sitting in a circle pretending that we arrived at motherhood through some kind of immaculate, bloodless process. As if the children just appeared. As if we didn't gasp and grip and arch and beg for the very thing that made them possible.
And nobody says a word. Nobody even hints at it. Nobody even comes close.
It is not polite to talk about sex. It is not ladylike to talk about intimacy. It is offensive to bring up erotica, even the literary kind, even the beautifully written kind that says something real about being human and wanting and being wanted. You can describe your birth story in graphic detail, the blood and the tearing and the seventeen hours of labor, and everyone nods and shares their own. But mention that you and your husband had a really good Saturday night and the room goes cold.
I don't understand the rules. I have never understood them. And some days they make me feel like I am going to burst, like if I don't say something honest about what it means to be a woman who still wants, I am going to come apart at the seams right here on this folding chair between the kombucha mom and the spreadsheet mom while someone's toddler eats goldfish crackers off the floor.
I don't think any of them have lost it. That is the thing I want to be clear about. I am not sitting in that circle feeling sorry for anyone. I am not assuming that the quiet knitter has a sexless marriage or that the organized one has forgotten how to let go. I don't know their lives. I don't know what happens behind their doors, and I respect that completely.
What I know is that none of them talk about it. And they are all so different, so individual, so unafraid to disagree about literally everything else, that the uniformity of the silence is what gets me. It can't be that they all independently decided this topic is off limits. Something bigger is pressing down on all of us, some unspoken agreement that women who are mothers are supposed to set this part of themselves aside, or at least stop talking about it in public.
And I just wonder. That's all. I just wonder.
Do they still reach for their husbands in the dark, or has it been so long that the reaching feels awkward now? Do they still notice things, the way a shirt pulls across his shoulders, the way his voice drops when he's tired, the way his hand feels on the small of their back when he guides them through a doorway? Do they still have moments in ordinary afternoons where something warm blooms in their stomach for no reason at all, just their body remembering something good?
Do they lie in bed some nights and let their minds wander? Do they think about being touched? Do they think about touching? Do they replay a moment from a week ago or a year ago or a decade ago and hold onto it like something precious?
I don't need answers. I would never ask. But I carry the questions with me like I carry everything else, quietly, privately, folded into the regular rhythm of my day.
Some days I wonder if it's just me. Maybe I'm the one who can't let go of it, can't stop wanting, can't stop noticing, can't stop this low hum that lives in my body like background music. Maybe the other moms really have settled into something calmer, something that doesn't include this kind of ache, and maybe that's fine for them. Maybe I just have no self-control.
But I don't think so. I think desire doesn't disappear. I think it just learns to be quiet because we teach it to be. I think every single one of those women has a version of herself that still wants, still aches, still remembers what it felt like to be new with someone. I think that version is alive and well and just waiting for permission to speak.
I'm not going to pry. I'm never going to corner someone at co-op and ask about her private life. I would never make anyone uncomfortable or cross a boundary that someone else drew for good reasons. I respect every single one of them too much for that.
But I want them to know that if they ever did talk about it, I would listen. I would not judge. I would not flinch. I would lean in and I would hold whatever they gave me with care, because I know how heavy it is to carry desire alone, to feel like the only woman in the room who is still burning.
And at night, after my own kids are asleep and my own house is still, I lie in bed and I think about all of them. Not in a way that crosses any lines, but in a way that aches with tenderness. I think about these women I admire, each one so strong and so certain in her own way, and I imagine the parts of them I'll never see. The softness. The hunger. The private moments that belong only to them and the people they love.
I picture the granola mom letting her hair down, literally, and being someone who doesn't have to be centered or calm. I picture the organized one closing the binder and opening something else entirely. I picture the quiet knitter saying something that surprises even herself. I picture the loud one going still, finally still, and letting someone see the woman underneath all that beautiful noise.
I let my mind hold all of it, gently, like cupping water in my hands. Their passion, their tenderness, their secret selves. Not because I want what they have. Because I want to witness it. Because I believe it's there, in every single one of them, and the fact that I'll never hear about it makes me ache in a way I can't quite explain.
Because we were all there once. Every one of us. We were all new and trembling and completely undone by another person's touch. We all had a first kiss that rewired something inside us. We all chose someone and let them see us at our most open, our most vulnerable, our most alive.
We are all so beautifully different. And in this one way, I believe we are all exactly the same.
So why doesn't anyone say it?
Why are they all so silent?