Content warning: Gender dysphoria, particularly around pregnancy, having children, and hormone replacement.

My gender dysphoria is strongest around pregnancy. I want to be a mother, more than that: I want to bear a child. I want to feed them from my own breast. That longing is deep in my heart. Yet given all reality: this is the most unlikely scenario. (Yes, I’ve seen the latest research on uterus transplants.)

But if I start hormone replacement therapy—which I think I want within the next year—my chances of being fertile are greately reduced. Of course, I can go through the effort and cost of freezing sperm, but my chances of having children are greatly reduced.

And the other equation is what world would I be bringing them into? With each election in the US, I’m seeing deminishing chances electing a government that is able or even willing to oversee moving the country and the world to sustainability. Each presidential election is not a chance for a climate victory, but another chance for absolute failure if a Republican is elected.

Any child born now could, by midlife, see massive storms inundate coastal cities and the Great Plains turn to dust.¹

And yet, I see my friends’ smart, delightful children and I have hope. I look at projections for the Ogallala Aquifer, then my bank account and debts and imagine what sort of wealth I’d need to pass on to a child for them to suceed in a capitalist society where water is a scarcity. I wonder if I should instead redirect my industry and wealth to help secure my friends’ children. It has always taken a village to raise a child, even if Western society pretends that the nuclear family is an atomic unit.

And yet.

And yet I want to bear a child. I want to feed them from my own breast. And that longing is deep in my heart.