Have you seen the new app called “The Wonder Clock”? When I read Emma Gray’s post on Huffpo about it, my first thought was – Excellent- Here is an example of how, unlike the myth of the biological “urge,” this innate longing from within calling us to have a child and now, we consciously decide to use our reproductive capacities.  However, in reading further and then going to its creator’s wonderclock website, I felt familiar pangs of frustration.  Here’s why.

Gray’s piece says Mira Kaddoura created the app “to confront her own fertility insecurities” and to provide women with  “a tool for dialogue” about childbearing.  Kaddoura  writes on her website:

“I created this clock to face my own fears. To beckon the elephant in the room so to speak. To release my own power, my own choices. To open a dialogue with other women about fertility, empowerment, and loving ourselves. We are women, and we are ticking. But we are so much more.”

I get that she has fears about reaching the time in life where she may no longer be fertile, and able to biologically create a child.  But how is the clock “releasing” her power? It seems that the clock is a way to remain conscious of her power to decide when and whether to have  a child.  How is she “releasing” her choices? Again, it seems she has created a way to be reminded of her choice with every hour, minute and second of the day.  Or how do you interpret this?

We are women, and we may all be ticking when it comes to the ability to reproduce, but we are not all in fear of that ticking. And yes, we are so much more.

I am left unsure how she really feels about her ticking clock until I read, “…I am ticking. I am also loving, creating, traveling, thinking, laughing, nurturing, evolving, and making money. But the ticking is getting louder. Why do I feel that somehow, at my core, I am failing?” (bold is mine)

Reading things like this last sentence makes me sad…that she thinks she’s somehow a failure because with every second that goes by she’s choosing not to become a mother. What a number embedded pronatalist beliefs can have on people. How they can dis-empower and chip away at self-love.

Mira, I offer you a free copy of The Baby Matrix.  Dig into how long-held social and cultural pressures influence feelings that don’t serve you.  When we see what these pressures are based on – beliefs – we have the power change what we believe that is alignment with the truth–starting with not using ones’ biological capacities to reproduce is…just fine.