Note from the author:

I always struggled with the idea of motherhood. My mom started begging me for grandchildren the moment I became an adult. My friends who have children pretty much told me “you’re going to have kids, regardless of whether you want them or not. It just happens.”

Motherhood never felt like a choice to me. It’s an expectation. It just happens.

I always wanted two things in life: to write horror/dark fiction and to interview metal bands. I’m proud to say I accomplished both.

I know if I have kids, that will interfere with my career and my passions. That’s why looking at motherhood as a choice is something I always held dear to me.

But my country may overturn Roe v. Wade. Anger rattled my bones as I read all of the news stories. But I also felt despair engulf me like a cold blanket. Despair told me “motherhood isn’t a choice, it just happens.”

It was that anger that drove me to write this story. That anger deep in my bones created these violent thoughts and moved my fingers across the keyboard.

As I was writing, a new revelation occurred to me: what is the significance of life? I thought back to a conversation I had with my grandma when I was younger — she told me “once that heart stops beating, that’s it — you’re done.” Even though my grandma was barely 5 feet tall, she scared me more than any horror movie at that moment.

But in the present day, that got me thinking. The state of Texas sees a fetal heartbeat signifying a live birth. But why should the fetal heartbeat be the only heartbeat that matters? I have a heartbeat. Do I not matter? Am I invaluable because my heartbeat is that of an adult woman, not of an unborn child?

Then, I had the eureka moment. How I could write a story that could not only serve as the outlet for my anger but also could influence people to see life in a different way. To not just focus on the mass of cells and tissue forming inside a woman, but to pay attention to the human being standing in front of you. That human being with wants, needs, passions, and ambitions of her own. And that human being in front of you also has a heartbeat.

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