It’s not always what is said—it’s what is silently carried.

At a recent family gathering, as I chatted with a cousin, she glanced across the lawn at my mother, who was patiently showing a toddler how to blow soap bubbles.
“She deserves more,” my cousin said softly. “Don’t you think it’s time you settled down?”
Before I could answer, my mother, overhearing from a distance, looked up and smiled faintly.
“She is settled,” she said gently. “Just not in the way you imagined.”
That stayed with me.
That’s the truth I live with. I have built a life that feels full to me. I pay my bills. I travel. I work in a career I carved with intention. I know how to sit with myself in silence without the need to fill it. I’ve fought hard—against expectations, against cultural guilt, against the belief that a woman’s completeness is defined by the ring on her finger or the child in her arms.
I’ve chosen solitude. Not out of scarcity. Not because I haven’t been loved. But because I have learned to love my own company. I am not waiting for someone to rescue me—I’m already living my life.
That doesn’t mean I’ve closed the door on love. My heart is still open—for companionship, for deep connection, for someone I’d truly want to share my life with. I’ve made plenty of professional decisions through the lens of practicality and compromise, but this part of my life? This is where I want to have a say. This is where I want to choose without settling.
And if that kind of love finds me, I’ll welcome it with open arms. But if it doesn’t, I won’t live a lesser life. I won’t shrink. I won’t stop pouring into myself with the same fierce commitment.
Because choosing to love myself has never meant shutting the door on someone else—it’s just meant I’ll never abandon myself to be loved.
And yet, as I watched my mother scoop up that little boy and spin him in the sunlight, something shifted. Her face lit up, soft and unburdened. This joy was simpler. Childlike.
She has never pressured me to find a husband. But her silences are eloquent. The way her eyes soften when holding a stranger’s baby, the way she lingers near the children of my closest friends, gently tying a shoelace or fixing a ribbon—her every gesture whispers a quiet wish, one I can no longer pretend not to notice.
It’s not the missing son-in-law she mourns. While she’s a romantic at heart—someone who still believes in true love’s magic—she’s also seen what many marriages become.
“Love is a stroke of luck,” she once said. “It either finds you or it doesn’t. You wait for it, or you adjust.”
In her eyes, many relationships are ceremonial—defined more by duty than depth. Exchange pleasantries, bring sweets during festivals, offer the occasional helping hand, and walk hand-in-hand at functions to keep nosy relatives at bay.
She’s never asked me for a husband. What she quietly hopes for isn’t a man with a checklist, but a true companion—someone to laugh with, grow with, stand beside. Not someone bound by silent rules or societal roles, but someone who chooses me as I would choose them. In her quiet way, she holds space for that kind of love—not for tradition, but for joy.
And yet, more than a partner at my side, what her eyes quietly search for is someone smaller—tiny hands reaching up, eyes full of wonder. A child. A grandchild.
How does the absence of someone who never existed cast such a long, echoing shadow across a relationship that does?
It’s not guilt I feel, but a heaviness. As if the choices I’ve made for freedom have become invisible threads that tug gently—but persistently—at both our hearts.
Later, as we drove home in silence, I finally asked what I’d held inside for so long.
“Amma… why do you want to be a grandmother so much?”
She smiled, gently brushing my hair back like when I was little.
“Because becoming a mother is the first time love is allowed to be pure. But being a mother is hard. You’re not just raising children—you’re managing a household, a husband, your in-laws, and your own parents. You’re solving, soothing, running on empty. There’s love, but it gets squeezed between chores and clockwork. You’re always moving, rarely pausing to play or truly listen. The children grow, but you’re too busy surviving to watch. You become the rule-maker, the killjoy, the disciplinarian—while your heart quietly breaks from missing out.”
She paused, looking out the window at nothing in particular.
“But when you become a grandmother… It’s different. It’s freeing. You’ve run your race. You’re no longer chasing goals. There’s no rush, no pressure. Just stories, songs, silly games, and long hugs. You finally get to love without limits—and they love you back without expectations. The only condition is to keep them safe.”
Her words hit me with a softness that bruised me. That yearning wasn’t just about tradition—it was about reclaiming a kind of love she never had the luxury to indulge in.
It’s like going from being Virat Kohli, forever chasing the next big century and world record, to becoming Rafael Nadal—putting down the bat, calling it a night, and finally reaping the rewards of all the hard work. Slowing down. Letting love be enough. Lazy mornings, warm laughter, and the sweetness of doing nothing—earned, not escaped.
My mother grew up in a world where women did not choose. They complied. She was taught that men were smarter, stronger, and more capable. That a woman’s strength was in her sacrifice and her worth in how well she endured. She followed that path because survival demanded it.
She is not formally educated, but deeply wise. Her rebellion—subtle but seismic—was raising daughters who were everything she wasn’t allowed to be. Educated. Independent. Fearless. Free.
She taught me to speak up, even when her own voice was silenced for too long. I owe my courage to her.
Through her sacrifices, I became who I am: independent, self-sufficient, free. I’ve carved a life on my own terms. I work. I travel. I wake up in a house I pay for. I choose how to spend my time, who to let in, and what to believe. I’ve made solitude my sanctuary—not a void to fill, but a space I inhabit fully.
I am alone by choice.
But freedom is rarely clean. It tangles itself in guilt, culture, and the quiet ache of those we love.
Now, as she enters a quieter phase of life, I see the conflict within her. She is proud of me, truly. She boasts to her friends that I live “on my own terms.”
But I also see her face shift around other people’s children—something inside me stirs. Not regret. But reckoning. A question I can’t quite silence: Are our choices ever truly just ours?
I have always believed choosing yourself isn’t selfish. And I still do. But sometimes I feel the ripple of my autonomy in someone else’s longing. Not because they demand it. Not because they blame me. But because they love me, and love, by nature, is intertwined.
She wants to be a grandmother. Not for the title, but for the fullness it offers—the sense of completion, the soft joy, a final chapter.
And I wonder—have I denied her that? Have I unknowingly broken the circle?
It’s a complicated place to stand—in the space where your freedom feels like someone else’s quiet grief.
We talk about autonomy as if it’s clean, bold, and linear. But in truth, it’s messy. Tangled in love, guilt, sacrifice, and heritage. My decision to stay single, to not see marriage or motherhood as milestones, affects more than just me.
Does that make it wrong?
No. But it makes it real.
One evening, she asked gently, “Don’t you get lonely?”
I smiled. “Sometimes. But not the kind of loneliness that companionship alone can fix. I like who I am. I like my space, my rhythm.”
She nodded. “We didn’t get to think like that. We married because we had to. Some were lucky. Most just adjusted. I wanted more for you. I just didn’t expect more to mean alone.”
Her words weren’t laced with pain. Just a quiet surprise. A mother recalibrating what love looks like.
She now scrolls through her iPad, marveling at videos of women breaking norms—dancing, singing, climbing mountains clad in sarees, becoming YouTube sensations. She forwards them to me with heart emojis, as if to say, You are not alone in your choices. And I know she means it.
But I also see something else. A flicker of regret. A whisper of envy. She gave up her dreams so I could live mine. And now, even as she celebrates my freedom, there are moments she mourns the life she never allowed herself to imagine.
I cannot fault her for that. But I also cannot live my life as compensation.
There is no handbook for navigating generational heartbreak.
My mother watches the world evolve and celebrates it with me. She sends me clips of women building companies, living boldly without marriage or children. “Look,” she says. “They’re like you.”
And yet, I know—even as she cheers—there’s a quiet place in her heart that wonders what it would feel like to hold my child. Not to complete me, but to complete her.
Still, I cannot live my life as a debt I owe her.
Her love shaped me. So did her courage.
She gave me freedom, not wrapped in conditions, but handed over as a tool.
Now, I wield it.
Whatever life I choose—marriage, motherhood, or neither—it will be mine. Not out of fear, guilt, or tradition.
I’ve come to believe that honoring those we love doesn’t always mean giving them what they want. Sometimes, it means living with unwavering authenticity, trusting that real love will survive the gaps.
Because I am not alone.
Not when her courage lives in me. Not when my strength reflects her sacrifice. Not when my choices echo the freedom she gave up so I could have.
And maybe that’s the legacy she leaves—not cradled in a grandchild, but in a daughter who can finally stand tall and say:
I am settled. Just not in the way you imagined.

.    .    .