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A post shared by Vanessa Boehm (@vanessa.k.boehm) on May 17, 2019 at 6:07am PDT

Warning: naughty language ahead!

My mother became a mother at the age of 18.

An anti-abortionist, raised as a Southern Baptist. She is a lover of children, believer in adoption, a die-hard family woman. Me, pro-choice. Twenty-six years old, without children, never married, fiercely independent.

She raised me, I love her, all of her. I accept her. I accept her fully, with all of her beliefs, with all of our differences. I love and accept her fully because I know where her beliefs are rooted, because I respect her for standing as her own independent human, because I have compassion for the life she has lived, and the life she is honoring with her beliefs.

She raised me, as the child of a mother who exists without a college education, who spent her 20s raising two children—often without my military father present. She raised daughters, demonstrating strength, sharing opinions, and dedicating her life to us.

She raised me to see there was more to life than just having children. She did this, not by preaching these words, but by never hiding her hunger for more, expressing her curiosity and all while saying her children were the best thing that ever happened to her.

But I share her blood and I know the wild woman that lives within her, hungry for varying experiences. It’s the same wild woman that lives within me. The difference is that I get to live within my wild woman, answering to no one, exploring who I am. She raised two children, humans that were dependent on her, and she is still a mother.

My varied, wild experiences, my education, my travels—the opportunities allotted to me largely because of her—have only created more division in our beliefs.

We disagree, politically. We vehemently, painfully, disagree—but we love each other unconditionally. So, we listen. We learn. We grow from each other.

Why?

We have the lifelines, the bloodlines, of strong courageous women pulsing through our veins, surging resilience through our souls with every heartbeat.

Call us sluts, call us murderers, call us cunts—call us whatever you want.

We stand united as women, sturdy as mountains, even as we disagree.

We stand united, knowing the generations of hell and fighting we have endured, as women—regardless of our political beliefs.

We stand together, respecting choice. Respecting and honoring differing opinions.

Elevating and honoring the choice—not the determination to be right.