After my rape, I remember having a strong desire to get pregnant on my birthday. At the time, I didn’t fully understand why that thought felt so important to me. Looking back now, I realize it wasn’t truly about wanting a baby in the typical sense. It was about something much deeper.

My rapist was my first. My virginity was what was taken from me.

Virginity is something that can feel almost invisible. Physically, it can be small and unnoticeable, and it’s not something people can see just by looking at you. Yet emotionally and spiritually, it can represent something deeply personal. When it was taken from me through rape, the loss felt enormous, even though it wasn’t something the world could visibly recognize.

At the time, I also believed I had miscarried months after the rape. Because of that belief, I felt like I had lost something else too.

Looking back now, I realize my desire to become pregnant on my birthday wasn’t really about pregnancy itself. It was about trying to restore what I felt had been taken from me.

My birthday mattered because birthdays symbolize beginnings. They represent the start of a life, a new year, and a new chapter. Somewhere deep inside, I think I was trying to recreate that sense of beginning for myself.

If I became pregnant on my birthday, it felt like it would mean something symbolic—that life could start again. That something good, pure, and life-giving could come from a date that already represented my existence in the world.

In a way, I think I was unconsciously trying to rebirth myself.

A pregnancy or baby would have been visible. Real. Alive. Moving. Something I could feel and hold onto. It would have been something that was completely mine—something no one could take away or remove from me.

After experiencing a violation where control over my body was taken, my mind was searching for a way to reclaim ownership, safety, and wholeness.

I was even okay with the idea of being a single mother at the time. Not because I necessarily planned that life, but because the deeper desire was about having something that belonged to me. Something life-giving instead of something violent.

I realize now that what I truly wanted wasn’t simply a baby.

I wanted to feel safe again.

I wanted to feel alive again.

I wanted to feel movement, purpose, and life inside of me rather than the emptiness and violation I had experienced.

I wanted to feel whole again.

Trauma can create deep internal reactions that we don’t always understand in the moment. Sometimes our minds reach for symbols of restoration—life, creation, new beginnings—because we are trying to rebuild what we feel was broken.

Looking back, I have compassion for that version of myself. She was searching for healing in the only ways she knew how at the time.

And maybe the most important realization now is this: the desire to restore myself was never weakness. It was my mind and spirit fighting to survive.