A Journey from Silence to Strength: Monojit Lahiri unfolds a moving, real-life story of a student who transcended society’s regressive gaze on childlessness to rediscover her power and peace.

Maya stood at the threshold of a life she never imagined—childless not by choice, but by fate—her past echoing with lullabies that would never be sung, while her future flickered with possibilities undefined by tradition. Once the brightest mind in a Brown University seminar room, now dimmed by the shadow of societal judgment, she found herself surrounded not by compassion but by questions cloaked in pity. Yet in the quiet presence of Aditi—radiant, childless, whole—something shifted. Here was a woman who had transformed absence into authorship, rewriting her life’s script beyond the confines of motherhood. Their meeting was not merely conversation; it was an alchemy of womanhood, where pain was neither erased nor worshipped but reframed. And in that reframing, Maya began to understand: motherhood was a role, not a requirement, and her worth was neither diminished by biology nor defined by expectation.

The call came on an ordinary afternoon. The voice on the other end was hesitant, almost muted—young, unsure, burdened. A former student’s husband, calling from an infertility clinic. “Sir, the tests failed. The IVF… didn’t work. They say she can never conceive. She’s devastated. Could you… maybe speak to her?”

Her name was Maya. And once upon a time, she had lit up my classroom with her sharp intellect, charm, and passion for the arts. A Brown University graduate, eloquent and exuberant, she was full of ideas about justice, gender, and the world. But today, all of that was eclipsed by a singular, searing truth—she could not bear a child. And in that loss, the world she knew seemed to crumble.

In his voice was the exhaustion of navigating societal shame. “My folks… they’re devastated. She blames herself. She’s terrified they’ll never accept her again.”

It shook me. Not just because Maya was in pain, but because even now, in our supposed age of progress and empowerment, a woman’s inability to conceive could still unravel her entire sense of self-worth. Wasn’t this the very thing we were fighting to undo—the chaining of a woman’s identity to her biological capacity?

As the feminist scholar Simone de Beauvoir wrote, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” The tragedy is that society still insists on defining that becoming through reproduction.

And so, I reached out to someone I knew could help—my cousin, Aditi. In her mid-forties, vibrant, confident, wildly successful—and childless by fate, not by choice. She had once endured the same crushing verdict from a doctor. She too had mourned. But she had also risen.

“I’ll meet her,” she said simply. And when they met, something quietly powerful happened.

Aditi smiled, opened her arms, and embraced Maya with a warmth that transcended words. “You are not broken,” she said. “You are more than your womb. Life is for the living. It is vast. And it is waiting for you.”

It wasn’t magic or miracle, but it was medicine. Slowly, through Aditi’s firm, fearless, and compassionate guidance, Maya began to unburden herself. The guilt. The shame. The fear of rejection. The years of conditioning that taught her a woman’s ultimate purpose was motherhood.

Aditi’s words were part balm, part blade. “Why are you letting people who don’t matter dictate your sense of worth? Who gave them that power?” she asked. “You’re not a failure. You’re not less. You’re simply on a different path.”

And that is the truth society still struggles to understand. The divide between women with children and those without isn’t one of value—it’s one of vocabulary. The former often converse in languages of diapers and admissions, PTA meetings and paediatricians. The latter in ideas of travel, heritage, nature, politics, literature, and the human condition. These are not opposing worlds—they are parallel ones. But when motherhood becomes the default metric of completeness, it forces women like Maya to internalize a false inadequacy.

Gloria Steinem once said, “We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise their sons more like their daughters.” In this binary lies the seed of judgment—a code of femininity that still equates fertility with fulfilment.

But Maya broke the code.

One day, as I carefully asked about her college days, she smiled—wryly, wistfully. “Sir, you don’t need to be so gentle. Aditi ma’am has helped me see clearly. I can’t conceive. So what? I can adopt, right? Like Angelina Jolie or Sushmita Sen?”

There she was. That spark. That fierce, funny, fabulous girl I’d known was returning. The girl who once wrote essays on Frida Kahlo, who questioned patriarchal customs, who imagined a future on her own terms.

Aditi had slipped away by then. Her job was done. She had handed Maya a mirror—and a sword.

As I looked at Maya—her eyes clearer, her posture steadier—I thought of every woman like her, silenced by a society that still worships a narrow, maternal archetype. And I thought: this is what liberation looks like. Not loud slogans or grand gestures, but the quiet reclamation of dignity.

And in that moment, Maya wasn’t a woman undone by fate. She was, once again, complete.