It was not a shock value headline when Selena Gomez said, I never said that…but I can unfortunately not carry my own children. It was a wistful yet timid statement that had shown how personal her motherhood has been. Years of the singer and actress life were under the eyes of the publicity but this confession was something different. It was not concerning music charts and red carpets. It was familial, health and the type of dreams most individuals hold in their minds at an early age.
Selena Gomez has been quite vocal on her health issues, especially on her struggle with lupus which she first publicly discussed in 2015. Lupus is an autoimmune disorder, which may involve various organs and may have to be managed throughout the life of the person. The condition has caused severe complications in her case such as a kidney transplant. With time, she has been able to cope with the vagaries of chronic disease and still establish an excellent career in music, acting and production. But in the case of pregnancy the medical danger could no longer have been neglected.
In a rather open way, she confessed that she has numerous medical problems that could endanger her life and the life of the baby. There is something hanging on those words, medical and heartbreaking at the same time. The pregnancy is to many women envisioned as a natural and anticipated adult stage. Gomez confessed that at one point she had thought that motherhood was going to take the conventional course. This is what she had to mourn knowing that it was impossible. That melancholy, she intimated, was not instantaneous acceptance but gradual and secret re-calculation of a still different future.
One may easily fail to notice the complexity of such news. In the case of women with autoimmune diseases, pregnancy may occasionally cause a serious flareup or even fatal complications. Physicians tend to balance the well-being of the mother and possible harm to the child. The choice presented to Gomez in his case did not portray it as a career versus family issue, but rather a question of survival. It took bravery to admit that reality out in the open, as the female celebrities are often characterized by their looks, their relationships and their family arrangements.
The pain is not the only thing that is remarkable in her reflection but also the strength that ensued. With time she had started to view other ways of motherhood as not a second choice, but as something worthy and good to pursue. It was a great help to me that the other outlets are getting me extremely grateful to be the ones who are dying to be moms. I am one of those people, Gomez says. Surrogacy and adoption, which were previously far-fetched, became the sources of comfort. The change in her point of view is rather a process of development rather than compromise.
In that change there is something very human. Most individuals are brought up having a preconceived notion of how they would live. When something changes that picture, health, relationships or some untold events, disappointment is the first thought that comes to mind. But maturity at times entails giving the dream a new meaning instead of leaving it. The fact that Gomez himself has been honest with this process has struck chords with a lot of people due to the fact that it is something that so many families are silently going through.
This is another twist to the story with her relationship with Benny Blanco. Blanco, who is credited in the music business as a prolific producer-songwriter, is a person that has contributed to some of the biggest pop hits in the last ten years. Gomez talks about him backstage, however, not in terms of industry success but of emotional presence. She has talked passionately of how open he is about the fact that he wants to have children, telling her that his eagerness makes her laugh because he is not able to conceal it. Given that people tend to enact romance in the world, she has depicted their relationship as real and genuine.
She has once said that she has never been loved as he loves her and that she refers to him as a light in her life. That is such a simple statement, but it gives a clue as to the security she appears to experience. Being constrained by medical limitations is enough to cause tension in even the most robust relationships. Their openness in talking about surrogacy and adoption is also indicative that they are committed to the process of creating a family but it does not have to be biologic. It redefines parenthood as a choice and not an event.
It is also quite a painful chapter in the career path of Selena Gomez. She has gotten into the entertainment business when she was a child and was raised before the camera. Throughout her years, she has developed as a Disney star to a world-depicted pop artist and producer with a balance between fame and personal struggle. Long-term health conditions, societal divorces, and mental health challenges have all been consumed by as much scrutiny as possible. Her choice to be honest about infertility in that regard, will not be so much of a publicity stunt, but rather, an extension of her previous transparency.
