I always thought I didn’t want children. In college, when a friend confessed a deep longing to become a mother, I couldn’t relate. I had ambitious career plans, and being a mother sounded limiting and ordinary. After college, I worked for a nonprofit organization in Washington, DC. My work felt exciting, important, and meaningful. Deep down, I knew there were many things I needed to do in my life, and I feared that having children would prevent me from fulfilling my potential.

Bestselling author and psychologist James Hillman proposed what he called the “acorn theory” of psychological development.1 He contended that we each enter the world carrying something unique that asks to be lived out through us. Just as the destiny of the oak tree is contained within the acorn, we arrive in life with something we need to do and someone we need to become.