alwaysabeautifullife:

I wish as a younger, baby Catholic I wouldn’t have been sold that massive amounts of children =holiest woman. In my parish women with 7+ were always treated as the go-to for advice on being a holy wife, mother, person. It was like the Catholic community as a whole used children as a unit of measurement of visible holiness. This made me feel a lot of unnecessary guilt about not being physically (let alone mentally) capable of having more and more and more children. I wish Catholics who choose to TTA (try to avoid pregnancy) for grave reasons (especially invisable reasons like mental health) were rewarded or praised by the community as women with 10 children are. These couples need support as well, taking care of mental/physical health of your body which is a divine gift from God, the wellbeing of born children, and struggling to avoid by days of abstaining is holy family work too.