The Thorn Institute

Holding four truths at once

Truth is not binary. Something can be true, untrue, both true and untrue, or neither — four-valued logic, a different shape to the two-value logic most of us were handed. Daniel Spina's account of not having children holds all four at once.

The piece is written from the inside — wanting children, not wanting them, both wanting and not wanting, and neither. Most of the difficulty people bring to this work is not the loss itself; it is the belief that one of the truths has to win.

The work is not to resolve the contradiction. It is to stop demanding that it resolve — and to feel the feelings behind the thoughts rather than only thinking about them.

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