Every story has a start, a beginning; a moment where all the wishing and dreaming and hoping comes together and a path emerges through the forest, showing you the way to where you always hoped, or perhaps never even realized, you’d end up.
I am, admittedly, a very big dreamer and wisher and hoper. I’ve wondered if it might get me anywhere at all. But I do think that willing yourself into being has a way of making you arrive where you should be, even if you don’t always arrive by the path you had thought, and even if you don’t quite always end up at the conclusion you’d planned. Where you should be and where you thought you wanted to be, well, in my not so learned 30 years, I’ve learned that those are two different things that sometimes interconnect, and sometimes do not, and always for the very best of reasons.
I can’t quite remember when I started dreaming of parenthood.
I’ve always had a fondness for children, for caring for those who I see as some of the most important people in this world. They are the moldable brains and hearts of our future. The way in which we treat these small humans can very much shape what our world looks like in 50 or 100 years. To be absolutely clear, I believe that everyone has a right to choose whether parenthood is the right path for them and I look forward to all of the non-parental aunties and uncles who will shower my future children with so much goodness. I think that if you are called by the universe to raise our future, then it is a gift and if you are called to be supportive figures without children, your role in humanity also very much touches all of us.
I do remember thinking about having a family with almost every person I’ve ever had an interest in. I realize in reading this you may decide I’m totally bonkers for jumping to those thoughts, but I want you to truly understand the depth of my wanting for motherhood. Even being on what some would say is the cusp of that hope, I find my longing to create and nurture and love little ones to be insurmountably strong. It was always clear to me that being a mother was a part of my journey. It was much harder to find who to share that journey with, as the eternal struggle of finding love leaves so many of us lost.
It is in the moments when we least expect that love creeps in.
A little over seven years ago, I met someone who I can only describe as my soul mate. Almost three years ago, I married her in a fancy hotel in Minneapolis, hours away from our home, in one of the many states around us who had decided to get on the right side of history, unlike our state of Wisconsin at the time. At some point in the not so distant future, we hope to welcome our first child, with perhaps many after that. She is the only person I can truly say I imagine a family with, the only one with whom I can imagine raising children together. The picture is complete when I imagine her in it with me.
When she walked into my life all those years ago, we both felt a spark, and I’m not sure either of us knew what to do with it, but neither of us could let the feeling go, and we found a way to cultivate it and create a life that I have never regretted in good times or bad. Our relationship and our marriage has been a rollercoaster, one I really have never wanted to change. I can honestly say I look forward to spending the rest of my life with her, my wife, my soul mate.
So, let’s get down to business, dear reader, so you can understand where we are and the journey ahead. My wife is Ashley. She is a woman of great fortitude and caring. As the first college student in her family, she has striven for greatness and is very close to being done with her Ph.D in Rehabilitation Psychology, currently working at a facility where she helps those in our community with mental illnesses stay in our community and hopefully thrive here.
I was not the first in my family to go to college, in fact, my mother received her Ph.D from the same school where Ashley will receive hers. I stopped after a Bachelor’s degree in Music Therapy from a little all-girls college in Indiana where we call ourselves woodsies. I have worked in my field and love that music is a constant in my life, but I currently help raise another family’s children in my role as a professional nanny. I derive just as much joy from this occupation and I am so very grateful for the wonderful family I work for currently. My name is Christy.
Ashley grew up as mostly an only child, with two battling parents who divorced when she was very young. Her mother remarried and when Ashley was twelve, she obtained a little brother, Tom, and they are probably the closest siblings I have ever seen. For his part, Tom is a very cool young adult, and we’re both incredibly proud of his accomplishments, especially the growing success of his jazz band, The Cool Notes.
Her younger years were rife with conflict between parents who did not get along, other family rivalries, conflicting messages about who she should be. Through it all she grew into a woman full of unending compassion, who never quits, despite the disruptive experiences of her childhood.
I am also the oldest in the my family, but with a sister only about four years younger, Cathy. She has my adorable little niece, Amelia, and is an incredible mom. We have never been close, quite often have been at direct odds with each other, and somehow have continued to stay in each other’s lives despite a fierce sibling rivalry from the time she came home from the hospital and I asked my parents to take her back. As adults, we still don’t always see eye to eye, but we’re working on it. Keep an eye out for more greatness coming from that work, I’ll let you know when we’re ready to reveal it.
My early life was very different from my wife’s upbringing. My parents are still lovingly married and we have always been comfortably middle class. I had a lot of expectations thrust upon me and I mostly met them. In adulthood, I have had some challenges, but that’s for a different post.
Why am I here? Why are you here reading this? What is the point of all that blathering about my life and love and hopes and dreams? Well, the short answer is that I’ve always had a yearning to write and I want children. This blog gives me a platform to talk about children, but I promise I won’t bore you with just talk about my future children. I want to give all of you parental inspiration, products that will help you connect, ideas that will inspire communication, and help along your own journeys. See, it’s not just about the kids. The kids we have imagined in our heads a million times. We have names picked out, we have ideas about what they’ll each be like and worries about placing too many expectations on who they’ll be. The kids we hope will come soon, but, Ashley and I, we have some work to do, some journeys to travel, before we’re prepared for parenthood.
We also need to let go of the idea that we’ll ever be “prepared” for parenthood.
Many months ago, I conceived of the notion that others might want to share in this journey, learn from our mistakes and victories, and find inspiration in our path to help them on their own. The goals are fairly simple and are as follows:
1. Prepare our bodies for parenthood: This involves both of us getting in better shape, losing some weight, and really cementing better habits. This also involves more specific goals for me, the future childbearer, like making sure my blood pressure is good and consistent.
2. Prepare our finances: We need to pay off some credit cards! We also need to work on other goals like getting serious about investments and having an emergency fund.
3. Prepare our minds and hearts: Ok, so we’re pretty ready for kids, but we still have some soul type preparation we need to do. We also have some couple stuff that we want to work on.
4. Prepare our LGBT childbearing knowledge: This was actually a big part of the original idea behind this blog. Resources talking about how LGBT families are still somewhat few and far between. I’d really like to use this blog as a place to compile information related to insemination options, adoption processes, and laws in various areas and other related topics.
Finally, I want to put my voice, our voice, together with so many others who are facing the prospect of what family will mean in this new America. We have consciously decided that we still want to have children, no matter what happens in our nation with a very different administration in the White House.
We believe that there have to be children to carry on the fight for equality and justice for the oppressed.
We believe that Black Lives Matter.
We believe that refugees deserve our help, we refuse to make judgements based on race, gender, orientation, or any other factor that others try to use to divide us.
We believe that people matter and there is too much hate in this world.
These are our truths and we will express them here.
I look forward to sharing our views and our journey with you.
Thank you for letting us in.
P.S. What about the name you ask? Whose Lydian and why are we trying to find her? Lydian is the name we will give our first girl, hopefully our first child, so she can keep the sons we have in line 🙂 My wife thought of that name and it felt right because I do feel like we are trying to find her, trying to follow our path until she comes into this world kicking and screaming and teaches us how to be new people, how to be parents. So, this blog is just as the title suggests. It is our journey to meet, and finally find, our Lydian.