After years of planning and months of emotional anticipation, my partner gave birth to our first child in February of 2011. Eva is awesome and considerably well-adjusted for having two moms. That?s the catch and what I hope to point out. Twice a month, I will be sharing traditional stories happening in an untraditional family. There are differences and challenges my partner and I will experience as a same-sex parenting team, but at the end of the day we are like any other parents. We are two people who love our daughter.
Donor Siblings, Part Two
When I wrote Donor Siblings nearly a year ago, I explained my initial reluctance to get to know the family who used the same sperm donor my partner and I used.? Through the use of the cryobank?s Sibling Registry, we were able to connect with other families who used the same donor.? I felt threatened and insecure about letting strangers into my life?strangers with children who are my daughter?s half siblings, or donor siblings.
For me, family has very little to do with biology.? I came from generations of relatives who continued the cycle of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.? I hover somewhere between victim and survivor.? Victim comes with too much pain and survivor comes with too much guilt.? Healing is a spectrum and similar to the evolutionary chart of progress; some days I feel like crawling and other days I hold my head high and walk on two feet.? After 15 years of therapy and surrounding myself with amazing friends, I walk way more than I crawl.? I am healthy and happy.? I have created a life I never thought could exist.
So the idea of opening my guarded home or mind, never mind my heart, to another family just because of circumstances was tough.? After a few initial emails and videos, it was a lot easier than I anticipated.? We shared a path to parenthood only other recipients of frozen sperm can understand.? And we share the challenges and frustrations of living lives as ?nontraditional? families. Mine is a same-sex parenting house and theirs is an opposite-sex parenting house with a transgender dad and queer mom.
Since the first nervous email exchanged a year and a half ago, I have learned that our relationship is not just because of circumstances, but serendipitous.? We were brought together because of our desire to start a family; however, the growing affection I have for my daughter?s donor siblings and their parents seems to have been pre-determined by something way bigger than me and my defense mechanisms.
Too many moving parts were hovering too close to not have collided.? And if choosing the same cryobank and sperm donor wasn?t enough, before I knew anything about sibling registries, I had been reading Dad?s blog in search of information about the female to male transition for a short story I was writing.? When my partner, Amy, and I connected with Mom and Dad for the first time, I was shocked to see his face match the one I had been reading about.
Then we learned Dad had lived in a town minutes from where Amy and I lived.? For the stretch of four years he was living near us, we may have passed him in the grocery isle or bumped into him at a concert.
Over the course of getting to know this family through email, photos, and Skype, we have been overwhelmed with our similarities. We are living parallel lives on parallel coasts.? And as Amy and I packed our bags for our vacation to North Carolina this summer, we found out Dad was going to be in the same town in North Carolina on one of the two weekends we would be there.? He was on his way to a childhood reunion that had been in the works for years.? What were the chances we would find ourselves in the same town in a state in which neither of us live at the same time?? Whatever they were, the chance to finally meet was too good.
Unfortunately, Mom and kids could not join him, so it was just Dad, Amy, Eva and I who spent the day growing this relationship.? The oddest part about the day and the whole experience is that nothing seems odd about it.? Meeting Dad was like meeting up with an old friend.? When I looked at the photos we had taken of the group of us, it was like our family photos had finally merged into one.? And when our kids play peek-a-boo on Skype, flip through books given to each other, or hold photos of one another and repeat their names, it?s like they know too.? Granted, they are all under the age of two and we have fostered their knowledge of each other, but I wonder how much our kids feel connected to each other.
With the birth of my daughter, biology is now playing a positive role in my definition of family.? I will never be biologically connected to my daughter, but my partner is and I have benefited more from this connection than I can describe.? Eva?s donor siblings are biologically connected, and I have benefited from this connection too, in both personal growth and new friendships.
In a couple of months, all of us are going to meet.? I can?t wait to see how our kids interact when they are in the same room.? I look forward to catching up with Mom and Dad, and I anticipate the visit to be easy.? Because opening my mind to my daughter?s donor siblings was tough, but wrapping my heart around them has been easy.
Source: http://cherrygrrl.com/family-rhetoric-donor-siblings-part-two/
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