Cocoon

I talk to a lot of people about their experiences of becoming parents. I am always struck by the difference in the ideas people have about parenthood before they become parents versus after. Which may be obvious because, let’s be honest, on paper, parenthood doesn’t look that great. Lots of noise, lots of messes, power struggles with toddlers, years of interrupted sleep, and so much more. It is a lot. Who would ever sign up for that?

But the interesting thing is, that once you start talking with real parents about real children they are really raising, the tone changes and the lists of pros and cons mostly disappear. In fact, I would argue that if you are using a pros and cons list to determine whether or not you should have a child, you are using the wrong tool. I wrote this essay for Wayfare magazine to explore the aspects of parenthood that generally don't make it on to the pro/con lists, to argue for the more of parenthood that is joyful, fulfilling, wondrous, abundant.

https://www.wayfaremagazine.org/p/abundance-and-natality

As a young single woman living in a punk house in LA, Sarah made an unusual choice: to become certified as a foster parent. Over the next few years Sarah welcomed young traumatized children and surly teenagers into her home and gave them all the love she had to give. Then, after days, or weeks, or months, she let them go.

Sarah talks about what it is like to not know the end of the story, to know that maybe nothing is fixed, and how she sees her role as a foster mother in both the lives of the children she loves and the parents who are trying their best with what resources they have available.

Tysha was basically born wanting to have a family of her own, with as many children as she could handle. But she got a late start, and it seemed as though she might never reach the destination she'd had in her heart when she started.

For 17 years Jamie had hoped to have a baby but only experienced loss after loss after loss. Meanwhile, her cousin Bonnie was watching and waiting—knowing and hoping that she could offer a solution that would bring healing to both of them.

After a bit of difficulty trying to get pregnant with their third baby together, Kristin and David decided to pursue IVF. It was an experience that would stretch them and help Kristin find her own boundaries around her body.

David and Kristin got married in 2008 and after taking some time to adjust and blend their lives with their 3 children, they decided it was time to try to have a baby together. Before too long, they were parents of two daughters. And then . . . things started to drift.

When David was 30, he was a kindergarten teacher in a rough part of LA. He decided that, despite being a single man, there must be something he could do to relieve the suffering of a child in foster care and chose to pursue adoption for a child in need. It was the first step in creating a home that is a refuge for many different people with many different needs.

Amanda was at a crossroads in her life—a tricky transitional place between bearing children and moving beyond that—when a friend asked for some help finding someone who might be willing to be a surrogate for her. Amanda took some time to think about it and found that she could be that person.

Over the course of the next year, Amanda took on a physical and emotional challenge that would not only result in a beautiful baby girl, but in strengthened friendships, greater peace as she closed her childbearing chapter, and (no surprise) the best sleep of her life.

Rebecca decided to pursue a career in medicine about the same time that she had her first baby. And it has always been an open question whether she could have both the family she dreamed of and the career she felt called to. Recently that question has been pressing on her with a little more urgency and she reached out to Lizzie, who happens to be a friend of hers, to talk about it. Lizzie thinks about these kinds of things a lot.

The two of them talked about some of the hopes and hesitations that fuel our decisions regarding our families, about the difficulties of being a mother in the workplace, and about how things have changed for working mothers—at least since we've been paying attention.

Questions that remain unanswered: can you have it all? Professional fulfillment and a house full of babies? Should you even try? Can you live with yourself if you don't? We don't really know the answers to anything, but sometimes it can help to talk it out with a friend.

Four and a half years ago, Jill stood on the sidewalk and watched as another family drove away with the little boy she had given birth to days before. While pregnant, she had been unemployed, depressed, and certain she could not care for a child the way he deserved to be cared for. But the experience did not quiet the yearning she had always felt to be a mom. If anything, it strengthened it.

At first Jill set aside the feelings, but time passed and while her circumstances changed, her feelings didn't. She soon had a job, a relationship, and a medication that stabilized her mental health—and she wanted to try again to be a mom.

And now, just a few years from that curbside goodbye, Jill's life has taken so many turns that you might think you had wandered into someone else's story.

Click here for the first part of Jill's story: I Could Bring Him to His Family.