There are many ways the new Republican tax plan will have adverse effects on real people, but the one that is the most hypocritical for the party itself, the most heartless, and the one that will affect me personally the most in the coming year is the complete repeal of the adoption tax credit. I vaguely knew the shakeup of our tax code would benefit the wealthy and ultra-wealthy far greater than middle America, but as more reporting has been done on the nuts and bolts of the plan I’ve become downright appalled at some of the proposed changes.

Teachers can’t deduct classroom expenses they incur out of pocket (I used to be a teacher and can’t for the life of me understand this one), individuals can no longer deduct medical expenses (I use this one almost every year, because I work for a small business that doesn’t provide health insurance—and even worse I’m pregnant this year which will be extraordinarily expensive), and PhD students will face a devastating burden because their tuition waivers will be treated as income to be taxed (okay, I’m not going to be earning my PhD any time soon, but why would we want to hurt students?). But worst of all, Republicans are attempting to revoke in its entirety the credit that helps offset the immense cost of adoption in this country. They are hurting people for doing a good deed. They are ripping the rug out from under families who choose to give children a good home. Children who have nowhere else to go in many cases. Children in foster homes. Special needs children. Children in refugee zones. And the way Republicans like to look at it—children spared from abortion.

Let’s back up and talk about how long the tax code has incentivized adoption in one way or another. From 1981 to 1996, people who adopted were given a tax deduction for doing so. In 1997 the deduction changed to a nonrefundable credit. In 2012 this credit was made a permanent part of the tax code through the American Taxpayer Relief Act. Basically, for almost as long as I have been alive, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, the general idea that adoption should be encouraged and subsidized has never really been questioned. The tax code encourages all kinds of other things like home ownership and marriage, so why not?

Now let’s talk a little bit about why a credit is necessary, strictly from a financial standpoint. Just like becoming a teacher, no one adopts for any financial motivation. They do it because they want to give love and stability and security to a child. But unfortunately, adoption is an expensive undertaking and can range anywhere from $3,000 to $40,000, depending on a variety of factors. My adoption cost me $15,000. Had my adoption been finalized in 2016, I would have been able to claim up to $13,570 in a tax credit this year, which is the maximum allowable. But it wasn’t finalized in 2016. It took most of 2016 and wasn’t finalized until July of 2017, which means I am in danger of losing it altogether. Furthermore, the people who adopt are not rich people. They are middle class, middle income Americans, and a third are single parents just like me. They need this credit.

Why would we want to incentivize adoption from a societal standpoint? On any given day, almost 500,000 children are in foster care around the country. In 2015, more than 62,000 children whose parents’ rights had been legally terminated were waiting to be adopted. On average, children stay in state care for nearly two years, and although many are in foster homes a substantial percentage are in institutions or group homes. Every year, 20,000 kids age out of the foster care system without permanent families or assistance. Statistics show that these kids are more likely to experience unemployment, homelessness, and incarceration. So the benefit to society of state adoptions is obvious. But private adoptions are equally beneficial—these adoptions give birth mothers an option besides abortion, and we all know being pro-life is a bedrock piece of the Republican platform. How are you going to push against the right to choose, coerce women to have children they can’t take care of, and then make adoption even harder? That’s not pro-life, it’s despicable.

My adoption was through the state. My little girl was removed from her home at 11 months old and placed in emergency protective custody. The responding social worker described the state of the home as the worst she’d seen in her 20 years of experience. Little Caroline came to live with me when she was just 18 months, and although I didn’t know what the future would hold, getting her is the best thing that has ever happened to me. She just turned 8 years old. She has beautiful blue eyes and blonde hair and loves kittens more than anything in the world. She loves telling jokes and makes me laugh every single day. She is not a statistic. She is loved beyond measure.

I know we all want to simplify the tax code. I know that in order to cut taxes in one place, the government has to make up that revenue somewhere else, either by cutting spending or by shifting the tax burden elsewhere. But taking the adoption credit away from people will only save the government one third the cost of an aircraft carrier over the course of a decade—a drop in the ocean. The worst part is that the new tax plan is also projected to cause a 1.7 trillion dollar increase to our national deficit, so the savings from the adoption credit are pointless. Franky it’s offensive. As far as I can tell the plan is to slash the corporate tax rate and disproportionately put more money in the pockets of multi-millionaires, and in order to do so, Republicans will not only go against a long-standing party principle of increasing the deficit, but they will take money away from people who need it the most, including adoptive parents, public servants and students. This is not how you help your middle class. It’s how you dismantle it.

Please help me and my daughter (I love saying that) and thousands of others like us by calling your representatives and telling them to vote against this reprehensible bill in its current form.

The post Please Help Stop the Tax Reform Bill From Hurting Adoptive Families Like Mine appeared first on AuntMommy.

I’m a 40-year-old gay lady, so getting pregnant was never something I thought about much. I’d heard about the basics of being pregnant—the morning sickness, the swollen feet, something called trimesters that added up to about 9 months. I knew you shouldn’t smoke or drink while pregnant, which just seemed like common sense. But until I decided I wanted to experience pregnancy for myself and got inseminated, I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into when it comes to the list of things you are no longer allowed to do if you’re expecting. In fact, according to the internet, the list of prohibited (or at least questionable) activities and foods is so long, it is shorter to make a list of things that everyone agrees is alright to do. For your benefit, I have provided this list here so you too do not have to spend weeks poring over forums on “thebump.com.”

1. sit*
2. sleep**
3. breathe

*Making sure to support your back using proper posture and taking care not to strain yourself when getting up and down
**Making sure not to position yourself on your stomach. Actually or your back. Actually or your right side either.

So really, I should shave this list down to just breathe. At one time I included “drink water,” but that got tricky. For instance, do you live in or are you visiting Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Pacific Islands, Central or South America? Because according to the CDC, local water in 80% of the earth’s surfaces can result in anything ranging from loose stools to a ghastly death, and that has nothing to do with pregnancy.

My first inklings of guilt came after I got my positive three weeks after insemination. I immediately began to think of all the things I had done in that time that were socially unacceptable, even though I KNEW I had been inseminated. It was planned. I didn’t accidentally fall down on an erect penis one day—I PAID for this shit. What’s more, I am informed enough to know that a hot dog from a street vendor is not a responsible choice for me, much less a developing fetus. That weiner may have been my first brush with listeriosis, but it was not to be my last (also I just realized that sounds like I’m talking about a recurring STD, but that’s a whole other article).

To be fair, I usually don’t know I’m doing something wrong WHEN I do it. I consult all the lovely people of the internet after the infraction, which is a lot like looking at webmd when you’ve got a funny spot on your skin, and after 20 minutes of sheer horror, self-diagnosing end-stage cancer. Before I started consulting the internet, I had never even heard of the listeria bacteria. Or toxoplasmosis. Or that something called Zika would cause something called microcephaly. BEFORE I STARTED WRITING THIS ARTICLE I HAD NEVER HEARD OF CYTOMEGALOVIRUS! But now I have!

It seems there are a couple of camps when it comes to this stuff. The first camp is comprised of women like my mother, who were pregnant in the 70’s and before, when drinking, smoking, and pill-popping were far less stigmatized. These women ate lead-based paint like it was candy. I am almost certain my mother would tell you a few bumps of coke are fine as long as you don’t get carried away. I am almost certain she added the “don’t get carried away” part out of experience only after shooting out a couple kids. The second camp is comprised of the teetotalers. The Puritans. The risk averse. The ones who, if you were to construct a Venn diagram between them and people who insist that abstinence is the only way to “teach” kids about sex, the middle overlapping part would be labeled “people who burned witches in the Middle Ages.” It is these people who seem to dominate internet chat rooms.

I always thought I’d be the type of person to land more toward camp A on a sliding scale, but when I peed on that stick (and my leg and the toilet seat) everything changed. Let me put this in perspective: I am at the very end of my fertile years. I don’t sleep next to a sperm-making machine at night. It took months just to find a donor. I started with three shots of sperm, which I paid approximately $1000 each for, and two were already unsuccessful. I paid a doctor another $1000 each time to do the honors. I had surgery on my hoo-ha before I could even begin the process. I took all different manner of pills, got poked by needles countless times, self-administered shots, meticulously tracked my cycle for months, wrung my hands wondering if my gay-ass fallopian tubes even knew where they were supposed to be. And during the same time period, I was also engaged in an epic custody battle to adopt my niece, so the entire process ended up taking a year.

This. Was. It. This was my only chance.

And then I started reading the internet, but usually only after I did something I probably shouldn’t have. A couple of months in I was craving Chinese food really bad, and the only place I could find open at the time was a buffet in a shabby building with missing letters in its sign, the interior of which was so dimly lit I couldn’t tell whether the floor covering was tile or carpet, so naturally I crammed three plates worth of food into one Styrofoam to-go box. Even if I didn’t harm my unborn child with MSG or listeria, I could at least carry the guilt of harming the environment.

“Avoid buffets at all costs, particularly those in which the food may be sitting for hours!” the internet screamed at me. Well shit.

Without even thinking I got a massage toward the end of my first trimester. “Whatever you do, do NOT get a massage, particularly in the first trimester!” the internet scolded. “Why would you even think that’s okay???” (A lot of things on the internet say “particularly in the first trimester.”) Damnit to hell. Never mind I was trying to alleviate the stress the internet was giving me in the first place.

I drank an O’doul’s “non-alcoholic” beer while on vacation. Only to realize it does have a small amount of alcohol, approximately .05%.

The internet was not kind.

“If it’s not okay for alcoholics to drink an O’doul’s, then it’s not okay if you’re pregnant,” the internet said. “Horrible! It’s a fact, alcohol causes birth defects, so why would you risk even a little?”

I did the math. If the average beer has 5% alcohol by volume, then it would take 10 O’doul’s to equal one beer. So, quite literally, I took the equivalent of one swallow of regular beer, or—in the case of a glass of wine—dipped my tongue into the glass, and accidentally got a little down my throat. I hung my head in shame. How could I live with myself?

The general thinking of the loudest internet voices is basically “better safe than sorry.” The more I researched, the worse I felt. Because they’re not wrong, exactly, these voices. A woman’s immune system IS much more compromised when pregnant, much more susceptible to diseases that are otherwise inconsequential to an average adult. And the developing fetus IS extremely vulnerable to things the woman is not.

I began to look around me at all the dangers in my own home. If the unwashed fruit—was it even organic?—didn’t harbor a parasite, then my cat walking around on the table and counters with its toxoplasmosis paws would surely get me. The internet literally asked, “Would you rather have a cat or a baby?” I shook it off and reached for a prenatal supplement before realizing in horror it was synthetic folic acid instead of natural folate (there’s a difference!!) so my baby’ll probably be born without a spinal cord. I swallowed it anyway with a Gatorade out of the refrigerator, and I was halfway through the bottle before it dawned on me I’d just ingested several fluid ounces of “suspected carcinogen” red 40. I grabbed a Sprite instead and glanced at the nutrition label—44 grams of sugar! At this rate I was probably headed for gestational diabetes or maybe preeclampsia. I was hungry and heated up some leftovers, but the dish didn’t specifically say microwave-safe, so I tossed it. I decided to go to a restaurant instead but forgot my meat thermometer, so I figured maybe I should get some fish. But then I couldn’t remember which seafood has high mercury levels, so I settled on some eggs. They ended up looking too runny to be trustworthy and they came with cheese that I couldn’t verify was pasteurized. I thought about a salad, but you can’t be too careful about pesticides if you’re not doing your own washing. I was in a waking nightmare.

It is easy to see how someone might become disenchanted. It’s even understandable how someone might become radicalized by the internet, if one lingers long enough in the wrong spaces. At a certain point I could almost understand joining ISIS or listening to Rush Limbaugh.

Enough internet and I’d get caught in these negative thinking loops. I’d imagine my baby turning out like that Steve Martin character in Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels. Ruprecht. The man-child who looks kind of normal, but is mentally incompetent in such an over-the-top way, that only Steve Martin could deliver the performance (do yourself a favor and google it). Sometimes I’d switch it up and imagine Sloth from the Goonies. Me and baby Sloth in a stroller. Me pushing little Sloth on the swings. Me and adolescent Sloth picking out a corsage for his Junior Prom even though no one wanted to go with him.

To alleviate my guilt I’d imagine going to confession even though I’m not Catholic. “Bless me father, for I have sinned,” I’d say.

“What have you done, my child?” he’d ask.

“When I was 10 weeks pregnant I drank an entire large coffee from McDonald’s,” I’d break down sobbing.

“Yeah that’s pretty morally gray,” he’d agree. “That’s a lot of caffeine, particularly in the first trimester. Just tell me you didn’t use artificial sweetener.”

My silence would say it all…

I’m only halfway through this pregnancy, and have no way of knowing what will happen. I know I will love little Ruprecht or Sloth no matter how they turn out. I’ve also been consulting the internet long enough now, that I’ve discovered these other countries called “France,” “Italy,” and “Japan” that have similar birth statistics to the Unites States but where espresso, wine and sushi are not enemies. So I feel pretty good about that. Plus, I figure I’ve GOT to be through the hard part. Once I finally have the kid, surely noone on the internet will be judgy about how I raise it. Right?

The post What to Expect When You’re Expecting… Wait, Is That Already Taken? appeared first on AuntMommy.

Ever since the stork left an 18-month old girl on my doorstep, I have had the dilemma of what to do for her birthday. I have helped her celebrate 6 of them so far. Today—September 25th—she turns 7, and the party was yesterday. Every damn time has been some kind of problem.

I decided to host the first party in my home, and after that I said, “no more, I’m not cleaning for days before and after something that only lasts an hour.” (It’s generally also how I feel about sex as I get older, except it’s an hour of cleaning for something that only lasts 5 minutes.) So the second time I rented out a room at a place called Monkey Joe’s. Well that also turned out to be kinda stressful to arrange, AND I had to fork out a bunch of money. So the third time I decided to go back to the home idea, except I was dating the Queen of Pinterest at the time, and she decided for both of us it was going to be an extravaganza never to be forgotten. I really had no say in it. The theme (because of course there was a theme) was “Pirates and Princesses” and the invitations were hand-painted on scrolls and distributed in little shipwrecked bottles. There was a bouncy castle the size of my back yard and balloons everywhere and a room full of food and a temporary tattoo station and dress-up games and like a hundred people. It did not save me money. And I cleaned for days. And it was very stressful. It was ALL the things.

But it WAS forgotten. By Caroline. The next week. Because she was 4. And because she forgets EVERYTHING. Until just a few weeks ago, she couldn’t even tell you what day her birthday is on. I could’ve just lied to her for 5 years that September hasn’t come yet.

So the next time I decided screw it, if I’m gonna be stressed and have to pay money anyway, I’ll do it outside of home. There is a great place for kids in St. Louis called The Magic House, and we hosted the party there, and… well actually that one went pretty well. Her entire preschool class was invited, and most of them came.

But apparently I had started a trend that was going to continue indefinitely—you know, this home-away-home-away thing—so the following year Caroline decided she wanted a birthday sleepover. Hmmm, a sleepover. On the one hand that sounded easy. On the other hand, LOL! I NOW know that I’d rather spend the night with a pack of rabid feral cats than try to get several 5-year old girls hopped up on sugar out of their princess dresses and into bed at any reasonable hour. I was picking popcorn out of couch cushions for months.

Which brings us to this year. And this year’s particular set of problems. To begin with, Caroline was 6 going on 13 and wanted a salon/spa day at Sweet-n-Sassy. So you don’t have to google what that is, just know the tagline reads, “Treat your daughter to a day of relaxation and fantasy.” Oh good lord. Because HER life is so stressful. They offer several overpriced birthday packages for little girls (or I suppose fabulous little boys) which basically involve updo’s, dressup, and mani/pedi’s. Caroline loves getting a manicure, and she loves telling you all about them. Except that she doesn’t know how to pronounce it, so to the average stranger it sounds like she’s discussing Medicare. It’s very confusing for the neighbors when she launches into a gushing speech about loving Medicare and wishing she could go get some Medicare right now. Because Medicare is awesome and you feel great afterward. I don’t correct her because I’m a terrible parent.

Now, being the stereotypical gay aunt that I am, this birthday idea made me squirm. I could think of nothing I wanted to do less than be the host of a bunch of little girls and their moms in a big group makeup sesh. Gross. I just couldn’t stop thinking about the ways we set up girls for future failure with unrealistic and arbitrary Western beauty standards. But Caroline really wanted it, so I manned up and booked the “Fashion Runway” show because it was cheaper than “Perfect Princess” or “Pop Star Premiere.” And because I’m a complete pushover.

I began realizing I’d made a huge Donald-Trump-sized mistake almost immediately. This birthday party was a very regimented thing. Unlike many of the other parties I’ve discussed, this one had EXACTLY 8 slots for 8 little girls. Also unlike the others, this was the first one in which Caroline attended public school. She’s usually the first one in her class to have a birthday, making me a reluctant trendsetter. Anyway, school just started a few weeks ago, so I didn’t know many of the students’ names. When I first queried Caroline about who she wanted to come to the party, she said, “NOT Stacey.” Okay, then, not Stacey. I guessed she and Stacey had some kinda bad blood there, like Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.

Pretty quickly we came up with a few names we regularly include over the years, but there were still four slots left. Fine, no problemo, I’d just send Caroline with some invitations to school. “Wait, can I do that?” I thought. “I don’t think I can do that,” I concluded. I vaguely remembered something about it in the student handbook. I decided to email the teacher, Mrs. Codswallop (I have changed names for anonymity). Mrs. Codswallop had already pulled me aside on the second day of school and reprimanded me for forgetting to pack a snack for Caroline on the very first day. So I hadn’t exactly started off on the right foot with this woman.

“No,” said Mrs. Codswallop, “you cannot do that.” She went on to say I was allowed to send invitations to school with Caroline IF everyone in the class was invited, because nowadays we coddle children in little “blue-ribbon everyone’s-special” bubbles until they’re in their twenties and realize the real world will kick them in the balls, and by that time they have no coping mechanisms for failure or rejection, and that’s why they end up living with their parents in their thirties. She didn’t say that last bit. That’s mine.

It wasn’t MY fault I only had four slots. DAMN YOU SWEET-N-SASSY! Even if I didn’t have that restriction, 98% of the boys in her class wouldn’t be interested, and the 2% who WERE interested probably wouldn’t say so. Bottom line, I had no idea how to invite these kids to this party. The whole affair was becoming way more trouble than it was worth.

“Caroline!” I said desperately 12 days out from the party. “I need last names. I can figure out who to contact from Mrs. Codswallop’s emails if I have last names. Do you know anyone’s last name?” But Caroline didn’t even know everyone’s first names, because of course.

Mrs. Codswallop openly cc’d all the parents on her class emails, and I figured I could put 2 and 2 together with just a little more info, because I’m basically Nancy Drew. I never saw any other parents because I drop off Caroline early for extra reading help, and I don’t pick her up directly after school, I pick her up from aftercare.

“Caroline!” I said desperately 11 days out from the party. “I want you to get the girls to write down their names for you. Like on a piece of paper. That you bring home to me. Okay? Can you do that? It’s easy right?”

Caroline furrowed her brow. “I don’t wanna!” she yelled.

“Well, do you want a party?” I yelled back threateningly.

The cat meowed and threw up a hairball.

This thing was tearing our family apart.

Mrs. Codswallop emailed me that day. “It seems you need a class list, according to Caroline,” she said. She provided me with a list of names and made sure to tell me it all could have been easily accessed on the school’s website.

“God,” I thought. “Mrs. Codswallop hates me.” How was I supposed to know this information was out there? I’m just a gay aunt doing the best I can!

I matched names, sent out the email invites, and crossed my fingers. A day went by with no responses. What was wrong with these people!? Why didn’t they have my child’s birthday happiness as their central life goal!?

I realized I was going to have to get more aggressive, so I emailed again. This time I got some non-committed responses and redirects, kinda like when I ask someone to go out with me romantically. So you know, I was used to it, and knew just how to approach it. Have one glass of wine too many, cry myself to sleep, and the next day cast a wider net and lower my standards.

I called Sweet-N-Sassy. “Uhm, what if more than 8 girls show up?” I asked. They told me it was okay, but that I’d be charged $20 extra per girl. “Oh, good,” I thought, “I can just go bankrupt.” So I changed strategies and decided to invite a few more to make sure at least 8 came.

But there was one girl Caroline really wanted to attend, and I couldn’t figure out how to reach her. I’d gotten no response from the email and realized I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. I decided to do the obvious thing and stalk her. I knew when the class had recess outside on the playground and considered taking my lunch break then. I could swing by and beckon her over. That wouldn’t be creepy at all.

I think this was when my friends started to worry about me.

One week before the party, I ran into the girl before school started. She hadn’t gone in the building yet, so I figured it was okay to give her an invitation, which I’d been carrying around with me just in case. Because this was all completely normal. “Pssst, hey Mary!” I said, waving her over. “Put this in your backpack. Give it to your mom, okay?” Mary nodded her head.

That was on a Friday. On Monday morning when I dropped off Caroline for reading practice, Mrs. Codswallop called me over. “Uh oh,” I thought.

“We had a lot of tears on Friday,” she said. “Apparently, somehow Mary got an invitation to a party that Stacey is not invited to.”

I cast my gaze ashamedly toward the floor. “Uh, yeah sorry about that,” I said. “That’s my fault.”

Damn that Mary! All she had to do was give it to her mom. Ugh!

Mrs. Codswallop pulled out a crumpled up invitation and gave it to me. “They’re 6,” she said. She shook her head.

“NOOOOOOO!” I thought. “All this trouble and the invitation didn’t even go home with her!”

This was when I started wondering why God hates me. I mean other than because I’m an asshole who makes little girls cry. Besides that. But it wasn’t MY fault the party was gender-selective with limited space! DAMN YOU SWEET-N-SASSY!

I ended up figuring out how to contact Mary’s mother by going to the front office. I guess I should have done that in the first place, but I didn’t know I could until Mrs. Codswallop told me to. This parenting thing is hard. Mary’s mom said she’d love to come.

The party was yesterday. I really hate to admit this, but it was kinda the cutest thing ever. The sheer look of joy on Caroline’s face (and all the girls, really) was totally worth it.

But I’m still an asshole, and Mrs. Codswallop will shake her head every time she sees me. And Stacey cried. That’s something I have to learn to live with forever.

Even though I loved it, I’m never doing it again. Ever.

Next year we’re staying home.

The post Willingly Throwing A Child’s Birthday Party Is A Sign of Insanity… Or, How I’ve Thrown A Party Every Year For Caroline appeared first on AuntMommy.

I have several coming out stories, but this is the one that stands out most in my mind. About twelve years ago I had just gotten a job as a high school English teacher in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It’s funny to think about now, but at the time I was closeted—well at work anyway. My close friends and most of my family knew I was gay, but I never told anyone in a professional setting. The last decade has been lightning fast on the issue of gay rights, but at the time in rural Kentucky, people did not come out. A majority of people there didn’t believe gays should serve in the military or be able to get married. A majority believed homosexuality was a sin. Even today sodomy laws are still on the books there. Even today an overwhelming majority of people do not support marriage equality. I live in St. Louis now, and telling someone I’m gay is like, “Oh yeah I like boobs, pass the ketchup.”

My very first day of teaching, the bell rang and my junior honors students filed into my classroom. After taking stock, I realized one of them was the younger brother of the last guy I had ever dated, who was pretty jaded when I came out to him. Shit. I also had the very religious principal’s son, and another boy who was obviously flaming. Sonofabitch.

Our first unit was The Scarlet Letter. I asked them to break up into groups and create their own utopias, kind of like what the Puritans were going for. It was a silly little exercise, but the principal’s son’s group—and others—banned homosexuality from their utopia. Gay people not allowed. The flaming boy piped up he’d join that group. Sure you will, buddy. Seeing as how it involved the principal’s kid, and I was a new teacher, I decided to move on instead of saying anything about it.

Throughout that semester I felt like there was a whisper campaign about Ms. Osborne the dyke. I’m pretty sure it came from the brother of the guy I’d broken up with. Later that semester, a female student developed a crush on me. I decided to ignore it, but she kept crossing uncomfortable lines. She wrote me a poem, and all I remember were the last two lines: “I love Ms. Osborne’s class, and I’d like to tap that sweet sweet ass.” After prom that year she came to my house—unbeknownst to me—and decorated my car and driveway with “I love you” written everywhere. Great. Just what I needed. My fear was that if anyone had any idea this was happening, they’d think I was some kind of pervert. The general consensus toward gay people was already slanted toward pedophile. I had no choice but to go the principal about it to make sure there was zero possibility it looked like I was messing around with a student.

Speaking of the principal, I mentioned she was a very religious woman. Before my second year started, she decided to conduct a required school meeting of all administrators and teachers at her mega-church. Let me repeat this for clarity. She required everyone who worked at a public school to attend our state-funded function at her church, also requiring we all bow our heads in prayer before it began. This was not an optional meeting, it was one that happened every year before classes resumed. It was state paid for, and state business. I’m not sure if there were any Jews or atheists or Muslims or even different denominations in the crowd, but I was certainly uncomfortable.

That second year, as I surveyed the students who filed into my juniors honors class, I discovered I had the son of the pastor of the mega-church. You have got to be kidding me, I thought. Interestingly, although they believed I was a sinner in the eyes of the Lord, they drove around in a Cadillac Escalade and had a lot of flashy expensive things. Hmmm. That didn’t seem very Jesus-y to me.

Also that second year, I believe I may have had a transgender student. At any rate, one day he wore a skirt to school. He was in my first period class. Every first period teacher had to make their students stand up and decide whether or not those students met the dress code. I thought nothing of the skirt. It was a long one, and if a girl had worn it, it would’ve been fine. Later that day the vice-principal informed me I hadn’t done my job, and that student was sent home for being a distraction.

For various reasons, I had decided teaching in this district in this rural area was not for me. A lot of it was No Child Left Behind and what they called KERA, the Kentucky Education Reform Act. They were terrible. So I put in my resignation with absolutely no plan about what to do next.

A couple weeks before school ended that second year, I was talking to the English teacher in the room right next to mine. I’ll call him Kyle. Since we were adjacent to each other, Kyle and I had become friends. I’m not sure, but I think he may have been Pentecostal. He was a really nice guy, and very mild-mannered. We bonded over not wanting to come to work. For some reason, and I don’t remember how, we got on the topic of gay marriage. I challenged him to a debate on the subject in front of his senior AP class, and he accepted. I happened to have my planning period at that time and figured, fuck it, I’m outta here soon anyway. This is something I would have never done if I hadn’t already quit.

When it came time for the debate, we each laid out our arguments. Kyle’s was almost entirely biblically based. He also referenced a woman in the UK who had recently tried to marry a dolphin. I made a joke about the dolphin and asked if that meant he thought being gay was a mental illness. I knew for a fact there were gay students in that classroom and I was not about to let him make them feel lesser than. As if on cue, a girl started crying and walked out. This girl had told me before that her mother was gay. I tried comforting her in the hallway, and Kyle joined us and asked what was wrong.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, incredulous. “Her mother is gay, and you’re basically telling us she’s going to hell. I mean that’s probably what’s wrong.” Then I suggested all three of us go into my room and have a talk.

In my room, I pressed Kyle further on his suppositions. “Do you take all of the bible literally?” I asked. “For instance, you don’t think all of the animals on the planet got onto Noah’s ark, right? It’s just a story.” Judging by his face, I think he’d never thought about that before. I kind of couldn’t believe it. I pushed further, offered more arguments that specifically negated his biblical position (old testament god supported slavery, beating people, killing a guy for spilling his seed, women as property, stuff like that; and new testament Jesus never mentioned it). Finally, and I don’t know why I did it–but he kept repeating the same arguments, and this student was still sitting there feeling raw about what he’d said–so I just looked at him in the eyes and said, “Kyle… I’m gay.”

He immediately covered his face with his hands and sunk down in his chair. He stayed like that for a full minute. I looked at the student and gave her a little smile. When Kyle uncovered his face and sat back up, he said, “Christa I’m so sorry.” I could tell he meant it. He had fallen right into my gay-agenda trap, in which I spent years befriending him so that he’d think I’m a human being before I dropped the gay bomb on him. (This is also how I convert your children to be gay.)

“Don’t be,” I said. “Who knows, maybe I am mentally ill, but not because I’m gay.” I winked at the student. This teacher wasn’t a bad guy (he just had bad gaydar). It was obvious he’d never been friends with a gay person, that he knew of. He’d never been forced to think about it. He was experiencing cognitive dissonance. Here’s this person he liked, he worked well with, who was funny and nice—who didn’t fit in with his perception of “a gay.” I left him to reconcile it on his own. I’m not sure if he ever did.

A couple weeks later I left that school and never looked back. That summer, I ran into my replacement one day at Barnes & Noble. He had been a student teacher the semester before, and apparently they gave him my old position. And I kid you not, we sat down for some small talk, and it turned into a conversation in which he tried to explain to me that being gay is a choice. That the bible clearly states it is a sin. That I was not born this way, but had chosen a misguided path. I’m pretty sure he was also Pentecostal. I congratulated him on the job, said we’d agree to disagree, and walked away.

I decided not just to leave that school, but also small-town Kentucky. I absolutely made the right decision. Sometimes, though, I do miss teaching. By and large, my students loved me. I felt like my job wasn’t teaching them Shakespeare as much as it was teaching them to think. I can only hope someone else is doing that for these kids. Who knows, maybe it’s Kyle. Sometimes I still think about him, with his head in his hands, and wonder how he feels about it now. If I ever had an impact coming out to anyone, he was probably the one. If this story exemplifies anything, it’s how important it is to come and and be out. The more people who do the more it will become a non-issue. (It also doesn’t hurt that it increases my dating pool.)

The post A Coming Out Story appeared first on AuntMommy.

Dear Republican Friends,

I like a lot of the things your party has traditionally stood for. I like personal responsibility. I like supporting our troops. I like reigning in government spending and being fiscally conscious. I like reducing bureaucracy. I like not intervening in world affairs unless absolutely necessary, which—you know, was more of a thing until recently. I love that your first President was Abraham Lincoln and your party was founded by anti-slave activists. That’s pretty awesome.

But here’s the thing I don’t get. I don’t get the gun issue. Let me back up. I get the second amendment. I’ve read it, and I’ve read the relevant portions of the Federalist Papers in which Alexander Hamilton discusses the need for citizens to be armed as a hedge against a tyrannical government. I get that people like to hunt. I get that people like target practice. I get that people like home protection. I get all those things. More than that—and I think more to the point—I get that we are a gun culture. That when our youth grow up surrounded by a certain way of thinking, it is a powerful force, and one slow to change. We Americans love our guns, and we love our freedom, and we believe that the one is the other.

Fine. I’m tired of debating the reasonable restrictions angle. I’m tired of pointing out statistics that support regulation. We want our guns, damnit, and yes—that means there will be collateral damages. We don’t care about loopholes or background checks or so-called assault weapons. Apparently—judging by the recent Senate vote—we don’t care if someone on a terrorist watch-list can buy one legally. It’s a shame that innocent people die, but it’s a part of life that comes with our gun culture. It just is. Yes, yes, I know what you say next. If someone is hell-bent on destruction, they’ll find other means. If they live in a cold climate, perhaps they’ll use a sharp icicle, or otherwise, perhaps they’ll acquire a weapon illegally. Blah, blah, blah. Fine. I’m done. You win! (By the way, I’d just like to point out you hate it when people use this argument in favor of abortion—you know, the one where people say women will find a way to do it anyway, regardless of whether or not it is illegal. Just sayin.)

Back to the part I don’t get. After the attack in Orlando, my Facebook was flooded with the usual gun memes, many of which say something along the lines of, “It’s not the guns that are the problem. It’s the people using them.” So I’ve decided to create an entire argument around that statement. I’m certain we can all agree that we abhor gun violence (or any violence for that matter) that kills innocent victims. I’m operating under the assumption that none of us wants to get dead for no reason. If this is not the case, I fear we will not be able to find common ground. So if you don’t believe restricting guns or high capacity magazines would have any effect on saving lives, then how should we approach our national gun-related death problem? And we do have a problem, statistically speaking. According to politifact.com, between 2005 and 2015 there were 301,797 gun deaths in the United States. That’s more than 30,000 Americans per year. Some of these were suicides and police-related occurrences, but many were homicides. Murder. Also according to politifact, Americans are 20 times more likely to be killed with guns than people in 22 other comparable developed countries. Twenty times more likely.

So, on the premise that we have a people problem—not a gun problem—what do we do about it? Wait, I’ve got it. We should just ban people. Like, not all people, just certain types of people. This country is filled with the wrong kinda people, amirite? Hold on, I’ve just thought about that for a second and it sounds a bit Nazi-ish, but I mean, we do have a people problem on our hands. Maybe we just get rid of the ones who say stupid stuff we don’t agree with. Hold up again, just referenced the amendment before the second one—apparently can’t do that. Screw it, how ‘bout the Muslims though? I mean they’re the terrorists, right? According to Donald Trump we should stop them from coming in the country. Ooops, just realized gun owners constantly point out that we cannot group the bad apples in with the good. I.e., responsible gun owners should not be punished for the few who aren’t. I.e., the millions of law abiding peaceful Muslims should not be punished for the few who aren’t. Thanks, gun owners, for reminding me I can’t use that argument. Oh shoot (haha, “shoot”). I just realized another problem with that whole Muslim ban thing, anyway. It’s also against the first amendment. The first one—before the second was a gleam in Alexander Hamilton’s eye. Honestly it’s against everything we stand for as a nation, and everything we’ve ever stood for, from the very first colonists who came here escaping religious persecution (probably should’ve led with that point).

Well what then? How do we fix our problem? There’s got to be something. Perhaps we could learn a lesson from the great historical documentary West Side Story. Other-izing people, using heightened rhetoric and bully tactics all lead to escalation. Escalation leads to violence. Violence begets violence. That’s probably not the direction we want to be going (cough *Donald Trump* cough). What’s that “e” word that means you have the ability to understand and feel emotion from the perspective of another human being? Oh yeah, empathy. Maybe we could take a page from the book of the greatest president in the history of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. Freeing the slaves took empathy. The desire to help fellow mankind. Empathy makes the world a better place. (Side note: Can you imagine if Facebook existed leading up to the Civil War? White southerners would be posting pictures of their dogs and made from scratch biscuits, and if anyone ever posted about how maybe slavery isn’t right, they’d be all like, “I don’t know why she has to get all political on here.”)

There are things we could do now, to help lift up the people in our society who need it the most—starting with education. We could extend free pre-K to poor neighborhoods, pay our teachers more to encourage the best and brightest to go into the field, hire more teachers to have smaller class sizes and more one-on-one interaction. We could and should implement measures to make college and post-secondary education more affordable for everyone. As Malala Yousafzai said, “With guns you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism.” We can increase the minimum wage to a livable one, so that people can have pride in their work and don’t have to “suck on the government’s tit.” We can make sure everyone has access to health care, particularly mental health care (so maybe the crazies won’t shoot us). We can help end systemic racism in the judicial system and elsewhere. We can offer people real rehabilitation during incarceration, instead of the system designed now to make profits. We can help immigrants who have lived here their entire lives and who pay their taxes have a path to legal citizenship. We can gather round a fire, hold hands and sing kumbayah my lord… wait, no. But you get the point. Believe it or not, these empathetic measures—that improve people’s lives—are actually accomplishable. They’re not just something Gwyneth Paltrow cooked up in her pie-in-the-sky perfect-life-world blog. And a happier nation would be a less murder-y one.

Speaking of murder, how did Lincoln die again? Oh yeah, a gunshot wound. I mean a people-wound. I find it interesting that 150 years after Lincoln’s assassination, the majority of minorities do not vote Republican. That’s weird, isn’t it? It’s like something happened between then and now. Well either way, the Republican Party did not even exist, in its current incarnation, at the birth of our nation. If you look at history, the divide between Republicans and Democrats isn’t the problem. It’s always been more about the divide between the haves and the have-nots. And perhaps more so now, it’s the divide between those who care, and those who don’t. I’d like to think no one wants to get dead for no reason. I know I don’t. I’d like to think we can come together to solve our people problem. And according to my social media, that’s the one thing we can all agree agree on—that we have a people problem.* But the thing is—and this is important—people are also the solution.

*(We can probably also agree this video will never not be funny).

The post We Have a People Problem appeared first on AuntMommy.

This morning, whilst driving to summer camp, I thought Caroline and I would have a nice casual conversation. For some reason, I decided to make the topic about siblings. Seemingly innocent. WRONG. It went awry, quickly. Because, as usual, I’m an idiot.

Me: Would you like a little sister or brother someday Caroline? Would you like it if mommy got pregnant?
C: You mean a boy would put his wee wee in you!??
Me: [Why did I start this conversation. Whyyyy.] Oh god, who told you that!? [When I find out the punk kid from school who told her, I’m gonna…]
C: You did!
Me: [Damnit, that’s right, I did! Why did I do that? It must have been back when I was on that honesty kick. Why would I be honest!?] Oh, right. Yeah. Well, no, if I did it, uh, I would have a doctor put baby seeds in my tummy.
C: How would the doctor get the baby seeds?
Me: [Screw being honest, I haven’t had my coffee.] Yeah I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but a baby doctor would know.
C: How would you get the seeds in you… swallow them?
Me: [mumbles] Well only if you care. I mean, no.
C: Huh?
Me: Nothing, nevermind. [whyyyyyyyy did I do this to myself]
C: So how do they get in there?
Me: [Starts speeding to arrive at destination.] Well, uh… the doctor would put them into my tummy where the baby would grow.
C: Yeah, I know that, but how?
Me: [Starts sweating.] Well, the doctor, uh, would put the baby seeds in… through… my vagina. [Why did I say that? Stop being honest right-the-fuck-now!]
C: What does a baby seed look like?
Me: [How can I fucking end this conversation.] Well, you know, mommy doesn’t have too many occasions to see baby seeds. Uh, but, maybe we can google it later. [Nervous laughter, please end now.]
C: So does everyone have a baby doctor put seeds in their baginas?
Me: [Continues speeding to arrive at destination] Uh, no, no, uh–well, no. [Please make no associations, please make no associations] There is another more direct method. [Diversion tactic!] Hey are you excited about camp today!?
C: [Ignores question] So… can I get a baby in my tummy from baby seeds?
Me: [PANIC PANIC PANIC] No, no you cannot. No. The answer is no. Nopety nope nope. [Why in the HELL are we not at summer camp yet…honks horn.] Well, someday you can, when you’re older. Uh, see, your body will change… [Ohmygod STOP TALKING]
C: Wad’ya mean?
Me: [Fuck] Okay, well… [ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DISCUSS MENSTRUATION] It’s when you get your boobies. Like, you know how I have boobies? Well, you need boobies to feed a baby. So that’s when you can, technically speaking. [Phew, this should end it. Good thinkin’.]
C: When will I get my boobies?
Me: Usually around like 11 or 12 years old.
C: So I can have a baby when I’m 12?
Me: [Dear god, what have I done, I have hit every land mine possible] No! Well, I mean, yes, technically, but NO! See, babies are expensive, and they cost a lot of money, and you won’t have a job, and you have to be married first anyway, and, well there’s all kinds of reasons.
C: But you’re not married…
Me: [Whips the car into the summer camp parking lot like an insane bat out of hell] WE’VE ARRIVED. We’ll talk about it later.
C: But…
Me: Later. Love you! Have a good day!

The post Baby Seeds appeared first on AuntMommy.

Dear Target,

I’m really sorry to do this to you. I hate open letters. I really didn’t want to write one, but then I saw this OTHER open letter to you circulating the interwebs from some chick named Mary Martha hating on your restroom policy. You know, the policy in which you state you “welcome transgender team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.” In her letter, Mary Martha states she’s afraid for her daughters’ safety in your stores now, positing that because of your progressive stance on inclusion, everyone is now at risk for sexual assault.

I have little nieces and a nephew myself, so I completely understand the fear regarding rape. It’s scary. It really is. And that is why I too am going to have to boycott you, Target, unless you can promise me that no Catholic priests use the bathroom with little boys. Not all priests are bad, of course, but I don’t really know how you enforce this policy without just keeping them all out. Did you know that over 3,000 priests in the last decade were given disciplinary action for the sexual abuse of boys in the church? And that’s just the ones we KNOW about. I did the math. That’s 60 priests per state, and approximately 2 for every Target in the nation. That’s a lot. Now I know that this abuse happened, by and large, outside of Target bathrooms, but that’s not the point. And to be honest, I don’t know how you fix this one, because over 80% of those cases of abuse were same sex. Little boys. Little boys who use the bathroom with men. Frankly I’ve worked myself into a fit about it, and if you can’t find a way to be less inclusive on this one, I’m going to have to stop buying your products. And I don’t want to get off topic here, but that is a damn shame, because your Archer Farms spicy maple bourbon pickle spears are FIRE good.

Target, I just thought of something! If I let my 5-year-old nephew go to the men’s room in K-Mart, a priest could get him there. I mean it’s unlikely, but you never know. You can’t really be too careful. I guess now I’m going to have to write an open letter to K-Mart too. And Piggly Wiggly. And, well, everywhere. This is gonna take a while.

Wait a second. I just thought of something else. I’ll bet those transgender people were ALREADY going to the bathroom of their choice. I’ll bet it would be even WEIRDER if they didn’t. I mean that doesn’t mean you hafta SAY it’s okay or acknowledge them or their feelings at all. You know, if everyone would have just stayed in the closet and learned to live with their god-given shame, like the Catholics wanted, we wouldn’t have to experience these uncomfortable social growing pains. Oh my god, I just thought of something else. I’m going to miss your Market Pantry peanut butter fudge ice cream. It’s hella delicious.

Okay there’s only one way to solve the problem. I can’t think of any other logical outcome. Clearly we must abolish all public restrooms. No one is safe anywhere. If you go shopping, you strap on an adult diaper. That’s it. It’ll become a thing. Shopping diapers, we’ll call them. It’s not weird if everyone does it, right? I mean, it’s kinda gross. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll do some research to see if it can be avoided.

Crap (no pun intended). I knew I shouldn’t have researched. Now I’m evolving on the issue, and I hate evolving, Target. It hurts my brain. Why didn’t I just stick to my gut reaction instead of researching!? WHY? Now I have thoughts, and statistics, like that lady Mary Martha.

Like for instance, Mary Martha cited research about rape from RAINN.ORG in her letter. That stands for Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. I’ll bet they’re experts on the topic, and they say that “approximately 4/5 of rapes were committed by someone known to the victim.” In fact, the site LITERALLY states, “THE RAPIST ISN’T A MASKED STRANGER.” Mary Martha didn’t mention that statistic though. I think she was going for the fear factor.

I’m not sure why Mary Martha thinks Target’s policy means her daughters will inevitably see a penis. I looked it up. Turns out 100% of women’s restrooms do not have a urinal, meaning everyone tinkles behind a closed door in their own stall.

Even so, just the idea of it is SCARY, isn’t it? I guess the only way to know if this could happen is to see if there is any research to support it. (This didn’t really need its own bullet point, but it sets up the next few nicely.)

States like Hawaii have had gender neutral bathrooms for 10 years already. The State Civil Rights Commission says their non discrimination law “has not resulted in increase[d] sexual assault or rape.”

Cambridge, Massachusetts, has prohibited discrimination since 1997. That’s almost 20 years! According to their police superintendent there are “no incidents” of transgender protections being abused.

Minnesota has prohibited discrimination in public accommodations for EVEN LONGER, since 1993. First of all, I had no idea Minnesota was so progressive. Secondly, according to a Minneapolis police spokesman, sexual assaults stemming from the law were “not even remotely” a problem.

Many more states have had anti-discrimination laws in place for years to protect transgender people, without any incidents or problems directly arising from them. You can find the source for these statistics here.

Mary Martha suggested that 0.85% of the U.S. Population is transgender. Now, she just pulled that figure out of her ass, but since it’s her number let’s go with it. That would be 2,743,477 people. Mary Martha said that’s hardly anybody. Not enough to care about. Seems like a lot to me. I mean, the entire country of Ireland only has 4.5 million people, and probably about the same number of gingers as we do trans people (I just pulled that number out of my ass).

Mary Martha says we shouldn’t inconvenience the many for the good of the few. Let’s put aside for a moment that it would be MORE inconvenient to use shopping diapers for 100% safety in all situations. Doesn’t that argument sound a lot like George Wallace refusing to integrate schools in 1963? It’s not the black people, he said. They’re not bad. But integrating them causes all kinds of other problems. It’s disruptive to the white kids who are just trying to learn. Those poor white children, getting all inconvenienced and shit.

Wait a second, Target, don’t you have something called the family bathroom for anyone who wants to go in with their children? And isn’t that family restroom just one room by itself with a locked door? I just remembered! This solves everything! Someone tell Mary Martha.

I ran across some really alarming statistics about transgender suicide rates. Did you know the prevalence of suicide attempts among respondents to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS) is 41 percent? By comparison the overall U.S. Population who report a lifetime suicide attempt is only 4.6!!! That’s sad, Target. It seems like the trans community might feel… I don’t know… not wanted or something.

Speaking of which, 57% of trans people have families who have shunned them. 50 – 54% have been bullied at school. 60% have had a doctor refuse to treat them. This next statistic is interesting, since Mary Martha was talking about sexual assault. 64-65% of gender non-conforming people suffered physical or sexual violence at work. 63-78% suffered physical or sexual violence at school. And 69% have experienced homelessness. Target, I’m starting to feel things and I DON’T LIKE IT.

You know, the more I sit here and think, the more I realize you can’t really control everything that goes on in your stores, Target. Not even priests, although I still find them kind of sketchy. But what you CAN do is promote change that will help a group of very disenfranchised people. What you CAN do is get rid of discrimination where you see it. What you CAN do is ignore protesters with their boogeyman tactics. Since all the data points to the fact that these laws and policies have never brought harm to anyone, what’s the big deal? I can’t help but think it’s a red herring, Target. A distraction from the truth.

One thing is for sure. I do NOT want to miss getting my Starbucks on while shopping for home decor items I don’t really need. It’s my fave. And Target, now that we’ve settled all this, I’ll be peeing in you soon. That didn’t come across right. I know you know what I mean. And I gotta say, I am more than a little relieved not to worry about shopping diapers.

Sincerely,

Christa

The post An Open Letter to Target appeared first on AuntMommy.

“It doesn’t matter that you’re gay,” the social worker said. “It matters that you are a liar. And if you’ll lie about this, what else will you lie about?”

Anyone who follows my blog or Facebook page knows I’m a gay woman raising my niece as my own child, that she calls me mommy but knows she didn’t come out of my tummy, and that I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to parenting, but I know more than I should about how to break into my own house. I’ve watched the topic of gay rights become very popular in my newsfeed over the last year or two, as the laws have finally been catching up with our society’s general views on civil liberties. Obviously the legalization of same-sex marriage last year by SCOTUS was a huge domino to fall, and then just a couple weeks ago it finally became legal in all fifty states for same sex couples to adopt a child jointly. Advocates with the HRC and other equality groups have continued doing the work necessary to topple the remaining dominoes, and there are still several. For instance, only a handful of states explicitly protect the rights of gay people who want to be foster parents, which is essentially what I’ve been doing with my niece for the last five years. Most states do not protect people like me from discrimination in housing or employment. And of course, states like North Carolina and Georgia recently introduced backlash legislation aiming to discriminate under the guise of protecting religious freedom. I looked that one up. Turns out religious freedom was already protected under the first amendment, so I bet they feel pretty ridiculous.

Ridiculous as it is, the pendulum is often difficult to bring to an abrupt stop. Apparently other states are following suit with these religious freedom / gay discrimination bills, my own state of Missouri included. It is a skillful way to distract from an ugly truth, like voter ID laws that profess to protect against fraud while in reality serving up 21st century racism. It’s subterfuge. It’s Orwellian doublespeak that points in one direction while going in another. It’s a shame that it works, and I have a story about how this very tactic was used against me while I spent six months trying to get custody of my niece Caroline out of “stranger” foster care. I tell the story now for two reasons. One is because I believe it to be ultimately relevant as LGBTQ rights are currently being debated on the national scene, and the battle of hearts and minds is just as important—if not more so—than the battle in the courtrooms. And secondly, and perhaps most importantly, I’m fishing for Oprah to find this and make a Lifetime-type movie out of it.

The story begins in August of 2010, when Caroline was just shy of eleven months old. For reasons I will not at this time disclose, she was removed from her residence and placed in emergency protective custody. This happened in the small town of Russellville, Kentucky, which—with 7000 residents—is the largest municipality in all of Logan County. It is a place out of a Cormac McCarthy novel, firmly rooted in the bible belt, where everyone knows everyone else, and where the high number of churches per capita belies a seedy underside rooted in drug trafficking. I lived about five hours away in St. Louis at the time, and still do. In order to get custody I spent several thousand dollars to hire a local attorney and traveled to Kentucky five times over the course of six months to appear in front of a judge. I won’t go into all of the reasons the process was cumbersome and took entirely too long, but I do want to focus on a few.

Firstly, even though I was a family member—a blood relative—to the child, I had to jump through several hoops because I was out of state. Normally, in-state at least, placement can be made with a suitable family member almost immediately. I kept asking the Logan County social workers involved in the case why I had to wait six months when relative placement often occurs within hours of an incident, and the only answer I ever got was, “that’s just how it is.” I understood there was a certain amount of paperwork that had to slog its way through a bureaucratic machine, but 180 days? Noah loaded the ark with every kind of animal on the planet in just seven, but the social workers did not appreciate this point.

In the meantime I buckled down and began jumping through the hoops in my path. Hoops that, apparently, would not have been required at all had I lived about two hours closer. I was fingerprinted and run through an FBI background check, I submitted a physical exam including an STD check, I stockpiled food and water that would last for weeks, I equipped my apartment with more smoke and carbon monoxide alarms than it already had, I bought a fire extinguisher for the kitchen, I assembled a first aid kit and bought a portable radio and batteries, I posted a list of emergency numbers and an evacuation plan for my apartment (this requirement really made me laugh as you could see both the front and rear door simultaneously from just about anywhere in the place, and I kept imagining a baby trying to read the diagram), I made a nursery room out of my office, I filled out an extensive application and wrote pages and pages of short answer essay questions about myself, I passed a required class, and finally, I had multiple home visits from a local St. Louis social worker who interviewed me. These were all absolute requirements, and as I jumped through each hoop, I couldn’t help but think that a hooker and a meth head with a rabies-infested pet baboon could pop out a baby and take it home without so much as a question. I also couldn’t help but think of my niece, whose personality was in a critical developmental period that needed stability, but who was being shuffled around from person to person, and who celebrated her first birthday and second Christmas with strangers. I was determined to get her.

“I’m not supposed to tell you this,” she leaned in to say quietly…

Somewhere in the middle of all this I had my first home visit from the St. Louis social worker assigned to me, who has since retired, and who shall remain anonymous. For the purposes of this article I shall refer to her as Pamnesia, or Pam for short. Pamnesia was a little old lady with a timid voice, and when I met her she said, “I had the hardest time finding this place.” She proceeded to unpack her bags and spread out her materials on my dining room table. “I’m not supposed to tell you this,” she leaned in to say quietly, “but I have to write everything down because I have a short-term memory disorder.” She then told me about the car accident in her twenties that led to her inability to retain new memories, but somehow allowed her to keep all the memories she had made up to that point. She also said she often forgot the meanings of words. “You have got to be kidding me,” I thought, just nodding my head pleasantly and listening to her tell me again that she shouldn’t really be saying any of this. She walked me through the general process of becoming a foster parent and said she’d be back soon for a follow-up.

When the next follow-up came Pamnesia arrived late, and as I opened the front door she shook her head and said, “I had the hardest time finding this place.” She proceeded to unpack her bags and spread out her materials on my dining room table. “I’m not supposed to tell you this,” she leaned in to say quietly, “but I have to write everything down because I have a short-term memory disorder.” For the next half hour, as she explained to me about her accident, I lived the real-life version of the movie Groundhog Day. “I really shouldn’t be telling you this,” she said again. This happened to me four times. If I’d had to sit with Pamnesia again, I was going to suggest she start tattooing her body with things she wanted to remember, like that guy from Memento.

Now all of this is relevant—very relevant—to my story. See, Pamnesia’s job was to write up a full report on me. But, given her condition, this was difficult for her to do. So she gave me a list of questions, and asked me to write down a paragraph for each one so she could create her report based on my answers. She basically wanted to cheat on her homework, and to be honest, I was just fine with this. In fact, it was ideal. I was also supposed to attend meetings, like a sort of foster-parenting class, but she said if I just studied a binder of information she gave me and answered the questions at the end, like a test, I wouldn’t have to physically appear for the meetings. Once again, although I wondered how Pam retained her job, I was happy to comply.

Some of the questions on the paperwork made me uncomfortable. One question asked me about my religious upbringing, and what my current religious practices included. I didn’t see this as relevant for anyone wanting to take in foster children, much less me taking in a family member. But I answered as honestly as I could by saying that although I did not currently attend any church, I was raised in a Christian household, was baptized, and still held strongly to many of the core teachings of Christianity, such as the Golden Rule. All of that was, and is, true. I wondered what if I was an orthodox Jew or a Muslim or worshipped the flying spaghetti monster or any other thing that’s not exactly mainstream America. Would it matter? Why was this question being asked?

No really though, why was this question being asked?

There was another multi-part question that directly asked me what my sexual orientation was. I strongly objected, answered the other parts of the question and ignored the part about whether or not I was attracted to men or women. You have to remember, in 2010, “don’t ask don’t tell” was the law of the land, same-sex marriage was illegal in most states, Anderson Cooper was still in the closet, there was no Caitlyn Jenner, and polling numbers showed a majority of Americans had not yet come around to the idea of equal rights. There has been an incredibly fast paradigm shift on the issues related to LBGTQ people, and I feel privileged to be watching it. But way back in the 1990’s, when I first realized I was different from most other girls, I knew immediately to keep it quiet. To tell no one. Because back then, the first thing you learned if you were gay (particularly in rural Kentucky), was to have a sense of shame about it. And that unease I had about telling people—especially in positions of authority—still hung around in 2010. At any rate, I thought the questions were weird and unrelated to my ability to take care of a child in need, who otherwise would be falling through the cracks.

The third time I sat down at my dining room table with Pamnesia, I patiently let her explain that—although she shouldn’t be telling me this—she had a memory disorder. “You’re kidding,” I said, trying my best to act surprised. I presented her with my answers and let her go over them.

“You didn’t answer about your sexuality,” she said.

“I didn’t think it was relevant,” I responded.

“Well, I need to write down something,” she said.

“Can you explain how it’s relevant?” I asked.

“I have to put something. I can’t leave it blank.”

I sighed. “But why?”

Pamnesia thought for a moment. “That’s just how it is,” she said, unable to come up with anything else.

That’s just how it is.

I imagined myself in black and white, sitting across from Senator McCarthy in the 1950’s as he demanded, “Have you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” I shifted uncomfortably and did the only thing I could think of. I “Bill Clinton’ed” the hell out of the situation. Which is to say, I answered the question without answering the question. I didn’t go so far as to echo his famous statement, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” But I equivocated without actually lying. At no point did I say “I am a homosexual” or “I am a heterosexual.” Finally, Pam seemed tired of listening to me dodge the issue, and it was dropped. I thought no more about it until a couple days before the final court hearing in February 2011.

I called the Kentucky social worker in charge of Caroline’s case—who I shall refer to as Dolores Umbridge—to touch base and make sure I had the correct date and time. During the course of this conversation, Dolores intimated that it didn’t matter anyway, that I wouldn’t get my niece, and that they had found out the truth about me. I searched my brain for what in the world they could possibly have found out. Did I have unpaid parking tickets I didn’t know about? Oh my god, had they found out I illegally downloaded Twilight last year? What could it be?

“We know you’re gay,” she said. “And an atheist.”

“What?” I almost choked. I couldn’t believe it. “First of all, I don’t even know where you got that information. Second of all, what does that have to do with anything?”

“We found you online,” she said, smugly self-satisfied. “And we saw pictures of your tattoo.”

Allow me to pause for a moment and explain that I do indeed have a somewhat telling tattoo of a gay robot on my lower leg. I suppose, since the robot sports a rainbow “gay-o-meter” in the middle of its chest which is turned all the way to “gay,” it’s pretty “incriminating.” But here’s where the subterfuge entered.

“It doesn’t matter that you’re gay,” she said. “It matters that you are a liar. And if you’ll lie about this, what else will you lie about?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “I haven’t lied.”

“We’ll see about that,” she said. “We’ve got the report from your social worker in St. Louis.”

“I’d like to see the report,” I said. “I haven’t seen it so I can’t defend myself.”

“You’ll see it on Thursday,” she replied.

Dolores Umbridge had never liked me. Neither had her colleagues. Neither had the guardian ad litem, who—interestingly enough—was a closeted homosexual. Everyone in the town knew he loved Broadway Musicals a little too much, but, like Michele Bachmann’s husband, he vehemently denied it. And for good reason. Men, especially of his generation, especially in the south, simply did not admit to it, much less act on it publicly. To all these people I was a big-city liberal outsider. They did not like me because I did not reflect their “values.” I didn’t look and act and talk like them. But they didn’t want to say that, so they attacked my character instead. They flipped the script and said I was a liar.

I immediately got off the phone with Dolores and called the Missouri Children’s Division, asked to speak to the supervisor, and demanded the report be faxed to my office. Unsurprisingly, the report in question was a reprint of everything I had written down for Pamnesia. Verbatim. To the letter. Except one noticeable difference—one sentence I had never uttered or written that said simply, “Ms. Osborne describes herself as a heterosexual.” The rest of the report was comprised of my words, not Pam’s.

So Wednesday night, as I had done several times before, I packed up my bags and drove to Kentucky. I slept on a friend’s couch and went to court early in the morning, a general sense of dread hanging over me.

“It doesn’t look good,” my attorney said. “They’ve assembled a whole case against you this thick,” he placed his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. The Logan County Office of Protection and Permanency had latched onto that one sentence. It could have just been ignored. It SHOULD have just been ignored. But they didn’t want to ignore it. They wanted to use it to drag my name through the mud, to attack my character, to call me a liar, and to extrapolate that I must be a bad person with a degenerate moral code who couldn’t take care of my niece because I couldn’t be trusted.

“It doesn’t look good,” my attorney said. “They’ve assembled a whole case against you this thick.”

Luckily I had made copies of every important piece of paper that came across my desk throughout the process of trying to get custody, including the questions Pamnesia gave me, with the answers in my own handwriting. A simple side-by-side comparison of my hand-written answers with her typed-up report showed I had not lied, that Pam had added that sentence, for whatever reason. My guess is she forgot to get a real answer from me during the interview, then she forgot she forgot until the last minute and added it in thinking it was harmless to do so. Maybe she had second thoughts about adding it, but then she forgot about them. Much as it pained me, I was completely prepared to throw Pamnesia under the bus. There was literally no one else’s story to go on, because Pam didn’t remember nothin’. And she’d tell you that too, although she’d be the first one to say she really shouldn’t.

My heart never beat so hard in my chest as that morning of February 24th, 2011, at the table with my attorney, waiting for the judge to hear our arguments. I glanced over at Dolores Umbridge, across the courtroom, waiting to pounce on me with her report. She looked like just eaten another social worker for breakfast. My attorney had asked for all the other cases to go before us and for all non-essential people to clear the court room because of the sensitive nature of the accusations against me. I waited as multiple copies of the two reports—Dolores’ and Pam’s—were distributed to everyone. The judge read in silence.

Everything in my life for the last six months came down to that moment, but more importantly, the future of a beautiful child did too. These people wielded such power. Obviously, I got Caroline that day. But it was a shock to everyone. It was a shock to me, the social workers, my attorney, pretty much everyone. I got lucky. Although Dolores tried to make her case that she found me to be an unfit placement (not because I was gay, but because I was a liar about being gay), the judge did not listen to it. The judge saw through the tactic. The rest is history, and Caroline has lived with me for five years now. Five of the happiest and hair-pullingest years of my life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. We go together like peas and carrots.

Today as I write this, Kentucky court clerk Kim Davis still refuses to put her name on marriage licenses in Rowan County, not that far away from where Caroline was born. One of the two major political parties in the United States still refuses to see gay rights as an equality issue. States like North Carolina and Mississippi have succeeded in passing what is basically anti-gay legislation. Supporters of these “religious freedom” laws point their fingers at people like me, calling US the bigots for trying to stop their freedom to deny people services. They’re flipping the script. It’s nothing new. It’s Orwell. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” But we’re in the middle of a tide change, and that tide can’t be stopped. Like women’s rights and the rights of black people, the rights of LGBTQ citizens will eventually be completely protected under the law. On paper anyway. Just as racism and sexism still exist, there will still be millions of Americans who don’t think I should be able to get married. Maybe who don’t even think I should raise a child. But I’m out to prove them wrong—well about the raising a kid part, I haven’t found anyone who wants to try marriage with me yet.

As the great Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” That’s such a perfect quote, but what makes it true is that people don’t stay quiet. They don’t sit down. They ask questions. They challenge the status quo. They don’t accept “that’s just the way it is.” They speak truth to power. That’s why I’m telling my story. Well, that—and I hope Oprah finds it. Mostly I hope Oprah finds it.

The post I’m a Godless Gay Liar, or The Story of How I Got Caroline appeared first on AuntMommy.

I am a fraud. I have purposefully lied to my five-year old on numerous occasions, and have upheld those lies in a complex web of deceit bordering on conspiracy. I lie to her daily, in fact. Naturally I employ the usual falsehoods necessitated by modern single parenthood in order to manipulate and control the youth—we can’t go to the toy store (in the middle of the day) because it’s closed…if you don’t come here right now I’m leaving without you…if you lie to me your nose will get longer. I have further upheld cultural norms and misled her into believing in the existence of a jolly bearded man who lives at the North Pole and whose life mission is to fly around the earth once annually delivering gifts to all the children of the world. I have occasionally been caught in these lies, such as when I told her how lucky she was to receive said holiday presents, mistakenly letting it slip that some children in poverty are not so fortunate. “Why won’t Santa visit poor kids?” she asked innocently. I thought carefully about my response, realizing the entire fabrication was at stake should I reveal information contradictory to the contrived paradigm. “Um, nevermind,” I said uncomfortably. “Look, shiny things.” I’m used to constructing paradigms, whether it’s a popular one about an elf or a completely unnecessary one in which America has more princesses than the entirety of Europe, all of whom happen to reside in Orlando. But there’s one in particular I have scaffolded, that most parents never will.

Like most parents, I stay awake some nights worrying about the child I’m raising. Like most parents I worry about making ends meet and whether I’m making the right decisions. I worry about her welfare and my sanity. But unlike most parents, the child I’m raising is not my own. I did not give birth to her. I have not legally adopted her. She is a five-year-old ward of the state. It’s hard for me to look into her beautiful baby blue eyes and see her as a statistic, but she is. So am I for that matter. And the biggest paradigm I’ve ever created involves the nature of our relationship with one another. It is a relationship in which she calls me mommy and assumes she came out of my tummy. It is a relationship in which she thinks her father, whom she’s never really met, and I were involved romantically at some point in order to conceive her. But that’s further from reality than a Justin Beiber ad campaign.

The chances were always pretty slim that I’d be conceiving a child, much less in the traditional way. I’m gay and only ever flirted with the idea of going all Kirstie Alley in Look Who’s Talking—you know, the movie that revived John Travolta’s career long before Pulp Fiction, in which Kirstie Alley’s character is artificially inseminated through a sperm bank. Oh wait, she wasn’t inseminated, she just told everyone she was. Well, whatever, I didn’t really flirt with that idea anyway, so much as I kind of shyly glanced sideways at it once. I was young and only five feet tall, and would have looked an awful lot like a pregnant choir boy. I decided I didn’t want to spend time explaining to confused people that I had a vagina.

When I was 33 years old, my then seventeen-month old niece from Kentucky came to live with me, and instead of becoming Kirstie Alley I became Diane Keaton from Baby Boom, except without Sam Elliott and a million dollar baby food idea. Caroline and I experienced our first paradigm shift with one another—in her case, it mainly involved a different crib, and in mine it began a 17-year countdown to freedom. After the first week Caroline spent in nursery school, the lady who cared for her asked permission to refer to me as her mommy. All the other kids had mommies. It was a natural thing for Caroline—then learning to speak—to want to say mommy. I hadn’t thought about what I might be called. “Sure,” I said, “I guess.” Even though I hadn’t considered it, naturally it would be comforting for her to be like everyone else. There is contentment in sameness. Not like Borg sameness, that’s just creepy. But fitting in does feel good. It was weird to hear myself called mommy, at first, but now I can’t imagine Caroline calling me anything else. Well, she calls me that and sometimes poophead. I’m used to both.

On February 24th, Caroline will have lived with me for four years. I have done most of it on my own, with occasional help from friends. I have no co-parent. There are no grandparents close by. I have sculpted my life around caring for her. I learned to change diapers and install car seats and how to rock a baby to sleep. I traded a social life revolving around a bar to one revolving around playdates. I bought a house based solely on the school district it was in. I even got a cat when Caroline was two, so we could have a family pet. She named him Gus after the mouse in Cinderella. These last four years I’ve learned a lot about myself. I learned how long I can hear the Barney theme song before I snap, how long I can go without a shower before I snap, how many times my head can be bounced on at six o’clock in the morning before I snap. Basically I learned my snapping thresholds. But I have also learned how much it’s possible to love another person, that it’s possible to be so full of love that it hurts, and that I would give my life without question to protect hers.

You know how they say no one can know for sure if the purple you see is the same as the purple anyone else sees? That it’s entirely subjective and therefore impossible to measure. When Caroline was three and I’d ask her a question she didn’t know the answer to, she would always respond with, “I can’t know” instead of “I don’t know.” Besides being cute as hell, it always struck me as strangely profound, that there are some things in life—like an individual’s interpretation of the color purple or who will win the world series next year or what they’re saying on Honey Boo Boo when there aren’t any subtitles—that can’t be known. I used to wonder occasionally if I feel the same way toward Caroline that any other mother feels toward a biological child. I don’t wonder anymore, because comparison is the thief of joy, and also because I have decided that my purple is the same as anyone else’s purple. Maybe it’s even purplier. I love her beyond words.

It is my love for her that has prompted me to construct and maintain the elaborate paradigm I find myself in. For all intents and purposes, I am her mother. I bathe her and feed her and tuck her in and hold her when she cries. But this paradigm, like most childhood paradigms, will have to shift at some future point. There will be a day when she asks about being in my tummy that I will no longer be able to respond by pointing to some stickers. I’m not sure why I don’t do it now other than my own desire to take the least resisted path, like a drop of water running down a stone. There’s plenty of time, I say. Wait till she has a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the world, I say. There is a desire, a selfish one on my part, to maintain a bubble of innocence for as long as possible. But there will be a day when I will have to sit her down and look into her baby blue eyes and explain to her that I’m the same person I’ve always been, and that labels won’t change that. That we love each other and everything else is just minor details. It will be the day I come out to her. I have some experience with coming out, and if it’s anything like my first time, I know I’ll cry. As for her response—well I guess that’s something I can’t know. Hopefully she doesn’t think I’m a fraud. Maybe she’ll just start calling me poophead with more regularity, instead of mom. I’m used to both.

The post Are You My Mother? appeared first on AuntMommy.

 
 
 
I wasn’t the likeliest of parents. I’m gay, was never married, have never been pregnant, and up until my mid-thirties had only wondered what it might be like to be a mom. But my life changed forever when a district court awarded me full custody of my 17-month-old niece. Instead of bringing home a baby from the hospital, I brought home a toddler from social services. With all the people in the world trying to get pregnant who can’t, I suppose it’s ironic I ended up getting a baby—me, a single tomboyish lesbian with no intention of child-rearing. Over the last four years, I’ve noticed hundreds of ironies about parenting in general, not just my particular situation. Here are a dozen.

1. You are constantly cleaning. Nothing is ever clean. Unless you have a maid or are on amphetamines, there is one thing completely out of reach to you from now on: for all rooms in your house to be clean all at the same time. You may get the upstairs. You may get the downstairs. You may get the bathroom, or the kitchen, or the laundry. But you’ll never have it all done at the same time. Unless meth.

2. Your bedtime is far earlier than it ever was before in life. You are always tired. I remember the college days, when staying up till 2 was the norm. Now I couldn’t get past 9 if red bull and strippers were involved. And yet still, I’m exhausted on a daily basis.

3. The thing which required sex to make (baby) results in you never having sex again. Although I didn’t make a baby within a gender normative relationship, this one still affects me. Of course I’m exaggerating—only slightly. In my case, it might be better stated this way: the thing which would be ideal to raise with two parents makes it impossible to find second parent.

4. You spend more time on personal care than you ever have in your life, but look and feel your worst. That’s because 99% of time spent grooming is on the kid, leaving 1% for the cat. Hours and hours spent bathing her, feeding her, brushing her… and then there’s the child. I used to look like 1990’s Janine Turner, and now I look like 1980’s Jason Bateman (photo evidence to follow). The irony for others here is that—at least presumably—they had to have some sort of sex appeal to attract someone to make a baby with them in the first place. And now it’s gone, just like number 3.

5. You make more money than you ever have in your life, but your piggy bank has never been emptier. Kids are expensive. In the last four years I have spent approximately $45,000 on Caroline’s school tuition. I’m considering demanding a bachelor’s degree when she graduates pre-K.

6. You successfully manage other people all day long, but can’t manage the tiny one at home. Or (in my case) you spent years on your higher education, graduating at the top of your class, but act like a slobbering moron to get the child to do what you want (which doesn’t even work half the time). The other day, in order to get Caroline to eat, I pretended to be the grean beans. “No, don’t eat me!” I pleaded, wiggling around one of the beans. “Please don’t turn me into poop. Anything but that. Just don’t eat me and turn me into poop! I don’t want to be poooooop!!!” It worked. Because poop is funny. Either I’m smarter than the kid, or dumber. I haven’t figured out which yet.

7. You force family fun situations. No one has fun. I took Caroline to Disney World several months ago and noticed this one everywhere. Parents dragging teary-eyed children through It’s a Small World or onto the Flying Dumbo ride or waiting four hours in line to see princesses. Four. Miserable. Hours. It was hot, the days were long, the kids were out of their routines, temper-tantrums abounded. I’ve noticed the same thing getting pictures with Santa. But we do it every year, maybe because our folks did it with us. “You will have fun dammit!” we say.

8. You always told yourself you’d never become your parents. When your child is old enough to be defiant, the first thing out of your mouth is something your mother would say. It’s ironic in the first place that you get a child as difficult as you were. But for you to turn into your mother on top of it is just salt in a wound. I have actually said to Caroline, “I’ll give you something to cry about!” I don’t even know why I said it, because I certainly didn’t mean it the same way my mother did, right before she’d reach into her purse for the dreaded plastic spatula she’d use to smack at me and my brothers as she chased us around in public places. But I said it. It came right out of my mouth. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Even if you’re determined not to make all the mistakes your parents did, don’t worry, you’ll make all new ones. Because irony.

9. You are constantly on your kid about listening to you, but tune them out all the time. I don’t know how many times I’ve lectured Caroline or ended up yelling at her because— She. Does. Not. Listen. To. My. Words. The flip side is I also don’t know how many times I’ve been trying to have a conversation with someone while she’s tugging at my shirt saying “mommy” over and over, and— It. Doesn’t. Even. Register. The day I realized we mutually don’t listen to each other was a total Keanu Reeves “Whoa” moment for me.

10. The child looks to you as a pillar of strength, assurance and safety. But life is just as scary for you as it is for her. You’re not afraid of the dark or the creepy looking Easter Bunny costume worn by some guy down at the VFW. Actually, scratch that, the bunny costume is emotionally scarring for anyone (click here). But you are truly frightened when you hold your sick child and her temperature reaches 103 degrees and you don’t know what to do. Or when you think about how you’d put food on the table for her if you get injured or lose your job. Or when you worry about all the things that can happen to her when she goes out into the world, or when you wonder if you’re royally screwing up the whole raising-her-thing. You rock her gently and tell her everything is okay and there’s nothing to be afraid of, and you wish there was someone to comfort you in the same way. But there’s not.

11. You are never alone and still feel lonelier than you ever have in your life. I’m never alone. Never. I’m not alone for my morning pee. I’m not alone during the day at work. I can’t cook dinner without tripping over a 5-year-old full of questions I can’t answer (another irony). But, at least at times, I’ve never felt lonelier in my life. I’m a working single parent, but I know SAHM’s must feel the same way. I have cried myself to sleep wondering if I’ll ever be in bed next to another person again (who doesn’t have a diaper on, and I don’t mean when I’m 80). But unlike many SAHM’s, at least I get to interact with adults during the day. Being with children for long periods of time is lonely.

12. You constantly wish you could have “me” time. But when you get it you either miss your kid or feel guilty over wishing for their absence, or both. This one is ironic considering number 11. The times I feel the loneliest, I just want to be alone. The times I can’t do it anymore. The times I break, and there have been many. The only “me” time I get naturally built into my day is on my commute, in the morning after I’ve dropped off the child but before I get to work. Those are ten glorious minutes, and sometimes they are my favorite minutes of the day. But when someone takes the child off my hands for a longer period, I often spend my “me” time missing her or feeling guilty. Dammit all, what the hell is that? Or sometimes before bedtime I’ll be thinking how much I can’t wait to be away from her, but then when she falls asleep I stare at her thinking how amazing she is. This literally makes me feel bi-polar. Like, I’m pretty sure parenting has made me bi-polar.

13. You have a child to save your crumbling marriage. Baby turns out to be opposite of marriage glue. Okay I said I’d only have a dozen. But then I thought of this one, so now it’s a baker’s dozen. Obviously I’ve never experienced this personally, but I’ve watched plenty of you crazy straight people do it. Babies are often called bundles of joy. They are, in fact, bundles of screaming diarrhea. Because irony. It’s a head-scratcher why that wouldn’t save a troubled marriage.

Being a parent is hands-down the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. It’s soul-crushing, sobbing-on-the-floor hard sometimes. And perhaps the biggest irony of all is that I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Even with the constant exhaustion, the gray hair, the stress, the worry, all of it—I wouldn’t trade it, even though I never planned it. I may daydream about my previous life, but I’d still take the one that makes me feel bi-polar. Seriously, though, what the hell is that? That is beyond irony. It’s madness. No, it’s beyond madness. It’s motherhood.

Me Before Child:

Me After Child:

Me Projected 5 Years:

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