05: Are You My Llama: Creating a blended family after divorce

Lauren always knew she wanted a family. The way she imagined it, she’d meet a great guy, get married, and have babies. But when she finally met Dan in her late 30s, that’s not how it happened. Dan was a divorced dad with two small kids, so their family became a blended one. Lauren’s transition from Lauren to Mama (aka Llama), led her on a journey to grieve her single life, learn her new role as a bonus parent and grapple with her least favorite word: step-mother. Along the way she gained more love than she ever imagined was possible. 

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Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.

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Julia: In May 2019, Lauren hosted her last birthday party for herself at her San Francisco apartment. She was 36 at the time, and was about to leave the city to move three hours away, near Lake Tahoe. This party was a chance to say goodbye to her friends...the city...and also to the apartment. 

Lauren: That was my home. I made it my home. It had my artwork up in it. It had furniture I had gotten second hand and I just loved it so much. And while I was very excited to move into this new beautiful house, I really had to say goodbye to 90 Castro. 

Julia: Lauren moved in in her late 20s, when she first came to California. She lived in that apartment for 8 years, evolving and changing into the person who was now ready to move to Lake Tahoe. 

Lauren: I invited people over people that were meaningful, um, parts of that journey, and it was really beautiful to have the energy and to have the people and to say goodbye to 90 Castro, as that was the end of that chapter

Julia: Lauren's party was about more than this apartment. 

Her move was about more than a new city and a new house. 

Lauren's party marked the end of her single, child-free life.

The reason she was moving to Tahoe was to move in with Dan, the man she would eventually marry. And Lauren was SO excited about that! 

But... Dan was divorced with two small kids. So moving in with him meant she was stepping into a new role in someone else's family.

In the four years since Lauren said goodbye to her apartment and started her life with Dan, the two of them have done what forty percent of all married couples in America do: they created a blended family. 

These days, Lauren and Dan are married. They raise Dan's two kids half of the time. And they've had a child of their own. Their blended family is full of love, and naturally, there are also challenges. Some of their challenges are unique, and some come from the sheer fact of being a blended family - a new family unit that has formed in the wake of another family unit falling apart. So co parenting, raising children with different parents and stepping into the role of step-parent is nuanced.

I'm Julia Winston, and this is Refamulating, a podcast that explores different ways to make a family. Today, Lauren and Dan walk us through some of the nuances that come with a blended family. 

Which starts, of course, with their love story. 

Lauren grew up in North Carolina, where her family all lived in the same town. Most of the women she knew got married and had kids. So as she became an adult, she too imagined having a family of her own. But after a big heartbreak in her mid-20s, she took a break from dating. Instead, she traveled abroad to Ecuador, Columbia and Israel for most of her 20s and focused on short lived flings.

Lauren: I came back to the United States and my siblings had kids and a lot of the women I grew up with were married and having families and all of a sudden I think I felt behind. That I really wanted a family. I wanted a partner and family and dating became something else after that. Became another job.

Julia: Oy. I know that feeling of being single and feeling behind. I know it well. Anyone else know that feeling? (sigh) Anyway, dating started feeling like a job for Lauren because she was serious about meeting people. She told her friends to set her up. She used dating apps. Some weeks, she went on multiple first dates. And while some of these dates turned into relationships, none of them felt serious enough for marriage or kids.

Lauren: This was kind of in my early thirties and I would have boyfriends for about a year And then often it was mutual where we'd be like, this is it. This is great. You're great. But this isn't how I see my future. Even though I often knew, well, that's not the right person for me. There was still sadness for me becaus e I felt like this family oriented person without a family. I felt behind, like everyone was partnering, having families, and I was measuring myself against this really traditional measuring stick, which I had never previously done. And when I use that measuring stick, I was falling short. 

Julia: Those damn measuring sticks can really feel like they’re beating you into the ground, right? It's so hard to feel like you’re not measuring up, whether it’s about being single or some other fundamental part of your life. You can't force a husband and kids upon yourself...you have to be patient! (God! Patience! Oof! Such a tough one). So for much of Lauren's dating life, she was also working on accepting her life as it was. Her therapist at the time pointed this out... 

Lauren: And I remember she asked me, let's say you never meet a partner and never have kids. What are five things you need in your life to be happy? And I don't remember exactly what I said, but I probably mentioned a career I love, hobbies that excite me, a great community of friends, strong relationship with my family, exciting travel adventures, things like that. And I focused on those things.

I think people would say I was really good at like putting myself out there, letting people know they could set me up and sometimes going the extra mile to meet someone. But in the meantime, I did eventually have to let go of that measuring stick and say, you know what I'm doing pretty good. Like I don't need that traditional measuring stick where I'm gonna be falling short.  Let me use this alternative measuring stick and a sense that I could feel really good about myself And where I was at in life. 

Julia: While Lauren navigated this tension of...how did she phrase it? "being a family oriented person without a family"....Dan was 200 miles away navigating the opposite situation. He was married with kids. 

Dan: I guess I always grew up with, um, this very traditional ideology, as of get out of high school, go to college, find a partner, have kids, build a life together. Very, very kind of traditional. Um, image of that's just what you did.

Julia: Dan grew up with this traditional ideology about family, but his family wasn’t traditional. He grew up a child of divorce, and the situation was…complicated. 

His dad and stepmom had majority custody, and he saw his mom about once a month. There was a lot of tension amongst the adults, and Dan felt that as a kid.

But since he lived with his dad and stepmom most of the time, he subscribed to their traditional views of family. So when he was in his mid-20s and moved to the Lake Tahoe area, he met a girl, and got married.

Dan: I did fall in love for sure. Um, but I think I was also very stubborn at the time. And just, uh, determined to make a relationship work. I think our relationship was fine. I didn't really know or have a whole lot to compare it to. It was really my only long term relationship I had ever been in. Um, I didn't know that much about being a partner and what that looks like, and I was just learning in my, my early thirties what it means to be a father, a partner, uh, and kind of all those things. And fast forward, uh, I was together with my ex for, I think, twelve or thirteen years, and we were married for eight. Eight and a half years, and there was a lot of, uh, inter family stress and friction between her and my parents. Um, and that is not the only reason that we, uh, split up, but definitely that was a major cause of stress for us in our relationship.

Julia: Dan and his wife got divorced, for reasons that frankly aren't our business. And just FYI, we didn't interview Dan's ex-wife, because we’re focusing on Dan and Lauren’s experience of creating a blended family. So you won’t hear from her in this episode, but we want to acknowledge that her role in this family is important.

When Dan got divorced, it forced him to really think about relationships and whether he'd want to be married again.

Dan: Going through my divorce, I feel like is when I really started to do the soul searching and the personal work and the exploration and explore what is it to be happy and what is a relationship, what should it look like. And discovered Brene Brown who really kind of changed who I was as a person and went from being a very private person who always had a smile on and everything was fine to being a very, very vulnerable and open person and kind of wearing my emotions on my sleeve and walking into situations and And sharing marbles, as Brene Brown would say.

Julia: What does it mean to share marbles?

Dan: She has this term called marble jar friends. And basically, when you share stories with somebody, You are sharing your marbles, and in return, people will share their stories with you and share their marbles. And over time, you have these jars with your friends names on them, and they have all their marbles in them. And it's the people, really, who had collected the most jars with the most marbles and built the most relationship, meaningful relationships, real relationships. Um, those are the folks who were really the happiest and, and the healthiest later in life. 

In reading Brene Brown and understanding that it really revolves around shame. And, and having internal shame and not wanting to share that stuff because you're ashamed of it. I remember going on a trip with, uh, a ski trip with a half a dozen of my closest friends. And we were in Canada for two weeks together. And we get home and, uh, Two weeks later, I moved out from my ex wife and I, I was at a bar with a bunch of friends, you know, later, just a day or two later, and I told them that we were splitting up and I had moved out, and they were shocked that we had just spent two weeks together in the mountains, and I did not say one peep about, um, kind of the situation of my relationship, and, and these are friends who, you know, I'd known for, since I'd moved to Tahoe for, for, A dozen plus years.

And that's when it kind of struck me that living a life without sharing, and without being vulnerable, and with hiding your shame, was a little bit meaningless and a little bit soulless. And I, I kind of almost overnight, um, changed as a person and, and started going to situations and saying, Hey, my name is Dan, I'm divorced. My brother was in jail, I have this, I have that, whatever it is. And just kind of walking into a room with your hand out full of marbles. And some people would embrace that and they would turn around and grab their bag of marbles and want to share back with you. And those are the people who have since, in the past five years, um, become my, my absolutely closest friends. 

Julia: A few months after Dan and his ex-wife started the divorce process, he got the chance to share some of his marbles with Lauren. His brother invited Dan to come visit in San Francisco.

Dan: I did not know, but it was, um, it was a setup, and they had also invited Lauren, who they knew through, uh, the synagogue and the Jewish community. 

Lauren: I got a text from Dan's brother, whom I was well acquaintanced with. I but they, I think this was the very first text I ever received from him. And it said, Hey, my brother's coming to town. I'm getting a fun group of people together for dinner. Can you join? So I of course knew this was a set up. I got set up all the time. 

Dan: There was, uh, five of us. And we went and hung out at a friend's house and then we all went out to dinner and immediately Lauren and I started chatting about Brene Brown and Connection and, you know, a conversation that I probably would not have been capable of having even just a year or certainly two years before that.

Lauren: Right away I just thought he was adorable and looked so out of place in the city. He was like this mountain man in the city coming to hang out. So I really didn't know anything about him. And in front of him, Jen asked me, Lauren, could you date a man with kids? And I said, sure, I could date a man with kids as long as he wanted to have more. 10 minutes later, Dan starts talking about his kids. And at the end of the evening, Dan asked if he could get my number. I got a text. Either that night or in the morning that said, you're super cool. I'd love to see you again. 

Dan: I found out that she was going to Burning Man for her first time. And I was going also that year, it was not my first time. And we kind of stayed in touch and exchanged some texts over the next month or so. And then we kind of had our first date on the playa. 

Lauren: We had a lovely first date at burning man, where he came and picked me up and we explored art on the playa. And I really thought he was just for fun You know, he had just gotten separated. He had two kids. There was also several other guys I was connecting with at Burning Man. And while he was my favorite by far, you know, he had two kids. He lived hours away. I wasn't necessarily expecting what was going to happen next, which was when I left Burning Man after having hung out with him a couple times, I received a slew of very romantic, sweet text messages from him. And of course, which he asked when he could come see me again, which was Probably the next week or two. He came to San Francisco to see me and That's when I knew things were for real

Julia: This first visit wasn't a playful night out between two people who just met. Lauren says it was clear right away that they had serious feelings for each other. 

Lauren: I'll go ahead and tell you a fun detail that's slightly embarrassing. I told him he could come visit me as long as he didn't expect a sleepover. And um, we had a lovely time together, but when I asked him to leave that evening, he, um, you know, asked why. And I said, well, it's a late night. I have work the next day and like, I don't want to get too attached. And he, um, became tearful and said, but I want you to be attached. I'm already attached. 

Lauren: And so that was when I was like, okay, we're together. This is, this is it. This is for real. And it was, it was just, it just flowed after that. It just was so easy being with him and that's what was so different about my other relationships. I felt like I dated extraordinary men who were wonderful people who treated me very well. But it always felt like work. It felt hard. The relationships felt hard. And from day one, even though Dan had kids, even though he was in the middle of a divorce, even though he lived, you know, over three hours away in a cold place, and I do not like to be cold, A relationship was easy. Being with him was easy. Communicating with him was easy. And it was just like letting nature take its course. It was letting the river flow.  

Julia: Lauren and Dan have fallen in love, and are in a full on, Brene Brown approved relationship. Dan has custody of his kids half of the time, so they mostly see each other on the weeks when he’s not in dad mode. But it was important to Dan that the kids and Lauren met early on.

About six weeks after their first date at Burning Man, Dan and his kids were visiting his brother again near San Francisco. 

Lauren: When I met his kids, it was super casual. I was just meeting them as a friend. My roommate was having this huge pancake brunch in Golden Gate Park. And I even texted Dan, you know, if you want, bring the kids, it'd be great to meet them. And then he walks up with his two adorable children in a wagon and my heart just melted 

Dan: and I just introduced her to my kids as a friend, and immediately they, I don't know, they recognized her as a sparkly, sparkly jewel. And they kind of, my daughter especially, grabbed her and took her off into the woods and they started chasing fairies and, um, Actually a funny story was my, my six year old, uh, we live in the woods and she has, um, no qualms with going to the bathroom in the woods. And there we were in, uh, Golden Gate Park and she grabs Laura and they're off in the woods and she says she has to poop. And so there she is, and she just drops her pants right there behind a tree, and I think she said something like, make sure no boys are coming, and she pooped right there behind a tree. And Lauren was just completely caught off guard, had no idea what to do. Um, and it was just kind of a funny situation. And so then I saw what was going on, I went over there and helped rescue her. 

Julia: Nothing like a good poop moment to seal the deal, right? (laugh) At least it was a kid who was doing the pooping and not one of the adults! 

Dan’s kids were 4 and 6 at the time, which Lauren recognizes made it a little easier to connect. The six year old daughter opened up to her right away, but Lauren says it took a little bit longer with Dan’s younger son.  

Deciding when to introduce your kids to a new partner is different for everyone. Lauren and Dan both agree bringing the kids into their relationship early was what was best for them. 

Lauren: You know, there's a lot of advice out there for parents with kids not to introduce your kids to your partner until it's till later on, and I just completely disagree with that. Of course, I'm sure it's circumstantial, but for me, I met his kids very early on and I fell in love with him and his children at the same time. I fell in love with him as a dad, which is who he is. And I think that advice really robs people of that opportunity and doesn't set their relationship up for success. I think it was really easy to fall in love with someone who was a dad, who had that nurturing part of him, who loved his kids and prioritized his kids. You know, a lot of times you fall in love with somebody who you think is going to be a great dad, but I already had proof. And it was a really big part of who he was. 

Dan: I've had other friends who have, uh, similar situations, they were divorced, and they had kids, and they met somebody, and they kind of lived two separate lives, where they would have this new partner, and the new partner would not meet the kids. And they would have a lovely fling and relationship and whatever. But it was always kind of just a vacation and I think, um, with Lauren, you know, I, I didn't want it to be a vacation. I wanted her to know who I was and, and my kids were, um, obviously a very big part of who I was and it's, it was kind of a non negotiable as well. Like, I wasn't gonna get in a relationship with anybody who wasn't going to embrace me for who I was, embrace my kids, and want to play a significant role in raising them and being their stepmother.

Julia: But they didn't jump right into Lauren being a stepmother. Things progressed slowly over a year. Lauren and Dan spent a lot of time together when he didn't have the kids, and when he did, they had Lauren meet up with them at restaurants and public places.

Lauren: We were intentional in terms of having it be gradual with me being around the kids. And I remember I met up with them at a pizza place and Dan sister was there too. And Leora was telling me, go, go talk to daddy, go talk to daddy. And she was like writing little notes in a book that said like big L heart, little L. And when I left her, she said, are you sure you don't want to spend the night and stay tonight? You can stay forever. That was amazing. And then the first time I did stay the night when she was there, we took her to school on Monday and she gave me a little stuffed mouse and said, Don't forget about me. And so I just, you know, I fell in love with his kids as I was falling in love with him. 

And I had never felt that type of love from children before. And To start seeing Leora Jude on a regular basis and the means so excited to see me When I was with their dad just brought so much more joy and meaning to my life to get to be A part of children's lives. 

Dan made it easy. It wasn't like I had these responsibilities with his kids. He just always told me like, I just want you to be a good role model. cause I didn't really know how to be around kids. Like I didn't want to wipe their snotty noses and I didn't, you know, like I didn't want to, uh, discipline them or anything like that. So I was. I feel like in the beginning, my relationship with them was very much like a fun auntie. You know, I would read to them and I would play with them and I got to be a fun auntie with them. 

Julia: A year and a half into their relationship, Dan proposed to Lauren. She slowly started moving in with him, but held on to the San Francisco apartment. And when she finally let it go, it was harder than she expected. 

Lauren: When these things became official and I let go of my apartment and I was living in a home with children and I was planning to expand our family, I realized I had become attached to my identity as a citizen single woman, a successful single woman who had a career, who had a community, who went out a lot, who got takeout a lot, who went out dancing. And these, I remember specifically being like I'm not going to have any stories to tell anymore because all my funny stories had to do with random flings and funny dates. And I loved that part of my life, telling funny stories about my ridiculous dating love life. And I was just like, that's that part of me is over. 

And humor aside, I needed to really intentionally step into a new chapter of my life while honoring the previous chapter in a way that felt good. 

I have this amazing women's circle and I remember bringing it up with them and sharing how I was feeling. And they supported me in a way where I remember one woman sent me songs for this transition of my life to listen to, and they just gave me an avenue to speak about it. I journaled about it and really sharing with other women that journey was a way I honored it that felt right for me.

Julia: so I'm in your women's circle and, and this is, you know, the reason I know your story and wanted to invite you to tell it is because I've been a witness to it. Over the many years and I was so inspired when you came to us and you you knew exactly you knew what you needed and you asked for it and that alone is an alternative measuring stick you were like, Hey, I am moving into a new chapter of my life and I've realized that I need to let go of, um, my single independent life as I start a family and you know, join a family and start a family and I'm actually sad and I'm grieving. Um, I'm excited about where I'm going and also I want to make space for the grief and the sadness of saying goodbye to the life that I've loved, known because I've loved it. Even though I was yearning for something more, now I've found that and now I have to actually say goodbye to what I had that I also loved. And I really was just amazed at, I witnessed a woman yearning and stepping into her desire and it also grieving, it really showed me the range and the breadth of one person that it can all be true at one time. And I saw that as a model. 

Julia: This tension that lies in that space between losing something familiar in order to gain something new is at the heart of many refamulating experiences. For many of us creating quote unquote non-traditional families, we’ve had to let go of something. 

Maybe that's just letting go of expectations or ideas about what your family will look like. I can relate to that one. But sometimes..it means letting go of people. Dan's divorce created a big loss for his children- the loss of their parents living in one home- so Lauren and Dan worked really hard to include the kids in every stop of their relationship.

When we come back, we'll hear about the joys and challenges of creating a blended family. 

Julia: Once Lauren moved in full time with Dan, the couple started preparing the kids for the changes that were coming. 

Lauren: I had reached out to a friend of mine via Facebook that I noticed was a stepdad just to get some advice on how it went for him. And he told me one of the most important things was having, that he, one of the things he wished he had done is had a nickname for the kids. And so llama was planted. It's like Lauren plus mama equals llama. And I wrote them books via some site where you pick the characters and you can write a book. And in the book is the story of how I met each kid. And so I gave it to Leora maybe on her eighth birthday, but it's the story of Llama and Leora and it ends with I can't wait to make it official. And so she has that and I made one for Judah as well.

And then there was this whole thing where it was, Oh, when we get married, it's going to be official. And so I think having that momentum of we're engaged, there's going to be a wedding. This is going to be official, really solidified us as a family before we were actually married because we didn't get married for until years later because we waited until after the pandemic. 

Julia: The kids were excited about Lauren and Dan getting married. But Dan grew up in a blended family, and he knew that he, his ex-wife, and Lauren would have to work really hard to make sure that any conflict amongst the adults didn't impact the kids. 

Julia: What did you learn from your own blended family growing up that influenced your decisions as you've started to blend and build family with Lauren?

Dan: Uh, I think the importance of the relationship with their stepmom and how to cultivate that so that they have a close relationship, and Lauren is just amazing at doing that already as, as, as the person that she is. And I think the importance of, um, encouraging and promoting a healthy relationship, uh, with the kids, with their mother, and as much as possible making sure that it doesn't feel like they have, Uh, two separate lives, even though they do have two separate lives, it's, it's hard to avoid that.

I don't have an overly great relationship with my ex wife. Um, but I think the kids have done a really good job of adapting to going back and forth between two households. Uh, it's very, it's very different than what I had when I was growing up, certainly. And also the same dynamic when I was little between my dad and my mom and always trying to please both of them, which is, it's a lose lose situation. And so now, as much as possible, I really try to not put my kids in that same dynamic where it's trying to either make me happy, or their mom happy, or their stepmom happy, or somebody else, and try and not put them in the middle, um, and really try and encourage them to focus on their own happiness.

Julia: One way they keep the kids out of the middle is that Dan serves as the main liaison between all of the adults, so everyone has the same information.

Dan: I find sometimes making decisions, uh, in conjunction with either Lauren or, uh, my kid's mom independently, and just telling the kids this is what the decision is. So they're not actually put in a position where they need to make a challenging decision that they might not really be equipped to make as, again, they try and please both their parents, which I feel like every kid is going to always try and do. Um, as they seek love and, um, acceptance. Um, I feel like I was raised with a very conditional love. And especially, um, from my dad. And so that is something I'm very conscious of with my own kids. To try and make sure that they understand that the love is unconditional. And that they are enough and that I love them. And they don't need to do or succeed on whatever level for me to be proud of them. And, and love them unconditionally. 

Lauren: Dan is more the primary contact with their mom, they're the ones that are figuring out the schedule and she and I have met and had tea and coffee here and there to talk about the kids, but I think it's really important for Dan that he doesn't feel bypassed. Like in our home, he is the primary parent. It's important to me that the kids see um, me and their mom as allies, as friendly, as pleasant. It's easy enough to do that. You know, they do sense the tension and the conflict between their mom and dad. And I really try to stay out of it.

Julia: It's been four years since Lauren moved in with Dan and the kids. While she absolutely loves her role as Judah and Leora's llama, she's struggled with some of the assumptions that come with being a stepmom.

Julia: tell me your thoughts about the word stepmother.

Lauren: I think it's awful. I think it is so triggering. I think it's so hard not to have knee jerk negative reaction to it because of Disney and all the other things. It's really hard. And yet it is what I am and I'm called it all the time and there's no real reason why it needs to be negative. But I, I struggle with owning the term, although in certain circumstances it definitely feels like the most appropriate term to use. And the kids don't seem to have a negative connotation with it, although my stepdaughter was literally Snow White in a school play and literally said my evil stepmother's trying to kill me. 

Julia: why do you think that is?

Lauren: I mean, Cinderella, Snow White, I'm sure. There are some examples and I'm sure there's some sociological reason of society having a hard time with other women taking care of the children who still have their biological mothers and sharing that time. Hopefully it's changing. Yeah. There's the new term bonus mom that doesn't feel quite right either. Other mom, second mom, it's like you want a term that still acknowledges and respects the biological mother. 

A lot of step moms feel they can do no right because there's this dichotomy of oh, well, if you call them your step kids and you don't refer to them as your own children then you're not being loving enough. And then there's this idea that if you call them your children and you want them to call you mom or something like that, then you're being disrespectful to their biological mother and stepping on her toes. 

I remember sharing how excited I was by this really cute love letter that Judah wrote me and my friend just having this knee jerk reaction of, Oh, if I was his mom, I would hate that. And I'm like, okay, that's one way to look at it. Or if you are his mom, you can think that's great, he has another adult in his life who cares for him. Or you could also just look at it from my lens. And so there have been a few moments like that, that have been hard. And I think that often unconsciously people have this loyalty to a biological mother that would assume negativity around a stepmother that doesn't really bear much reality, so to speak, not for the kids. The kids don't feel like one love excludes another. And I think sometimes adults have a harder time with that than children.

So I just feel like you're constantly figuring out what your lane is. You don't want to overstep and disrespect their, their mother. Um, and you want to make sure they feel loved and nurtured and supported enough by you. And so I think sema  ntics can make that more challenging, but that, that's kind of playing in my mind a lot with the kids. 

Julia: This is why many of us come up with new names when we refamulate. We have such limited vocabulary for people who are close to us. Of course we’ve got titles for the usual suspects- mom, dad, aunt, uncle, cousin. For non-relatives we have friend...or best friend. We don't really have options for people you aren't blood related to. 

In my situation with the egg daddies, there was no title for "a woman we know who is donating her eggs and will spend time with our children but not act like a parent"....which is how we settled on Fairy Godmother. 

Titles and language can set the tone for an entire relationship. And Lauren has found that to be true for herself and the kids. 

Lauren: I love Llama because it feels good. Their teachers call me Llama. If their friends call me Llama, I like it. Llama is such a positive, fun, Word for us. It feels right. It feels full of love. You know, I call them my little apocas. They still use the term stepmom in, in context in certain situations. And that's totally fine. 

A lot of times I'll say I'm their step mom, they call me llama. And it's like, as soon as I let them, whoever, no, they call me llama. Then there's this autumn automatic. Oh, the kids must like you. Because I think I really think that people have this unconscious bias that most kids don't like their step mom. Or that most stepmoms don't like their stepkids. And so that's why that word triggers me. Because of an unconscious bias that often goes with it. And not by people who have necessarily experienced stepparents. Those people are often the most supportive. But people that have grown up in traditional families and haven't been that exposed to it.

Julia: Three years ago, Lauren and Dan took another step in blending their family. They got pregnant with a child of their own, something Lauren had wanted her whole life. They didn't know how the kids would react, so to tell them....

Lauren: we, uh, and had them watch the, the movie or documentary called Babies. It follows four different babies, their first year of life in four different cultures around the world. And so we watched that together. And then afterwards we said, Do you know why we watch this? And they had often asked me if I was going to have a baby, right? Like that was something they were curious and interested in. And so it was this nice, beautiful, like celebration with the kiddos afterwards. And, you know, they went to school the next day and like told their teachers and were really excited to celebrate it. Dan very respectfully did tell their mother before he told the kids so that she would learn about it from him first.

And it was a really exciting time, and I had a very beautiful, easy birth at a birthing center. Sophie Jean was born around midnight. And we were able to get home around seven in the morning so the kiddos could meet their baby sister before they went to school. And we didn't know if she was going to be a boy or girl and Leora was absolutely ecstatic that it was a girl. And I just remember so well seeing the kids see Sophie for the first time and how much they loved her. And how sweet it felt as a family for her to bring us all together even, uh, more unified.

Julia: And a new child changed the dynamic for everyone. 

Lauren: It gives a different rhythm, right? So one week when we have the big kids, we're a big family and it's louder and we have the big kids activities to attend to and Sophie just wants to be all up in their business all the time and play with them. And one thing that's really hard is when they're gone, she says their names a lot. She really misses them when they're not here. And when they are here, I feel like Dan and I Are really available to them and present to them. We try not to go off as much. And then when we don't have the big kids with us, it's easier for us to have our couple time and date time. 

Julia: What about step parenting prepared you for being a parent and what is totally different?

Lauren: think when you start spending more time with children, you realize how important patience is and staying calm and not getting triggered. Leora and Judah. I'm, I'm their third parent so to speak. They have two primary parents and I'm their third parent. And their safety in that. So the difference of the Sophie, I would just say, uh, I worry there's, uh, An anxiety or worry that I had never experienced before in my life. And when I became a mother of Sophie, that's kind of what felt different. You know, she was a baby, she was very vulnerable. It was me, like I was the first stop. And that is what felt different about parenting Leora and Judah. I have a specific role, like my role with them is very nurturing. It's, you know, they come to me when they need me. They also have two other great options to go to. And at this stage with Sophie being and so young, I'm often the first stop and that feels, that feels different.

Julia: Becoming a biological parent has also shown Lauren that while her duties as a step-mom are different, her dedication to all the kids is the same. 

Lauren: Just like any parent takes their parenting role seriously, I take my llama role just as seriously. It's such an important part of who I am, and these kids are gonna be a part of my life, my entire life. You know, I met Juta when he was four. It will be hard for him to remember a time when he didn't know me. And so when people ask me, are they your kids? Hell yeah, they're my kids. I'm raising them. 

And that is not any exclusion to their mother who birthed them, who raises them, who they have a secure, loving relationship with. And I think that's also what makes a blended family in my situation easier is there's no competition. There's no mom versus step mom. They have a wonderful relationship with their mom. They have a wonderful relationship with me and their dad. And I feel like people always want to kind of like pit the women against each other. And I think that in more cases than not, it is actually not that contentious. 

Julia: As we’ve established, a big part of refamulating is letting go of expectations. Most of us have ideas about what we want our family to look like. But the universe doesn’t always give us what we want. Sometimes it gives us something even more wonderful than what we expected. 

Dan: It's not really the life I envisioned when I was 20 years old, but it's a wonderful life and the kids are happy, healthy kids that love me, um, and love their, their step mom, their llama, uh, and have a lot of loving people around them. And so to me, that's a, that's a huge success and something I'm super proud of. 

I'm super proud of, of Lauren for being such a rock in their lives. And, um, really, there are situations that have come up where, uh, the kids actually go to Lauren to confide before they come to me or their mom. And so, uh, the role she plays for them is, is just got, um, is just so beneficial for them. And I'm proud of me, for kind of evolving and growing to a point where she would find me attractive and actually be willing to be my partner. Because, like I tell her, five years ago, or seven years ago, I was a very different person, and if we had met in our twenties, it would not have been a match.

Julia: I asked both Lauren and Dan, five years into blending their family, what advice they would give to someone else creating a blended family.

Dan: your kids are smart, and don't, don't try and hide to them. You don't, you don't have to show them every single card in the deck. But, uh, no matter what age they are, They're smart and they want to know what's going on and you just got to sit down and be real with them. They don't deserve to be your emotional punching bag, um, but they are along that journey with you and they do deserve to, to know what's going on and to know the people in your life and to know how you're feeling and to ask them how they're feeling and get their input. It doesn't mean you're going to do whatever your six year old kid says, but it's important to listen to them. And, and understand how they're feeling. 

Lauren: I remember Googling, you know, dating a man with kids when I got together with Dan and it was so negative. It was women saying run the other direction. And I think there is a lot of negativity out there about joining families. And I just needed to forge my own path with it. Because becoming their llama has been one of the greatest joys and delights of my life.

Lauren: I have many single girlfriends who I think would still be hesitant to enter into a blended family and it has worked out so beautifully for me that I can't help to be an evangelist on the topic because if you are in your mid to late thirties, early forties, and you're wanting a family. A lot of your options out there, the dating pool may be divorced men. And so I'm saying do not overlook them. A lot of divorced fathers have grown their nurturing muscles. They have been through a hard time. They know what they want. They're not afraid of commitment. And I've had friends say they're hesitant because they're not sure they need to come first and they're worried the kids will come first or they feel, how will they ever feel prioritized and loved enough?

You don't just get love from your partner, you're going to get love from the children too. If you enter into the family in a healthy, welcoming way and that love expands. And so I think it's so beautiful that when I entered in this relationship, my heart grew, not just for one person, but for three. And that's awesome. And I think. If more people can experience that, then it, there wouldn't be so much stigma for successful single woman to partner with a divorced dad because They're awesome. And of course, there are going to be some situations that are trickier dealing with Exes dealing with kids that might not be excited that their parent is dating So I understand that that exists I don't think there's enough emphasis on that possibility of that exponential love.

04: Professionally Pregnant: For this mom, being a surrogate is not a job, it’s a calling

When Jen was pregnant with her daughter, she had one of those unicorn pregnancies you never hear about in real life: she wasn’t tired or sick, and she felt energized by it all. But she and her husband didn’t want more biological kids, so Jen started thinking about how she could experience the magic of pregnancy again. That’s when she became a surrogate and found her life’s purpose. 

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Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.

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Julia Winston: I'm Julia Winston, and this is Refamulating, a podcast that explores different ways to make a family.  

Kelly Clarkson: Congratulations. Oh my. You baby boy. Right? Thank you baby boy. Uh, 

Khole Kardashian: It definitely was, you know, just a different way. I did surrogacy. Yeah. 

Julia: In 2022, Khloe Kardashian went on Kelly Clarkson’s talk show and casually talked about having her second child via surrogacy. 

Khole Kardashian: it's amazing. I had reasons why I couldn't carry myself. Me too. Right. And it's, it's such a blessing that we have this. And I, my sister Kim had two babies through surrogacy. She had two that she carried on her own and her last two are through surrogacy. If it wasn't for Kimberly, I definitely don't think I would have been as comfortable. I wouldn't have been aware. I wouldn't have known as much. 

Julia: There is nothing particularly special about this interview, and I’m not a huge Kardashian fan. I play it because this kind of casual conversation about fertility and surrogacy on daytime TV…wouldn’t have happened even a decade ago. 

Many of us were told conversations around fertility and family planning were inappropriate, so keep that to yourself. But Khloe mentions that watching her sister, Kim Kardashian, use surrogates helped demystify the experience for her. 

The normalization of surrogacy seems to be becoming more widespread. Even if we don’t know someone who used one, there are more and more examples in pop culture. In the last few years, Paris Hilton, Crissy Teigan, Gabrielle Union and other celebrities have openly talked about their surrogacy experiences.

But all these celebrity examples only give us a glimpse of surrogacy from the perspective of the intended parent- a word you'll hear a lot in this episode that refers to the person or people who will raise the child. 

The main narrative we've been given about surrogacy is that it helps people who can’t carry babies or give birth, have biological families.

But what about the surrogates themselves? What are their stories? As someone who donated my eggs to help a same-sex male couple start a biological family, I was curious to learn more about the experience of the other key player in a refamulating scenario like mine - a surrogate. 

When I was asked to donate my eggs, I had to do a lot of personal reflection about my future relationship to these imaginary kids. People close to me, especially people who’ve had children, worried that I might get too attached. “I could never do that,” they said.

For me, being the source of DNA feels more like a cool connection to the kids, rather than an attachment. If I had been asked to carry the children, on the other hand, that would have given me pause. I could totally picture myself getting attached if I felt them actually growing in my body. 

But I've heard other people say that the opposite might be true, that sharing DNA with a child would make them feel more attached. 

It's obviously personal… but I wanted to dig into questions like this with someone who actually serves as a surrogate. What is it like to carry a child and do the intense physical labor on behalf of someone else? 

In my own experience, once I donated my eggs I wasn't really involved in the process, and didn't have a relationship with the surrogate the egg daddies used. So I wasn't privy to the ups and downs. 

But luckily...I found Jen. 

Jen: I just love the feeling of growing a baby, like being able to feel the baby moving in your stomach, just knowing that there's a life in there. It's just, I don't know, everything's just very magical. I have friends that get very sick in pregnancy and I completely sympathize. But for me it's, it's been such a positive experience. 

Julia Winston: Jen is 38, and has spent most of the last decade pregnant… or trying to get pregnant. That’s because Jen is a surrogate, and she’s given birth to five babies for other families.  

Jen lives in the mountains of Northern California with her two daughters, her husband and lots of animals- dogs, horses, chickens and peacocks- all together on their small ranch.

I had so many questions for Jen- because I felt like I could connect with her on some level. I know what it feels like to use your body to help someone else have a family. I also know how taxing it is to do IVF. But my situation was pretty different from what Jen does. I was helping a couple I was friends with, donating my eggs as a gift. Jen works with families she doesn’t know, carrying their babies as a form of paid work. 

But before surrogacy was even a twinkle in her eye, Jen built her own family. That started when she met her husband and quickly fell in love…

Jen: We fully committed to each other in January and in February we actually found out I was pregnant. So, we hadn't been expecting that and both of us just looked at each other and we're like, we want to keep it. You know, let's see where this goes. 

Pregnancy was really easy for me. Uh, I didn't have any of the side effects. I didn't actually believe that happened to women. I thought for sure you get the nausea, you get the aches and pains. And I didn't have any of that. My daughter was not a big kicker. So she was very gentle. And the whole process was just so calm and sweet. And I didn't expect that because you hear so many negative things about pregnancy and how hard it is on women. And it definitely can be. I just... was one of those lucky ones.

Julia: She even loved giving birth to her daughter. Things didn’t go exactly as she planned- her doula was late and her husband was nervous- but she felt empowered after the experience. 

Jen: I think it was a year or two later, and we just said, you know, I don't think we want to have another one of our own. We, we both have some funky biological background. I absolutely adore my daughter. She's just turned out to be an amazing kid. And so we thought, you know, some of the risks that our family has just biologically, we could be taking those same risks and be helping children that need a home or a temporary home at least. And so when we decided that we wanted to do foster care, we just talked about, and I told him, I said, I miss being pregnant. I really miss the feeling and I know I still can be.  

Julia: So Jen and her husband started fostering children, and eventually adopted their second daughter. While she and her husband were building their own family, a relative of Jen’s was also trying to have kids. He’s a gay man, and he used a surrogate. 

Like Khloe Kardashian, seeing someone close to her use a surrogate helped Jen understand what the process actually looks like. 

And that’s when something clicked. 

Jen could be pregnant again and she could do it for someone else. 

And so she became a surrogate, and her first pregnancy couldn't have gone better.

Jen: the whole thing was wonderful, but the actual labor and delivery was probably my favorite part. I think giving birth is so fun, I really do. Especially if you have a doula. I don't think I could do it without a doula. 

We had this funny little Hawaiian doctor. He was just, he was really cool. He played over the rainbow on his ukulele during the labor, and um, when I did give birth and the dads took that baby into their arms and they held him and they called him sunshine. It was like, it was very magical, very special, and I just felt lucky to be a part of it. 

Julia Winston: What role do you think that the success of that surrogacy played in you wanting to continue down this path? 

Jen: I think it made a huge impact, just how wonderful the intended parents were. They were nothing but... Sweet and kind to us. It's been 10 years and I'm still in touch with them. They send us a little gift every Christmas and we get their yearly letter. I know surrogates have had a much tougher first journey. And I think if I didn't have that connection with my intended parents that I really wanted, if I had just gone for an out of country couple that let's say, We had a hard time speaking the same language or something. For me, that just, that would have been a lot harder. I really wanted a connection and I, and that's exactly what I got.

Julia: Okay, let’s just rewind for a second though because, unsurprisingly, being a surrogate involves a lot of logistics. 

For Jen, the first step was to find an agency. The agency would match her with intended parents and handle all the logistics. 

After finding an agency, Jen had to go through a series of physical, genetic and psychological screenings to make sure she was a good fit to become a surrogate - I went through a similar process as an egg donor. 

But one thing that surprised me about surrogacy, is that most agencies want surrogates to have already had their own children. 

Jen: They always say you wanna be kind of done with your family if you're gonna be a surrogate. I've seen a lot of people that are very young go, oh, I wanna be a surrogate, but I've never had a child. Why won't they let me? Um, it's because there is a chance you could lose all your reproductive organs possibly and not be able to have another child. And there are surrogates out there that actually are now intended parents because of things like that. 

Julia Winston: Surrogates who ended up being unable to have children of their own and now require surrogates to help them have biological children?

Jen: Whether, whether they got remarried and decided, oh, you know what, I'm not done yet, or whatever it is. Yes, there is. 

Julia: After passing the initial screenings, Jen worked with the agency to find the right family. She knew she wanted them to be local so that they could go to doctor’s appointments together.

Jen: My very first couple was a gay couple because I requested a gay couple because the person I knew who had their child through a surrogate was a gay couple who had been trying, you know, to have children. And that was something that I really felt strongly about. My doula, she's a lesbian, she's one of my best friends. She had hopes of having children one day too. And so just being part of that community was important to me to be able to do that for the first time.

Julia Winston: The couple was trying to have their second child, and they were thrilled to be involved in every part of the pregnancy, which Jen loved. They went with Jen to doctor's appointments. They attended her oldest daughter’s birthday party and had their nanny watch Jen’s kids when the three of them went to OB appointments. She really felt loved and supported by this couple.  

This first pregnancy was also her introduction to the legal side of surrogacy. Before the IVF process began, Jen and the dads signed a contract explaining the terms of their partnership. The main purpose was to make sure the surrogate, and egg donor, have no parental rights over the child. But Jen says the contracts can also get more granular. 

Jen: You can add little things like I've had intended parents that don't mind if I dye my hair and I have intended parents I would prefer I don't dye my hair the whole pregnancy and some that would like me to not do it in the first trimester only. So all those little things get added to the contract and I think that's totally fine. You just have to make sure what you're putting in the contract is really important to you because something could cause a match to go wrong that maybe wasn't that important. You know, for me, I am very sensitive to my intended parents' needs, but I'm also very busy mom and I don't know if I could keep a journal about every time I exercised and every time I ate something and it, it's a little too much. I'm already a homeschool mom, , you know, I'm already doing my homework a lot. . 

Julia: This is, this brings up the whole topic of how much say an intended parent has over the body of another human being while they're pregnant with the intended parent's child. 

Jen: That was a big conversation recently in one of my surrogate groups. A intended parent was very upset that the surrogate did not want her to touch her stomach. And it was one of those things that some people are like, well, it is her baby, so why shouldn't she be able to feel her baby moving? And other people are like, well, that's the surrogate's body and you can't just touch people unwanted. And they were already very far into this pregnancy. 

For me, I wish that had been talked about ahead of time, but that's not something anybody in our groups had like even thought about. I think one side just assumed it would go one way and the other side just assumed it would go the other way. And nobody ever even thought to talk about it during a match meeting. But there are little things that you need to think about. They don't necessarily need to go in the contract. I wouldn't put: she can touch my stomach in the contract. That'd be a little bizarre. But just having that conversation and anything you wanna lay out on the table, you have to do it during the match meeting.

So the match meeting's important. Everybody wants to be polite at the match meeting. Everyone wants to say yes to everything, especially if the intended parent has been waiting. You know, some intended parents wait over a year for their surrogate, and if that match doesn't work, then they could be waiting another year. So don't say, you know, just, you can't say yes to everything. You have to really be true to yourself on if it's a good match or not. 

Julia: The legality of surrogacy varies wildly… depending on where you live.

It’s not even legal, or recognized, in most countries. The US is one of the few that allows surrogacy, and even then it changes depending on what state you’re in. Jen lives in California, which has some of the most supportive laws for both surrogates and intended families. 

Jen: I have heard there's lots of other states that are not surrogate friendly and that's when it gets scary. Here, when you get your birth certificate, it has the intended parents' name. My name is never on the birth certificate. It is not an adoption. It is very clear their children and we sign all the paperwork way ahead of time for that. In other states, it becomes more of an adoption, and your surrogate does have her name on the birth certificate, or you have, you know, you have to go to court and almost fight for your own child as an intended parent.

Julia: Here’s a very general overview of how that looks in the U.S. 

A handful of states, like Michigan, Louisiana and Nebraska, don’t recognize contracts for surrogacy. That means there are no legal protections for the intended parents or the surrogate if something goes sideways.

California, Nevada, Washington, Colorado and a handful of other states do recognize surrogacy contracts.

The rest of the states fall somewhere in the middle.

We have a link in our show notes if you want to learn about surrogacy laws in your state. 

Compared to other countries, the American surrogacy process focuses on making sure both the surrogate and intended parents have a say, and that the surrogate is properly compensated. There are also more medical requirements here than in other countries, which makes surrogacy in the U.S. pretty   expensive. 

Intended parents usually spend 50 to 100 grand on the process, but really the cost can get as high as 200,000. It all depends on the legal fees, if the family needs an egg donor, and all of the medical costs. So how much of that money goes to surrogates like Jen? 

Jen: That is an extremely common question. It's not the same as if you're working a full-time job. It's not, you know, the amount of hours that go into surrogacy is 24 7 for, you know, ideally 10 months. But at the same time, you know, my last one didn't stick, so we're having to try again. So I don't wanna give the exact amount because it really varies. A first time surrogate, you know, it can go in some states, I guess. Maybe $30,000, but I've heard of surrogates getting a hundred thousand in, you know, Hollywood or something like that. You know, it really depends on what the intended parents focus is. If they want an experienced surrogate, if they want a surrogate to follow a certain diet plan, you know, I've had surrogates that are supposed to write down in a journal every day what they exercised and what food they ate. And then there's other surrogates that, you know, things are a little more relaxed for.

So it, it's huge variation. Um, I don't know any surrogates that do it for the money, you know, you are supposed to show, especially with an agency that you are financially doing just fine. They do not want people in America doing surrogacy because they're desperate for money. Same reason they don't want anybody doing surrogacy, you know, that doesn't have a child Yet.. You know, you've gotta kind of have some boundaries on this to make sure that people are doing it for the right reason. There are altruistic surrogates that do it for no money other than, you know, like covering the hospital expenses and things like that. But it's a huge variation. I just like, I do wanna put out there that most surrogates really aren't doing it for the money. It's not that much money, like with the risks you're taking. 

Julia Winston: Yeah. It seems like you have to have a really strong sense of purpose and, and intrinsic motivation to do something like this, that the, the incentive is not the money.

Jen: I would think so. I mean, every surrogate I've, I've met really talks like I do about it. They, they did it for the experience more than anything, you know? And usually it's people like me that didn't have an absolute horrible time with pregnancy that love being pregnant or have like that connection like I do, where they saw a family member that was able to use a surrogate. So they have that in their heart. You know, it's not so much you wake up in the morning and you just go, oh, I feel like being a surrogate today. There's so much thought and research put into it before you do it. There's so many other ways to make a ton of money that, that you're not risking your body and taking time from your family and all those things. 

Julia: Jen mentioned the risks a few times- which is something I want to underscore. Giving birth in the U.S. has gotten more dangerous in recent years. The number of women who die during labor is growing, especially for Black women. The US is the only developed country with a growing maternal mortality number...

Also...more than a third of women have some sort of health issue after giving birth. These range from depression and anxiety to pain during sex to infertility.

Jen: There is a lot of risk of surrogacy, just like any pregnancy. Um, sometimes higher because of IVF. So, you know, you do risk even things like losing your uterus, you know, I, I actually have it in my contract that if I am put on life support only to support the babies, , um, that the intended parents do pay for therapy during that time. I'm on life support for my family because you can't grieve losing someone when they're still on life support for a ba just purely to give the baby a couple more days or whatever. 

Julia: But Jen accepts the risks. When we come back, we'll hear details about being a surrogate: the good, the challenging, and the pregnancy belt that holds it all together.

Jen's next two surrogacy experiences were similar to the first one. She enjoyed being pregnant. She had successful births. And...she felt connected to each family.

Jen: All three of my first intended parents were really great. You know, we stay in touch. I've still seen pictures of the kids. It just, it felt like friends, you know, not necessarily a friend that lives next door that you go and have coffee with every single day. But it felt like friends that, you know, we check in with each other. We ask how your kids are doing, you know, um, during the pregnancy they would text or call or we'd visit and it was awesome. You know, it really, it felt very warm and I knew that this baby is definitely something that they really wanted, cuz half the conversation would be totally focused on how excited they were to become parents. 

Julia Winston: But Jen’s fourth surrogacy didn’t go as smoothly. The agency had connected her with a single, gay father trying to have his second child. 

Jen: So, hearing his plight that, you know, he wanted a sibling... I was like, well, you know, I think I could do that. That could be fun.

So we did a match meeting and, uh, he was very, very nice. Uh, very excited to get started. He'd been waiting kind of a while. And he didn't want the kids to be too far apart in age. So, we went to his IVF clinic. Um, he didn't come to the first appointments, but we video chatted during them. So, I felt like he was there for the appointments, you know, as much as he could be. We did the... The transfer, and a couple weeks later The IVF doctor actually told us at first he thought there was triplets. Yeah, it was pretty, it was actually kind of scary because body wise I am a little bit older into my surrogacy journeys. I'm not trying to carry three babies. That's a little, little much and the intended parent really kind of freaked out. I think it really scared him. The idea of being a single father with one toddler And three babies on the way, possibly. 

Julia: Jen got an ultrasound the next day, and they found out she was pregnant with twins, not triplets. Jen had been a surrogate three times, but she'd never carried twins. So she was understandably a little nervous...and she expected the intended father would step up and be her partner during this pregnancy, but...pretty quickly, Jen realized this relationship was going to be different. 

Jen: He kind of stopped messaging me as much, he stopped calling, he wasn't even really talking to the agency. But he kind of stopped communicating with me and for me that was hard because my last intended parents have all been very communicative, very supportive. I totally understood that this was very overwhelming for him, but I was also suddenly pregnant with twins, not expecting it. And I kind of needed us to be able to support each other.

That got a little lonely. My agency was very nice. They were there for me, best they could be. Um, went to the next few appointments by myself. He didn't video chat, you know, he wasn't there. I did ask my agency if they'd talk to him. I think they only talked to him like once and they were like, yeah, we think he's just really overwhelmed with the idea of how as a single father, he's going to manage a toddler and twins.

Julia: Toward the end of the first trimester, Jen was getting ready for a big doctor's appointment where they would do an ultrasound that would tell her and the dad more about the twins and what to expect from the pregnancy. But the day before the appointment, things took a turn.

Jen: Unfortunately we did have a miscarriage at 11 weeks. Because it was twins, there was something called, um, an S C H, which is a, like, kind of a big ball of blood that was behind them, which is very common in I v F. It can also be common with twins. I lost a lot of iron and, um, being that it was twins, I was already, um, much more tired than normal. And I think a lot of that had to do with the amount of iron that two babies kind of take versus one. And, and so I ended up having to go to the ER. 

Julia: She went to the ER because during the miscarriage she fainted and lost consciousness. Fortunately, IV fluids kept her awake while she completed the miscarriage. 

Jen was out of the woods, but the pregnancy didn’t make it. Once she was okay, Jen told the intended dad what happened and… 

Jen: I did get a message from him just saying, you know, I hope Hope you're doing okay after it happened. He did discuss with the agency me going ahead and trying again because usually with surrogates you agree to try three times If you mentally and physically feel like you can. You don't have to . I still wanted to be a surrogate. I still wanted that birth I still wanted that joyful feeling of bringing a baby into the world and we thought hey, what's the chance of another split? It's a very small chance. This happened once wasn't meant to be You know, hopefully this is a singleton this time. Let's try again. And they ordered me my medication, got my medication, and a week before I started he decided to cancel. And so I just never heard from him again. 

So that one just kind of left me feeling a little abandoned, I guess. Where I know a lot of surrogates like to have more of a connection with their intended parents, where they don't feel like they were just, you know, A breeding machine or something like that. You know, you, you are a person, you do have a family. Obviously me going through miscarriage, all these things affected my family as well. And so I just wanted some recognition that, like, Hey, I'm here, I'm a person. And I'm really sorry this happened to you, but I'm sorry it happened to me too.

Julia: Earlier, I talked about attachment to babies that aren’t your own. It’s something I had to wrestle with a lot, and I was curious to hear about Jen’s experience.

Jen: It feels like a friend's child to me. And there's love there. There's worry and concern that, you know, they're healthy and they're growing. Um, the time that we did find out was twins. I was excited to see two heartbeats, you know, but it doesn't feel motherly. It feels like an auntie or a very close friend, someone that just wants to protect your child and see that they, you know, do end up living their best life. Um, and I think I kind of took on that same perspective with foster care. You know, they're not your children and for me, it's very easy to separate that but still be concerned and still be loving and still, you know, like I said, like an auntie would mother a child, but not be the mother of a child. You know, there's boundaries there. 

Jen: A lot of us really don't like when people tell us about how they could never do it because they'd be too attached to the baby. It's a really harsh thing to hear because we are attached. It's just in a different way. We've been able to take the mindset of doing what's best for the baby. I saw someone say surrogates must have no maternal instinct. And I thought that was very harsh because even though I don't feel sadness when that baby's going to their family, I feel happiness because I know that's what's best for the baby, is their child. 

Julia Winston: Did that come naturally to you, or is that something you've had to sort of train yourself to do, to hold these boundaries in knowing that you're not the parent?

Jen: It came more naturally with surrogacy than it did for foster care. Honestly. I think foster care and adoption carries a little bit more heaviness. A little more sadness. You do worry about where they're gonna go afterwards, Foster children and adoptive children have been through trauma. It doesn't feel the same way when it comes to surrogacy. You know, they're built with love. They're, everything is all about that child from, you know, A to Z the whole time. And with foster care and adoption, it's, it's not like that. 

Julia: Jen has a lot of compassion for children who have been adopted. Yes, she adopted one of her children from the foster care system, as you might recall… and she was adopted herself. 

Jen: It was never a secret. It was always, I was always able to ask questions and eventually I kind of started looking into it more myself and I have been introduced to some of my birth family, um, through different channels. It was, they handled the, especially as a young child, I think very properly. I will say, there wasn't a lot of support for adoptive families at that time. And so, encouragement was to be so overly positive about adoption, that later on as a teenager and as an adult, when you start to get feelings about Um, coming out of what they call the fog a little bit, we're starting to understand that, uh, there was loss involved, you know, there's, there's blood relations there that you don't know, you may never know, there's, uh, you know, certain, uh, health history you may never know, things like that, that I feel like, Maybe shouldn't have been quite so glorified at a younger age where I would have been more comfortable with the negative stuff as I got a little older. Uh, the negative stuff kind of was actually more of a shock to me when I started coming, those things started coming to light.

Julia: Being adopted helped Jen understand, from an early age, that families can be created in many different ways.

It primed her to think about family more expansively. There are people out there who share her DNA, but she doesn’t have the same emotional attachment to them as the family who raised her. 

There are different kinds of love, and Jen knows how to hold that complexity. Her own adoption helped her realize she could raise two daughters of her own and carry babies for others - and approach both experiences with love. They’re just different kinds of love.

This isn’t easy for everyone to wrap their head around. Jen gets a lot of comments and questions about being a surrogate, and I was curious what the general response was.

Jen: people say very nice things. My last ultrasound, the gal was like saying just such sweet things and I just told her, she goes, you're so sweet for doing this. I said, I'm crazy, but it's a good kind of crazy. 

My husband's not the type of guy to just say no,  you know, he's very, very,  um, backs me up 100% no matter how kind of crazy my ideas are.  Um, my daughter has always been involved in the process. She was only three through the first surrogacy, but she's 12 now. And so as she's gotten older, we always ask her, you know, how do you feel about mom doing Another surrogacy? It's never been weird to her cuz it's just always been a part of her life. And she also knew that, you know, this family member had had kids through a surrogate. So we're very open with her about everything. 

My  mom on the other hand, was not super comfortable with it.  Um, she was kind of confused at why we weren't gonna have more children of our own. And I do think part of that comes from because she just wasn't able to herself.  Um,  she's very worried about my health. I am her only daughter, you know, and so she just worries that something could happen to me and I'm, I am risking it for another family. Uh, but as we've gone on, she's kind of accepted it.  Other than that, I, all my friends have been supportive. You know, I've never had, I know some surrogates that have had like nasty comments from people, and I've never had that. Everyone's always been very pleasant. Hmm. Confused maybe, but pleasant.

Julia: After the miscarriage with the twins, Jen knew she wasn't done being a surrogate. But working with the hands-off dad of her fourth surrogacy taught her she should be a little pickier about the families she worked with. She wanted the parents to be more involved if she was going to enjoy the process. 

Jen: I wanted to trust my gut a little bit more. Maybe ask a few more questions, make sure that I'm really on the same page at the match meeting with the intended parents. And, um, my next match meeting went wonderful. I absolutely love them, and I still absolutely love them. 

Julia: They're another gay couple, trying to have their first kid. 

they were adorable. Every appointment that I saw them at, they showed up with cupcakes for my kids or flowers for me or both, and just very adorable. appreciative, very sweet. The first two transfers that we tried, unfortunately, neither one took, and there was only one embryo left. So as a surrogate, I had a lot more anxiety for the intended parents. We did take a little break after the second one, so my body could just get back to normal before we started with medication again.

Julia: After a short break they tried again, and the third transfer worked! The first doctor's appointment was just to confirm the pregnancy had stuck. 

Jen: And we ended up going together. They met me there. And I actually had been a little more abnormally tired than usual. But I convinced myself, I'm just, you know, I'm a little bit older, maybe I'm just tired because I'm pregnant, and I'm a little bit older than I was, you know, my first pregnancies, and so when we went in there, and the, the guys are in there next to me, and the Um, the lady was looking at, you know, the image and she turns to us and she goes, I see two heartbeats. And they, it was like they didn't understand what she said. You know, the look on their faces was like, what? And, and, and that's what they asked. They said, What do you, what do you, what did you say? I see two heartbeats. It looks like you guys are having twins. And they were just in complete shock. And I just kind of looked over and I smiled at them and I was so happy to have a second chance at this for a couple that really wanted this. And I did have a tear in my eye. I just, It was pure happiness.

It was a little bit of nerves, because, you know, twins I know is going to be a harder, a harder thing to, a harder amount of babies to carry. Um, I will say that the miscarriage I had with twins was very, very hard. It was very scary. And so there was a little bit of that kind of fear and stuff, you know, well, I hope this just works. I hope this lasts, you know. I know this makes it a little bit higher chance of losing them because there's two in there. 

Julia: When I interviewed Jen, she was in the final trimester of this pregnancy with the twins. And if you were frustrated earlier hearing her talk about how easy pregnancy is, don't worry, the twins changed that for her. 

Jen: I definitely had more symptoms with this pregnancy that I did not have with singletons. Um, I'm, I feel bad because I feel like I'm just having what a lot of women probably had with singletons. Uh, just like in the first trimester, I was a little nauseous, I wasn't horribly sick, but I had a lot of trouble eating, you know, as much as I should. I had to struggle with protein, things like that. Um, so that... Was a little bit tougher, you know, I was a little bit, a lot tired, things like that. But it sounded like a first trimester that a lot of my friends that had singletons went through. So I'm kind of just getting what everybody else gets. Uh, second trimester, really wasn't bad at all, been very smooth. Uh, third trimester though, it's a lot heavier. Um, I've got, currently I'm 33 weeks pregnant and I've got Two babies that are slightly over five pounds in there right now.

Julia Winston: Wow.

Jen: and I can feel it. You know, my pelvis hurts a little more, I had to buy a belt, a special pregnancy belt, which I've never done before. Um, definitely lots of heartburn, lots of acid reflux, you know, you can't eat as much because there's two babies in there. So it's been tougher, but every appointment we go to, they do the ultrasound and they tell us how perfect these babies look. 

Julia: Jen gave birth to healthy twin boys earlier this year. She hadn’t given birth yet when we talked, but I wanted to know what her other experiences were like once she left the hospital. She gives birth, she hands off the babies, and she goes home. What now?

Jen: I am so happy to get back to my family and my pets and. , I have everything I've ever wanted. So for me, there's no, no real loss to it. And you know, like I said, I've had intended parents that still stay in touch with me. So, you know, they'll send a picture of the baby and as long as I know they're healthy and happy, I feel very good about it. Um, it does depend though, if you're pumping afterwards, which I pumped for 10 months with my first surrogate baby, he had, um, an issue with formula. With my second one I pumped for three months. You do, you know, you do get a certain amount of money to pump , uh, per week. But the amount doesn't honestly make up for the amount of time that you're pumping. 

Julia: Jen loves being pregnant, and all of her healthy deliveries added to this being a magical experience for her. But she's in her late 30s now and knows it will only get riskier to carry babies…

Jen: I am allowed to do one more surrogacy. Um, they do not let you have more than six deliveries, which, uh, whether it's C section or, uh, vaginal delivery. just, I love this. I absolutely love the whole process. And even when it goes not so well, it is like I told you before, you know, you learn something from all of it.

Um, I will be very picky about the intended parents again, though, just like I was this last time where I want someone I'm going to have a connection with again. You know, someone that if it was twins, they would be okay, or at least, you know, happy with it, that they are prepared for some of these unexpected things that do pop up, but we'll get through it together. Like if I can find a couple like that again, I would be very happy.

Julia Winston: Wow. I, so I'm just like jaw dropped, amazed that you want to do it again. You, you, it sounds like you just love it. Like, what do you love about being a surrogate?

Jen: Um, I just, uh, growing life is amazing, you know, and knowing, I think being adopted and, you know, seeing what foster care is like for kids, seeing so many kids that have rough starts in life, have families who maybe they want them, but they just struggle at the ability to take care of them. Sometimes you do have parents that don't like their kids or don't want their kids. In the surrogacy world, I get to be with parents that dream of children that, you know, they just, they've been hoping and wishing and praying and doing everything they can to hopefully be able to have that family that they always wanted. And, um, I love being a part of that. I, I love the positivity that I know these kids are going somewhere that they will for sure be loved, maybe a little spoiled, you know, exactly what kids deserve.

Julia: Whether Jen does another surrogacy or not, her time being pregnant will be over soon, and she's thinking about what comes next. 

She’s busy raising and homeschooling her two kids. But she's started to think about how she wants to spend her time when they're older. 

Jen: my goal is eventually when my kids are a little older to become an end of life doula. Uh, just like a birth doula is there for when babies are born to comfort the mother. I'd like to be there for people when they are passing away, especially when it's hard for their family to be. Um, I want to be the one that's there for the uncomfortable conversations that, uh, maybe need a little bit of guidance or a little bit of support with the family that's going through that. 

Julia: Jen's dream is to use her ranch in Northern California, as a place for this end of life work. 

Jen: I have big goals for our property. We plan to turn it into a place that people can come who are in their end stages of life, that can bring family, a priest, whatever. And we're trying to make it kind of where they can do lots of different things. We have four horses. We raise peacocks. We, you know, are doing, um, meat pigs right now. They can come pet the horses, they can walk around in the forest area we have.

I know death can make people very, very uncomfortable, which is totally understandable. Um, for me, I unfortunately, you know... As an adoptee, I did lose a chunk of my family. Um, and I knew that from a young age, uh, 12 years old, I lost my father. I continued to lose family up until around age 18, 19, you know, grandparents, uncles. It just kept going. So for me, death was a large part of growing up and, um, you can either sink down in a hole with that or you can see, you know, why that's just part of life. 

And when it came to, you know, being able to carry these babies and stuff like that, and be able to bring life into this world, I feel like it helped balance it out for me a little bit. It helped make me even more comfortable with what I had previously gone through knowing that that will happen to all of us. It's just the same that we're all born. We will all die. I don't want to be uncomfortable with either one of those. So I dive in deep with both of those. 

Julia: Have you ever met someone who you thought might actually be an angel? For me, Jen is definitely one of those people. In her world, the veil that separates birth and death is very thin.

Jen: Giving birth naturally is almost as close to death as you can get. Physical body is in extreme amounts of pain, but it's doing what it's supposed to do. It's completely natural. And when you pass away, that's completely natural. But both those things are, they're on the opposite end, but they, when you're in that moment, I feel like that's kind of what it's going to be like. This extreme moment that leads to some kind of peace. And that's how I feel giving birth. It's an extreme moment. It's very, Emotional, physically and mentally. And then there's peace after really when the baby, as soon as the baby kind of pops out, those shoulders come out, that heads out, the body's out. You just breathe. And it's, it's an interesting moment that I will miss. 

Julia: Talking to Jen made me feel more seen as an egg donor. Some people in my life don’t understand why I wanted to help someone else have babies, when I haven’t even had my own. And I struggle to explain it, all I can say is my gut told me it felt right. It just feels like part of my life’s purpose in some deep, strange way. 

Jen so clearly feels that giving birth for other people is part of her purpose. She sees herself as someone who is not only here to serve her own family, but to help other people start their families as well. 

There’s a life mantra I've been developing for many years that goes like this: “be grateful, stay open, give what you can, and enjoy the ride.” 

In Jen, I see someone who is truly living this mantra. She realized pregnancy was her happy place, and wanted to gift that experience to others.

Some people don't understand her calling- that's fine. She still does it. Jen is not afraid of loss, failure, or being misunderstood. In fact she embraces these things, painful as they may be, because she wouldn't get the magical experience of birth without them. 

03: Accidental Parents: Creating a family after tragedy

Four years ago, Lindsay and Jeff were just starting their family. The 32-year-old couple had recently bought a house. They were talking about getting married and they knew they wanted kids…one day. Then, Lindsay’s step-sister collapsed, and overnight everything changed. Lindsay’s sister had 10-year-old twins, and as their mom lay unconscious in a hospital, Lindsay wondered if she and her boyfriend could take care of and parent these kids.

Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.

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Julia: January 22, 2020 was like any other school night for eight year old Ariah and her twin brother Breydon. They were both hanging out in their apartment with their mom, Jennifer, like most nights. 

Ariah: We were just chilling and she was telling us it's time to go to bed. And then I was like, okay. She said, I love you. Good night. And I was like, I love you. Good night.

Julia: That evening, Ariah and Jennifer had been FaceTiming with Jennifer's stepmom, the kids' Grandma, to talk about the twins upcoming birthday-- deciding what pizza to order, whose house to celebrate at. Ariah went to bed thinking that at the end of the week, she'd turn 9 and have a big party.

Ariah: But then I kind of got a little thirsty, so I got some water, but I just saw her on the floor and she was like kind of shaking. I don't know what was going on. 

Breydon: Araya went downstairs, and then I was just laying in bed, and then Araya said, something's happening with mom, come down quick. I was like, okay. And I was like, What's wrong? What's, what's wrong? 

Julia: Their mom is conscious, but clearly not well. Ariah tries to call 911 on her mom's phone, but couldn't figure out how to open the Android. So she and her brother grab their iPad…

Breydon: So I called, um, our grandmother and then she called 9 1 1 and they came 

Ariah: I was like, I don't know what's really going on, but mom's on the floor and she's shaking and I showed her, and then I just hear a gasp, but I didn't know why she gasps. I just thought my mom was just playing around, but she wasn't really playing around. 

Julia: Just a mile or so away, the twins' aunt – Lindsay- had just gotten home from work. She and her boyfriend Jeff were preparing dinner and unwinding from the day. 

Lindsay: my mom called me and said, something's wrong with Jennifer, you have to go over. And so we're all racing to her house. We kind of all arrived at the same time. The paramedics were there. My mom and my stepdad were there I kind of briefly looked at my sister and I could see that she was kind of slumped down. But, you know, as the paramedics are pulling in, I just thought. Oh God, I don't want the kids to see this. Um, and, um, I just kind of like grabbed the kids and I was like, let's just go in your room for a minute and, you know, we'll let these people help us and, you know, they're gonna figure it out. 

Jeff: we were one of the first ones there and went in and, you know, I actually was had to be the one to check her pulse. Like it was, you know, it was intense.

Julia: That's Jeff, Lindsay's boyfriend at the time, and now husband. Jeff and Lindsay were the first people to get to the apartment that night. 

Lindsay: They weren't upset at that time. They were just kind of like confused and, you know, a lot of people just came rushing into their apartment 

Ariah: and then Aunt Lindsey just came, and then she told us to pack her things up, and we went to her house. 

Lindsay: They had just had a recent sleepover. So we thought, okay, guys, it's going to be like. You know, like a sleepover and, you know, the doctors are going to figure out what's going on with mom and, um, and they were pretty calm and we just packed up some stuff for school the next day and we just, um, yeah, we just got their stuff together and we just went over to our house and tucked them in and, you know, as soon as we got them into bed, Jeff and I were like, what, what's happening, you know?

Julia: What was happening was Jennifer had had a stroke. Which felt crazy to everybody because she was in her early 40s. For a few days, it was a medical puzzle. Why did this young mom have a stroke? Would she be okay? At first, everyone was hopeful her age would mean a full recovery. But after a few days, it was clear Jennifer suffered severe brain damage. It was unclear how this stroke would impact her quality of life, but they knew it would somehow. 

Lindsay: I had this fear that I didn't share with Jeff, and I thought, oh my god, like, she might die, you know, she might die, and What are we going to do? instead of communicating that to my partner and being like, I'm freaking out. Um, I just thought I'm going to solve this and I cannot ask him to take on these children and to have this different life than we thought. The plan was that we were gonna get married We were not gonna have children for a long time, you know I can't ask him to raise my sister's children, and I'm 100 percent gonna do it because I love them, and they need me, and I'm gonna do it, but I can't ask him to do it. 

Julia: Lindsay's worst fear came true- her sister died six days after the stroke. There was too much brain damage, she would never wake up.

In the span of a week, the kids went from excitement about their upcoming ninth birthday, to becoming orphans. 

I'm Julia Winston, and this is Refamulating, a show that explores different ways to make a family. 

Today we're going to tell you the story of a family that never intended to be. Ariah and Breydon loved their mom and felt safe and happy with her. Lindsay and Jeff were a 32 year old couple, new homeowners, and just starting to make plans for their future.

These four people were already family- an aunt and her niece and nephew, a boyfriend, who would later become a husband. But when Jennifer died, Lindsay started considering something much more serious than the role of a fun aunt.... she wanted to take the twins in and raise them. 

In an alternate universe where Jennifer had lived, we would see two families: one would be a single mom and two kids. Another family would be a young couple, the fun aunt and uncle. 

Nobody thought that this would change. But Refamulating is not just about CREATING family. It’s also about redefining family when the one you’ve got is falling apart.

Julia: Jennifer’s death was the catalyst that formed this family of four. We’re going to come back to that, and how her death brought them all together. But first let’s find out how each of those 4 people arrived at that moment. 

The story begins with Lindsay and Jennifer, who are technically step-sisters. 

They met when Lindsay was 12 and Jennifer was 24, because their parents got married. Their blended family lived outside of Philadelphia, where Lindsay, Jeff and the kids still live. Because Jennifer was 12 years older, Lindsay looked up to her a lot. 

Lindsay: I was becoming a teenager and she was, you know, really cool older sister and she and a friend of hers took me to my very first, um, um, Rap concert, which I thought was very cool. And we went to see Nelly and It was amazing. I remember being like There, and there was all this smoke in the building, and I was like, Oh my god, is there a fire? Like, what is that? And she was like, uh, yeah. Like, and now I'm back, like, thinking of it as an adult now. I'm thinking, like, she was so sweet. And like, I had no idea. And, um, it was so fun. So she was really fun.

Julia: Not only did Jennifer expose Lindsay to Nelly and - ya know - weed, Jennifer gave Lindsay the gift of becoming an aunt. Lindsay was 22 when Ariah and Breydon were born, and she loved them from the moment she met them. 

Breydon: She said that Ariah and I looked like alien potatoes. We did.

Julia: So when they were born, they were alien potatoes. But who are they now? 

Julia: So, Araya, Tell us a little bit about you.

Ariah: I like to paint and I like to hang out with my friends.

Julia: What's it like to be a twin?

Ariah: Honestly, he is my best friend. We will get each other mad sometimes, but he is my best friend at the end of the day.

Julia: How sweet right? But like most siblings, this answer changes depending on the day. 

Breydon: My name is Brayden. I'm 13 years old

Julia: what's it like to be a twin?

Breydon: ew, it's annoying.

Julia: What's annoying about it?

Breydon: Ariah bosses me around. Arai has been my buddy since birth. We would like, be together no matter, like, no matter what. Sometimes Arai and I have moments, sometimes we don't.

Julia: Here is how Lindsay describes the two of them:

Lindsay: Araya is two minutes older, and she's very proud of that. She is just incredibly creative and happy and sweet and just very authentic. You know, she's just a big personality, and I love that about her, um, and she is just wild and funny and creative, um, she's very artistic, she's very observant, um, you know, she might come at you with this badassery that she gets from her mom, but, um, she's very protective and she's very loving and You know, assesses the situation.

And Brayden is very sweet and loving in like a very genuine way. He's very quiet at first, but when he gets comfortable with you, he is, you know, silly and kind and loves to be around family. He says his favorite hobby is relaxing. And he is also a deep, deep feeler and lover.

Julia: Lindsay has so much love for her niece and nephew, and they love her too.  

Breydon: so every day I give her hugs.  Um,  because I love hugs from her. 

Julia: There’s another person in this story who also loves Lindsay, and that’s her husband Jeff, aka Uncle Jeff. 

Jeff: My name is, uh, Jeff Rosello, and I'm actually the uncle of Ariah and Braden and the husband of Lindsay.  

Lindsay: we've been friends since we were little and we grew up together, but mostly I would say we started hanging out when we were in high school, um, and we, you know, quote unquote dated when we were in high school and college, um, but because we had this very beautiful friend group, we kind of always thought we better not, you know, be too serious because we don't want to make it awkward in our friend group, 

Jeff: it was always there. I feel like maturity level wasn't there, but it was always there. And then Just being around her parties and things like that. She always wanted to do like, you know, it's just we always ended up being around each other.

Julia: Just so we're clear, Jeff is referencing his own maturity level - he wasn't quite ready for a serious relationship. So they do the whole "will they won't they" thing through most of their 20s. And then when she was 27, Lindsay's dad died of a heart attack. Nine months later, Jeff's dad died unexpectedly, too. Suddenly, these two friends were going through the same kind of grief and heartbreak at the same time. 

Jeff: It was one of the hardest things I dealt with. So I didn't want to do anything. I felt like me going out was almost like I wasn't caring for him.  But Lindsey was actually the one who got all my friends together and drug me out of the house and got me out of the house and got me to do things. 

Lindsay:  It was you know Helping to clean out the garage and the things that are the even more unpleasant things of people don't think about when you're someone dies it's like You got to sell the car and like, you know, just things like that. So we spent a lot of time together, you know, just helping each other's families at that point. 

Jeff: And I think we were at a birthday party at the bar and she took me home and I remember we pulled in my driveway and we, I was like, we're not getting any younger. You know what I mean? Like life's too short. Let's do this. So that's when we started dating.

Julia: Why was Jeff the person you wanted to commit to aside from him just being like one of those people who's just the best person?

Lindsay: He has such a beautiful heart and because we've been friends for so long, it was kind of like, we already knew all those things about each other that maybe you do or don't want to reveal to people that you're dating, and that part would, could kind of be over, and we're like, you could be more vulnerable with that person,  And I think at that point we kind of fell in love as like adults.

Julia: What do you love about Lindsay?

Jeff: Like, what's there not to love? My buddies used to always tease me, like, if you don't wife her, I'll probably will. She will never forget someone's birthday, never forget an anniversary, never forget a passing. But it's also like even with her work for a non profit like She comes home from a full time day at work, and then we'll get on a board meeting for a non profit, and then volunteer her time to go to a mission for a week and out of her own pocket. You know, it's just, I It's just who she is. There's not a bad bone in her body.

Julia: So Lindsay and Jeff finally get together. The plan was to eventually get married, and someday have kids, but they were in no rush. First they wanted to spend time enjoying each other’s company. 

They also wanted to focus on their role of fun Aunt and Uncle. 

Between the two of them, they have 20 nieces and nephews- so they were always going to birthday parties, school plays and family events. And when you’re the fun aunt and uncle, there are no rules. It’s all about slumber parties, buying toys, and most of all… s-u-g-a-r. 

Jeff: it's, giving them ice cream to come over here just to bake cookies to stay up late, to watch movies to have soda, to eat sugar,  and then send them home all jacked up and wired up and not have to worry about it. 

Julia: Meanwhile, just down the road, Jennifer was living life as a single mom, juggling a job and two kids. Implementing rules about sweets. And she was doing the best she could, which was more than enough for Ariah and Breydon. 

Breydon: Oh, her scrambled eggs are amazing. She just like, Makes eggs and put cheese on them. I don't know what kind of cheese. I just say that she's an amazing person. we would like do fun activities, um, once in a while. in the summer we would go to the beach with our family.

Ariah: My favorite memory of my mom was probably going down to Ocean City, Maryland with both of my brothers and my mom and spend the week with my family. We would all have fun and just play in the water. Even though my mom didn't like it, she'd do it. She'd do it for me. 

She loved Penn State every single time she was watching the game. You would just hear in the living room saying, yeah, or something or screaming if they made a goal. And she was just amazing. She let me do her hair, even though I was a little rough, like she was with the hair. I would still do her hair, um, she would always play and would play hide and seek and always go to the store every single weekend and get each other some snacks. She was the silly, goofy best friend I had at home. Brayden and my mom were my best friends. 

Julia: What do you call your family? Since you have different last names from the kids.

Lindsay: Our dog's name is Roxy and we say, this is Roxanne's family. 

Julia: They didn’t know it at the time, but Roxanne’s family actually started during those six excruciating days that Jennifer was in the hospital. Lindsay and Jeff brought the twins back to their house, expecting them to stay for a few days. But after almost a week of surgeries, tests and treatments, the doctors told the family that Jennifer wasn't going to make it. 

And Lindsay had to figure out how to tell Ariah and Breydon.

Lindsay: a good friend of ours, she lost her mom when she was a child, and she works for this amazing organization that helps kids who are grieving. And when it came down to it, we're like, do you have any advice on how we tell them?

Is there a script? You know, what do we say? She was on the phone with this lady who's like the head of this organization and being like you got to just tell them the truth. That's what the research shows, that's what you're supposed to do.

And so we explained to them, um, that mom was really sick and that she was going to die. And, telling them was just the most awful thing, obviously. We just told them that, you know, mom has been suffering for this whole week. And the doctors told us that, you know, her brain is not working and she's she's going to die.

My nephew was kind of just in shock. He didn't cry. He didn't say anything. He just sat with us and we held him and he didn't say anything. And I kind of said to him, you know, we're going to go to the hospital today and we're going to, you know, see mom, but she's not awake. You know, we're going to, we can give her a hug and, you know, we can, you know, come and see her, but this is going to be the last time that we're going to see mom and, and she's not going to be able to talk to us and she's not going to be awake. And he kind of understood that, but he never said anything. And my niece is the polar opposite. So she just began weeping and screaming. And she just started saying, I need my mom. I need my mom. I need my mom. And I was so grateful that Jeff and Kelly were here and we were just like holding them and, you know, validating them. And obviously this was a new thing for all of us. So we were just like, yeah, I'm, I'm so sad too. And we're going to miss her.

Julia: Here’s the thing. Ariah and Breydon didn’t have another parent they could live with - their dad had died three years earlier from a drug overdose. So now Lindsay had to talk to Jeff about the thing she'd been  thinking about all week: that she wanted to take them in. 

But Lindsay felt she couldn’t ask Jeff to take on this burden with her. This would be a huge undertaking. Both kids were dealing with intense trauma. And both kids needed a lot of academic support - Ariah had dyslexia and was reading at a kindergarten level in third grade. Breydon had just been diagnosed with learning differences and needed extra help. 

And Lindsay and Jeff had never been parents. They weren’t planning to have kids for many years. Taking in the twins would mean turning their lives upside down. It would mean more financial responsibilities and less time for themselves and their relationship. And they wouldn’t have 9 months to prepare, they’d have to learn how to parent on the fly.

All of this was swirling around Lindsay’s head when she sat Jeff down. 

Jeff: Lindsay came in the bedroom and I was, we were sitting there and she said, we need to talk. 

Lindsay: I made up this grand plan in my head again without saying anything to him. I thought, okay, well, we just bought the house, so maybe we can sell it, or maybe I can just, he can buy me out, then I can get an apartment down the street, and then the kids will live with me, and you know, it'll be terrible to break up, but I can't ask him to do this, and the wheels are just turning.

Lindsay: And I say, um, you know, I think we should break up. And I can't ask you to do this, and I have this whole plan, and he just, you know, like a movie, he just kind of grabbed me, and was like, what are you doing?

Jeff: And I told her, like, this, this is what you do. You know what I mean? This is what you do for family. Like, if something happened to my brother or sister, there would not be doubt in my mind that Lindsay would take those kids in and it's just, you know, it shows the type person she has. Like she didn't, she didn't blink twice. Like it was, it was like mama bear mode and took them right in. 

Lindsay: And he was just like, we're a team. We're doing this together. No questions asked. And that was it. 

so then we had to explain to them, you know, that this was their home, and that lots of things were gonna change, um, but that we would always be here for them, and that you know, we're so sad too. And, you know, there'd be a lot of things that would be different. 

The kids were able to stay at their school, but almost everything else in their life was changing. They were moving to a new home and there were new adults in charge, which meant new rules and routines. 

Ariah: was really kind of awkward and weird for me at first because like there are so many different things that we do at my mom's house and we did here. 

Jeff: You're gonna make your bed every day. You're gonna, you know, you're gonna shower at night. You know, you're gonna hang your towel up. It's a whole different thing. 

Breydon: it was hard to live with Uncle Jeff, but it was easy to live with Aunt Lindsey.

Julia: Yeah. What was hard?

Breydon: I barely knew him.

Julia: Remember, Jeff and Lindsay have 20 nieces and nephews between them, so Jeff saw the twins at birthday parties or family gatherings, but that didn't mean he knew their personalities and quirks super well. So while Lindsay had known them since birth, Jeff and the twins got to know each other well when they all moved in together.

Jeff: They were eight when we got them. So that was, I think, the hardest part is not having them from when they were babies to know what we expect and how we operate. So not only Did they have to learn us? We had to learn them. So like, they had to learn our behaviors, we had to learn their behaviors. 

It’s obviously going to change from being like, you know, let's go sneak away and have this cake to, you know, now it's,  you can't eat cake. You're about to go to bed. And now it's like, do your homework, get in the shower, cut your nails. We have to be, paternal figures and not just the fun aunt and uncle. 

It's hard because like the first time, like I had to punish them, like it, I was upset, like the first time I took Brayden's phone away and he's like upstairs crying. I'm like, did I do the right thing? It was a learning curve. Like, I don't know if I'm doing the right thing or not. 

Lindsay: we were just very honest with them, unfortunately, our relationship was going to change, you know? It was going to be different and that we were still going to make time for fun and any time they wanted to do something like we did before, we would make time for it. but also that, you know, it was really important that, you know, me and Uncle Jeff, that we do a really good job of doing what mom would want. And, you know, mom would want us to brush our teeth and do good job in school and, you know, work hard and all that. Um, so we're still navigating that.

Julia: Another thing they’re navigating is parenting kids of color. See, Lindsay and Jeff are white. The kids are multiracial- their mom was black and white, their dad Peurto Rican- so Lindsay knew right away she and her husband would have to approach parenting differently than they would with biological kids of their own.

Lindsay: I think raising them has been, um, more of a protective, you know, mama bear mode now that they're getting older, because, you know, they don't look like us. We went on a family trip with Jeff's whole family. And we were, you know, 20 of us at Disney World, which is like, pray for us, that's a whole different story, but, they were the only kids of color. There were times when we would be, like, in the line, and people at Disney World. at Disney World would think that they weren't part of the line with us. Like, like, you know, as if you would cut the line off, because they must be a part of a different group. And the kids were pretty young when we did that. And they would be like, why did they not know that they, you know, we were with you. And things like that, that we had to explain to them. you know, that, that is really hard. And we, um, try to explain that to them in a loving way. That like, we'll never know how you feel. And, you know, we can't relate to the things that people say to you or, you know, the experiences that you have.

But the other side of it is that, you know, They just turned 13, and, It's not an easy world for people of color, and now we're in protection mode. Things that are crappy, like when you go to a store, you can't keep your hood on, You don't have to say that to a white kid, you know? And so, that has been hard to navigate as White people to be like, I'm just telling you, you can't do that. My little brother is biracial and he helps them with a lot of stuff or my stepdad who's black helps them with a lot of stuff. And I'm grateful for that, that they have that support in a way that we can't relate. but I would say that they're doing a really good job. You know, they, are proud to be who they are. But those are the times I really wish, you know, my sister was here because I'm like, darn, I could really use your, your parenting on this thing that we really can't relate to.

Julia: In the four years they've lived together, they've all gotten to know each other more and adjusted to the new routines. Of course, the kids will always miss their mom and their life together. But they have come to appreciate many parts of life with their aunt and uncle.

Ariah: My aunt and uncle, they're like coolest and they're the best. I love like how Aunt Lindsey just like takes me outside of my comfort zone and like helps me find something else I love to do and my uncle I like i'm inspired by my uncle i'm gonna be so honest Like he plays hockey and I was like one day I can play like hockey and I was like no no hockey I can't ice skate. So I want to try field hockey. And now it's my main sport and I love it and I can do it. 

Julia: One thing that was new with Lindsay and Jeff, is that the kids got to travel for the first time.

Ariah: Like we didn't really go anywhere travel The only place we went to was school, home, or the store and then like here we go places a lot of the time so it was kind of like different 

Julia: They've explored more on the East Coast....

Breydon: Uncle Jeff, Araya, and I, and Aunt Lindsey went to New York to see a a play of Harry Potter. the play was so good. It was like, better compared for what we're doing for school. I mean like, I wonder how they did that. Or just like, how do they do it so fast?

Julia: They also traveled to Florida, their first airplane ride, for a beach trip with Lindsay's extended family. They'd never met any of those people, but they were embraced as new cousins. 

Ariah: especially when we went to Florida and I met like everybody I was like so happy. I felt like that was just like more love I could take in and just feel like, feel like I could like absorb and like feel happy. 

Julia: Throughout all the ups and downs of this journey, there has been a constant current running between all four of them: grief.

There is grief over losing a mom and a sister. They've all grieved the loss of their previous life, or their old dreams on how life would unfold. And when we come back, we'll learn how the four of them addressed their grief together.

Julia: When the kids moved in, Lindsay and Jeff were no strangers to grief. They could relate to the kids’ pain because they had also lost parents. But they had lost parents when they were adults, with adult mindsets and coping skills.

They had no idea how to guide two third graders through such an intense emotional experience. 

But just like Lindsay showed up for Jeff when he was grieving, and he showed up for her, the couple stepped up for these kids. Grief brought Lindsay and Jeff together as a couple, and now it would unite all four of them as a family.

The first thing they did was find a local organization that offers support for grieving kids and their families. 

Lindsay: They, have a, six weeks, very intensive, family course about grieving, except it's the same topics, but there'll be like a children's group and an adult group, and then you kind of talk about the same thing in appropriate language, And we learned so much from that and I feel like that was really helpful to have early on. That helped us to figure out how to parent a little better and, you know, just learning about grief I feel like was really helpful because, um, Obviously, we were actively grieving and, you know, we had grieved our dads not long before that. But, you know, everybody's experience is different. 

Jeff: Some people cry, some people need to be left alone. Some people need to draw. Some people need to, to get a shower. Some people need to go on a run. There's no right way to grieve and everybody handles it differently. So however you handle it Just make sure you grieve. 

Julia: The course on grief also taught Jeff and Lindsay how NOT to handle grief. They both realized their instinct was to "fix" the pain the kids were feeling...which isn't actually helpful. 

Lindsay: You had a terrible day at school. Well, it's okay. And I love you so much. And it's okay. We're going to figure it out. I was so guilty of that. You know, Jeff was guilty of that, where we were like, especially kids who were grieving, were like, we just want them to be happy. You know, like, do you want to go get ice cream? Uh, do you want to go to the park? Like, you know, we were just fixing everything, what we thought was fixing. and so that was another freeing moment where like, yeah, we could just validate their feelings and we could just sit with like, Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, it stinks a lot and we feel that too. I'll just say like, yeah, sometimes I just think about my dad and I just think about your mom and I just cry for no reason.

Jeff: That's one thing lindsay told me which is like a good point like a kid is crying like Stop crying. Why are you crying? You don't know why they're crying. Like they're crying because they feel something. Like they're, everybody should be able to cry. Like you shouldn't yell at a kid because they're crying. So that was huge for me. 

Julia: And they're also trying to model what grief looks like, and not hide their own pain.

Lindsay: You know, if they kind of catch me in the morning, like, on my yoga mat or, like, crying in a meditation, I'm, like, just honest with them, like, this is just me, you know, taking care of myself and this is what I felt like I needed today and I was thinking about mom and, you know, and, and I've seen that in, you know, in their little, You know, 12 and 13 year old ways of them being like, Oh, I just want some alone time or, you know, I just feel like I want to be outside today. And, you know, I'm being like, you don't have to have a reason, you don't have to explain it, but maybe we can teach them that, like, you do have to take care of yourself.

Julia: Jeff and Lindsay learned a lot from that course they took. But the kids found the most solace the year after their mom died, when they found a summer camp specifically for kids who are grieving. It’s called Experience Camps. 

Breydon: And then Ariah and I started going to a camp. Then it started getting easier to talk about our parents. A lot of people there has lost somebody very special and you can talk to anybody about it. And I made a lot of new friends there.

Julia: This became a place where Ariah and Breydon learned how to talk about losing both of their parents and their grief about that. But it was also a summer camp with bunks and bonfires and sports.

Breydon: And they have so much activities there. I love doing volleyball. And um, swimming. we have a like a grief circle so we go around saying who our special person was. It just like helped me a lot. 

Ariah: When I went to camp, I felt like I could talk about it more because I was around people that knew what I was feeling and could express it in different ways. And it helped me, like, calm down if I ever needed to. 

Julia: They've learned coping skills to help them when they feel overwhelmed with emotions. 

Breydon: sometimes I'll like count to 10. It would kind of make me feel better. And then sometimes I talk, I talk to people about it. I mean, like you don't have to, if you don't want to.

Julia: But most of all, at camp, this horrible thing they experienced doesn't make them different. It makes them belong.

Ariah: Cause, my friends at school, they don't really understand. But then at camp, everyone's just like, asking you, who you lost first and they like use the proper terms of who takes care of you and no one really makes fun of you at camp like they do at school. Cause kids at school really just don't understand, because if like, if they ask about it, I'll talk about it, it's just Some of the times, they're kinda rude about it, cause like, sometimes they'll make fun of me and then say I'm adopted, or other times they'll just laugh and then say that I'm weird, and they say I'm not normal, but honestly, there's no such thing as a normal family. Not everybody is perfect family because there's no such thing as perfect.

Julia: It broke my heart to hear Ariah talk about being judged for her family. 

It reminded me of when I was in middle school, trying to hide the fact that my dad was gay and had a live-in boyfriend. I only felt comfortable sharing about my home life with other kids who had alternative families. 

But Ariah and Breydon have more tools now than I had when I was their age, and they have access to supportive adults who are trained to help guide them through grief and pain. 

Julia: What are the counselors and adults that talk to you about at camp? What have they taught you?

Ariah: They basically taught us like There's no normal way to, like, grief, like, there's different ways you can express your grief, and then, like, it's okay to be, like, at a point where you moved on, and then you're, like, finally happy and, like, free. But some people feel guilty when they, like, feel free and happy again. But honestly, when you're free and happy again, I feel like you can express your feelings more. And I feel like you're like more open and some people like when they're like in the first stages of grief, I feel like they're just like locked away or they're somewhere in their own world where they think no one gets them, but there's gonna be someone that's gonna get you, but you just didn't find that person yet.

Julia: How, how have Lindsey and Jeff helped you in Brayden when you felt sad or overwhelmed?

Ariah: They would give, like, Breydon and I our space, and they would talk to us about it after, and I would always, like end up hugging and then like crying on your shoulders or something, but I feel like they understand the most because they also lost their dads. When I lost my dad, um, I don't think my, like my mom didn't know how to handle it because honestly, I didn't know that he kind of like passed away because I didn't know what like death was at the moment. I was like a little bit younger. my mom just explained it as going to sleep, but he just won't wake up. And I said, why won't he wake up? And I'm just like, now I'm living with someone that understands more.

Julia: God I wish these kids didn’t have to deal with such heavy losses. But what a gift, to have supportive adults who understand them. 

It brings me hope to know that there are programs and people out there who can help young kids process grief while it's happening. Even the simple fact of being able to name grief as a thing to deal with feels like a far cry from the way things were when I was growing up.

When my dad's life partner, Mitchell, died of cancer after I graduated from college, I had no tools to help me deal with the intense grief I was feeling. 

So I partied. I turned to drugs and alcohol to avoid my big feelings. 

It wasn't until I discovered yoga and meditation that I had the tools to help me slow down enough to face the pain and start healing. 

Like many of us, I learned the hard way that you can't ignore grief. The pain will always be there, no matter how hard you try to numb it. You have to deal with it, and there are healthy ways to do that. 

Roxanne’s family didn’t ask to form the way they did, but here they are. And I find their willingness to face grief and embrace the unknown so brave and beautiful. It reminds me of this quote by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who developed the theory of the five stages of grief:

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."

Ariah and Breydon are only 13-years-old and they already have such depth and compassion, more than most adults I know. Who will they be when they grow up, and what will they bring to the world as a result? 

As for Lindsay and Jeff, it’s inspiring to see fully formed adults stretching, learning and making an effort to change their own behavior so their kids can live loving,  peaceful lives. 

This is an important form of refamulating that many of you parents may be familiar with - taking a look at how you were raised, and choosing to approach things in a different way. 

It's been four years since Jennifer died. The kids have gone from little third graders to bona fide teenagers. Lindsay and Jeff went from a young couple with no responsibilities, to being caregivers and role models. 

One thing that hasn't changed, is that they all think about Jennifer every day. 

Julia: what do you think Jennifer would think about how you've raised the kids these last few years?

Lindsay: Like I said, she was kind of a, had a badass exterior, you know, she was always sarcastic. but then she would like pull you aside for a quiet moment. And then when no one else was around, you know, give you her real feelings. and so I envisioned that she would, you know, yell at me for letting them eat candy or, you know, yell at me for, letting Ariah have a little boyfriend. but then I think she would pull me aside and say, You know, thank you so much. I think she would, um, see how hard we're trying.

Julia: what do you think your mom would say about how much you and Brayden have grown and changed in the last few years? Yeah.

Ariah: I feel like she would Um, tell me a few things of how much I grew because like last time when I was like talking to her, I could barely read and now she's just like, wow, now, now you can read, read, now you're reading books. Well, my dad was a mechanic, same as Uncle Jeff's dad, but whenever I feel like I'm working with tools, I feel like, I'm like thinking of my dad. I'm just like, wow. What if I was just like here and my dad was just like saying good job. Cause I think of my aunt and my uncle as my mom and dad, but like. I feel like, so bad, if I like ever call them mom and dad, I feel like I'm replacing my mom and dad. But, I would never like replace them. They're always in my heart. They're always here and everywhere. I, I am them. I really am them.

Julia: There’s enough space between the trauma of the past and now, that Roxanne’s family can step back and appreciate where they find themselves today. 

Lindsay: they've just blown me away, you know, recently. Braden, you know, kind of graduated from special education, um, and he doesn't have to be a part of, you know, the extra support class and he, you know, he's able to, um, advocate for himself when he needs help and, you know, that's been really great.

And Ariah too, she, she went from a little girl who literally couldn't read,  you know, at a kindergarten level to, you know, advocating for herself, reading really well, you know, speaking up, looking for her own accommodations that she's also not in the, in the supportive classroom anymore. 

So I think, not only like their academic skills, but just, you know, being in therapy and being in tutoring and, you know, all the things in life,  been a lot in a few years for them, um, but I feel like  they do a great job of balancing, like, being a kid, um, but also being, you know, mature and doing things that are really hard that, you know, they really should never have had to deal with.

Julia: Something that we believe very strongly at Refamulating is that everyone's definition of family is going to be different. 

So to end this episode, let’s hear how each person in this family has re-evaluated what family means to them. 

Lindsay: It kind of just reinforced of, you know, the feeling of blended family and, that, you know, I love them with the same love that I feel like a, you know, mother feels for their children. 

Julia: What's been the best part of raising the twins? What have you enjoyed? 

Jeff: To watch them grow, to see their accomplishments, to see them smile, you know, to see their reactions when you tell them you're doing something, or where we're going, or just everything. To see like you're helping them be their best person, you're helping them succeed to, to strive to be all they can be, you know, to, to support them in whatever they want to do

Julia: So do you think of yourself as a father?

Jeff: Yes. Yes. Of course. I mean, just because you didn't birth the kid doesn't mean you're not their father. no, we still have them calls and uncle, but, you know, we are, we're their guardians.

Julia: What does family mean to you, Brayden?

Breydon: family means a lot to me. I would never forget about them. I would never hate family. I would love them no matter what. Because Ohana means family. Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten. 

Ariah: Family means everything to me. It's my world. They're my love. I have their eyes and nose. I am my family. So, I am everything and they are everything to me too. And I know one day, if they ever need me, I'm gonna be there for them.

Everything is not bad. Things are so mysterious of why they happen and why they do or do not. But, you gotta kind of live with it. The world is kind of crazy. So You gotta kind of, like, not, like, get used to it, but, like, be a part of it, too. 

02: Picture Perfect: A single dad’s journey to fatherhood

Tony Lilios always imagined himself as a father. When he was younger, the picture he had in head included a wife, a few kids, and a white picket fence. Then he came out as gay and had to totally re-think his family image. It took him almost 20 years, but finally Tony got a family that brings him so much love. And he couldn’t have done it without the help of two very special women.

Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.

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Julia Winston: In the year that I've been producing this podcast, and since I created the word refamulating, I've been seeing it everywhere! Here are some real examples: 

I celebrated a friend who had a baby on her own because she hadn’t met a partner to do it with. She’s so courageous. She’s refamulating!

When a group of friends bought a plot of land to build a compound for family and friends, I thought holy shit - they’re living the dream! 

A colleague told me about how her father acknowledged his lifetime of alcoholism and expressed a desire to heal old wounds. As I thought about how much was changing in her family dynamic, I thought “wow, that’s also refamulating.” 

My friend’s transgender spouse was legally recognized as their baby’s parent, yay!, but part of me was pissed that they had to go through that process in the first place. But hey, that’s refamulating. 

Refamulating is a lot of things. When you’re breaking new ground, it stretches you, which is uncomfortable, but it can also be really exciting. Often, it’s all happening at the same time. Change can be intense, man! 

I’ve been feeling that through the process of becoming a fairy godmother. And now, there’s another thing. Recently I started dating a woman - which is kinda new for me - and I realized that for the first time in my life I’m not entering a relationship with some pre-written story about where it’s supposed to go. This is my latest version of refamulating. 

Ditching expectations is often the first step in refamulating. This was definitely true for Tony Lillios. For a lot of his life, he had a crystal clear image of how his future would unfold.  

Tony: If I was a painter, I could paint this painting. Like I feel like I have a specific white picket fence and house In my mind it must be like eight is enough or something like that where I got this image or something. there was definitely a spouse, a woman, uh, a wife. But yeah, I wanted a lot of kids. Um, I enjoyed being in a larger family and so I imagined having four kids of my own. Lliving somewhere, just like recreating what I knew. 

Julia Winston: What Tony knew, was a mom, a dad, a gaggle of kids, and a lot of love. And most of that picture was possible for Tony- except one part. The wife. 

Tony: When I first  came to terms with being gay,  I felt like my life just exploded. Like it was like a tornado, a hurricane, tornado came through and obliterated my life. Like all the pieces of papers of my lives, all the photo albums were just strewn up on the lawn and just destroyed. 

Julia Winston: I’m Julia Winston and this is refamulating, a podcast that gets curious about different ways to make a family. 

In this episode, we're going to tell the story of Tony and how he created a different picture, one that doesn't include a white picket fence or a wife, but is absolutely perfect for him.   

Tony: I grew up in suburban Connecticut and I always like to qualify, not like suburban Connecticut, like suburban New York City, Connecticut, but like middle of the state. Just, you know, plain old, middle class, uh, America. I was the youngest of four kids,  uh, with immigrant parents. One from Greece, one from Brazil.. I was the accident, I was an oops child, a five year gap to my siblings. Born and raised in the same house my whole childhood. Um, and very kind of average, wonderfully average.

Julia Winston: In his early 20s, Tony started to see his white picket fence picture come into focus when he fell in love with a woman named Mimi. He’d known her since high school and after college they both ended up in San Francisco. That's when he started courting her. He would send her gifts and poems…but she didn’t know who they were from.

Tony: That culminated into us a blind meeting at the, the Carnelian Room at the top of the Bank of America building.  where I was sitting there when I back to the room and in comes Mimi. So I needed some big transition from like friends to something more. Um, and she, you know, walks in and it's this huge, like, Oh my God, it's you, Tony. I can't believe it. I thought it was this person and that person. And Oh my gosh, I'm so glad it wasn't that guy because all my, it just kept going on and on. And then  finally I was like. Are you happy it's me?  There's this kind of this like magic moment. Oh my god. Yes um, and so Mimi and I dated for five years, um, she was um, really We were just so connected.

And  at some point there, there is, um,  a part of me that discovered I had an attraction to men.  which kind of blindsided me because  I never thought of myself as gay. Um, when I was a kid, gay was Liberace or Elton John. And, um, I don't feel like what I see kind of projected at me. But then I had this other thing of where I was attracted to men. Now as a 20 something, I'm like, oh, that means gay. I think I know what that means, or bi. And so I started to explore that. 

Julia Winston: At first, the way he explored was online. This was in the 90s, and American Online, otherwise known as AOL was brand new. 

One of the features of AOL was chatrooms - where me and my teenage friends were pretending to be porn stars while in real life were actually eating the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches our moms had cut the crusts off of.

But Tony, because he was an adult, was participating in chat rooms as himself.

Tony: And there were all these rooms for M4M San Francisco, M4M LA, M4M this. I was like, member to member? Like, what is this? And I would drop into these rooms, and I was like, oh my gosh!  These are gay people, like, chatting up in these rooms, like, what?  This is so crazy, like, what?

Julia: gay people! 

Tony: They're gay people, and they're organized, and I found myself,  Enraptured, engaged, deep in the wormhole of these conversations with these people. And, but I'm not gay, I'm just like, captivated. Um, and I ended up in, with this one person, Norman, having months long conversations. Hours a day, you know, hundred dollars, hundreds of dollars a month of bills because of these online chats. Um, that eventually led to You know what, we should actually just meet up, because I think there's nothing here, it's no big deal, this is just some weird obsession, let's just like, meet, realize there's nothing here for me, like, I'm, I'm not gay, and we can just put this one to bed and move on. 

We meet up,  and fireworks explode, and quite the opposite happens, and when you meet someone like that from the inside out, like, we were, there was, like, the physical attraction was built on this emotional, kind of intellectual, rich depth, inside out kind of connection that, you know, he could have been anybody and of course fireworks would have happened. 

Julia: So fireworks are exploding with Norman, but what does this mean for Mimi?

Tony: it led to a couple months of me trying to figure out how to navigate this or what to do and eventually  came out to Mimi, my girlfriend. And.  In all of it's mess and confusion and uncertainty of what it meant of  how to step forward. And she was willing and able to walk with me for months at first.

It was hard to be authentic to what I was discovering and to be in a relationship with her. It just felt like I was just crushing her. And she was willing to stand there for me, for herself, but eventually it became a, I need space to just  get messy and figure this out on my own and to walk my path.  And, um,  and I love you to pieces and I need to do this for myself.  It was heartbreaking. 

You know that phrase when you feel like your heart's getting ripped out?  Um,  not until that moment did I ever know what that really felt like. Like it literally felt like  I was just, my heart, I loved her so much. And to just have that like, but it can't be right now and just to rip it out. I just, I could feel the pain in my chest of how hard, um,  This decision was for me, and how necessary it was at the same time. We stayed apart for, didn't communicate for maybe a year or maybe even two years before we could kind of come back together and, you know, find a new way to kind of engage.

That led to me going on a real long, deep journey. Heart  blasting open, mind blasting open, journey of,  you know, literally the white picket fence view was just kind of obliterated and Wizard of Oz style, just tornado ripping it apart. And here I am. What am I left with?  The whole future is ripped to shreds. I have no idea what's coming next. Um, and that vision of not only the white picket fence goes away, the wife goes away, the kids go away. There's that, that whole future is just, um, gone  

Julia Winston: Tony and Norman dated for a year. While it was a very important relationship for him, eventually it ran its course. Once he was single again, Tony was figuring out how to date and pursue people as a gay man. 

Tony: I'm in my 30s now dating. But this is still new to me, so I still have kind of a teenager y view of things. Like, it's very kind of, um, shallow. You know, it's very like, ooh, you're fun, and you're attractive, and like, whee! And, but I'm a 30 year old acting like a 17 year old, you know? It's like it's, or a 14 year old, you know? It's just, it, I wasn't sorting for a partner to co parent with at that point.  In my 40s I did start moving out of that phase and like who could I really be with and who could I spend my life with and who might want to have kids. And I found it really challenging. I felt like there was a lot of people that I would meet that would talk a good talk.  Oh, I love kids. I've always wanted kids. And then, meanwhile, you look at their actions, and you're like, that doesn't really seem consistent with, like, what a parent in my mind looks like. And so, I would get judgy about it, of like, you seem like a high risk, like, I don't know what you would be like as a parent, because everything you, not everything you do, but a lot of your behaviors and your habits seem to be not around settling down and home oriented. Um, and so, I started to kind of lose  faith that I could find somebody that was both gay and wanting to settle down and have a family. I thought I was really  not the only one, but it was like slim pickins and  at the rate I'm going, it does not feel like I'm going to find somebody that's going to do this with me.

Julia Winston: The searching and yearning Tony experienced as he got older really hits home for me. Each passing year that I’m single, I get to know myself better and I feel clearer and clearer about who I am and what I want. But as I expand and grow, the pool of possible partners seems to shrink. 

This was Tony’s frustration in dating as well. 

But after a decade of dating and not finding a partner who wanted kids, something started to shift as he watched his friends have kids. 

Tony: Having folks ahead of me, That were starting nontraditional families really moved the needle. Specifically there are two gay men that I know that were single gay men that had Children of their own  and seeing them. And even though we weren't close, just the fact that I had contact with them and I could see them and I could go to dinner once every four or five months like it was like, Oh, this is how this works. That's like a possibility I can see.  

And then also my friend Thursday. That's her name. Thursday was a single mom and adopted a kid and she allowed me to kind of take care of her son, uh, for days on end at times where I developed this. Not only do I want kids, but I can do this. Like, not only is she trusting me with her child, like, I'm actually doing the things, like, I'm, like, being a dad right now, like, I can do this, and those little gifts of responsibility were, man, she's like, thank you for babysitting my child so I can go to work, and I'm like, no, thank you, because you've given me an embodied experience to know, to give me increased confidence that I got this, I can do this too. 

Julia Winston: So he was seeing single parents raising kids on their own, and loving it. And at the same time, he was hearing from married friends that having a partner isn’t always better.

Tony: There were those whisperings of these couples that I just love from the outside. They seem these, these great straight couples. And meanwhile, when you have, you know, conversations over, you know, kitchen, side by side, when with one of them, I can specifically think of one woman who would say, you know,  when my husband's away on business.  It kind of runs pretty nicely here. Like I kind of like the temporary single parent thing where it's just things are a lot smoother. We get to, you know, and there was this like, like I love my husband. Absolutely. Do we love being together? Yes. But there was also this side of, it's actually awesome and different being a single parent when, and I was like, that opened a door for me of, oh, like what if it was like that all the time? And then,   that could actually be pretty great.

Um, and that led me to a realization at some point that there was a possibility that I could actually have kids on my own and that would be enough. So there was a sense of. You know, I'd have to make up, if I didn't have a wife, I had a partner, I was a gay man raising kids in a partnership, okay, that's not as great, but, uh, you know, we can compensate and make it happen.  There was a shift at some point, and I don't even, can't even put the pieces exactly together, but there was a sense of. Oh my gosh, as long as there's love, I have so much love to give. I have so much to provide. I have so much like wanting to bring to the world in, in, in terms of starting a family. Um, I was like, I can do this on my own. Like I really saw this future of this is totally different, way off road now and.  , this is different and awesome, like this will be great.

Julia Winston: When we come back, Tony tries to have a baby. 

Julia Winston: When Tony was 41, he was finally ready to be a dad. For him, the first step was restructuring his life a little bit, to make space for kids.

Tony: I moved to Lake Tahoe on my own saying I'm no longer trying to meet anybody, so let me get myself outta San Francisco where dating and shiny things are everywhere. I'm doing this on my own, let me prioritize that.  move up into the mountains on my own, get a house with extra bedrooms so that I'm building and manifesting this future. So, and, and it started to feel natural.

So at first, I was thinking of adoption, um, for various reasons.  One of the reasons that took me out of adoption is that the narrative I was getting was that in terms of pecking order, single gay dad is not on the top of the pile.  And so I was like, wow, this is gonna be a challenge. And um, you know, I just had the story of, oh my gosh, this is gonna just take years and years and years. 

Thankfully, and just how pieces fell into place, um,  uh, professionally, uh, came into some money. We sold a portion of our company. I had more money than I had had in the past. And the opportunity to, to pursue surrogacy was available.

Julia Winston: And what do you need to have a baby via egg donation and surrogacy? A lot of money. The cost ranges depending on the surrogate and their location, plus the cost of drugs, clinic visits, hospital stays, travel expenses and agency and legal fees. Sometimes intended parents even pay for the surrogate’s groceries. 

Most people end up spending between 100 and 175 thousand dollars for one pregnancy.

Once he knew he could afford it, Tony set out to find the right egg donor and surrogate.

Tony: I found an agency to have to find an egg donor and an agency to find a surrogate. So those are two separate agencies.  Um, and with the egg donor, it was a lot about  Finding someone, and I was coached to this for some reason, and I probably still like that I was coached this way, is to find someone who kind of looks like you. You know, if they're, if they look really different, you're going to constantly be asked questions about your wife, of why is her, what's her ethnicity, and why is she, you know, why is your kid a mixture of things.

So the more that the egg donor looks like you, the less questions there are going to be, and it just makes it easier.  Seemed reasonable to me. So, um, so there was someone, I was looking for someone like me and it was like, like online dating, like swiping. You're literally looking at a picture book with pictures and like basic stats. 

Julia: Truly, just like Tinder.

Tony: I remember sending something to my sister like,  Oh my gosh, it's so weird that the surrogates have this weird selection bias that they're all kind of short. They're all like five, four or five, five.  My sister was like, Dude, that's the average height of women, just for the record. I had no idea! I was like, they're all really short!  Um, and then it came down to meeting a few and finding chemistry. And meanwhile, I'm in conversations with another agency to find a surrogate.

Julia: And they found him one.

Tony: I remember as I drove up to the restaurant to meet her, I thought, man, if this at all feels transactional, I'm out of here. If this feels extractive, like here's my money, I want you to do this for me. Like, like any kind of back alley kind of feeling to this, I'm like, dude, this is not, I'm not into it. And I got quite the opposite connection with her. She's a mom of her own son. She  Was like, I love giving life and bringing  the experience of bringing my son in the world was amazing. And she's like, you know, those people on TV that you have way too many kids and you know, they really can't support all those kids. And you're like, what are you doing? She's like, I get that. Like I have that feeling, but I have this responsibility filter on of like, don't do that because you can't support them. So, um, and so she, When she came into being of like, oh, there's a thing called surrogacy where you can help others start their family. She was like, Whoa, sign me up. I could do this. 

Julia Winston: Tony leaves that lunch knowing this is the woman who will be his surrogate. 

So now he has an egg donor and a surrogate, and it’s time to start the IVF process. Tony has the easiest job. He gives a sample, and he’s done. But the women had a much more intense process. 

Tony: The egg donor in the surrogates have to take repeated drugs, injectable drugs, over a several week period of time to get them on cycle with each other. So they're trying to get the two of them on cycle so they are ovulating at the right time. And they're painful injections. They're self administered day after day for weeks to get into it. This is a non trivial thing.  Um, and then when the doctor deems like the hormone levels are all right and everyone's ready,  the egg donor goes into the office and they do a collection of, of the eggs and she was not under, she was kind of given some drugs to be, um, to reduce the pain a little bit, but it was, it's a painful and uncomfortable experience for her.

They extract the eggs, they fertilize the eggs and they put them and in a petri dish, essentially for days watching how they grow.  And as they grow, the IVF clinic decides this one looks good. This one growing in a way that I just qualitatively think is a good egg. And they pick that, the surrogate will come in,  they implant, um, the egg.  into, uh, the surrogate at that moment. And I'm sitting by her side and that's like,  in the world of IVF, that's like, Oh my God,  like she's pregnant.  Um, and so it was an emotional moment and it's like, there it is. The egg goes in, it comes in the lining, gets sucked in and And for the next,  I think, 10 days, you're kind of holding your breath, um, to see how it's all going to go with hormone levels and tests and see if it's being rejected or accepted. 

The first ones didn't take, you know, and when it doesn't take, you start all over again, and here we go, um, from scratch. Uh, and this was This happened several times. I'm not going to walk you through all the gory details, but there were multiple cycles involved.

I thought it was going to be, um, linear, like very straightforward. You find an agency and you pay some money and make it all happen and it all kind of unfolds  according to plan, and it can often be very bumpy. 

Julia Winston: Like many people who do IVF, it doesn't happen the first time. This was the case for me and my egg daddies too. We only had three embryos, and the first two didn’t result in a viable pregnancy. Thankfully the third one stuck, but it took us a full year to get there. 

Tony’s process took two years, but finally his surrogate gets pregnant. And Tony is in full on supportive partner mode:

Tony: I  go to all the pregnancy, all the OB appointments with her.  They would keep forgetting like, oh, yeah, you're not married. Are you and yeah, we're not married and you know. Sometimes we were kind of a little sheepish about her being a surrogate, uh, that wasn't kind of like waved on a flag. Um,  I can't remember exactly how we fully navigated that, but it was, it was somewhat elusive. And I always kind of left her to decide how she wanted to present  the situation, because I was in her town where this was happening. So, it was her world to kind of, her cards to play.  very supportive. Her parents are very supportive of this process.

Her son was like right in there with it. It was just beautiful. And she just got, you know, more and more pregnant. 

Julia: Were you ever, um, worried or feel concerned that there would be some level of attachment between the donor or the surrogate and the, the kids that you would have to deal with later?

Tony: I was concerned  mostly on the surrogate side thinking, she's been with this child for nine months, that there would be a real heart attachment. I, I was concerned on that point. And, you know, you can say stories all day long, but you've never done this before. So how do you know? You know, I, it's hard to trust her, what she says, you know? And so there is a leap of faith. Um, she was clear at some point in the process where she said, had it been her  own egg, it absolutely she would feel attached, but because it was someone else's egg, she felt very clear the whole time that this is for the sake of another. This isn't my child. This is something I'm doing for the sake, for someone else. So that never got mixed with her is the way she explained it to me.  

Julia: that's, uh, that resonates actually. I, as an egg donor who's not carry.  . I don't feel concerned about getting attached because I'm not growing a baby in my body. Yeah. But if I was, if I was, I, I don't, I would, I would say no if I was asked to carry a child, because I do think that that would be a different experience. Mm-hmm. , so I understand what she meant by that. Yeah. 

Tony: Early on before this ever happened. I had been asked to be a sperm donor for various women, and I did say no because I was afraid of attachment. And now the answer is, um, a wholehearted yes if I were to be asked again.  

Julia Winston: As the due date of his first child approached, Tony moved to the surrogate's town. For three weeks he and a friend posted up at a hotel, waiting for the baby to come and brainstorming names. Finally, the surrogate was induced. 

Tony: I was there in the room for the delivery,  um, mom, her mom was in the room  and  she was just such a trooper, such a champ. You see, um, women giving birth as a man, uh, in movies all the time and it's so theatrical  and  To be living, this is, this is the real deal. This is, um,  her really going through the pain and bringing this child into the world and  it was so rich with emotion and passion and, um, and out  came my child and then the, he, the doctor picks up  my child backwards and  Both of us were convinced that she was going to be a girl, but when he held up my child backwards, you could see these two kind of massive ball sacks hanging down. And we're like, Oh, I can't believe it. It's a boy. I, we totally had it wrong. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And he turns her around and it turns out it's just her labia were just so swollen it looked like testicles from behind. We're like, it is a girl. Ah, there's like,  you're killing us. 

Julia: Okay, here’s where I insert a very heartfelt apology to Tony’s daughter. I love this story, AND I would hate it if my own dad was telling it. But anyway, it’s a girl! And tony is like…

Tony: oh my gosh,  get over here. Cut the umbilical cord.  Cut the umbilical cord and, and just  took my shirt off and just had my daughter just laying on my chest and just that skin to skin, skin to skin connection was just,  you know, and they were like, Oh, let us clean her up. And I'm like, are you kidding me? You can't take this child off my chest  now. I'm like, I'm just like,  you can just feel this like attachment, just this like her getting folded into my chest. It was just an amazing  connection that was just like, oh,  it was just, I can still feel what that felt like  to have her laying there.

And I remember just turning my head looking at the surrogate, just repeatedly just going Thank you.  Thank you.  It was, um, it was  unbelievable, uh, to be in that space to like, oh my God, like this actually is happening. I, I was.  Overwhelmed. Um,  and uh,  it was beautiful. That moment lasted.  It felt like forever. both of us were just  in tears that like,  my gosh, we like got here. Like, I can't believe in all the twists and turns were so many reasons to punch out and give up.  We arrived at this point.

Julia Winston: Tony’s dream has finally come true, he’s a father.

He hangs out at the hospital for a few days, learning how to care for a newborn, and then he heads back to Lake Tahoe with a new child in tow. 

Tony: So I was totally immersed in my own world of like, oh, new dad and all these pieces and poop and food and formula and this and that. So she pumped a little bit. So we have that. But, oh no,  the surrogate's milk is out now. So  when is she going to get more milk to me, and we have freezers and the whole system lined up, and I check in with her and she, no response, and eventually I get in contact with her mom, and her mom tells me the story that she's back in the hospital, um, she's like on IV antibiotics, and she bled so much and got an infection from the pregnancy, that um, she's got a blood infection called sepsis. 

Julia: Maternal sepsis is rare, but it’s also the second leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths. So Tony’s surrogate was suddenly facing a potentially fatal complication.

Tony: And it's touch and go. I'm like,  uh, I can't even like wrestle how to deal with this. Like it's far away. I'm in this like new dad, emotion, wrestle, love  everything, like love all the emotions. And wow. And this, like, she's like fighting for her life, you know, two hours away from me. Um, and it was, uh, There was really nothing for me to do, um, and so I just kind of just checked in on the regular to see how she was doing and she came out okay. On the other side was weak for a little while. 

And the most amazing thing happened  to three months later, one of our check ins that, you know, we're constantly sending photos and I'm telling her stories of what's going on with my daughter  and she goes, yeah, like, let's talk about number two.  And I'm like, what are you talking about, girl?

She's like, you know, you wanted more than one kid. Um, I'm up for having a second.  I'm like, are you delirious? Like, have you thought about this? Like, do you, like, do you remember what just happened two months ago? And she goes, yeah, I'm really. I'm up for it. It won't happen again. We know what to look for. It'll be better. Um, and I really want to do this.  And I was like, if you're in, I'm in, let's go. And so the started yet another process to have number two.

Julia Winston: There were some embryos leftover from the first pregnancy, so Tony and the surrogate go through another few rounds of implantation. But nothing sticks. After a few cycles, he goes back to the egg donor to see if she would do another retrieval. 

Tony: And she's like, I've been waiting for you to ask me for my eggs. You know, I wanted to give it. I didn't want to be forthright and say, yes, I will. But I've been waiting for you to ask. And I was like, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, so she did another egg retrieval.

Julia Winston: Another round of sticking herself with needles, being hormonal, and a painful extraction. But these new eggs do eventually lead to a pregnancy for the surrogate. This time, a son. With an actual ball sack to prove it. 

Tony: And how did the second pregnancy feel, especially with the knowledge that the surrogate got so sick after the first birth. 

Tony: Yeah, there was more kid gloves going on. I was listening more intently during, um, checkups with the O. B. I was much more like making sure the doctors and Uh, you know, nearby and nurse knows what's going on and it's really paying attention.

I just had a higher degree of, um, attendance and with all that,  when my son was ready to come,  the doctor was not in the hospital, he was at his office like 10 minutes away. My son's popping out all by himself. I'm telling the nurse, like, huh, can you get in here? She's like, yeah, just in a minute. I'm like, no, his head is like about to land on the table. She's like, oh my gosh. And so nurse played doctor. I played nurse. And suddenly we're delivering a child without a doctor. And I'm like, did you not get the memo that we're worried about this pregnancy? Um, and so he just came out like that. He just like got shot out black and blue head, you know, face. It was a very aggressive quick, uh, delivery. 

Julia: This time, there are no health complications. The surrogate is healthy, Tony's son is healthy. And finally, his family is complete.

Julia Winston: Tony's kids are now 8 and 10 years old. They all still live in Lake Tahoe, and have the kind of busy life you'd expect a family with two kids and a working parent to have. 

Julia: Tell me a little more about your your sort of day to day life. Yeah, where do you get support and help and what does the flow look like? 

Tony: Yeah.  Once I had a second child, I got an au pair. An au pair is a  A person from a foreign country that comes on a special visa, a J 1 visa. They come here for a cultural exchange for one to two years. They live with you. They can only do child care related things. And once I got two kids, I was like, man, I cannot do this on my own with a babysitter here and there.

When I travel, finding care on the road, it was just, it was, it was too much.  And then it turned into Wow, here's a female presence in my life that is absent in the house and my daughter gets this like female Guidance and energy and, you know, essentially a surrogate parent and she gets a revolving door of different parents, different styles and, and for every age, I felt like I picked a different au pair.

I'm on my seventh au pair. Now, each one of them had their own style, their own personality, and I invited that into the house, um, and encourage them to bring their own,  you know, whatever it was like, bring that into the house and, uh, yeah. You know, every morning during the week, the school week, they're up often before my au pairs up often before me starting to prep lunches for kids at school and breakfast  They help out with you know, doing the laundry and getting Things organized.

Julia Winston: The au pair is a necessary second set of hands for Tony. But when it comes to parenting and making decisions, he's still on his own. Which most of the time, he likes. 

Tony: There isn't a whole lot of, well, what do you think is best? I don't wanna do this. There isn't a discussion, um, kind of going on with two parents around. It's like, we wanna travel through Europe this summer. Uh, you know, three nights every place somewhere we will backpack through Europe. We're just doing it. My kids just kind of follow along and we just, you know, we're the merry, uh, campers.

The hard parts of being a single parent is  when this, when you're  not really sure. When you find yourself second guessing and approach and you'd love a qualified invested  second opinion. Um, you can get those from other people, but no one knows your child, like  a parent. And so I feel,  um, out on a limb sometimes with some of my decisions. I worry that I'm making  Not a wrong decision, but a less than savory decision about, and it can be as small as like corrective behavior or, you know, school choices or parenting styles. Like I just, there isn't anyone really checking my work  and, and that's fine at times until it's not, and I would get insecure about something and I'm not so sure about something like I worry about the teenage years.

I imagine the teen years can be frothy and confusing. Man, a second pair would be so nice to have in those moments, I'm sure.

I more often think than I think most parents.  You know, I'm one bus hit away from those car kids being alone. Um, so I'm the last man standing and um,  it scares me sometimes. It influences the activities I do,  the way I engage with those activities. It's real. Um, I think about  my  health, my, you know, how I could be gone at any moment and what that scenario looks like way more active than people with two parents. Um, that's top of mind, probably compounded by the fact I'm older.  

An imagined challenge that is kind of funny given, uh, to me by a friend is that, you know, as a child of single parents, they never see the arguments. They never see the discussions. And this single parent would actually role play with me.   a crisis, or not crisis, but distress. So she would actively engage with a, a discussion, a debate with me in front of her child so that her child could see how that, how that mechanism works, um, . And so I was like, oh, that's kinda interesting. Like  that's important to model and, and show your kids. So I think there's challenges of, oh, there's certain things your kid doesn't see.

Julia: we have such deep programming of the shoulds and supposed tos. Mm-hmm. , like, you should have a partner, you're supposed to be married before you have kids. All this stuff. Was that with you at any point at this or at this by this point? Was that stuff still with you on some level or had you completely shed the shoulds and the supposed tos?

Tony: In all honesty, I think it never leaves. I think it's always there in some degree. Um, and it, uh,   and, uh, yeah, it rears its head every once in a while,  way less strong. But the shoulds and the, and the, you know,  what's supposed to happen, um, it's just been baked in so hard. It's baked in by the media. It's baked in what you see your friends having. And so it's, it's always  there a little bit. And it surprises me sometimes.   and the other side, I'll say it's sometimes it surprises me of how amazing it is to be a single dad rocking it and loving like, we're doing this  like, it's like,  like giddy. I like pinch myself. And so, so it's, I'm not trying to be like doom and gloomy, but it, to be honest, um,  it's always there and, and decreasing, uh, volume.

Julia Winston: When Tony came out his entire perspective about starting a family was turned on its head. He spent the next 20 years slowly creating his own definition of family. 

Often, that looked like venturing into the unknown. He chose to walk away from Mimi and the white picket fence, because he knew he needed something else, even though he didn't know what that would look like. He spent six figures and two years trying to conceive his first kid, never knowing if the science would work out in his favor.  

And after he became a single dad, he was once again faced with another unknown in his refamulating journey: the very thing it took him so long to write off - sharing it all with a partner.

Tony: I set off on this path to do this on my own. During this path,  I met a person who lives in Florida.  And I started casually dating them, you know, not that we were even like dating. It was just like, you know, I'm being a parent, I'm doing this on my own. And, you know, let's like, have some fun weekends here and there, you know?  He had no aspirations of being a parent ever and not now. When my daughter was born, something got ignited in him. And in us of this possibility that, oh wow, maybe  I could be around kids. Maybe I could spend more of my time around Tony and a child.

His friends were like, you need to run. Like, you should run now. Like, if this guy wants kids, it's gonna be all about the kids and you're never gonna be seen. And they had all kinds of stories of why he should run. But he didn't. And when my daughter was born, he just fell in love. You could just see the sensitivity and the  Just the care, the deep care he just developed instantaneously.

He's a big hearted guy. Um, and so the  visits from Florida increased over time. I didn't consider myself really dating him, but I was like, I'm just busy being dad, you know, and I'm, and now here comes a second one. And I'm just like, I'm just doing my family stuff and he would kind of show up at times. 

And it kind of started to escalate over time. Like, he would show up more and more. Um, and I started to fall more and more in love with him. Watching him, like, love on these kids more and more. So, five years ago, he moved in. Um, and  he's here full time now with  me and the kids. And  While I don't consider him a parent, he is absolutely like a loving adult in the house and, and does a lot of care and help with the kids, but not quite like a parent. Like, he's not all the way in there. Um,  and. It's beautiful. It's like non traditional and kind of quirky and sometimes hard to explain, like, No, he's not their dad, but he's my partner, and yeah, we live together. Like, just,  that's, you know, every year at school there's like this explanation of who he is and how we are. Um, but it seems to work, and there isn't an insufficiency.  Other people look in like, you should be getting married, and you should do this, and blah blah blah, and he needs to be in that photo.  And honestly, it kind of works for us, and everyone's happy. 

Julia: This is refamulating. 

Tony: Absolutely. 

Julia Winston: It's been nearly a decade since Tony teamed up with the egg donor and surrogate. But the time he spent with these women, the sacrifices they made, and the gifts they gave him, are honored everyday in his family’s home. 

Tony: Because  I'm a single dad. I describe it as having an empty chair at the table. There's clearly no mom present. And so I am happy, I love filling that with these two,  they're the heroes of the story. Like nothing happens without them and. Um, to memorialize that, to really like ground that in the house. Um, I commissioned a piece of art when my daughter was born, uh, by an artist I really liked to, to essentially paint our family story and our, you know, how this came to be.  

this painting is probably six, seven feet wide. It sits on our mantel over our fireplace in the living room, and it's massive. And the surrogate and the egg donor are on the ends, the left and right, and they are all the way front and cen not center, but they're all the way pulled to the front. They're, they're the showcase of the piece, and it's all about them, and, and Asp, and really bringing out parts of their character. You know, the artist worked from photographs to really Capture them. 

And me and the kids are kind of set back in the center because we're a result of, of their amazing gifts and their love. Um,  and  in that picture, there are symbols all over my parents, my dad's as a sailboat, my mom as a butterfly,  a backdrop of Lake Tahoe where we live now. And it sits there as a reminder on a daily basis of the gift  that these two women provided for us that is,  um, so deep.  Um,  so meaningful  and I feel it so deeply because I feel like I'm a person who always tries to provide that in the world. And to get this monumental gift from these two twice over, um, it's just overwhelming. It's so beautiful.

Julia Winston: Tony always pictured a family portrait hanging on his mantel, he just never knew what it would look like. In his early years, it featured a wife and a white picket fence. And then for many years it was painfully blank. 

The painting that hangs in his living room now tells a beautifully original story of a family with love and teamwork at the center. 

And though he didn’t paint this portrait himself, Tony was always the one holding the paintbrush. 

The family he created may not be what he envisioned, yet it’s everything he ever wanted.

01: My Big, Gay, Blended Family

Host Julia Winston came up with the word “refamulating” when she became an egg donor in her late 30s. But when she really thought about what it means to redefine family, she realized her family of origin already did that back in the 90s.

Her dad came out as gay when Julia was seven, her parents divorced, and the four of them had to completely re-frame what they thought their family would be. A lot has happened in the 30 years since, and in this episode Julia, her mom, dad and sister talk about it.

Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.

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Julia Winston: On January 3, 2022 I read an email that changed my life. 

I was eating dinner at a restaurant in Mexico on the tail end of a fun and rejuvenating trip with a group of friends. I’d spent the last week in holiday mode, meeting new people, dancing at parties, hiking in caves. It was the last big dinner, and I was starting to emerge from the haze of vacation so I decided to check my email. 

I scrolled past some work emails I would need to respond to…eventually. There were lots of promotional emails I would need to delete. And then I saw a note from an old acquaintance. We’d been friendly years ago, but since I moved back to Texas, we hadn’t kept in touch.

The subject said: “Saying hi, and posing an idea.” 

Curious, I clicked on the message and saw a long email with his husband cc’d. I started skimming: 

“We’re thinking hard about starting a family…. We've been brainstorming women in our lives and we keep thinking about you and what an incredible story you have with your own family. We keep thinking: wouldn't Julia be an amazing person to ask if she’d give us the greatest possible gift?

The greatest possible gift…

My heart skipped a beat. The noise of the restaurant around me went silent as I tried to wrap my head around what they were asking me. I mean, I knew we always liked each other, but I didn’t know they liked me enough to ask for my DNA. 

In the past, when I’d thought about the concept of donating eggs my knee jerk reaction had been, “HELL NO! That’s not for me.” Those are my eggs!

The image in my head when it came to my fertility was that I would meet a nice Jewish guy and have children of my own. I wanted to make the heteronormative, nuclear family I always wanted but never had.

My eggs symbolized my future baby - my future family.

And yet… 

Here I was, 37-years-old on vacation with a group of other mostly single, child-free adults. Not with a family of my own. Far from the fantasy I’d always had about where I thought I’d be at this point.

For years, I’d been working hard to shed the shoulds I’d carried around for most of my life - “I should be in a relationship, it should be with a guy, he should be Jewish, we should have kids,” -  and what was left was just me: a woman with love to give, looking for people to share it with. 

I’d felt so much anxiety about whether or not I’d meet someone and have a family of my own. But this invitation made me realize I could bring life into the world, and create a family- just in a way I hadn’t imagined before.

So as I read that email, I was surprised to feel joy, relief and hope. Suddenly I saw a new pathway materialize right in front of me. 

Right there in that moment at the dinner table, my soul screamed, “HELL YES! This is for me.” 

Welcome to Refamulating, a show where we explore different ways to make a family.

I’m your host, Julia Winston. I’m passionate about this topic of creating family in new ways for a few reasons: like I just mentioned, I’m an egg donor to a gay couple. You can hear all about my experience as an egg donor in Episode zero in our feed. 

But also…. I grew up in a non-nuclear family. My parents divorced in 1991, when I was 7, because my dad came out as gay. At the time, gay parents and blended families weren’t the norm, and I often felt ashamed of what my family looked like. 

But so much has changed in the 30 years since my dad came out. Queer people are more empowered to be out and have families. Many adults are more comfortable choosing not to have kids or..have kids without a partner. In the last generation, the norms around family have shifted so much, but often when you’re the person making the new choice, you can feel so alone. 

When I chose to donate my eggs to the couple I lovingly refer to as the egg daddies, I started doing research on non-hetero normative families and heard some statistics that made me feel more seen:

The number of Americans who are unmarried or unpartnered has grown to almost half of all adults. And the majority of children live in non-nuclear households: their guardians are unmarried, divorced, LGBTQ, OR the kids are being raised by someone besides their parents.

All this to say, the nuclear family, with two, heterosexual parents in their first marriage, raising kids, is no longer the dominant family structure. 

In fact, there is no one dominant family structure. 

In the last 50 years we’ve completely reformulated what a modern, American family looks like. We’ve been refamulating – my new word, feel free to steal – and it feels like we’re reaching a crescendo. 

The intention behind this podcast is to keep normalizing families that break this nuclear mold. I want all of us to feel less alone in whatever paths we’re taking when it comes to starting a family. We’re here to talk to real people with nuanced stories that census data could never tell us.  

In this first episode, I want to tell the story of my family of origin and how we shifted from a nuclear family with a mom, a dad, and two kids, to the big, gay, blended family we are today. Our story is filled with love, but also pain and secrecy and eventually… acceptance. 

That’s what Refamualting is all about. Accepting, and embracing, family in all its forms.

My family is an example of how messy it can be to do something new but also how rewarding the payoff can be. 

I grew up in Austin, but moved away for most of my adult life. A couple of years ago, I decided to move back during the pandemic to be near my family. Including my sister Molly, who lives just down the street from me. 
Julia: So go ahead and introduce yourself however you want.

Molly: Okay. Well, hey, I'm Molly Winston. I am Julia's younger, 34 year old sister, living in Austin, Texas, and happy to be here. 

Julia: When I decided to tell the story of my family in this first episode, I was surprised when both of my parents and my sister said yes to an interview. Over the years, I’ve gotten the sense that we’ve all done our own healing around my parent’s divorce and my dad coming out. But…we’ve never actually talked about it. 

Julia: So before I sat down to dig into the past with my parents, I wanted to hear Molly’s perspective. The trauma around how our family changed was so formative for me, and I wanted to know how it shaped her.  

Julia: so Molly, I guess my first question is, what are some of the things you love most about our family?

Molly: Our family, well, they're unique.That's what I love about us. And we're open, we're funny, we're interesting. Like people when they're on the outside looking in, it can be a lot, it can be really overwhelming, but that's one of my favorite things about our families that we are overwhelming.

Julia: how would you describe our relationship? 

Molly: Oh, sisters forever. 

Julia: What's that pillow that mom has? It's like, I smile because you're my sister. I laugh cuz there's nothing you can do about it.

Molly: Yeah. It's that , it's that pillow. 

Julia: Nowadays we’re pretty close. But growing up, that was not the case. 

Molly: Our relationship was terrible for about, I'd give it 18 to 19 years.

Julia: Yeah, like, like I think about the time, I mean, there's so many, like, I remember you being a bitch, honestly in, in a hot tub and me throwing ice cubes at your head. Or maybe it was vice versa, I don't know. But yeah, it was marked by lots of violence. We'll put it that way. 

Julia: You had a move. You had a move that I called the cockroach . I would, I would approach you to hit or kick and you were on your back on the floor with your legs and arms. A kimbo just pushing away, squirming around like a dying cockroach on the ground. And honestly it was a really effective strategy because it was, I couldn't get to you

I have to apologize for taking all of my dolls and throwing them in your room every night before bed. Because the reason I did that was I saw Chucky and I thought my dolls were gonna kill me in the middle of the night.And so I threw them in your room. Might as as well, will kill you. 

Molly: Might as well kill me. 

Julia: and they never did, much to my chagrin.

Julia: But during our childhood, in between the slapping and fighting over typical big and little sister stuff, our family went through a huge change. Our parents got divorced when I was 7 and Molly was 3. Our dad moved into his own place and we split our time between his house and our mom’s. 

When they split, they did not explain why to Molly and I. We didn’t know our Dad was going through a huge personal change, that he was starting a new relationship with a man. 

For a couple years all we saw was that our mom was heart broken, and our dad had a roommate named Mitchell.

Molly and I lived in that confusion and secrecy together. The wool was pulled over both of our eyes, but as we got older, we both started to uncover the truth. 

Molly: Like I knew that dad lived with a man, but I thought, yo Tbh, I thought Mitchell was the maid until I was seven years old. Okay. That is so fucking embarrassing. He was just really compulsive about cleaning.

Julia: Yeah. Super anal retentive and compulsive. And I, you know, dad and Mitchell never showed any kind of affection towards each other, so I was like, oh yeah, they're just like totally chill roommates. And that guy's, the maid, also, they had different bedrooms. 

I mean, I remember this, I was confused because I knew there was more going on. Granted I was four years older than you. I knew that they were in some kind of relationship. I could feel that. But they lived, they had two separate bedrooms, but one bed was always made. Mitchell's bed was always made. They clearly slept together in dad's room, but no one ever talked about that. It was just this like weird elephant in the room.

And I never asked anyone about it, but it was, and I couldn't talk to you about it. You were too young. I was too young. 

Molly: And also I, I'm sure I've told you this story, but there was one time I was in the car with dad and I was like second or third grade. And I remember hearing on the play scape, like a kid calling another kid gay or like, that's gay, you're gay.

So I asked Dad , and again, I didn't know anything had to do with anything. And I was like, dad, are you gay?  because I heard it on the playground. I was like, yeah, I know what this means. You just asked him straight up. And he was like, well, honey. And it like turned into a big conversation and I was like, whoa.

Like whoa. That's not what I meant . But like thanks for the info. Didn't mean for you to just like smash open my whole world. Yeah. Shit. And then I remember being in like, Yeah, I think I was really ashamed of it.

Julia: We had a similar experience. I learned that dad was gay because I saw some kids, uh, like wrestling during recess, two boys. And someone was like, that's so gay. And I was like, what does gay mean? And my friend was like, you don't know what gay means. So I already felt ashamed cuz I was like, oh, I'm behind on something.

Mm-hmm. . And she said, it's when guys like, like each other.  and I immediately, I was like, oh my God, that's my dad. And I, I went home and I asked mom about it. You were too young at the time. I was like 10, so I guess you were maybe six. Mm-hmm. . And we were at dinner and I asked mom, I was like, mom, is dad gay?

And she like dropped her fork, mid bite and in shock. And so I knew it was true and I felt sick to my stomach and I ran to the bathroom and I thought I was gonna puke. And then I think she came and had the talk with me.

But isn't that interesting that we were all, you're in the closet with your family. Mm-hmm.  If there isn't like a definitive moment where it's like if either you're not raised with everybody just fully understanding and talking transparently about it, or they're being a definitive moment, and mom and dad made it they made a choice for us to just find out, to keep it quiet. 

Molly: And you know what's bizarre is, like I was saying earlier, like our family's so open, we talk about everything. But when we were growing up, we did not. No. It was, we were a family of secrets and you were a family of secrets. And it's very, you know, and you learn.

And if anybody's ever been in any kind of, um, recovery program, the one of the baselines is secrets keep you sick. Secrets make you sick. And I think that a lot of our childhood might have been plagued by a bit of dysfunction from the secret keeping. 

Julia: Keeping secrets and living in secret is a disease, a disease my whole family suffered from. But there was a turning point seven years ago, when Molly was in treatment out of town for drug/alcohol abuse.  

Molly: I will say that when I got older, when I went, when I went to treatment and we as a family had to sit down and be real with each other. Yeah. Yeah. That was a good starting place. Oh my God. Molly, you, you going, I think I accidentally kicked the door wide open with that. I think you did. That's actually, 

Julia: God, that's so fascinating. That was the first time the four of us got together. Just the four of us since we were a family unit. Mm-hmm.  and y'all actually stayed together. I remember at an Airbnb, like as a family and I was so jealous that I couldn't be with y'all doing that. I know, I know. And I was really sad that you couldn't be with us.

I also was like really appreciative that I got that time with mom and dad and I mean, you're being in treatment and the exercises that your recovery center made us all do together was like such a gift for all of us. 

Molly: Yeah. And you know what? That actually started Dad on his journey of being able to say what he was feeling very openly. Like he would come to me and he would use the framework that he learned in treatment. 

Julia: Yeah. It's really amazing. I mean, isn't it just like you just never know when some of these really challenging experiences are actually huge gifts. 

Julia: How did you feel about being in a blended family as a kid? Were you ever teased, were you embarrassed to tell others that your dad was gay? 

Molly: Yeah, very embarrassed. Um, and I think a lot of my childhood, I kind of blocked out a bit because I was so embarrassed by my home life.

Julia: Yeah. I felt the same way. And that was kind of how I, I gauged who my real friends were, were the people who'd, who accepted and loved me.

Julia: While Molly and I went through all of this at the same time, it didn’t feel like we were in it together. She’s four years younger than me, and that’s a big difference when you’re kids. The role I assigned myself was to try and protect her from the hurt of the situation.

Instead, I really relied on my friends. One of the friends I felt truly accepted and loved by was Ellana. We’ve been best friends since we were four, and she was one of the few people I could talk to about my parents splitting up. And then, when we were 12…her mom also came out as gay. All of a sudden someone I trusted could empathize with me, and I didn’t feel so alone anymore. 

Even better, her dad and my mom, the two straight parents, started dating and when we were 16 they got married. 

My best friend became my step-sister, which helped me feel more proud of my family, which at this point was starting to feel like a big, Jewish gay Brady bunch. 

But that also meant that I wasn’t talking to Molly about any of this. I was just talking to Ellana. I was probably still hoping one of my dolls would murder Molly in the middle of the night. 

It wasn’t until Molly was in rehab that we finally addressed the shared pain of our upbringing. 

Julia: You know, I remember feeling a sort of quiet exhilaration when that was happening, because I think I knew that this was just taking us to a new level. 

Molly: Yeah. Like a new level of like a family therapy that like we didn't ask for, but was kind of forced upon us. But that was kind of necessary.

Julia: It was necessary…and when we finished the interview I felt so appreciative and closer to her. 

Which made me wonder..what would a direct conversation with my parents make me feel? When we come back, we hear from my dad.  

Julia: One year on Father's Day, I think I gave you a card that was like, thank you so much for being my dad. Thank you for giving me life. And what was it you said? 

Jaron: I said, oh, it was nothing. Just a little squirt (laughter)

Julia: This is my dad, Jaron. He is, in one word, outrageous. 

For example, on a recent Sunday afternoon I got invited to a dance party in a warehouse, and I invited my dad. The room was filled with people in their 20s and 30s, slowly swaying and bopping their heads in their trendy outfits and wide brimmed hats. 

But right there twirling in the middle of the dance floor is Jaron, 67 years old, wearing athletic clothes from Target. The DJ dubbed him MVP of the dance party, and I agreed wholeheartedly. 

Because my dad is the life of every party. He’s sassy, irreverent and can find humor in any situation. 

But as my family has healed, we’ve learned that his humor is also a defense mechanism. He’s a geriatric psychiatrist, and that’s a heavy job. Humor and sarcasm has helped him compartmentalize the emotional strain of working with Alzheimer’s patients.

We’ve all followed his lead- humor is my family’s favorite tool when things feel hard. I often joke that I’m glad he didn’t come out as gay right away because otherwise I wouldn’t exist. 

That’s where I started our interview together- his desire to have a family. 

Julia:  When you were young, what did you envision for yourself when you thought about your family of the future?

Jaron: I mean, I wanted a family. Um, family was all important.

Julia: And what did that mean? You know, literally.

Jaron: I mean, literally it would, it, it would mean that I married a woman and that I had kids. 

Jaron: I had known your mother, I think since day o ne of college, which was 1973. 

Julia: But she moved away for a few years after college. And when she got back to Texas, they reconnected.

Jaron: We saw each other, got back together at her Best Friend's wedding, then we dated for a while until I really was, um, it was getting more and more intense and more and more, um, serious.

And I just couldn't tolerate it. I felt like I had to go. Uh, I had to go see about my gayness and I broke her heart. I broke the relationship off, and, uh, and she went and, uh, and did her own thing in Houston for a while. I went to Connecticut, uh, to do training in psychiatry and, uh, was, was really seeing men and women at the time.

And, um, uh, and AIDS came on the scene around the same time. And, uh, my cousin, uh, Alan eventually died of aids and I decided, you know what? If I can have it either way with men or women, I wanted to be with a woman. I wanted a family.

I wanted kids. I'd always wanted a family, wanted kids. Family was all important. And your mother and I really loved each other, and we loved each other's families.

And so it was really, really hard to initially break it off with her. And it was really, really wonderful to get back with her because I never thought it would happen.

Julia: During their time apart, my mom knew my dad was bisexual. And when they got back together, he told her he could choose and he wanted to be with her. So they got married and six weeks later they were pregnant with me. 

Jaron: So you came along pretty quickly and I realized afterwards that at least at the time, it's like, uh, wow, I guess I cemented myself in a heterosexual relationship and because I wasn't going to do anything different, I basically went back in the closet for several years. And then Molly came along and around that same time, I couldn't control what was going on with me inside anymore. I've known I was gay since I was probably five or six years old.

Jaron: your mother and I were in therapy. We were in couples therapy talking about being honest. And one day I just said, I, I can't do this anymore. I want to be with a man and broke her heart for a second time.

And I still feel bad about that. But, um, you know, my philosophy at the time was right or wrong. That I was the child of a very unhappy marriage. My parents were very unhappy from the time I was born. They were unhappy the day I was born. I couldn't tolerate that in my own relationship. And so I had to find  something that felt it fit for me. And I knew that I was never going to abandon anybody. I just had to go my own way sexually.

I knew that I could still have my family. It just wasn't gonna be a traditional intact family. And of course, 50% of families wind up in divorce too. And, you know, I've worried that psychologically I was going to damage you kids by divorcing. But on the other hand, the feeling of damaging you all, if I stayed in a marriage that I just couldn't be in anymore, was gonna be even worse for everybody. My unhappiness would've been worse for everybody I felt.

Julia: What made you sad? 

Jaron: Well, that I left her and I didn't want to, never would have, but I couldn't be honest about my sexuality for years. basically gay people learn, not to be honest. You can't be honest with yourself and you can't be honest with other people.

You don't want to be attacked. You don't want to be, uh, criticized. You don't want to be killed, so you learn how to stuff it and shove it and not be real, and not be honest and, and not be who you truly are. Some people, you know, don't have a problem with that, they're just out. And I think as the years have gone by, certainly younger men have a whole lot easier time, uh, than my generation did.

Julia: What was it like? To be a dad and raise kids as a gay man in Texas in the 1990s?

Jaron: You know, I guess looking back, it wasn't that bad. I was in Austin, Texas, which was a much better place to come out  than, you know, Odessa or Midland or, you know, uh, anywhere else, or, or Bohunk, Texas. Uh, so I knew I was in a liberal place and that most people were gonna be just fine with it, and they were, and at my job in my office, I mean, Nobody said anything about it.

I don't know that they were comfortable, but they didn't say anything about it. And so life kind of went on as usual. I think the hardest thing for me was, being a single parent, it was not easy. Every time I got you all, it was, um, okay, what am I gonna do with them for the few days to keep you busy or to keep you interested or, you know, do interesting things with you. And of course, that led to ‘Well, you're the good time dad’. That's what your mom would say.

I mean, it was really in the service of having a relationship with you all and taking care of kids. I mean, you know, go places and do things. And then taking you back home was always really terrible. I mean, it was sad. Sometimes you all didn't want to go home. Sometimes you wanted to go home to mom's, you know?

Julia: Not only was he a single dad, but right after the divorce, he started a new relationship. 

Jaron: I did meet my first partner, Mitchell, and he helped me rear you all really. For better or worse. I don't think you liked him very much at first. 

Julia: Not at first, but then later, man, he and I got really close. 

Jaron: You got really close. He was your confidant. 

Julia: Mitchell became one of my favorite people. When I first met him as a little, Jewish girl, all I could see was that he looked like a real life Ken doll, with blonde hair and blue eyes. I thought he was gorgeous. I could tell he made my dad happy, and eventually he made me happy. He was a source of light in my life who felt sparkly and fun. When I was a rebellious teenager, he came to my rescue when I got in trouble for drinking and partying. He brought optimism and cheer to my life, which I came to really appreciate the older I got. 

My senior year of college, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer. He died a year later. 

Jaron: What was the most painful experience from your childhood? Of me leaving the family?

Julia:  The most painful part of this journey for me was when Mitchell died. And the thing that made it so painful was not just that he died, but it was that the day he died was the day I found out that he was HIV positive.

And the reason I found that out was because you told me, but you told me in a way that was like in a sort of like sobbing, crying mess after your love of your life died, you were ranting about the H I V and how that was what killed him in the end, even though it was cancer and I, it was like, it was like the rug was pulled out from under me all over again.

It was like this whatever trauma I did experience as a young child from finding out a secret that actually had a huge impact on my life. it was that happening all over again with this other thing. And then I was afraid that you were HIV positive and I was convinced that you were what? Lying to me to protect me all over again.

I was afraid that you were gonna die of h hiv aids and that I was gonna, that I couldn't handle it. That I wouldn't be able to handle it. And you knew that. And so I thought you were gonna, I thought that you were lying to me to protect me from completely having a psychotic break. The day that I, Mitchell had already just died. It was the hardest day of my life. 

Julia: Thankfully, my dad never was HIV-positive. But it took me a few years to really accept that he wasn’t lying to me. My dad eventually fell in love again with his current husband Jeffery.

One of the things they love to do together is travel.

Julia: So recently you went on a gay cruise and  one gay cruise, many gay cruise. Recently you went on many gay cruises and you had a bit of a revelatory moment. Can you tell us about that moment? 

Jaron: Yeah. So I'm on this gay cruise with 4,000 gay men. And it's at one of the dances and it's outside on the deck. And I just looked out at everybody and I was up against a post and I just was bawling and I was bawling because it was, I was so happy that all these people, all these guys could just be themselves.

And I wished that I could have been able to do that when I was young. What was amazing was this one guy. He came up to me and he embraced me and he said, it's because of you all that we're here. Because I was feeling really old and, I was happy and I was sad, uh, but it was a very powerful moment.

Jaron: I would've come out a whole lot sooner, but I wouldn't, and maybe I would've had a family eventually, you know, somehow, but like people are doing now. But, um, but you know, the reality is, is that it happened the way it happened and I, I'm very thankful and I love you all tremendously. And, um, you know, just the journey continues.

Julia: I have spent years thinking about my dad coming out and how it’s impacted our lives. He’s always been at the center of this story: it was his decision to come out that changed our family forever. It was his secrets we had to untangle years later. 

I’ve also celebrated the good that came from my dad’s decision - like my relationship with Mitchell. Or…if they hadn’t gotten divorced, my mom wouldn’t have married my best friend’s dad. We all get together on holidays and everyone has a good relationship, so from the outside looking in, it seems like a beautiful success story of divorce. And let’s be real, we’ve had 30 years to get our shit together. 

Which is why I was a little surprised during my interview with my dad, to hear pain in his voice when he talked about hurting my mom all those years ago. 

It was a reminder that her maturity and resilience that really kept our family together. We wouldn’t be able to have a cohesive, blended family if it weren’t for her.

And I probably wouldn’t even be doing this podcast if it wasn’t for her. 

So when we come back, I talk to my mom. 

Julia: Cathy Schechter is a force of nature. 

Cathy: And dad was like, you know, I'm waiting for you to write the book. And I'm like, I don't wanna define myself by this experience. This is not, I mean, it's an experience, but it's not the defining moment of my life. There have been other defining moments, and this is just something that it's, it's a, it's a decision that I made, um, to marry him.

Julia: This is a woman born in the 1950s, saying marriage doesn’t define her. My mom is a lot of things- wise, authentic, compassionate - but most of all, she’s a badass. 

When I was in my early 20s, I worked at her market research firm. One day, my direct supervisor was stressing me out and I went into my mom’s office to tell her. She was sitting behind her big desk, with her glasses resting on the edge of her nose, and after I finished complaining she pushed up her glasses and said “Julia, is anyone dying?” I said no. She responded with “Then don’t worry about it. Just do what you can.”

That’s how she approaches many things in life: she calls challenging moments AFGEs…which stands for Another Fucking Growth Experience. She’s taught me that there are no mistakes, only lessons. 

She’s been such a role model for me - she cares deeply about the collective, she’s curious, and she’s a master storyteller, whether it was for public health campaigns or as a teacher of ancient Jewish texts.  

When I was a kid, she wrote a book about the history of Jewish people in Texas, based on our family history. This desire to mine for meaning within family clearly rubbed off on me.

But I was nervous to tell her about this podcast. I’ve explored my family’s story through creative projects before, and that didn’t go over well with my mom. So it took me months to muster up the courage to ask her to do this interview.

But….she agreed. 

Julia: First of all, how did you find out about dad being gay and then. How did that play a part in your marriage and the ending of your marriage?

Cathy: I knew that dad had had same sex partners when we got married. I, I'd known that about him for a long time and we had actually explored that together. Um, and the masters in Johnson's, you know, there's this, this continuum of sexual The Kinzie scale. Yeah. The Kinzie scale, whatever it was. And, you know, and Dad's assurance was, yeah, I'm attracted to, to both men and women, but, but you're the person I wanna marry.

And I believed him. Why wouldn't I? Um, so it wasn't an issue when we were married, you know, finding out that dad was gay. It was an issue of me discovering that Dad had betrayed our marriage and that he had fallen in love with someone else. 

Julia: And for you, how much did it matter that the other person was a man

Cathy: at the time, time? you know, I think, I thought that it was probably easier than it would be for a woman who gets left for a younger woman or for a more beautiful woman, or a richer woman or whatever. I mean, it was like, I, how could I compete with another man if he wanted another man? I mean, that was just something I could never do or be.

Julia: how did you feel when you decided to get a divorce?

Cathy: I felt very sad. I didn't want it. I didn't wanna be single again. I didn't wanna lose your father. I didn't wanna lose our dream, The family life. Um, so I was angry. Um, the rug got pulled out from under me. You know, here we had these two children together and I just, I was really angry with him.

Julia: how did you and dad end up repairing your relationship to get us to the point where we are today?

Cathy: I had done my research and I understood that children of divorce are more wounded by fighting and nastiness than they are by the divorce itself.

And so even though I was angry, I knew that I had to, find a way to keep our family together and, and in order to do that, I was gonna have to get my shit together and,I was gonna have to put my big girl panties on.

Julia: How the hell did you do that, mom? Seriously? Like when I do really try to sit in your shoes and think about what this whole process was like, from your perspective and what you must have gone through, which I'll never fully, I'll never be able to know that. No one will ever know but you, but how did you get through this?

Cathy: it was an exercise in self-control.I learned a lot about being human and I learned a lot about love. What I learned about love was that the better part of loving your father was gonna have to be loving who he really is and not who I wanted him to be. Um, and so I didn't get my way.That was just the way it was. And so I couldn't change it. I couldn't control it. 

Cathy: I feel proud of it because I feel that when dad and I were getting a divorce, there was the sense in on both sides of the family that they should not like the other one. That we should all be get mad. My parents and my aunts and uncles who were all prepared to really hate Jerry, I was like, we're not gonna do that.

This is not who we're going to be. He's Julia and Molly's father. And make no mistake, I was mad as hell at him. I mean, he broke my heart. He betrayed me. He betrayed our dream, the dream that we had together. But I loved him then, and I love him still.

Julia: I look so admirably at you for how you handled that. And there's so much that I'll never know about. I really think, and I've heard dad say before too, that you, so much of the reason that we are still so connected is because of you. It's probably all because of you actually. 

But there was a moment when you could have, I mean, you were the deciding person. You could have said, I don't wanna be around this person. But there was obviously something bigger that you had in mind, even in the moment that you felt heartbroken.

It's almost like you chose that bigger love or that bigger perspective over the feelings you had at the time. What was going on for you?

Cathy: I wanted my children to have a family. I didn't want them to, I didn't want you, I didn't want you and Molly to have a life, that was where you had to choose. I wanted you to have what I had.

And you know, that was, I remember one night sitting outside on the back porch, right outside my bedroom. Remember that? There's a big tree, big sycamore tree. Beautiful. It was a beautiful spot. And looking up at the stars and talking to God and saying, I have no control over anything.

I, now, what am I supposed to do? Just guide me. And that's when my career took the turn that it took. And I spent the next 25 years educating women about you were empowering women. I was empowering women. That was my path.

I had to set aside whatever romantic relationship we ever had had. And I had to start looking at him, not as a husband, but as the father of my children. And this was the father that, by the way, I wanted to, you know, I mean, . I wanted a partner in raising my kids, and then I also kind of got Mitchell in the bargain. Who sometimes did more than your dad did, you know. Who sometimes rose to the occasion so beautifully. Um, it just took time. It took time.

Julia: Yeah. What, when you look back at Mitchell and the role he played in our family and your relationship with him, what do you remember most?

Cathy: Mitchell was the only person who, who got doses of my rage other than your dad. So I'd left a really angry message one time and Mitchell was on the receiving end and he said, you ought really hear yourself. But you know, as their relationship went on through the years, he began to understand why I would be so angry with your dad.

And I loved Mitchell and I, I, I was grateful to him. he always complained, that we weren't teaching our kids to be clean or we to need enough and, you know, all their clothes and you, he hated that I'd throw my towels all over the floor.

So, you know, ultimately he became sort of the third person in the marriage.

And you know, and I appreciated that about him. He took the role seriously. And when he was dying, you know, for those, those months, those really horrible months, you know, I, I was there for him. And we had a good ending.

Julia: One of the things that is very top of mind to me at this point in my life, is the idea of having children. Neither my sister nor I have kids and I know this is tough for my mom, who loves being a grandmother to her husband's grandson and would love to have more.

Julia: Does it make you sad that neither of us have kids? 

Cathy: A little bit, yeah.

Julia: I have this story and I know you know that I have this story about you, that you want to be a grandmother, and I mean, I know that's true, but I think the weight I've put on that story that you never asked me to put on is that I am a disappointment somehow because I've not delivered children to make you a grandmother. What do you think about that story?

Cathy: I think the story's not over. And  what I've told myself is that if I never have my own grandchildren, you know will have hopefully left a legacy somehow on the world.

And if you don't have kids, you still have some obligation to leave a little bit of yourself behind, whether through students or the people that you touch, the children that you touch.

You know the things that you produce in this world to take people to a place where they can bring hope and repair to the world. And I believe that both of you are capable of doing that, whether you have children or not. But you do have an obligation. I won't let up on that . 

Julia: Well, it's why I'm doing this podcast.

Is there anything else you want to say just to feel complete with the conversation?

Cathy: You know, despite everything, when Molly was going through rehab and we had that moment where the four of us embraced each other, I didn't want it to end. And in that way, I don't think I've ever really gotten over it. I'm not sure that I ever will, but what we have is good enough. 

Julia: Thank you so much for how you've handled everything, and I know it's not perfect. We've all, you know, had our hard times. Um, but I think you've done a phenomenal job. , and I'm saying it in front of, I don't know who's listening to this. I don't know if this part is even gonna make it into the podcast, but I'm just saying like, it doesn't matter.

Cathy: I don't need credit. I know, I know. And I'm proud. I'm proud of our family. 

Julia: Hell yeah. No one else like us out there. 

Cathy: Oh. I think there are people like us out there that have had a journey where they just figured out that it's easier to love, it's just easier and healthier to love.

Julia: These conversations with my family were incredibly cathartic for me. The interview format gave me the opportunity to talk to them directly about things we never would have talked about on our own, which for me has unlocked another level of healing and acceptance. 

My parents divorce started with shame and secrets, but decades later I see how much we’ve loved and respected each other through an intense process of refamulation and I’m so proud of how resilient we are. 

Now I begin a new process of refamulating, this time as an egg donor, and I’m drawing from my past to inform my future. I’ve learned from my family of origin that transparency matters, different is beautiful, and doing something new doesn’t have to mean doing it alone. 

That’s why I’m creating this podcast. I want to shine a light on people who are courageous enough to create their families in ways that align with who they truly are and what they truly want.

If that resonates with you, I’d say you are refamulating and I’m so happy you’re here. You might know what you want your family to look like, but don’t know how to make it happen. Or maybe you think there isn’t a way for you to have the family you want. Maybe you have no idea what family means to you, or maybe you have a family and don’t see any others that look like yours.

All of these scenarios can feel lonely - trust me, I know - but they don’t have to. There’s no one else out there like you and your family, but there are a lot of people trying to figure it out, just like you. Just like me. 

So let’s do it together.

00: Becoming Fairy Godmother: Egg donation and creating a new kind of family

Two years ago Julia Winston was asked to help a gay couple start a family by donating her eggs. At the time, she was 38, single, and had no idea if she’d start her own family. Sometimes that made her feel insecure, so the opportunity to donate her eggs allowed her to help create a family, just not the one she imagined in her head. Since the donation, she’s gone through an emotional transformation that opened her eyes to all the different ways a family can look. 

This episode originally aired on Terrible Thanks for Asking, hosted by Nora McInerny.

Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.

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Nora McInerny: What does family mean to you? 

Each of us will answer that question a little differently- maybe you consider the people you live in the same home with as your family. Maybe you widen that circle and include aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins. Maybe family are the friends you've chosen who have stood by you through everything, when the people you share blood with didn't. 

When I was growing up, my family was a massive Irish Catholic conglomerate spanning the upper midwest. I have – and this is not exaggeration – FIFTY FIRST COUSINS! And so many other forms of cousins that if you share even one strand of DNA with me, or if you grew up alongside me, I was told you were my cousin or my uncle or my aunt.

Family to me was always expansive, but I still assumed as a kid that my own family would be pretty nuclear. I’d marry a man. We’d have kids. Those kids would be cousins with my siblings’ kids. We’d become grandparents, and then we’d die and maybe someone would name a kid after us someday? 

And I was kind of right and also kind of wrong.

I was married, he died. I was a single mom for a little bit. Then I blended families with my current husband, his kids, my kid and a surprise new baby. My first husband’s mother is a grandmother to all of these kids. Both my mothers in law have lunch together and don’t invite me!! Our kids don’t say step or half sibling, they just say sibling. Because our oldest was born when I was 18 but I didn’t meet him until he was 14…my husband calls me a “late in life teen mom.” 

And all of my kids mostly call me Nora, which is very funny to me. 

But you can only have a blended family when two other families disintegrate, and ¾ of our kids know what it’s like to have a family they loved…and a family they love now. 

Our family is more expansive that I thought it ever would be, and even though meeting new people often means a five-minute rundown of the backstory with time for Q&A…our family is unique in the fact that it’s not unique at all. 

A third of adults, ages 25 to 50, live with a spouse and kids. A generation ago that number used to be 70 percent. 

Family is changing. People are staying single longer, having children has become a choice for many people, not a thing they feel they have to do. And queer people have more opportunities to have kids using science and outside help. 

All of this freedom to do something different means that many of us are asking ourselves the question I asked at the beginning: 

what does family look like for you? 

Exactly two years ago, on April 2, 2022, Julia Winston logged onto a Zoom call with a psychologist. Julia was sitting at the kitchen table at her home in Austin, TX. The psychologist was in her office in a different state. They'd never met before, and Julia was talking to this specific psychologist because she was trying to figure out what family would look like for her.

Therapist: How do you picture this? Like, you know, what role do you think you would have? 

Julia: Well, we talked about that and we came up with a role. We came up with a title, which is the Fairy Godmother. 

Therapist: Yeah. Only thing is, I don't know if you have magic. 

Julia:  Oh, I have magic. 

Therapist: You do? Because that's very helpful for children.

Julia: I've got magic. I love that, yeah. 

Nora: Three months before this session, two male friends of Julia's reached out and asked her a favor. They wanted to start a family and they were looking for an egg donor. they asked Julia and....she said yes. She would be their fairy godmother. 

The technical term for her role is “known egg donor”. Julia’s friends – who she calls The Egg Daddies – want to use her eggs and their sperm to make embryos via In Vitro Fertilization. The embryos will be implanted into a surrogate, a woman who has agreed to carry the children she has no genetic tie to. This sounds so strange and technical, I know. The Egg Daddies don’t want Julia to be a mom, but they do want Julia to know their children, to be available for questions and to just be another adult who loves them. 

It’s not a relationship we really have a term for. We have aunts. Uncles. Cousins. But an adult who gave their DNA to make sure you could be born? That doesn't parent you? Fairy Godmother was the term that felt right. 

At the time, Julia was 37. She was single and didn't have children of her own. She'd frozen some eggs a few years prior, in case she did want to get pregnant one day, but her own desires for a family were still a little fuzzy. She could give these men a huge gift…and… be part of a family, without carrying the baby or filling a parental role.

Julia: I love the idea of, of having an extended wacky family. I mean, I just think to me, that's a very comfortable, uh, place. And, um, I mean, I felt a lot of joy when I was considering this, doing this, because that was actually one thing I imagined. And I just laughed so much because I was like, wow, I've gone from worrying that maybe I'll never have any kids to like, what if I have like a bunch of kids, like what if Aaron and Dan have multiple kids from my eggs and then I have kids, I mean, that would just be incredible and that my body wouldn't even have to go through you know, all the things to have multiple kids. So that possibility is actually very exciting to me. Not that it wouldn't have complications as every family does, but I fully trust that I would be able to meet any complications that came up. 

Nora: Saying yes to the egg daddies was easy for Julia. Two years before they reached out, she  went through a big break up in her mid 30s. The man she thought she would marry and have kids with wasn’t in her life anymore…and as she mourned the loss of that relationship, she also mourned the loss of the story she’d always told herself: that she’d get married and have kids before she turned 40. 

Then, the pandemic started, as Julia sat alone in her house she thought a lot about that story. She realized for her, kids weren't a priority, finding the right partner was. So when the egg daddies reached out in early 2022, she saw a new story being presented, and she loved her role in it.

But this process is not as simple as just saying yes, you may have my eggs.

That yes kicks off a medical process that begins with meeting with this psychologist, whose job is to evaluate Julia to see if Julia is psychologically prepared to donate her eggs to these men. Because donating eggs will make the Egg Daddies into parents. But not Julia. 

Julia: I would love to be a person who can be deeply caring for the child and to develop a relationship with a child and be able to provide answers about where do you come from? Why are you the way that you are? To be a safe space for them to go. I think that I could actually play that role better if I wasn't, you know, directly parenting them. And I think that's a really special, that to me, if I had a presence like that in my life, wow. Actually I did. My dad's, my dad's love of his life, my dad's partner really became that for me. And I know what it's, I know how to be that. Like I know how to play that role because I received it and I was so lucky. 

Nora McInerny:  The love of Julia’s dad's life was named Mitchell. And today on Terrible, Thanks For Asking, Julia tells us what it took to become the Fairy Godmother she is today. 

Julia grew up in what she considered a nuclear household in the 80s and 90s in Austin, Texas. A mom. A dad. A little sister, Molly, who is four years younger than her.

Julia: And I remember at age seven, just being really confused about what was going on and feeling the intense emotions in my household.

Like, I remember my mom crying in her room alone and my dad laying on the couch downstairs facing away from us. Like, in my memory, He's laying on the couch with his back facing towards our bedrooms and the rest of the house. And I just remember kind of going from my mom's room downstairs to where my dad was laying on the couch, just understanding that something big was happening and that change was coming, but I didn't really know what it meant.

And my mom said, your dad and I are getting... a divorce. And I think I asked why, like, what does it mean? And she said, ask your father. And so I went and asked him and I don't remember what they said. I was so young, but I just remember the visual of her crying alone in her room and him turned away from us on the couch.And of me somewhere in the middle, feeling like. What's happening? And I also remember them both telling me very clearly that they loved me and that I didn't do anything wrong.

Nora: Julia’s parents split custody. Her mom stayed in their house, and Julia and her sister went back and forth from their mom’s house to their dad’s apartment.

Julia: every other weekend and every Wednesday we would go hang with my dad at his apartment. Um, And I hated his apartment because I just wanted him to be back at home. And he was in this little dinky apartment with like, popcorn ceiling apartment and um, my sister and I shared a room, which I obviously hated. And I just remember, you know, there being a lot of just discomfort. like learning how to pack and like trying to make decisions about like what do you take, what do you keep, having pets at both houses.

And it went on like this for a few years. I just remember having this, this feeling that whole time. Like there was something I didn't know. There was some lurking truth and I felt it swirling around me. But I just didn't know what it was, but something fell off to me and at the time I did not totally equate that feeling of something being off with the fact that my dad was hanging out a lot with this guy who looked like a Ken doll. I was like, who is this dude?

We had like a dinky little like speed boat, fishing boat on the lake and we would go to the lake on the weekends. And my dad, you know, brought friends and there was always this guy named Mitchell who had blue eyes and blonde hair. And he has this like. Really fun, like chuckle. And he was just like tanning gorgeous. And like my dad seemed to just hang out with him a lot and I, but I didn't know who he was. And I was like, why are you here And so I thought it was kind of weird. And then my dad, um. I, at some point he moved into a new house.  There were four bedrooms upstairs and he had a room, Mitchell moved in with him. And then my sister and I had our rooms. And again, I was like, why is this guy here all the time? Like why does he live with us? And so this was happening. It was just like part of my everyday life was just like my dad and his roommate. And like, this was totally a trend in the 90s of, uh, you know, when, when there weren't a lot of resources at that time, like books and, and other types of resources for parents to have the talk with their kids about like dad is gay.I don't I don't know how it became like 100 percent clear to me, but it was like, uh, It's almost like at the end of it You know like the usual suspects when like suddenly you look back and all of the pieces came together like it's Kaiser Susie Like ah, my dad is gay! It's Mitchell!

Nora McInerny:  Aha! Julia's parents got divorced because her dad is gay. Mitchell isn’t just a handsome Ken doll who loves to chuckle. He’s her Dad's BOYFRIEND! 

Julia: We didn't really like each other. I was like, really aggravated by this person's presence. Cause I just, for, for those years, I, I just was like, who are you? Like, why are you here all the time? I don't care if you're handsome, get away. Like, I don't get it. And he had this like very sparkly, twinkly personality, but like it kind of annoyed me because, um, he was just always giggling, you know, I was like, why are you laughing at?

Like, it's just like, why are you laughing? And I think that, like, we kind of had like a little bit of a nemesis relationship for a while. Because I was very messy and I, I was a very messy kid and Mitchell was a very clean man. And I would like drop my towels on the ground and like leave cups everywhere, which I still do.

And I don't drop my towel anymore, but I definitely leave glasses all over the house, which Mitchell would fucking hate. But I just like left my stuff everywhere. I think that, like, maybe when the nemesis relationship began, it was when I felt judged by Mitchell. Like, he would glare at me, and then I would feel, like, really defensive, and he'd say something, like, Pick up your towel and I was kind of sitting there like who the hell are you to tell me to pick up my towel? This is my dad's house. Get out. You know, I was like it was a it was a power struggle between us.

Nora McInerny: It’s not just a power struggle. It’s the 90s, and like Julia mentioned earlier, we weren't really talking about how to be in a blended family, and in 90s Texas we definitely weren’t talking much about a blended family where dad has a boyfriend. 

Which means Julia’s dad and mom weren't really communicating with their kids about Mitchell's role in the family. 

Julia: Whenever there was like a function where my family came that Mitchell and my dad came together And that was when I understood that they were a couple or that was when I started perceiving them to be a couple It was probably my bat mitzvah Like there was a big event and in my you know in my life and my family really rallied together and in family photos It was my dad and Mitchell. 

when we started going on family vacations together, um, which we did from a very young age, like every year we would go to Mexico together or Hawaii or, you know, some kind of vacation and they would, yeah, they, they, we would always go together and it was my dad and Mitchell were like the, you know, the parent, parental figures. he was there and, um, and he felt part of the family. 

In middle school, I just, yeah, I started hanging out with, like, an alternative crowd. I was kind of feeling out with my new friends, like, are they safe? And it turns out that they were, like, I, I just got the sense that they were, like, the kids I was hanging out with, like, one, one girl, her, she had a single mom. And they were poor and they had, they just did things differently. And, um, I felt really safe and comfortable with her because I felt like she was sort of also, um, her family operated in a different way than what we saw around us as the sort of, like, gold star standard of families.

And I don't know, we like smoked cigarettes together and like we were just naughty and I remember one day when we were being naughty just telling them that my dad is gay and, and, and I think I was nervous to see what their response was, but when I felt accepted and in fact they thought it was cool, I started seeing Mitchell differently. When my friends accepted my family and my dad as being gay, I suddenly felt safe and relaxed enough to see him beyond just this like threat of Like whatever threat I saw him as it softened when I came out about my family to some friends and I started seeing him differently and then I think Because I started seeing him differently, I started acting differently towards him.

And we were able to just joke and laugh with each other. And that very organically over the years developed into a really cool camaraderie.  

And... And really when things, um, when things really started to solidify between us, it was in high school when I would get in trouble. I was constantly grounded in high school. I was just like, I just was a bit of a wild child and I loved boys. I loved partying. I loved, you know, all these things that my parents really did not want me to love. And Mitchell seemed to sort of like laugh with me and accept me for that. And I saw that and I was like, Oh, not only do I feel safe about Mitchell, but I feel safe with him to be my full self.

When, when, when we really, really like locked in and developed trust, it was when I got grounded for something for like, you know, something I did that was involved probably drinking or something. I got grounded and Mitchell sort of like came in to talk to me and he really related to me. He met me where I was at. And as a teenager who was like constantly rebelling against her parents, he sort of stepped in. And. Assumed this new different role that they couldn't which was like, hey, I'm here. I'm listening. Like what really happened? Like you must be so frustrated Hey, let me try to convince your dad that like to like go easy on you. And then I was like, yeah

And then from that point we started developing more memories together. Like he, we would go running together sometimes cause he was an avid runner and cyclist and he taught me how to run.   

Nora McInerny: The thing about being a parent is that you can only be so cool. Mitchell was VERY cool in part because he had the best role of all the adults in Julia’s life: mom and dad were parenting, running businesses and dealing with the fallout of their divorce. 

But Mitchell didn’t have all that baggage. And he didn’t have his own kids. He got to bring just himself to this relationship, and all he wanted was to have a good relationship with the kids he lived with on Wednesday nights and every other weekend. 

And that’s what he did. Consistently and competently and humbly. Until Julia left  the nest and headed to college. 

It’s 2002 and Julia is a freshman at American University in DC. When Julia left for college, she didn’t bring the shame about her family that she’s carried through her childhood in Texas. She loved that her family was different, that they were alternative, and she was proud to talk about them with her new friends. 

Julia: I remember talking to my dad on the phone when I was at college in Washington, D. C. and like, being excited to talk to Mitchell in the background. And like, I would hear his little twinkly voice and be like, wait, let me say hi to Mitchell.

I remember my freshman year, Mitchell was the one who told me that our dog, Raja, had died. And I was just crying and, you know, it was really clear to me with some distance what a family we were. And so he came to Washington, DC for work occasionally. And because that's where I went to college, we would hang out together. We would go to lunch. We really got to know each other, you know, as, as sort of as people, as adults. Um, I had a boyfriend my sophomore year of college and my dad and Mitchell came to visit and that was the first time that like we went, they took us to dinner and it was the first time I like went out onto a meal with, with a boyfriend, uh, or with like a, you know, someone I was dating with my dad and Mitchell and that the guy I was dating like really loved them. And I was like, Oh my God, cool. Like to see my dad and his partner, um, being seen as a couple by the person I was dating was like another new, it was a new moment of, of like deepening my understanding of who Mitchell was to me and to us.

and then I studied abroad in Prague my junior year of college and my dad and Mitchell and Molly came to visit me. we had like a really wonderful time together. And I remember one night we had appetizers and wine at my dad and Mitchell's like hotel and I brought all my best friends. who are still to this day like some of my best friends in the world, my best friends from college. And we all had wine and cheese and we laughed together and they got to know him and everyone I was close friends with fell in love with Mitchell.

And again, just like when I was a kid, an adolescent, when I saw Mitchell through the eyes of my friends, I saw how cool he was and I cherished him. He wasn't like a dad. He, that's the thing. He was, he was something different than anything I could have ever imagined. He was, he was just this special adult in my life who was cool, who didn't discipline me, who was handsome, who was successful, who was, um, Really independent but also like so loving and who my dad adored and who was adventurous and He was cool. 

Nora McInerny: This is why it was easy for Julia to say yes to being a Fairy Godmother. And this is why Mitchell came up in that evaluation Julia had with the psychologist. Because as Julia thought about what it would mean to be a Fairy Godmother, Mitchell's face appeared. His laugh. His Dimple. His magnetism. How he made her feel special and seen and safe…because he didn’t worry about her in the same way her parents did. 

He was an important adult, but not a parent. He enforced the rules, but he didn't make the big parenting decisions. He loved Julia, he showed up for her, and he let her be herself. 

It’s the kind of love that stays with you. The kind of love we’d be lucky to receive, or to give. And if Julia could, she’d have called Mitchell right after she agreed to step into the role he’d stepped into in 1992.

Julia: the summer between my junior and senior years of college,  I was spending the summer in Austin and And my sister and I were hanging out at the house and Mitchell, my dad was running errands and Mitchell was gardening in the front yard. And he, I heard him shout like, like he'd been hurt. He was like, panting and holding his side and clearly something was hurting him.

And, and my sister and I were like, oh my God, like, are you okay? What happened? And he goes, I don't know. I just turned and it feels like something snapped in my side. And we were like, oh no. And so my dad was gone. So I drove him to the hospital because he was in a lot of pain.

I was very nervous. I was like, what's going on here? And then my dad came and met us at the hospital and he was like, you guys go home. So my sister and I went home and I remember we looked at each other and we were like, I hope he's okay. You know, like that seems kind of like that's that's scary. Um, my dad and Mitchell came home and they said that there was something they needed to run tests. They found something kind of on his side and I remember feeling nervous and there was a part of me that's always been very intuitive and um, And since I was a child, I've actually, like, had visions, um, and, and sometimes gotten the sense, a sense of, of when things are serious. 

Um, and as a kid, in fact, I remembered looking at Mitchell and trying to imagine him as an old man. And I couldn't, I could never picture him as an old man. I would try, I would like furrow my brow and stare at him and try to see him as an old man, and I couldn't do it. And I remember in this moment when we got back from the hospital, thinking about that. And I had this weird feeling like, What if Mitchell's really sick?

Nora: Mitchell was really sick. The doctors found a tumor on his kidney. The tumor was  cancer. And the end of the summer, Mitchell started cancer treatment and Julia went back to college. 

I was fully confident that Mitchell was going to be fine. And because he was so strong and he was so positive. I lived my senior year of college with the story that Mitchell was going to be okay. Um, and every time I went home, he was deteriorating. We, you know, he's losing weight. He's, he's, um, he's looking pale. His energy is low.

By the spring, um, there's a photo that I remember of this trip. We went to Hawaii, and it was Mitchell's last trip to the beach. He loved the beach, and it was his last trip, and he was in a wheelchair. And I still thought he would be okay. I still thought he would beat it. And, yeah, there's a picture of me standing behind him in his wheelchair, at the beach, and sort of windblown, tan Mitchell for the last time.

Nora McInerny:  Mitchell died a few months later, at home, with his parents, Julia's dad, and Julia at his side. He would never be an old man.

But his love transformed Julia. It expanded her, and expanded her definition of family. And 15 years after he died, Julia would carry the torch of Mitchell’s love…and expand that definition even further. 

JULIA: When I said yes to the egg daddies...I knew that there would be a lot of unknowns with my role as Fairy Godmother, and I was okay with that ambiguity. But one question I felt I had to answer was what would this mean for my family? 

Any kids the egg daddies had would not be my children. Which meant they definitely wouldn’t be my parents' grandchildren. So how would I explain this to them? 

My parents and my sister are some of my favorite people. I love our family, and they have always supported me. But when I decided to donate my eggs, I knew it might be hard for them to wrap their heads around. 

I was raised with the story that I would grow up, get married and have kids, just like my parents did before me and their parents did before them. Even though my dad came out and my parents split up, this was still the default story. And that's really no fault of their own- they got married and had kids, and expected my sister and I would do the same. There was an assumption they'd be grandparents, and I knew my mom especially wanted that. 

I also think some of this has to do with being Jewish, because there's this trauma response that we must create new generations of our family, that otherwise we’ll die out as a people. 

All of these expectations were swirling around my head and my heart as my gut knew that donating my eggs was exactly what I wanted to do. 

I started recording voice memos of myself as I processed all of the questions I had and the changes I was going through. I was also checking in regularly with producer Claire McInerny to talk about all of this.

In the first few weeks of the egg donation process, I recorded this on the way to one of my first doctor appointments. 

Julia VM: How much do you owe your family in this decision, and how much is the decision purely yours? I think boils down to that question. How much do you owe to your family? How much is it your body? when the psychologist was talking to me about this and she said, you're, but who's your family? Is it your mom, your dad and your sister? Is it this family you're helping to create? Who is your family? When you become an adult, if you're not getting married and having kids of your own, who is your family? 

Julia: When I finally told my family, the reactions were mixed. My dad was pretty understanding, he wasn't surprised I was feeling called to do this. My mom and sister were a little worried I'd be too attached to the kids. My mom had a lot of questions about my involvement and her possible involvement. 

These questions are valid...but also, it showed me that it would take time for them to really accept this choice. 

While I was grappling with how this decision was shaking up my family of origin, I was also beginning the medical process of donating my eggs. Not the eggs I’d frozen before – I kept those for me. But I went through the whole egg retrieval process all over again, this time for them.

Julia VM: All the while, gumballs fill my ovaries, and I'm a little hormonal, a little emotional. 

Julia: This is a voice memo I recorded after the trigger shot I took leading up to my retrieval. This is the final big push of hormones.  

Julia VM: It feels like a weird time. I feel, I don't feel like a victim. I don't feel like it's not bad. It's just weird and intense. And maybe one day when I listen to this, I'll... be able to understand what was true. I don't know. Maybe it's just hormone, but something intense and powerful is happening and I hope that it's for a bigger reason. I hope this has meaning. I hope what I'm doing has meaning. Maybe that's the deepest truth is just this like real hope there is actually a meaning here that it's leading to something that I'll be able to hang my hat on. I guess the only way to find out is to live it.

Julia: So I lived it. It’s been almost two years since the retrieval, and hearing this voice memo makes me emotional ... I feel so brave for doing this. I want to hug that past version of myself, and tell her it does mean something. 

My egg retrieval went smoothly, and the egg daddies ended up with three embryos made from my eggs. In the following months they found a surrogate and started the process of IVF, and I would get periodic updates.

The first embryo is implanted. She loses the pregnancy a few weeks later. 

A couple months after that, the second one goes in. This one also doesn't take. 

The egg daddies live in a different state than me. So I wasn't seeing them during the IVF process, I was just trying to support them from afar- and it kind of felt like my first test as Fairy Godmother. Should I check in with them or wait for them to reach out? 

After the second embryo transfer failed, we only had one chance left, and I started thinking about the reality that they might not have kids. That even though I'd donated my eggs, I may never get to actually be a Fairy Godmother to any children. This thought made me sad, but I realized that either way, my mindset was forever changed. 

Julia: This whole process helped me confront my deepest insecurity: being single. I was approaching 40 and still hadn’t met a romantic partner. Stepping into this alternative role as a Fairy Godmother helped me realize I could look at my single life in a new way too. I didn’t have to follow the traditional script I had been given about kids. So why couldn’t I do the same for partnership?

The more I embraced this way of thinking about being single, the more I encountered others who felt the same way.

I started recording some of the conversations I was having with friends about this topic because it made me feel better and better about the path I was taking. 

One day, my friend Daniel and I were on a walk, and he brought up how this looks in his life.

Daniel: Well, I come from a family where it seemed, it, the narrative was that long term partnership was the norm, and it was ideal, and it was likely to lead to happiness. So basically, I was at this family reunion. And at some point, looking around the room at a dinner one night, I realized at least half people, half of the people, even in the older generations, were either never in a long term romantic partnership or no longer in one.

And it occurred to me that this narrative about like, long term romantic partnership being the norm was false. At least 50 percent of people weren't there and that it certainly wasn't the key to happiness. As demonstrated by the number of people who had gotten divorced and the number of people who had never been married that were perfectly happy. And somehow this narrative keeps getting perpetuated through the generations, even though it never... Is it this way? Uh, yeah, sure. Even though it may have never been true that it was the norm, and it may have never been true that it was the most... Direct line to meaning or happiness in life. 

No one just wants to figure out a way, no one wants to figure out a way to articulate the counter narrative.

Julia: What is the counter narrative? 

Daniel: The counter narrative is that a happy, meaningful life is accessible to you regardless of relationship status. No matter what your age is. And that there are a plethora of relationship structures and relationship pathways. Um, and that being in a long term romantic relationship, Oh, no, that's it. Um, being in a long term romantic relationship is hard. At some point, it may make you happy, and at some point, it may make you sad. It's 

Julia: not the solution to life. It is not the solution to life. It's not the silver bullet to a fulfilling life. Yeah. 

As I was getting more and more comfortable with living an alternative life, the egg daddies were still trying to conceive.

In spring 2023, almost a year after my egg retrieval procedure, after two failed attempts to transfer embryos into the surrogate…it came down to one last embryo. One last chance to make the egg daddies into actual daddies. We were all nervous and emotional. Because If this one didn't work, I worried my age would prevent me from being able to donate again. 

By this time, I had been talking to producer Claire McInerny a lot because we were going to make a story about my egg donation. 

One day in May, the egg daddies reached out, and the first call I made was to Claire. 

Claire: Tell me about the call you got a few days ago. 

Julia: I got a text from the egg daddies on Friday asking if I had a moment to chat and I honestly I was really nervous at first because I was like, shit, are they going to tell me that we like, we lost the baby? Like that it's actually like pregnancy didn't, didn't take after all. Um, and given the track record, like that wouldn't have been a huge shock. Um, So I was like, yeah, and my heart's pounding. And then, uh, they were like, we're going to FaceTime you. And I was like, Oh, this seems like maybe like, what is this good?

I don't know. And so I got a FaceTime from them and just like, I saw their faces and they looked like they had these like bewildered smiles on their faces. They were like, we're leaving the first ultrasound appointment, and we got to hear the heartbeat. And I was like, oh my god, amazing. And they, and then they said, there were two heartbeats. Twins.

Julia: All of a sudden, we went from maybe zero babies - to two babies. Instead of hypotheticals I had something real to wrap my head around. Two babies, with my DNA, would be born in  a matter of months. I was actually going to be a Fairy Godmother....and I still didn't know what that would look like. 

Claire: Do you have any fantasies about what your life as a Fairy Godmother will look like? 

Julia: There's not a lot formed around my fantasies, but there, there are pieces. I envision holding both of these babies, and, I have questions. I guess it's hard for me to allow my fantasies to take root until I know kind of like what the egg daddies want because I want to be really respectful and mindful of what the parents of these children want. And so I haven't really been letting myself fantasize that much, but I, you know, like in one version of my fantasy is like, I'm there when they're b orn and like we get to bond. But in another version of my fantasy is like, We're establishing the distance early on because that's, because I'm not their parents and I'm not, I'm not a parent. And so in that version of reality, I'm celebrating from afar with my loved ones. And, um, when I get to meet them, it's like this joyous, amazing, like occasion

yeah, I don't want to overstep and I also don't want to burden the egg daddies with my questions about it. Um, I feel like an, I feel like it's sort of like a, a go between where like, I want to share this exciting news with my parents, but I, you know, I think that like, it's kind of sad for them because like, it's not their, they're not going to be grandparents. So what are they going to be? Are they going to be anything? And I don't want to pressure the egg daddies with those questions right now, but I also feel this like pressure to, to let my parents know and to set expectations with them. Because if I just deliver the news without framing it in some way, then I don't, I know they're not going to know how to take it. And I want to help to guide their emotional response based on what. What they can expect from the role that that none of us knows what it means, you know, like we, we don't know. 

Julia: A month later, I traveled to visit the egg daddies so we could all celebrate the news of the pregnancy together. Going into that trip, I felt like it was time to try and define some details of what to expect as a known donor, and how I could prepare my mom for the news that the surrogate was pregnant.

This a voice memo I took during that trip:

Julia: I had dinner with the egg daddies the other night. Uh, where we are in the process is that the surrogate is, um, in her first trimester. And one of the biggest questions that has really been on my mind since that time and since it started feeling more real is just like, what does this mean for my parents?  

Um. I, of course, still don't really know what it means for me, but I'm okay with that. I really feel like I can handle and even a welcoming of the mystery of all of that. But what I have struggled with a little bit is just wanting to be able to share this news with my parents in a way that also gives them some understanding of what it means for them.

So what does it mean? Uh, that's just been on my mind a lot because I, um, this is probably a lot for them to take in, especially my mom. Uh, because she has wanted to be a grandmother basically since I was born. 

So, at dinner... Um, I brought this up and I, I brought it up in a way that felt good. I wanted to disarm them. I wanted to let them know that they don't need to worry or feel pressured, um, about my questions about my parents. 

I've talked to friends who are queer couples who have used donors to start a family and, you know, ask them what would they, how would they want to talk about that? And um, and what it kind of boiled down to was just sharing that I still have not shared this news with one of my parents, with my mom.And when I do that, I want to also deliver with it with a little bit of, uh, guidance about what it means.

And it was such a wonderful conversation. It just really deepened my level of connection and trust with the egg daddies and this feeling that we're, we're a team and that we are figuring it out together. Um, really what we kind of decided was like, wouldn't it be great for you guys to meet my parents and meet my family before there are children in the picture so that you're establishing some kind of familiarity. And um, and then when I sort of put that on the table, they were like, when's the best time to visit Austin? And I was so tickled. And so I think we're going to do that. And I really love, I'm loving this idea of bringing the egg daddies together with my family so that they get, as they said, a front row seat to see where half the d n a of their future children are coming from.

Julia: A few months later, they came to Austin and met my family. It was a social visit, nothing specific was decided about what life would look like once the twins arrived, but it was so special to see my parents interacting with these two men. I'd spent months worried and anxious about how this choice would change my family dynamics. I grappled a lot with the fact that my deep desire to help these men have a family was creating disappointment for my mom. 

But during their visit, she showed up. My dad hosted a BBQ at his house and most of my family came to meet the egg daddies. It was awkward at times, but really beautiful to see everyone trying. They knew this was important to me, and even if they didn't understand it, they were there. 

Of course...one person was missing. Mitchell.

He's been gone from our family for many years now, but that day I thought about him a lot as I looked around the BBQ. My dad and his new husband, happy. The egg daddies were about to be fathers, and were giddy with anticipation. My mom and her husband were curious and kind as she sat on the couch chatting with them.

This random assortment of people were standing together chatting because of me. I am part of the egg daddies family now, and I'm also still part of my family of origin. There was no wedding, but there will be children. I'm creating my own family, in my own way, and I'm still writing that story. 

The beginning of this episode ended with Mitchell's death.

So it's only fitting that we end this entire story with a birth. 

The twins were born in January 2024. At the time of recording this, I still haven't met them. The egg daddies are knee deep in juggling two newborns with the rest of their lives, but I get updates. 

I'm still figuring out what this role will be, and some days I wish I had someone to ask for advice. And the first person I would call if I could, would be Mitchell.

Claire: What do you think Mitchell would think about all of this? 

Julia: I would love to hear What he would have to say about what i'm doing now, which is like i've donated my eggs to a gay couple I'm, i'm continuing a cycle I'm, like continuing a family story in a way Um by playing this role i'm, you know, i'm i'm enabling, um, another gay family a gay couple to to have a family with children and I'm helping them to do that. And, and my role. I'm going to be the fairy godmother to these children. I hope to be like an angel to them. And I hope that I can be an angel on earth, a living angel. I hope I, you know, I hope I'm not just like a... A memory or a ghost or an apparition or a sort of outline of a figure who once was. I want to be a living source of love and, um, and, and sparkliness to the children who were going to come into the world through, you know, um, in part, um, because of some eggs that formed in my body that I donated. And I want to be, uh, I want to be a magical source of joy in their lives, just like Mitchell was in my life.

Julia: Somewhere in that 2-year process of becoming a Fairy Godmother, I made up a new word: refamulating. I felt like I needed a way to explain this process of ditching old ideas around family and formulating new ones. I wanted to talk to other people who are doing family differently, and a podcast felt like the perfect way to do it.

That’s how Refamulating was born. 

Nora: Refamulating is the newest show from Feelings Co. It's been in the works for over a year, and it's the kind of storytelling we like to do here at Terrible Thanks for Asking. Nuanced explorations of a topic that can be thorny or complicated and always very human.  

Julia: I, Julia Winston, am the host, and I’m so excited to share with you all the stories we’ve been working on. 

Claire: I’m Claire McInerny, and I’m the producer of Refamulating. If you go over to our feed right now, we have two episodes waiting for you. 

Julia: The first is about my family of origin. I interviewed my mom, dad and sister about what it meant for us to refamulate after my dad came out,There’s also an episode about a man named Tony, who spent decades on his path to becoming a dad, and got there with the help of two very special women.

The rest of season 1 includes stories about being a surrogate, how a blended family created new titles for the parents, the rise in communal living AND choosing to not have children.