Gender, adoption, and identity: how being transgender will help me be a better dad
When I began testosterone replacement, I was giddy and excited. Surgery made me anxious, but I was relieved when it was over. And now: nothing. The elation I expected never came. I had rejected the most basic gift from my mother and father — I had declared myself someone other than the daughter they had welcomed two decades earlier.
Baby piles, irrational fears, and responsibilities: why I don’t want to have a kid
Here’s the deal — I don’t want kids, I never have, and I don’t think I ever will. For years now I’ve had TONS of folks tell me “you’ll seeeee… that’ll change… wait until you hit 25… 27… 30…” I turned 30 last year, and it still hasn’t changed.
Being pregnant is changing my body and I LOVE IT
Before I got pregnant, I really didn’t like my body. I thought I was fat, thought I wasn’t good enough, you know… things a lot of young girls and women deal with. I gained weight and got stretch marks, and that sent me into a deep dark place of self loathing and despair that I wasn’t beautiful anymore.
It turns out I wear offbeat step-mama-hood well
Last year, I did something very terrifying: I began dating a man with a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. Naturally, one doesn’t spend a lot of thought on “the other woman” on the very first date with a single parent. But as our conversations deepened and our relationship evolved in that first month, I found that I was thinking about my boyfriend’s daughter an awful lot.
Would you call my daughters “black and white twins?”
My own daughters, whose in-utero nicknames were Roomba and Scooba, were born late in September that same year. But it didn’t occur to me until a few months ago that they, too, could be considered “black and white twins.” Scooba is as pale as I am, while Roomba is perhaps only a shade lighter than her father.
Confronting the terror of being a stay-at-home parent
The terror did not actually strike me immediately. Immediately I was too moon-eyed and sleep-deprived to know what was going on. But slowly, as each day folded back onto itself, as Willow and I both fumbled through our still-awkward dance of deciphering our respective rhythms, I realized that something has fled.
My daughter is building a relationship with the mother I grew up without
Last weekend I watched my nine-year-old daughter Francesca swim in the Hudson River with my mother. This would not have been a remarkable event if I had ever gone swimming with my mother as a child. Or listened to her read bedtime stories or felt her lips on my cheek or watched her eyes widen in delight as I presented her with a hand-made Mother’s Day card. I didn’t do any of these things with my mother because I didn’t meet her until I was a junior in college.
In case you forget: the rest of the world keeps on going even after you have a kid
My husband and I were THOSE super-liberal kids: we brazenly (and somewhat immaturely) ranted and raved about The State of The World, felt smug about the fact that we only watched independent media, and derided anyone who didn’t agree that of course social programs should be available for anyone who needs them, and of course the food we eat is loaded up with a thousand things that are killing us, and of course we were right. About everything.