Family Pride’s Blog

The players: Lois (39 and the bio mom), Holly (30 and the non-bio mom) and Andrew (baby boy born 2/8/07). We have been together over 7 years, surviving a long distance relationship for 3 years and now live in Connecticut less than 10 miles from our respective childhood residences. We started trying to conceive in May 2005, one miscarriage and 7 attempts later, we ended up with the light of our lives! 

If I were to write about our family, I would describe us as this loving, fun and outgoing family. It’s a normal family, just like so many families with two parents and one kid. 
 
For the time being, it’s only a one-kid family. We’re seeing if we can keep this one thriving to the age of one, then we’ll discuss if we can handle more.
 
There are some people, however, who do not see our family as this wonderful environment that it is. Instead of getting angry (which we sometimes do anyway), we just set about living our lives sucking people in to see how much fun it is to be our friend, then pushing them graciously into acceptance by charming the pants off them.
 
We are not advocates in the full-time sense of the word, but we have made small waves here and there. Lois initiated a court battle for visitation of her non-biological twin daughters several years ago and now has visitation. While not generous is the time department, an unconditional bond between them is undeniable. We have also been in a few hometown newspaper articles from time to time, including the weddings in New Paltz, New York , of which we partook and our Sunday front-page above-the-fold color photo and article spread regarding our civil union ceremony on the first day they were legal in Connecticut. That sure made things easier to explain to high school classmates at our respective reunions.
 
How did we get here?
 
When I first met Lois, I don’t think starting a family was even within my comprehension of what our relationship would be. I was a waitress trying to decide find a path in life, she turned out to be my rock.
 
Within 6 months of our first date, I was in law school 3 hours away, coming into my own as a person and coming out to practically everyone I knew. It was invigorating!
 
With every person I was honest about who I was, I began to find more strength. I told my mom’s best friend before I could tell my own mother. Guess what? She already knew!  The responses from my family, friends, even my college sorority sisters (I was a Kappa Kappa Gamma if you could believe that) were so accepting and “oh please, we knew before you did!”
 
Both of our families are doing their best to accept and come to terms with our relationship. Unfortunately, Lois has hard a much harder journey with her family that took over 7 years to make the slightest progress. My family is doing okay. I do think my mother would like it if I were a little more “quiet” about it. But she’s dealing. 
 
I thought law school would be this conservative atmosphere of white collar, moneyed individuals that definitely would not “get” me. However, if I do say so myself, I think we turned out to be pretty darn popular. By third year of law school, I was the President of the student government, President of the gay and lesbian legal society and the team entry into the women’s home run competition at the intra-mural softball tournament. Lois was incredibly popular as well, due to her personality, of course, but also due to her generous cooking on her weekend visits!
 
We have many great friends and family members and maintain an open door policy, literally, in our home and everywhere we go. 
 
Over 7 years later, I look at our life and our family and cannot help myself from being amazed at our happiness in what we’ve created together.
 
It is our job to raise our child(ren) to be great members of our society. I will not be disappointed if my son is not a major league shortstop someday, but I think I will be disappointed in myself if we don’t teach him to respect people and bring something to the world that includes a life of love and acceptance of others.
 
We’re going to have a little vacation time in P-town during Family Pride’s family week with R Family Vacations this July. Hope to see everyone there!!!!
 
Here’s our family blog, a little solipsistic, yes. But we are trying to keep a journal to keep some things frozen in time and to just be able to laugh at ourselves from time to time. http://2mommies.wordpress.com

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