Blogging for LGBT Families

During the Spring of ‘02, SW and I accompanied friends of ours to a Rainbow Families Conference in the Twin Cities (of MN).  Our friends, A & T, were planning on starting a family that year, and wanted to find out more information.  For SW and I, we were more there just to observe (though I’m sure that she would have been ready then to have had a kid, just as much as she is now).

For me, it was sort of a life-changing/affirming day.  This was the first time I had ever actually seen real, live LGBT families in action.  After a rousing welcome, the other three went off to their first breakout session, and I stayed back in the auditorium to watch one of the first showings of “Daddy and Papa”, a story about the journey of two gay men and their quest for a child.  I cried throughout the entire show.  I couldn’t help it.  It was all so overwhelming.  Later we attended sessions in which couples spoke of their successes, attempts, and failures at trying to conceive children.  Little did I realize how closely their stories would mirror our own.

Cut to present day, and SW and I are in the midst of actually trying to start our own family.  I think back often to that conference, and can still feel all the support, experience, and love of that day just as strong as I did then.  Unfortunately, we are living in a much smaller place now that does not have the same kind of LGBT resources, but somehow we’ve been lucky enough to become a part of something even bigger: blogland.  An extended-kind of family I never really knew existed, and never really understood the impact it would create on our lives until we joined the blog-train as well.

And so today, in honor of Mombian’s “Blogging for LGBT Families Day”, I just wanted to take a moment and thank those who have been so kind to open up their lives, and their hearts, to not only SW and I, but to all bloggers and non-bloggers alike, who are traveling on this TTC and post-TTC journey.  You make the world, both virtual and IRL, a little easier to travel through.  I only hope that one day we can help others the way you all have helped us.