10: Seahorse Dad: Planning for pregnancy as a transgender man

Liam is a transgender man who has spent the last eight years embracing his true life as a man. He changed his name, took hormones, and got top surgery. But recently he had a big realization. He wants to be a father – and he wants to carry his own child. Now Liam has stopped taking hormones and started preparing his body to do something he never imagined: get pregnant.

Listen to Liam’s Terrible, Thanks For Asking episode here. 

Here is Liam’s YouTube Channel where he’s chronicling his journey to pregnancy. 

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Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.
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Julia Winston: Liam Magan knew from a young age that he wanted to be a parent. 

Liam: my sister and I would make PowerPoint presentations of our future families, like husband, wife, the kids, their names, what they like to do. 

Julia Winston: A lot of us had some version of this PowerPoint- maybe it was playing MASH with your friends and seeing if you'd marry your crush from school and live in a shack with 12 kids. Or just using dolls to simulate a family as you played house. Liam used these PowerPoints as a child’s version of a vision board. 

Liam: So I like would find like some redheaded Stock images of children. Those were my kids um I always imagined like a son and a daughter like just Such the traditional like you have one of each kid and then you're good kind of thing.

Obviously being transgender back then I was like growing up as a girl and so I Was the mother in that role and I had a husband and two kids usually. And then it's funny one of my childhood friends growing up we would play like house and I was Mike and she was Kathy and we had like 27 children and we had like a list of them and it was so funny.

Julia Winston: Liam is now 30 years old. He transitioned from female to male eight years ago, and has been living as a man ever since. During his transition, there were moments when he thought he wouldn't, or couldn't, have kids. But recently, that dream of becoming a parent has resurfaced. 

Like many people in their 30s, Liam is surrounded by friends and family who are having kids. And he loves helping out and being an uncle.

Liam: Often times I would hang out with my friend to help her with the kids on Tuesdays while her husband was working and so like she had an appointment, the two year old's sleeping in the backseat, we did a car nap, I'm feeding the baby a bottle on the front seat and I'm like scrolling on Instagram.

And I saw a video pop up of like a transgender man's like birth story, and in the past, like, I would say like three or four years, there's been a lot more representation out there of like trans or non binary people, giving birth and, and being pregnant, and so it had been kind of like something I was like, huh.

I was watching that video and like the baby's like she would always like play with my beard While I was feeding her the bottle and so then i'm just like looking at her and i've just watched this video and I was like I want to get pregnant.  It just like came over me so quickly and I was like, I want I want to do that, too. I want to be a parent and I want to try and get pregnant.

Julia Winston: Today, on the season 1 finale of Refamulating, we share Liam's emotional and physical journey as he prepares for pregnancy as a transgender man. Liam wanted to share his story with us after listening to the show, especially episode 2, the story about Tony the single dad. He told us that story made him feel  more seen as he embarks on his own journey to single fatherhood. 

I got so excited when Liam reached out because the purpose of this show isn’t just to tell stories. It’s to remind everyone who’s listening that you’re not alone. We’re all part of a bigger family than the ones we came from and the ones we’re building. The purpose of this show is to create a sense of connection and togetherness. And we do that by sharing our stories, by being seen and heard. 

As for Liam, the family he envisions these days looks very different from his childhood PowerPoint fantasy- he won't be a dad named Mike, with a wife named Kathy, and there won't be 27 kids, but what has stayed the same, is his intense desire to have children. And now he’s making it happen. 

Liam lives in New Hampshire, where he grew up in an intergenerational home with his parents, sister and grandparents. He officially came out as transgender when he was 22, and started the process of transitioning. But he knew well before then that something in his life wasn't quite right. 

Liam: it was like always like there and I didn't really understand all the different things that I was like doing or, Ways I was self soothing. Like growing up I always wore like a backwards hat so that I didn't see my hair or like I wore my hair in a bun like at The back of my head. That's gender dysphoria Like I was like feeling something figured out a way to correct it for myself. 

When they made you line up boys and girls in school I always went to the boys line and then they were like Go back over here. And I'm like, oh, like it just was like, uh, yeah, I'm gonna line up over here. If someone had asked me then do you feel like a boy I'd be like, "yea!" 

And I think like so many things in my life could have been different if I had access to like the terminology to express how I felt, but I just didn't know. I was like, maybe this is how everyone feels. They just feel like disconnected from their self all the time. And like this little chaotic experience emotionally inside.

Julia Winston: The disconnect Liam felt inside was confusing and distressing. Internally he felt like a boy, but everyone in his life treated him like a girl. 

Liam: And I remember like fifth grade when they teach you like about your own body, I was just like, I feel like I'm in the wrong class. Like, I don't think I should be having this information. But I just had like no way to, to express that and, and to anyone in a way that like made sense. 

Like, I remember as a kid, I would, like, slam my hand in the door, or, like, kick my bedpost, like, a hundred times really hard. Or, like, try and smash my finger with a hammer. Like, anything to, like, output that discomfort I had in myself. High school and middle school sucks for everyone, but like it's more so sucking when your, like, body is starting to change in a way that just doesn't feel like it should.

Julia Winston: Liam came out as a lesbian in high school. But when he went to college, he met transgender people for the first time and finally understood something crucial about himself. That’s when he started to learn about the idea of transitioning.

Liam: Even then it was still like, maybe, but I don't think I could ever do anything about it because my family won't support it. And it was just kind of like, I don't know if I'll ever do it. But finally I decided to shave my head. So I had always had really long hair and I decided to shave it off because I was just like I'm gonna be a cool shaved head lesbian so my friends, we all got together in the lobby of our college dorm and shaved my head and then I went and looked in the mirror and it was like, Oh, yeah, Like it just was like a lightning bolt.

All the like small things I'd said and done throughout my whole life just like made sense on like all of a sudden. Oh yeah I am transgender and like oh shit now I've got to do something about it. I don't know how to describe it, but it was like the first time I saw myself in the mirror and not just like a reflection in the mirror.

It was just like, oh, there you are. Like that's the person like I've always like known was there. Um, and I could finally like see it reflected back to me. 

Julia Winston: When he shaved his head, surrounded by supportive friends, it unlocked something in Liam. He felt brave enough to transition into the man he knew himself to be, and the summer after he graduated from college, he started testosterone. 

Taking testosterone was a major step in his transition. The hormone changed his body to take on more masculine qualities: he stopped menstruating. He started growing more body and facial hair. His voice deepened and most importantly, he started feeling like himself.

Liam: And, then a year and a half later, I had top surgery to have a flat chest. 

Julia: In the early days of Liam’s transition, the idea of getting pregnant in the future would have horrified him.

Liam: pregnancy became something that like was very feminine and only women do it. And so I kind of like disconnected myself from that. And I was like, I never want to do that. I don't want, you know, to be associated with anything female anymore. Especially like an early transition, everything is like much more fragile, because you know so much who you are, but, like, nobody else knows. And, the world is perceiving you in a way that you don't want to be perceived, and so it's like, you kind of have to, like, push from one side to the other, to, tolerate that, I guess?

Julia Winston: One of the challenges about coming out as trans was telling his parents. 

Liam: for a while, it was very much like, we're not going to call you Liam. We're not going to call you he like. We can't support this. You're always going to be our daughter, like. very hard. and there was a period of time where we didn't talk at all. 

Julia Winston: Liam's rocky relationship with his parents after coming out is the topic of an episode of Terrible, Thanks for Asking podcast, another show in our network. That episode is called Liam and the Letters. We've linked that episode in our show notes if you want to hear more about that chapter of Liam’s story. Things were tough with his parents, but he did have support from other adults in his life. His grandparents, who he grew up with and was very close to, supported him unconditionally. 

Liam: they were like, you know we’ve been waiting for you to tell us what’s wrong. And we love you no matter what. My grandfather who has since passed away was a huge advocate. He went to the library and he got as much literature as he could to just try and understand and he wanted to support me the best way that he could. And my grandmother is just, she's come to me to all sorts of different t  rans activism stuff. She calls me my name in front of them, and like, it's just so great. I had asked my grandmother about it like several years later and she was Like yeah, I always wanted to ask you like what's going on. And then my grandfather was always like, no, just wait. Like he'll come when he's ready.

Julia Winston: These days, Liam's relationship with his parents is...better. 

Liam: Our relationship has very much ebbed and flowed and over the recent years and the point that I'm at now with it is like We agree to disagree about like my transition. they still like wish that I was their daughter and that I would like marry a man. They've been in their beliefs for so long that that's just their worldview, and I'm not going to change that in the same way that they're not going to change mine.

And so I try to just, like, meet them where they're at, which is like, they call me a nickname, they call me Red, so that, like, neither side is hurt by the name and use. My parents are wonderful, awesome people, and like, in all other aspects, like, other than this one major thing, but like, my sister has a son, and I see them as grandparents, and I'm like, they're wonderful grandparents, and like, I have a very close connection with my grandparents, and like, I would want my child to be able to have that opportunity to have that kind of relationship.

We're just going to kind of start from where we're at now. We're not going to like think about the last like decade and a half of things that were like really hard between all of us. I just really am focusing more on like, what can I cultivate for my future family? Versus like getting stuck in all the hurt in the past. 

Julia Winston: And Liam is happy to have a loving relationship with his parents, because as he prepares to have a baby, he'll need a support system. 

When we come back, Liam talks about his plans for getting pregnant. 

When Liam started taking testosterone at 22, he was warned it could impact his future fertility. 

Liam: the way that it was posed to me when I started testosterone was like you can either Like preserve your fertility ahead of time or you can choose this testosterone And so being young I was like, well, I don't want to wait any longer to transition to the person I know I am, and I don't really care if I have my own kids and so at that point in time, I was just kind of like i'm okay sacrificing a biological child to pursue what I need to do 

Julia Winston: But we have more information now. Transgender people do not need to choose between a biological kid and gender affirming care. Taking hormones could impact fertility, but it’s a small risk.

Many doctors will advise a trans patient to preserve their eggs or sperm before starting hormones in case they want kids later. 

During his 20s, Liam focused on his transition and creating a life as a man. He also got married, and his spouse didn't really want kids. So he was content just being a fun uncle to his sister's children. 

Liam: So my best friend of Like 13 years. She was pregnant with her first child in 2020 and then my friend had her baby and, I just, again, I loved, like, hanging out and being the fun uncle, and that was, like, still cool and fine for me, it was fun as we were like, oh, she's got, you know, Lindsey's smile and Ryan's eyes and, like, kind of picking out those, like, features where you're like, oh, like, I wonder what my kid would look like and what the features would be And different things like that that kind of started the little wheels turning, And then two years later she was pregnant with her second and they end up having to go to the hospital to be induced And so they needed someone to watch their older kid who was 20 months at the time And so I said, yeah, I can take her for the week. 

That was when I realized like how much I liked Being a caretaker for a child more so than just like I come over and I hang out for a few hours on Monday and we do like really fun stuff and then you go take a nap and I leave, it was like, Oh, I like waking up early with you I like making Your breakfast. I like putting you to sleep and giving you a bath and like all those things. And so then I was like, Oh my gosh, I think I want to do this too. But I'm now in this marriage where we decided not to have children. And, um, there are many other reasons why the marriage fell apart besides just that, but that would have become an issue for sure.

So that was like a pivotal moment where I was like, okay, I want to have kids, but I still wasn't even thinking about like biological kids. I was just like, I think I want a parent. I definitely know that I want to do that whatever that might look like. 

Julia Winston: It was around this time that Liam saw that  video online of a trans man who got pregnant, and he realized he might actually be able to do it biologically. So he started talking to his doctors about what it would take to try and get pregnant.

Liam: first I had to come off of testosterone because testosterone does suppress fertility. It does not make you infertile. I guess technically if you're on testosterone you are infertile, but it doesn't make you permanently infertile. If you come off of it your cycle will come back, and your like egg quality is preserved, like everything is still there. It's just been kind of Dormantly hanging out. When I realized like oh my God, I wanna get pregnant, I was like living in my parents' basement and like just about to get divorced. So it wasn't really like a I'm gonna start doing this yet. It was like, okay, once I get things like sorted out, I'm living on my own again. And like that's something I can start thinking about more. 

Julia Winston: At the beginning of 2024, Liam was in a place to make some decisions. His divorce was finalized, he had his own place, and the first step was stopping testosterone. 

Liam: I started the beginning of this year with the tapering of testosterone. Now there's not really any like, standards of care for this kind of thing. Like I was talking to my hormone prescriber and I was like, is there like a, like, what should I do? And she's like, you could just stop tomorrow. You could, you could do whatever you want. Really. There's no like really like set standards. There's not a lot of research about it. 

And so I had decided to taper my dose by one ML every month cause there were some times when like supply demand I didn't get my testosterone and I would really go through like an emotional little roller coaster for a Couple weeks when I was like having gone from high testosterone down to low it was like, okay I don't really want to just like go through that. If I gradually come off it I feel like that might be easier on the emotions and so that that was just what I decided to do And by February, I was on half of my dose I was normally on.

And then I was just kind of like, I feel fine. I'm really just anxious to like, get to the part where like, my cycle comes back and everything is working. Because it was also like, will it come back and will it work? I don't even know. I could like, go through this whole process and it might not happen. 

So I've been off testosterone now for three months and honestly, I thought it was going to be a lot more of like a jarring emotional transition to go like back in time.

I was like, I'm going to go back to like how it was before, but I've just, I definitely have felt more emotional. Like I can definitely access my emotions more easily. Like I felt like I couldn't like I couldn't really cry that much when I was on testosterone and like things like that But it has not been as kind of dramatic as I thought it was going to be for sure. I went through a period where like one armpit was really stinky and the other one was not stinky at all.

I was really tired for like a month straight because just like my hormones were all wackadoo. 

Julia Winston: Then, Liam got his first period in years. 

Liam: It was very light and my periods before were like so heavy that I was like, is this really a period? I don't really know. I mean, like I'm having cramping and things, but it seems like not that much. And I just kept like waiting for the day you like woke up in like a blood bath, cause that's like what used to happen eight years ago when I had a period so yeah, so it's like okay something something's working I think.

Julia Winston: Which is great news for Liam because you need to have a menstrual cycle in order to get pregnant. But it's also complicated, because all of these changes take him back to a version of himself that never felt comfortable or right. 

Liam: It's very interesting also to like parallel eight years ago I was like, I can't wait to start testosterone and get rid of my period and never have it again and then it's like eight years later i'm like waiting for it to come back.

Honestly thought I would have a greater struggle with my dysphoria than I have been. For most of my life, I really didn't think about, like, anything below the waist about myself at all. I just was like, I just live up here in my head, and I don't nothing else exists. And then, like, after top surgery, I was like, okay, I'm cool with, like, my chest and everything, but, like, the rest, I'm not gonna think about it. But I feel like it's been a journey of like, I guess, re experiencing my body in a way that I have not ever before.

I feel like a lot, in a lot of ways, it's like growing up a woman, it's like, you have all these expectations about who you should be and what you should look like and what your body does or doesn't do and all those things. And then as a trans person, it's like almost the mainstream narrative to like, well, I hate my birth sex and I don't want anything to do with it and all of that. And it's like, now I'm getting to kind of like redefine almost what My relationship to myself is. 

Julia Winston: Part of redefining that relationship is paying attention to his cycle, instead of trying to ignore it or make it stop, which is VERY new for Liam.

Liam: I just started using ovulation tests and I was like, wow, I've never peed in this many cups in my life. Um, a little teeny little. Um, mostly cause I don't really know what my cycle looks like you know, before I did, I just spent so much time in my before transition life, just like ignoring my body and like not tuning into it. So now it's like totally different to be like trying to be like hyper aware of my body in a different way and pay attention. It's like, I don't even know what my cycle length used to be. I just like knew that sometimes I woke up when I had my period and sometimes I didn't, you know, and now it's like wanting to know what my average cycle is so I can out when ovulation will happen 

Julia Winston: The menstrual cycle was a critical step. And the next piece of the puzzle was finding a sperm donor. 

Liam: I think a lot about What the story will be, you know, when my child asks, like, why do I exist kind of thing. I always wanted to use a known donor because I wanted there to be a story. Like, every kid grows up and asks, why, why did my parents fall in love? Why am I here? And I wanted it to be like a meaningful story. I didn't want to just be like, I picked a profile on some website and they sent me a vial of it. You know, that just felt very disconnected and I wanted a To demedicalize the process as much as possible. 

So, that sent me down the road of like, okay, what cis men do I know? That aren't my cousins or like, like other people who are not options.What cis men n do I trust enough? And like, you know, the list was very small.

I remember going through my Facebook like a thousand times being like, what the hell? And I like went back and forth about it for months on end. Like, who am I going to ask? 

My friend was like I'll convince my husband to do it and I was like No, that's way too close of a connection. It's like no, we're not gonna do that so I was like trying to find the balance between like too close and too far away. 

Julia Winston: There was one man who rose to the top: a co worker who Liam really liked. But a co-worker also felt a little too close. 

Liam: He's like the perfect candidate. He's gay. He doesn't want kids. We have a good dynamic, we do drag together. Like we have this like fun story. Then he ended up leaving and then I also left the job this year anyway, but all of a sudden I was like, Oh my god. We don't work together anymore. We're not co workers anymore. Like maybe he would be down for it.

So I just one night was out walking and I was like how do you ask someone to be your sperm donor? Do you like? Like do you propose to them? Do you give them a present? Do you have a conversation in person? Do you send them a letter like all these different things? Like how does one was I just need to him. So I did send him this rambling text. 

Hey So weird question like Um, I want to have a child but I don't have all the pieces, and I was like wondering if I could borrow your little guys for my project, and then when the project's complete, you don't have to do anything else. And if this is weird, just say, that's fucking weird, and we can move on with our lives. and if not, like, let me know if I can answer any questions, and he replied within like five minutes, he's like, hell yeah, I'm flattered, happy to help. 

Julia: How did you feel when you got that response? 

I was literally just like like so excited because I was like, oh my god, like I've been preparing for everything else But like I don't have the necessary other half So as much preparation I'm doing, I still can't really do anything until I figure that part out And so I was like, oh my god, like this is actually happening, I figured out a sperm donor. This is like getting more real like it was kind of like this idea in my head for like a whole year of like what I'm gonna do And now I'm like actually doing the thing.  And then we got his sperm tested just to make sure it was like, healthy, before we wasted either of our times, and it was. 

Julia Winston: They also signed a legal agreement, and came up with a plan for the sperm donor's involvement. 

Liam: He was like, you know, I'm down for whatever, as long as you don't die and they bring me the baby, like, just make sure that doesn't happen.

I was like, do we want it to be like a cultivated relationship where like you're uncle and you're intentionally in the life of my child or like you're just my friend and sometimes you see me out with my baby? Or do you want to just like go into it like you're the donor and like here's this whole special other person. Which is like Honestly, the way I've landed at this point, is just going into it honestly, like, yes, we used a donor to create you, and like, this is who he is, and like, maybe we don't see him all the time, but like, he's, if he wants to be at things, he can be, and if he doesn't want to be, he doesn't have to be. I said, as long as you're, like, willing to answer questions when the child's older and wants to, and like, if you're open to that kind of connection down the road, like, I, don't really expect you to be actively involved if you don't want to be.

Julia Winston: Liam now has all of the biological pieces in place. And once his cycle is regular, he'll start the insemination process. In the meantime, he's been thinking a lot about his lifestyle and what he might need to change in order to become a single dad. 

Liam: I ended up leaving the job I was at because I was like, I have no work life balance how am I gonna fit a child into like, what my day to day life looks like? So I'm in between. I don't really want to long term be a house cleaner, but it's getting me by.

But I'm thinking about, okay, what do I want my ideal job to be? Like, what kind of benefits do I want? And like, things like that. I've worked service related jobs, like forever, never had, benefits, never had, like, retirement or any of that. And suddenly, as I'm, like, thinking of, like, starting down this journey, it's like, all of a sudden, I'm like, I want a job that gives me paid time off, and I want a job that gives me benefits, and like, things that are gonna be good for me, and for, you know, a child. Where I said like, never ever considered it before, I was like, whatever, I'll figure it out, I don't care. And suddenly I care more about like, having balance in my life, I've been trying to kind of like, think about, okay, this what I, need to bring in. And one of my best friends is so supportive. She's like, we're going to sit down and figure out your budget and we're going to get you all squared away.

Cause I don't want you to be so willy nilly when you bring in a kid into the world that I'm like, yes, ma'am. Um, so I've got the fire under my ass for sure. 

Another thing that kind of pivoted my mindset of like, what I want to do for work was like, looking into daycare, so I was like, oh my god, it's so expensive, um, and my brother in law works a remote job, and he stays home with their son for the most part, and they have like a nanny for a little bit of the day, and so I was like, oh, if I could find something remote, I could like, have a pretty similar setup, which would be, A lot less money than sending my child to daycare.

Julia Winston: Liam is unbelievably intentional in his preparation to have a baby. It's something I've noticed with all of the queer people in my life - because queer fertility doesn’t happen by accident, everything needs to be planned. And that leads to a lot of self-reflection.

When we come back, Liam shares about how preparing for pregnancy is challenging his feelings around his gender identity.

After a lifetime of feeling uncomfortable with femininity, Liam says he's surprised at how well he's doing with the thought of having a menstrual cycle again and being pregnant.

Liam: it's been an interesting experience, but it has bothered me less than I thought it would. I was like, this is going to be really hard, but I'm just going to push through it. Like, I even thought having a period again would like really trigger me, because for many years I was like, if my period ever comes back, that's just going to be so horrible. If you had told me like, even like 5 years ago that I would do this, I'd be like, no. I do not want my period, I do not want to do any of that. 

Julia Winston: But as Liam has established himself as a man, he's changed his relationship with the idea of pregnancy and periods. 

Liam: It started with A) seeing representation of other trans people doing it and b) being able to separate my pregnancy from like womanhood and femininity and being like this is a really cool thing that my body can do. And I want to do it and so like able to kind of separate it is a very gendered world to be entering into. Like I for sure know i'm entering into a space where i'm constantly going to be like And me. Even just like prenatal vitamins. It's like good for mom and baby. And I was like, can't we just say like uterus and fetus? like do we have to say mom and baby? if this was me like seven or eight years ago I would have been so like deeply hurt to be like put into the woman category still . But now I'm like what the woman category is stupid. I'm entering the category anyway 

Julia Winston: As a transgender person, Liam has had to figure out the right words and language for his experience. Getting pregnant is a whole new chapter of that. 

Liam: Fatherhood, parenthood, like gestational parent is a term that is used a lot just to kind of like de gender it, especially in like same sex couples. There's always the like birth parents and then the non birth parents. So it's like gestational parent and, non gestational parent, you know, there's so many different words. I want to be seen in the same way that anyone else is seen as when they're becoming a parent. But it is an interesting. like intersection to be like, I want to be obviously acknowledged as the father of my child. Cause that's who I am, but also I want to be acknowledged for the like pregnancy and birthing experience I will have, which is obviously much more women's centric experience.But I mean, I just want really to be seen as someone entering parenthood, in a unique way. I think it'll be interesting to like experience, especially like as a child grows, being a father amongst other fathers, but I have the same experience as the women. And so like, what will that dynamic be like?

And so I don't know if there's an intersecting like way or term or like a way to sum that up. 

Julia Winston: Actually, we’ve got one! As we worked on this episode, we did find a term that could work for Liam: Seahorse Dad! In nature, male seahorses carry the babies and give birth. “Seahorse dad” is a term we’ve seen some pregnant transgender men call themselves.

But giving birth as a man is still new. Liam hasn’t found consistent medical advice, and not every doctor, nurse or doula has worked with a trans patient. So Liam has had to try and find resources to guide him through the process. 

Liam: I found some like good queer resources that are, Good at like, degendering. Like the one, Babymaking for Everybody, I think is what it was called. But it was very much like, if you have sperm, read chapter If you have eggs, read chapter 5.

It definitely feels lonely at times, just, you know, being the only person I know around me that's like on a similar journey.   Um, you? know, it's like as much as people in my life can be like sympathetic and try to understand the experience, they just won't. Which is true of many aspects of my life experience. Like I don't really know anyone else. No one else in my circle's divorced. No one else in my circle's transitioned. So it's Like, I've kind of always been on my own little offshoots, many different offshoots at this point.

Julia Winston: And that loneliness in this experience is a small worry for Liam. While he feels confident about his choice and is preparing himself as much as possible, he knows it will be a little different when other people know. 

Liam: I think for a lot of people, they just think, oh, you're transitioned, so you're not going to get pregnant or have children, you know, it's not like an, um, an option on the list of like things that people do. Um, a pregnant man, it's not like a common sight, and so I think about that a lot, like. What will people think and having to explain myself a lot feels like a little bit daunting like. 

People are always judging what you do no matter what, whether you do or don't do something, they're gonna say something, so like, whatever, I need to just not think about what other people are gonna think. 

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Julia Winston: But people's reactions are on his mind. A pregnant man is not common, and Liam knows some people might not react well. 

Liam: to see someone with a beard and also a pregnant belly. Like those two things clash with each other in, society's view of what a pregnant person looks like and what a man looks like. Those two images don't go together very often at all.

Julia Winston: Most people tend to respond to pregnant women with a warm smile, or patiently slowing down to let them cross the crosswalk, or offering their seat on the bus. Liam can’t help but think about his own safety if he goes out into the world pregnant. 

Liam: Especially in like late term pregnancy where it's very obvious. Um, you know, but I think there is going to be a point where it's like I've crossed the line from just like possibly just being a guy who has a big belly to like, huh, what's going on kind of thing. And so I think about that a lot. 

I was thinking about the other day, I was like, here I am just like in the gas station, like getting the soda. Like, am I going to do this when I'm eight months pregnant? Probably not. Cause I don't want to just be like staying around with all the other like dudes in line, you know, I feel like there's like a safety element that I have to consider. As far as like what the general public will make of me. 

Julia Winston: Liam has been creating videos about his experience trying to get pregnant. He just wants more people to understand the trans experience so he feels less like an anomaly. 

Liam knows how powerful a personal story can be. I mean it was an Instagram video from a pregnant trans man that inspired him to do this himself in the first place. And there are others who came before. Sixteen years ago, in 2008, there was a big news story about Thomas Beatie, a pregnant man: 

Oprah: I thought about seeing everything and then I saw a pregnant man. Thomas and his wife Nancy announced on our show that they were having a girl. They invited our cameras to come along for an ultrasound. 

Julia Winston: This man was also transgender and carrying a child. He was on Oprah and the cover of magazines, and all the stories framed it as a marvel! For teenage Liam, who hadn't transitioned, it was an inspiration. 

Liam: I can remember being a young teen and being like, I wanna do that. I didn't really like connect like those dots, but I just like, I remember thinking that's cool, and I wanna do it. 

Julia Winston: That's why Liam is volunteering his story now, before he's even gotten pregnant. He wants other trans men to know it's possible to have kids, and for other people to celebrate this experience just like they would for a pregnant woman. 

Liam: I just feel like it's either sensationalized as like the pregnant man, how is that possible? Or people just don't think it's possible because again, a lot of trans people don't or they like, they have hysterectomy and they go through all the surgeries and it's not even an option anymore. Back in the day in order to have your like sex changed on your documents You had to have proof that you had fully gone through all the surgeries. And so a lot of people did have to make the choice of like Do I want to be legally recognized as myself or do I want to have kids.

Julia Winston: Liam has told his close friends and his sister that he's trying to get pregnant. He’s making YouTube videos to share with a wider audience. And he’s sharing with us here at Refamulating. But he still hasn't told his parents. They struggled so much with him being trans, that he can't really predict how they will feel about him having a baby. 

Liam: I have a session with my therapist soon because I was like, I don't even know how to tell like how to tell my family what I'm doing. People will always have, will have something to say. Which is, I think, where some of my hesitation towards telling my family lies, cause like, I've always been, like, you know, on my own path, like we've said many times, but like, my sister has followed the exact right path that, like, they wanted her to. Which has its own whole host of issues that she has as a result of, like, being the golden child and I was, like, the problem child. But, I just feel like they're gonna be like, well, why aren't you married, and all the things that they probably wish I would do. 

Because I know that, I'm already like existing as a person that they wish was a different person. So then it's like everything I'm accomplishing feels like, well, we wish it was different, you know, kind of. Just like, if I have a kid, are they gonna be as excited as my nephew when he was born, or is it gonna be like a little bit lower? Cause they wish I was like, married to a man and a woman and doing it in a marriage and all those different things. But I could be surprised, honestly, I might be surprised. Maybe they will be so happy. 

So yeah, I worry about, I guess I worry about people's judgment. As much as I wanna say, I don't care what anyone thinks, but it's hard not to also think that. You know, we're all human beings. 

Julia Winston: Whether or not his parents are on board, Liam does have a support system that is ready to be his village if and when his child arrives. 

Liam: I have many wonderful friends who all have children as well And I know that they will support me in the same way that I've you know, supported them in their parenting. And I've got my sister and I actually just started dating someone in the last couple months and That's been interesting because I embarked on this journey being like, I'm going to be a single parent and I'm totally okay with that. And, um, just kind of just like fell into this relationship that's really wonderful. And she already has a son and I basically told her, I said, This is what I'm doing. I'm not pausing my journey because we're now dating each other. I'm going to still continue to pursue having a baby. But she's like, that's fine. I can't wait to like clean your house for you and rub your feet. So that's been nice because I was, I feel like I definitely was choosing between dating or becoming a parent. Cause honestly, I was like, I don't want to try and date someone to figure out if they're going to be a good parent. 

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Julia Winston: What have you learned that you want to share with other trans people who might be trying to get pregnant? Other trans men who might be trying to get pregnant? 

Liam: I went into it thinking this is going to be so hard. This is just going to be so hard, but I want to do it. And it's just been so much easier than I thought it was going to be. I mean obviously everyone has different experiences because I've read so many different things than other people, it was very hard to be off testosterone and go through the whole process, but I've been surprised by the lack of lows and maybe they're coming for me I don't know. Maybe I'm just still in the high zone of like ask me after a couple of like failed insemination attempts where I'm at You know, we'll see. But yeah. And just like, do what feels best for you. Because like, we've talked about already people are gonna judge you no matter what you're doing. So like, if you know that this is your path to parenthood, then just take it, and define it, for yourself. 

Julia: Liam talked a few times about looking in the mirror at different points in his life and seeing or not seeing the right version of himself. So I asked him to imagine looking in the mirror as a pregnant person. 

Liam:  My belly is super hairy. So I just picture a big pregnant hairy belly. 

Julia: Liam, we are sending you tons of love and good wishes as you try and get pregnant. We hope that you have a big, hairy, belly soon.

09: Sister Moms: From foster care to chosen family

When Lindsay lost custody of her toddler, Gabriel, an acquaintance named Rachel stepped in as his foster mom. As Lindsay worked toward reunification with her son, she and Rachel developed an unlikely friendship. The journey they’ve shared has led them to create a new family unit with Gabriel at the center.

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Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.
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Julia: On January 19, 2019, Rachel was hanging out at home. She'd just moved in with her boyfriend and his son. The whole situation, living with a partner, having a kid in her house, was new. And then she got a life changing phone call. 

Rachel: I got a call from my boyfriend and he said that his friend was in some trouble. And his friend was asking if we could take Gabriel for some time while they figured everything out. 

Julia: Gabriel was the friend's two year old son. Rachel had only met Gabriel once, when she and her boyfriend hung out with Gabriel’s parents on New Year's Day. But she wasn't totally surprised to hear they needed help. 

Rachel: And I was like, if that's something that you think we need to do, then let's do it. They both were dealing with substance abuse disorder and, it had come down that he didn't have a clean drug test. 

Lindsay: It was really frustrating because I had been in recovery. Like I hadn't used in over a year, but I still wasn't technically eligible to be parenting my son alone. 

Julia: This is Lindsay, Gabriel's mother. 

Lindsay: And I had told my significant other constantly like you've got to stop using like you have to stop using and he had assured me he did and then They did, you know a hair test on him and it came back all kinds of positive. 

Julia: When Lindsay's husband’s drug test came back positive, things moved quickly. The Department of Human Services, or DHS, got involved immediately. D-H-S is what it's called where Lindsay and Rachel live in Iowa. In other places this agency is called Child Protective Services. 

Because Lindsay struggled with addiction herself, and had previous interactions with DHS, she and her husband immediately lost custody of Gabriel. 

Lindsay: It was the worst day of my life. He was already at daycare when we got the call and they said you can't pick up your son and that was so traumatic. I didn't get to tell my son, like, Mommy's not going to pick you up today. Sorry, I get really emotional talking about that. Um, so I didn't get to say goodbye and the thing that I remember the most is having to watch them take apart his crib and take over to Rachel's. You just have to try to cope, and like, as a mother, like, it's literally like your heart is being taken from you. 

Julia: DHS picked Gabriel up from daycare and took him to Rachel and her boyfriend’s house. Rachel had no experience parenting. She is not a mother and she's never cared for a toddler. She had just moved in with her boyfriend and his son. So when DHS showed up with a toddler for her to suddenly take care of, it was pretty overwhelming.

Rachel: they came over with a packet of like, here's all the resources you need. it was a one page piece of paper front and back and really the highest level of logistics.

Julia: Rachel had no training about how to parent, and no guidance about how to parent Gabriel. She had no idea what his routines were. What his favorite toy was or what foods he loved and hated. Rachel was dropped in the deep end, with no idea what to expect. And Lindsay was heartbroken and longing for her child.

These two women barely knew each other that day. But this little boy, Gabriel, would bring them together in a way that would change both of their lives forever. 

Julia: When DHS took Gabriel from Lindsay, she was devastated. Remember, she was sober at the time. Her husband’s positive drug test is what caused all of this. So in the first days after he was taken, she was an emotional wreck. 

Lindsay: the night before, he was in a onesie and I slept with that onesie every single night because it, like, faintly smelled of him. And, like, I would just sit in his room and cry. I just felt incomplete. 

Julia: In that first week, Rachel set up a laptop in Gabriel's room so Lindsay could see him and talk to him on Zoom. 

Lindsay: They immediately set up my son in his crib, um, in front of a camera so I could sit and, like, read him books and just talk to him, which, at that moment, was, like, the only thing that kept me from running out that door and using again.

Julia: But she didn't turn back to drugs. She was laser focused on proving to the courts that she was responsible enough to regain custody of Gabriel. The legal term for this is
“reunification.” And the courts laid out the terms and conditions for Lindsay to regain custody of her son: she needed to complete a treatment program for substance abuse, go to therapy, take weekly drug tests and attend Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

So where did Lindsay’s struggle with addiction begin? What exactly did she have to overcome to bring Gabriel home? 

Like many people who deal with substance abuse, there was a lot of trauma and grief living inside of Lindsay. She grew up in a tight-knit, religious family that was supportive and loving. But the stability of her childhood fell apart when she was 17, when her dad died unexpectedly.

Lindsay: it just changed everything. The whole dynamic, like he was my person. Um, he was the one I talked to about everything. He was the one who I just felt was my protector in life and Um, everything just fell apart from there. It's such a traumatic loss to somebody who who'd grown up with really the ideal childhood.

I got into a really toxic relationship, and, um, I was introduced to some really toxic things, substances, and it just took my, my life in a totally different course.

Julia: Lindsay became a functioning addict. She went to college. She started working. But then her mom was diagnosed with cancer, and after eight years of being sick, her mom died, too. 

Lindsay: And after that I just really went off the deep end. there was no do not step, do not pass go, do not collect 200. I just, I could not cope. And I think a lot of people that haven't lost a parent may not understand like that absolute sever from like that biological person that's supposed to love you, you know, and just the feeling of emptiness and like having no meaning in life anymore.

Um, and it was a really terrible time. I had come to rely so heavily on substances. I didn't know how to function. To get up in the morning, I would have to use, to go to bed, I would have to use. It was just a constant dependency on needing it to survive. I wasn't really able to function, really severe depression, um, just toxic relationship after toxic relationship. 

Julia: One of those toxic relationships was with her ex-husband, Gabriel's father. Getting pregnant with Gabriel wasn't planned. 

Lindsay: I didn't know if I should have him for a very long time. I kept going back and forth whether this was something that I could do. But it's just something, you know, told me, like, I just, I, I wanted to do it. And so, then I tried to get myself better on my own, which, looking back, was very naive, and it's, it's hard to, You can't do it on your own. Like, I had no support system. I didn't have anybody in my life who wasn't using. The whole thing was terrifying. And so that, that love and that glow that a lot of pregnant women talk about, I just never had. I was just survival mode the entire time.

Julia: The day Lindsay gave birth, the fog and stress of her addiction finally started to clear. 

Lindsay: There's just this something that happens when you have a child, right? The moment that they laid him on my chest, everything changed. I felt like my heart was going to explode. That was the connection that I had been wanting and feeling. It just, I knew from that point on, like, I would do anything to be with him. And to make sure that he was okay. 

Julia: Lindsay had tried to get sober on her own when she’d found out she was pregnant. But without a support system, she wasn't always successful. So because she was still using drugs throughout her pregnancy, Gabriel had drugs in his system when he was born.

Lindsay: My son tested positive at birth and was taken by DHS. And I was still in a toxic marriage, and he used substances as well. Well, then, after Gabriel was born, I just, I went cold turkey. And what your body goes through, I can't even describe the horror. It was really hard, but I had this great motivation. And thankfully with DHS involved, as much as everyone hates DHS, t hey provided me a lot of services. So I was able to go to substance use counseling. I started therapy, which, honestly, the therapy is what changed my life. I started dealing with all the trauma that I'd never dealt with before.

Trying to get off the substances was one thing, but then trying to learn how to live after that. Part of it is you use up so much of the dopamine in your brain. It's all , chemically made at that point because I'd been using for so long. So I just, I, I felt no happiness, even being a mom. You know, and that was probably the biggest struggle I literally thought that I was never going to smile again. And trying to parent newborn during that time is really hard. I didn't know how to pay bills. I didn't know how to, budget or and how to have a normal relationship that wasn't codependent. And so my life, I, honestly, I don't really remember a lot in those years.

Julia: For two years, Lindsay clawed her way through recovery while taking care of a newborn. And it all came to a crashing halt the day her ex-husband tested positive for drugs, when DHS took Gabriel to Rachel's. 

Lindsay immediately left her husband, and made it her mission to get Gabriel back. She wanted to show the courts that she could be the sober, responsible parent Gabriel needed. 

Lindsay: I joined a program called Recovery Court, which is like an intensified program for reunification. So I was going to like three NA meetings a week. I was doing two therapies a week. EMDR and dealing with my trauma. You do, like, two hour court sessions, and then a night session. I started taking parenting classes. I got back into my career in hotels. I had left it for a long time because it was in the way of my using. I did a lot of work on myself. Honestly I wanted to get him back, but in the end it ended up just helping heal me.

Julia: Was all that work enough to bring Gabriel home? Let’s find out after a short break.

Julia: For six months, Rachel and her boyfriend were the legal guardians of two year old Gabriel. Legally, they were called "suitable others".

Rachel: Most people understand the concept of a foster parent, but the concept of a suitable other, which is typically like a sister or a grandparent or, Somebody that is closer. But because I didn't know Lindsey as well, it felt like a true foster experience without the training, which was kind of a problem.

Julia: People who sign up to be foster parents have to take classes and complete training courses. They're a little more prepared when a child is brought to their home. But Rachel and her boyfriend didn't see this coming. Again, she'd only hung out with Lindsay once. 

Rachel: I had my, my first impression of her. She, she was nice. She was lovely. And then the, when the DHS worker came over and explained the situation that Gabriel was in, it was like, Oh. And I wear rose colored glasses. And so it sort of hit me hard. Like, Oh, wow. she had been using for a really long time.  

Julia: So..why did Lindsay choose Rachel and not someone she knew better? 

Lindsay: I tried to see if my sisters could take him, but because they were out of state, they wouldn't allow that. so I didn't really have any options. So, I knew about her, but I didn't know her. And honestly, looking back, It's a crazy decision that anybody, one, would take our child, but two, that, like, we'd, we decided that. But I just didn't want my son to go to some home that could be even more traumatic for him, and at least I knew they had a clean house, and they had another child, so I knew generally who they were.

Julia: The dynamic among the adults in this situation was...heavy. But for Rachel, having Gabriel around was light and joyous. 

Rachel: I love kids. I kind of joke I'm the toddler whisperer so I was excited and I knew that, we would be able to give Gabriel the amount of love that he needed. Gabriel loved, loved, loved dolphins and sharks and anything that was, aquatic. My parents and I, and my ex and his son, went to the Omaha Zoo because we wanted to see him see the aquarium. And it, it was so, it was so fun.

The time that I loved with Gabriel the most is when we would do bath time. In that time, I'm like, Oh, you know, you're a little, a little fish and, and then we could name off the kinds of fish or the type of fish. He's just a, a funny boy, but he was so smart. 

Julia: Rachel was a natural at taking care of Gabriel. And she started to love this little boy with her whole heart. 

Rachel: I attached quickly, very quickly. And, um, here come the tears. And I, I was ready. I was like, if this doesn't work with Lindsay and her husband, if they, if they aren't able to reunite, like I'm, I'm ready to adopt him, whatever we got to do. And I met with a woman for coffee and she had been a foster mom previously. And she was like, unfortunately, the goal, the goal of fostering it is not to keep the child, which is sometimes a common misconception. The courts and everybody is going to be rooting for reunification with mom and dad. And she was the first person to, to really kind of lay it on me like this might not end up the way that you're thinking it's going to end up.

Julia: During that time, Lindsay could visit a few days a week, and Rachel included her in some of the day to day appointments for Gabriel. 

Lindsay: Rachel was great because she would invite me to go to the doctor's appointments for Gabriel. But one, having to relive every doctor's appointment that I used during pregnancy is really hard. Having to tell every doctor what could be possible complications, it's just, it's really hard. Um, but then when they ask the questions about what he does now, um, like behaviors, does he eat normally, does he eat vegetables, you know, I couldn't answer any of those and that was really hard. 

I remember one particular appointment, Gabriel just wanted Rachel, you know, and that's really hard. He would just reach for her and I would try to hold him and he would try to crawl to her and um, she was so good because she would try to like hand him off to me and, because I'm sure that was really uncomfortable for her too, but, that was really hard and just having to like accept it is a really huge humbling process. 

Julia: While Lindsay was focused on getting herself healthy, Rachel was focused on Gabriel. All of this trauma caused the two year old to start acting out, and she was trying to help him through it. 

Rachel: I could understand what he was going through. I knew, um, you know, where he struggled and when he got angry, I could, I could see that and respond to it. Obviously there, you know, we've got a discipline is discipline. You can't grew up biting people, but, but just having that, that understanding of he was, he was going through it and he couldn't talk about it. 

Julia: While Gabriel was in Rachel’s care, Lindsay would come over for weekly supervised visits. This was when Rachel and Lindsay slowly started to get to know each other. 

Lindsay: And she would just ask me small questions like, what is an NA meeting like? Like, what does this feel like? And can you tell me a little bit about addiction and what that is? And, you know, how I can help? And it just made me look at her like, wow, like what an amazing human being. You know, I had been in addiction for so long that you don't meet people that are like that, you know, you don't meet people that are just selfless and loving and caring.

And I just remember thinking, you know, if my son isn't gonna be with me, this is somebody I would want to take care of him. And, you know, as a mother, that's really terrible to ever think, but, You know, there were moments when I thought maybe he would be better off with her, because she's just this amazing human being.

Rachel: I also didn't have anybody in my life that had been dealing with substance abuse disorder in a way that was transparent to me. And so Lindsey taught me so much about what that meant. I did a good amount of research too. Um, but even to this, to this day, I, I learned so much from her about what it is like to live with substance abuse disorder.

Julia: They were starting to develop a friendship during these visits, and it kind of surprised both of them. 

Lindsay:   And you know, it's really intimidating when you meet someone like Rachel, who is just, Beautiful inside and out. I have so much shame and guilt and self doubt and it was really intimidating, but she would just ask questions and we'd joke around and we talked a lot about theater and things that we liked.

Julia: It would be very easy to villainize Rachel. But the more time they spent together, the more Lindsay loved her. And one of the reasons was because she was so good for Gabriel. 

Lindsay: She cuddled him and loved on him and he, he felt safe with her and I could tell that and it made it okay for me to recover. Because as a mom, you just can't focus until you know your child's safe and like the more I started trusting Rachel with my son, the more I was able to let go a little bit and work on myself. It's hard to explain, but when you see them together, the hugs he gives her are not the hugs he gives to anybody else. And like, there's this pull, this magnetic pull between them. 

Julia: That magnetic pull between Rachel and Gabriel was getting stronger every day that he lived with her. But Rachel knew it probably wouldn't last forever. Lindsay was working her programs and staying sober. And after six months, the courts decided that reunification was on the table.

Rachel: The new DHS worker said, We're going to start doing Two or three nights a week overnights with mom. And so we did that for a few weeks and it went fine. Obviously any time that Gabriel was with mom, that it had to be supervised. and I was, bummed out that overnights were happening. It just started that like, okay, I'm going to have to separate.

I'll never forget the morning he had come back from an overnight with mom and I opened the door early in the morning and I was like, Good morning, Gabriel. And he had a big smile on his face. And then he saw that it was me and it wasn't mom. And he broke down crying. And I thought, Oh my God. Reunification it's what has to happen. And, so how are we going to do it in a way that was going to ensure Lindsay was successful and Gabriel was successful too.

Julia: After a few weeks of supervised visits and overnights with Lindsays, DHS said they could go to court to start the legal reunification process. 

Lindsay: So it was the day after my birthday, actually, and I was telling everybody, like, this is my birthday present.

Julia: And that day in court, the judge declared that Gabriel could officially come home. The first thing Lindsay wanted to do was pick him up from daycare, something she hadn’t been allowed to do when she’d lost custody. 

Lindsay: You're not allowed to drive your child, you're not allowed to be alone with your child, um, and that's super traumatic in itself, being told that, like, you're not safe enough to, like, be in the same room with your child alone. And so walking into that daycare, like, was, The most amazing moment because his, like, face lit up when I picked him up. And I just, I was so happy. , there's no words to describe, like, that feeling of just, like, seeing your kid when you pick them up. And even now, like, I will always be happy to have him run and jump on me. You know, because he, to me, that's something that I treasure, because I, I took it for granted.

Julia: While Lindsay was picking up Gabriel from school, Rachel had to pack up his things. 

Rachel: We coordinated getting his clothes to her and, toys and books and those things. I remember in the courtroom it was really challenging for me, knowing that one of us was going to walk away upset was hard. It's also easy to be like, well, who did what wrong? And are you sure this is the right decision? And can you believe that, you know, they, they eat fast food three nights a week, or, you know, all of those kinds of things. It's like, what is this, what is the life that Gabriel is going to have? 

Julia: As Lindsay prepared for Gabriel to come home, she knew the situation would look totally different than before. She wasn’t with her husband anymore, so she’d be a single mom. She had more responsibilities that all fell on her, and the transition was tough.  

Lindsay: I was terrified. I didn't know what to do. DHS had previously been paying daycare and they're like, Oh, well, you know, today's the day we're cutting off daycare now too. So I immediately had to try to find financial, you know, assistance for daycare and, it was just a lot of you know, the small things trying to work out. And I would wake up super early because I was so scared. I thought that I had to get ready before he was up because I was so scared. Like, I didn't know how to be a mom, right? 

Rachel: In the beginning, it was a little, a little bit awkward with shifting. we had put together a Google doc of like, here's what Gabriel's routine is and the things that he likes and so on and so forth. And then as he was transitioning out of my home, it was, okay, here's what, here's what we're doing and how do we keep that consistent? One, so she, she has some success and to, to, um, keep it easier on, on Gabriel. Cause that's a, that's a huge transition. 

Julia: Gabriel was only two when he moved in with Rachel. So the six months he spent with her was a huge chunk of his life. He changed a lot, and Lindsay had to learn these changes on top of everything else. 

Lindsay: The whole messed up thing about this system is, you know, they take your kid and then you're supposed to work on yourself, right? You're supposed to get yourself better and so you can be better for your son. His dad had lost custody, so he was just coming back to me. So I'm going to a single mom, just trying to stay in recovery. And, uh, you know, I have a child with special needs and behavioral issues and, um, it was a struggle. And I just remember him crying in his crib for for Rachel. And, like, that It hurt so much that he was crying for her, but it hurt even more that he had to feel that loss yet again from somebody else.

And I, I ended up texting her and I was just like, Rachel, I am so sorry, but like, I don't know how to calm him down. Like, can you tell me some things that you do with him at night? You know, because I, I was new to this, you know, I, I hadn't done this with him. 

And you know, the day that they gave him back to me. You know, she came up to me and gave me a hug, and I will never ever forget the look on her face. She was so loving and happy for me, but the pain on her face was just like, I will never forget her face. Because she just looked like I felt when he was taken from me. And like, I don't know that anybody could understand, like, she was his mother. And like, the pain. Now she was losing him, and so I was so happy to get him back, but it's also that, like, how do we do this? 

Julia: Rachel was starting to ask herself the same question: she was in love with this little boy. She was starting to form a friendship with Lindsay. But spending time with the two of them was so painful, because it was a reminder that she was no longer Gabriel's caretaker. Around this time Rachel's relationship with her boyfriend started to fall apart, and now she was the one who was watching her world change. Now, it was Lindsay who started showing up for Rachel.

Rachel: It was such an emotional thing for me and she was so supportive and quite frankly, the one that could relate to me the most with all of it. Lindsay was always very kind and, considerate. I think she's one of the first people that taught me about boundaries and they were boundaries. Um, but she was so respectful of the feelings that I was having, especially as we were transitioning Gabriel back. And then after a while I was like, I've got to pull back from this. 

Julia: Rachel couldn't hang out with Lindsay and Gabriel while she grieved this loss, and Lindsay understood. She had gone through this same heartbreak and knew how painful it was. But she also realized she and Gabriel didn't want to lose Rachel forever.

Lindsay: And I had said, hey, I don't want you to think that you are not a part of his life at all. I told her like he loves you, and I don't want to take that away from you. So, if you want to be in his life,  I want to open that door for you. So if you are willing, we will work it out.

Rachel: I realized I want Gabriel in my life. And if, if it's not in a, in a mom role, like, how do I allow that to still happen? And Because Lindsay and I both love Gabriel, like what a bond. And my family loved Gabriel and it's like, how do we become her village so that he has the best life ever?

Julia: When we come back, we'll hear about the village they've created.

Julia: When Gabriel moved back with Lindsay, she had her hands full. She was a single mom. She was deep in the process of recovery and working a full time job. She was also trying to help Gabriel adjust. It was a lot to juggle. 

Lindsay: He was just, he's a lot, and he had a lot of behavioral issues, so he would throw things, screaming. But um, It's tough trying to go from one thing to the other. There were many times I just felt like I wanted to run away and, you know, relapse because it's hard and it's a selfish disease, right? And so when you feel like you're not doing the best, you just feel like maybe I shouldn't do it at all.

Rachel: I've never been a single mom. But I've been in a household with an eight year old and a two year old. And if I were going through recovery and trying to be a parent, a single parent, it's like you're treading water and then they're throwing a baby at you to tread water with.

Julia: When Rachel felt emotionally strong enough, she started helping out again. She would babysit Gabriel on Tuesday nights so Lindsay could go to NA meetings alone. She also recruited more help from two other people who loved Gabriel: her parents. Tim And Therese. 

During the six months Gabriel lived with Rachel, Tim and Therese spent a lot of time with him too. When he was reunified with Lindsay, they didn't quite know if that relationship would continue. 

Rachel: There was one week that I had gone to Mexico for my best friend's wedding and so they had babysat and like grandma mode kicked in and my mom and Lindsey had started a, friendship. As Gabriel was transitioning out of the home and back to Lindsey, she still had to do all of these meetings and all, all of these different things. And so between myself and my parents, we were watching Gabriel in the evenings.

Lindsay: I had never really met them until, um, after Gabriel was reunited with me. Rachel had actually facilitated and said, Hey, you know, my parents would be willing to, to help you out. Would you be comfortable with that? And I remember thinking, like, oh no, like, I don't do well with parents. I just had so much trauma. Also, what could they think of me? You know, I was the drugged out mom who lost her son, and now I got him back, and now I can't take care of him myself. You know, it's how the self talk went in my head. Um, and so it was a very slow building relationship with them. 

I'll never forget, there was a day that Therese had stopped me it was probably a year into them being in our lives very consistently every week. And, She had said, I hate to ask this, but would you, would you mind if he called us grandma and grandpa? 

And like my heart was so full because one of the biggest regrets that I have is I can't provide that for my son. You know, my parents are gone. His dad's parents are gone. I was so lost that like I didn't have parents that could help me through this. He loves them so fully. I mean, just loves them, and he doesn't know any different. They are grandma and grandpa. From there, it was just, they started cooking me, like, they make my lunches for work. And, you know, they take him every Sunday. They have just shown me so much love.

Rachel: I'm so proud of my parents because this is, it's a big thing to take on and they, they love Gabriel. And they care for Lindsay so much. And that was a little scary for me. It's one thing for me to be like, okay, if something goes wrong, that happens to me, fine. But , if my parents heartbreak over any of this, we're going to have a problem. And so it took me a little while to, to trust Lindsay with my parents hearts. but oh my God, like she, she is so wonderful to them and she's so grateful for them. 

Her parents passed away when she was younger. I can't imagine being an adult without being able to call my mom and my dad and say, something's gone wrong. I need your help. And she has that. And Gabriel has that. And I have that. And, it's really wonderful. It's been a really beautiful thing to see just family becoming more than, than what you were born into.

Julia: Gabriel is now seven years old. Lindsay describes him as a spitfire.

Lindsay: He loves to fish. He loves everything outdoors. He loves anything, um, to do with, uh, I would say reptiles, and you know, fish, amphibians, um, just a very he's super smart. Super, super smart. Which is, um, double edged sword a lot of times. Um, he's very, huge sense of humor. His favorite person in the world is his papa and, uh, that's Rachel's dad. 

Julia: Lindsay has been clean and sober for seven and a half years. She, Rachel, Gabriel and Rachel's parents have created a new family unit and family routines. Rachel and her parents are the default babysitters. Rachel's dad regularly takes Gabriel fishing. Tim and Therese have a standing date with Gabriel on Sundays, and often, Lindsay and Rachel join. 

Rachel: My parents have a wooded lot that they live on and there's frogs everywhere. We catch frogs and then when Gabriel leaves, the frogs go back to where they were caught before. It just feels normal.

Julia: Something that feels extraordinary, though, is the bond between Lindsay and Rachel. After they both ended their relationships with the men who introduced them, they started to lean more and more on each other.  

Rachel: Lindsay and I joke now, like we had to have some crappy significant others to, to find each other. But you know, here, here we are. She had also seen my relationship with my ex in a, in a way that was different than most people. And so as that dissolved, she's been really kind of a fantastic partner and angel and in just knowing what I need and, and really understanding what I've been through.

Lindsay: I always call her my sister. We may not talk for a few weeks, but like, when I have a bad day or when I want to vent about something, I'm gonna, she's the one I'm gonna do it to. It's a totally different relationship. Like, I can talk about Gabriel, we talk about a lot about what we've been through and how we want to change the world and, make sure things are different for other families.

I love her goofy soul. But we understand each other on a level that I don't think most people will ever get to, you know, because we have such a deep relationship and she's been such a huge supporter of my recovery. I mean, she's never made me feel bad about myself in any way. And now I know, like, our family is meant to be together. 

Julia: By many definitions, this is a foster care success story. Lindsay changed her life in a way that allowed her to get her child back. Rachel was a loving, safe person for her child to live with. But that's not how it always works out. And that's something Rachel and Lindsay have talked a lot about- how to make foster situations more empathetic to the people involved. They agree that the most opportunity for change lies in the way that birth and foster parents first meet: 

Lindsay: I would see her at court and, um, that's just not a way to introduce parents, right? We're gonna be co parenting my child, like, You need to have that trust. And so, honestly, Rachel opening that Zoom session was a huge lead in. So, I actually use that as a reference of like, hey, like, this is a great way to start an introduction. As soon as baby's taken, do a pre removal conference so they could meet prior to that and say, you know, I'm, I'm gonna be a safe space. 

The best thing for a child is to be with mom. But if a child can't be with mom to be with a safe support, that's not trying to take your child. They are trying to be there for your child in a time of need. Um, and so really there's so much work to be done around, like, fostering that relationship first. 

I think the biggest thing lacking in our world is empathy and understanding that, um, you know, I'm not just some drugged out person that could have stopped whenever. there's just such little understanding for the disease of addiction in general. Especially of what it does to our families and, and our kids. There's just a lot to be said about what that journey is like and the things that did work in the system, things that didn't work.

Julia: These days, Lindsay volunteers with a non-profit called Zero to Three, which aims to improve the child welfare system. She speaks to groups at the national level about her experience and how birth parents and foster parents can work together to support children.

Something Rachel is passionate about is how to be a supportive foster parent.

Rachel: I would hope any future foster parent would consider becoming that village for children. the success of the child is dependent on the parent and that parent's success is not going to happen without a network of good people that love them and love that child.

Julia: Meeting and loving Gabriel shaped how Rachel now thinks about what she wants from family in the future. 

Rachel: I want to foster in the future. And when I think about do I want kids and I want kids, but not necessarily in the traditional way. And I think that there is space for me to love kids and their, families. And that's the impact that I'll have on on the world, it can be really beautiful, and kids need it. And for parents who are going through it, for them to, to be able to focus on themselves and know that they've got a cheerleader and not, not somebody that's trying to, to take their child. Like that's, that's what it's, what it's about. How do we serve each other?

Lindsay: It takes a village to raise a child. I think that's such a lost, guiding compass for our communities. We're all so, siloed in life, and I think it's so important to remember that, like, we can't do this without each other. And what got me into substances was feeling alone. I think there's so many people that feel that way. There's just so much love and care in the world that I have seen and it's funny because prior to meeting You know Rachel and her family. I would not have had the same view of the world But now I really do because there are good and wonderful people out there.

I honestly was terrified of family. Um, I withdrew a lot from my family because it hurts so much to lose my parents. Um, and it cost me so dearly to lose them, it cost my soul for a very long time. When I was meeting Tim and Teresa, I kept them at arm's length for a very long time because I was so afraid to lose more people. And I didn't want my son to feel that, that loss. It's really scary, to be honest, to love somebody so much. I lay awake at night thinking about it because when you've gone through what I've gone through and you've seen what I've seen, it's really hard to not know about how that's going to feel when that relationship has to come to an end. But it would be a tragic loss not to be able to be loved.

Rachel: Love is going to come, from all of the non storybook, ways. I, I think that embracing the suck of heartbreak or potential heartbreak or, giving people the grace and the understanding that being human isn't easy.

The woman that I met with, that I had coffee with who told me that my job was to make a build was to build Gabriel's network. She also told me that people are their own best problem solvers. And that was the best advice that I could have ever received, particularly at the time in ongoing that, um, I don't have to solve people's problems.

Julia: When I interviewed Rachel and Lindsay, the thing that touched me the most was the mutual love and respect they had for each other. After each interview, my heart felt so full that I’d burst into tears. At first I thought it was because the pain of what they’d both experienced was so sad and intense, but then I realized it was because the love between them was so pure. How brave they were to let each other in! Looking at the whole story now, I can see that the relationship between these two women is the real love story in each of their lives. 

A theme that runs through all our stories of refamulating involves letting go of expectations around what a loving, happy family can look like and opening to new possibilities. In this, Rachel and Lindsay are role models for us all.

Lindsay: I had this idea of what my family should be when I had my son. I May not have been in a happy marriage and, You know, we were both using, but I thought that I had to stay because that's what, what was good for my son, right? He needs a mom and he needs a dad. And, you know, we have this, such a weird little family now. My son is so loved and that's really what's important is that this idea of what family is doesn't have to be mom, dad, baby. It can be, Mom and her sister mom and her parents. It's just wonderful to know that families can be made out of anything.

08: The Childfree Life Is The Life For Me

For many people, “starting a family” includes having kids. But we know that not everyone wants to be parents, and in this episode we hear from a handful of childfree people to celebrate that choice. 

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Episode transcript is below. Transcripts may not appear in their final form.
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Julia: I'm Julia Winston, and this is Refamulating a podcast that explores different ways to make a family. Often when you hear the phrase “make a family”, it's kind of assumed that you're talking about having kids. But not everyone has kids. In fact, a lot of people don't, more and more so all the time. And that's what today's episode is about- being child free.

Now I want to talk about words for a second here. When I say child free, I'm referring to people who have intentionally chosen not to have children. That doesn't mean they don't like children, though that may be true for some. It just means they've made a conscious choice not to become parents. Childless, on the other hand, childless, is a word that describes someone who wants kids but doesn't have them or didn't have them.

Childless is about lack - an unfulfilled desire - and childfree is about choice. We've all been told that having kids is the normal path, but for the first time, many of us actually feel like we have a choice. And the whole point of this show is to normalize whatever choices you make when it comes to your family. 

So the choice NOT to have children is the perspective we're going to dive into today on Refamulating. and we're going to hear from a handful of different people who fully own and celebrate this choice. 

First we’ll hear from a few childfree people in their 30s and 40s. Meet Lyz…

LYZ: I always knew I didn't want to have children.

Michael…

MICHAEL: I like to rent a child for a little while and then like, go home. 

Julia: And Gabby…

Gabby: I think that while I  would be a good parent, could be a good parent, I don't want to. And so, how well am I going to do something that I don't want to do? I mean, how well do you do a job that you don't want to do? I think it's a scary conversation to have and people are just starting to have it more. 

Julia: And then, we’ll get a fresh take from someone who’s been there and done that. 

HEIDI:  someone asked me what my word for the sixties, my sixties would be. And I said, it's just pure fuckin joy.

Julia: That’s Heidi Clements, a 63-year-old social media influencer who's oozing with confidence about her choice to be child free.

HEIDI: even if I was the only single child free woman in America, I would not feel alone. It makes me feel different. What's wrong with being different. I think it's cool that I didn't choose the same path that everybody else did. Makes me unique. Doesn't make me alone.

Julia: This woman is such a badass, I can’t wait for you to hear everything she has to say. 

Before we hear from these folks, I want to bring another voice into the mix. Someone very special, who you may be familiar with: my producer and partner in Refamulating, Claire McInerny.

Claire: Hello.

Julia: Claire and I are both child free, and neither of us are sure if we want kids. It's something we talk about a lot. So Claire, in three words or less, what is your stance on having kids?

Claire: I don't know, I think would be my answer.

Julia: Yeah, me neither. That's my three. So Claire made a terrible thanks for asking episode last year called, should I have kids? 

 Claire: One of the intrusive thoughts I kept having was, if I have kids now, will I be setting them up to be soldiers in the water wars? Will they ask one day, why did my mother have me when she knew humanity was going in such a bad direction? I was in this position of, I kind of want kids, but should I have them? Is it responsible to have children with the knowledge I have? Is it selfish to have kids if their lived experiences will certainly be worse than mine? 

Julia: Claire, I think so many people can relate to you about this questioning. This is a topic that's on everyone's minds in one degree or another. And when it comes to having children, you know, I think that it certainly is a factor that plays into people who are doubting. Are there other reasons that you consider not wanting to have kids?

Claire: Yeah, I mean, the climate anxiety, what the future will look like is a very real fear I have, but it's probably the most extreme. I also look at parenting as a really intense job. And I think if I did it, I'd want to do it well. So I know I'd give up a lot of my life and what it looks like right now. And then like the logistics, things like money, childcare, having support, I see how hard that is for other people and I know that that would also feel like a huge life change. So those are kind of the things that hold me back. And I just sit so squarely in the middle knowing that I think I would like many parts of it. I think I could have a great life without them. And that's my struggle is neither side pulls me super hard.

Julia: you know, One thing that's just interesting about what you're saying and where I am is the different phases of life we're in and the different life circumstances. So you're younger than me. You're also partnered. You're 33. You are in a relationship. I am 40. I'm single.

For me, It hasn't really been a question of whether or not I want to have kids as much as it has been who is the person I want to have kids with if I end up having kids. I have always been sort of like, if I have children, I know I want to do it with a partner and I haven't met a partner that I would want to do that with yet. 

I froze my eggs when I was 33 and it was honestly the most empowering decision I've ever made. It enabled me to freeze time. So in a way there is a part of me that's not really worried about having kids because technically I can do it with my 33 year old eggs anytime. Like I can do it.

Claire: When you and I started making this podcast, the topic of child free by choice was something we knew we wanted to talk about and tackle right away because we are in our thirties and forties, everyone around us is either like they're having kids or not, it's the time. And so I feel like this conversation is happening around us. So it was really important for us to make an episode that celebrates the child free life. Even though you and I aren't cemented in that camp, we just are hanging out there right now.

Julia: It's sort of a medicine that we're wanting to take of like, Hey, show me what it's like to embrace the choice not to have kids. I need to see more models of people who are like, yeah, I don't want children and I'm fine. I want to see more of that. I want to hear more of that. And I know more of that is happening all the time. So that's what today is really about. It's us. you know, opening that door and seeing what's, what's there.

So this episode includes a handful of voices of people who are child free and they each have different reasons and reactions to what their child free life has looked like. But before we get going, I want to be clear that we're not here to say that one choice is better or worse than another.

Each of us is on our own unique path. The way I think about that is that there is no right or wrong. There's just right and left. There are many ways that things can go when it comes to having kids or any other decision, and only you can decide which direction works best for you. There's going to be amazing things and there's going to be horrible things in either direction because that's just life.

But we hear a lot about the amazing things and the horrible things about being a parent. We don't really hear that about being child free. So let's get into it. 

So I interviewed three child free people for this next segment. Liz, Michael, and Gabby are all in their 30s and 40s, they're all married, and they've all decided against having kids.

Lyz Nagan: Hi, I'm Liz Nagan

Michael Ventura: I'm Michael Ventura.

Julia: and there's Gabby.

Gabby: I live in Texas and I do not want kids.

Julia: Gabby is a pseudonym. She wanted to protect her identity because of her work. 

Claire: We wanted to ask these child free people all the questions that might feel rude if we just met at a social gathering. Here's what we wanted to know. How did they make the choice? What do they love about it? And what's hard about it?

Julia: Let's start with why, like how did they all choose to be child free? 

Lyz Nagan: the idea of a family was just one person who I loved and loved me.

Julia: Liz is one of those people who always knew she didn't want kids. What she wanted was a partner and the freedom to travel. 

Michael and his wife Caroline actually did try to have kids in the early years of their marriage. 

Michael Ventura: We were 20 something kids that like hadn't questioned the norms. And as we started to question the norms and also come into really who we were going to be as adults, we realized that a different way forward was, was likely to be for us.

Julia: The thing that made it clear was when Michael's wife actually got pregnant, and they realized they didn't want to have a baby. So they terminated the pregnancy.

Michael Ventura: It was a real galvanizing moment for us to, to mutually decide that we were going to have an abortion. And after making that choice, really feeling clear that this was the right choice for us and what we wanted.

Claire: Gabby's decision to be child free was more of a slow burn. She started her family when she met her husband and got married.

Gabby: Being a spouse is really important to me because I love my husband and, uh, he's the coolest person in the world. I think that was part of my initial pause was I'm not sure if I want to share this time or compromise the way that we do things.

Claire: And it wasn't just wanting to savor this life that she's creating with her husband. Her job also played a huge part in her decision. She is a social worker in the ER at a children's hospital, which means she gives a lot of energy and emotion in service to others, and kind of describes it as, not seeing herself having energy for children at home.

Gabby: So I think in A maybe harsh, but real summary, I spend most of my time with kids who have been hurt or violated, who want to die, who spend most of their time wanting to die, or who are killed in some horrific accident. And that feels like something that I don't need to take on at home as well.

Julia: Something that both Gabby and Michael mentioned that I want to highlight is their desire for community and how having kids would have taken away from that for them. They both told me that they want to nurture and teach lots of people, whereas other people choose to channel that energy into their children. The energy required to parent can take away from friendships and other ways of having a community. We only have so much energy.

Michael Ventura: It felt to us like we would rather be out in the world doing what we do with lots of groups with lots of families with lots of people with lots of interests. And then over time, starting to see that one to many was really the way I liked to be in the world to now being very clear that that is how I show up. Along the way making the decision to have, dogs in our life was kind of the, the right level of, of one to oneness that allowed us the freedom we still wanted. 

Claire: The way he talks about that really reminds me of you, Julia. I feel like you also thrive with a really big social circle around you.

Julia: Yes, that really spoke to me. And I feel like even, I don't know if I'm going to have children or not. And if I do, of course, they'll become My priority but because I haven't had children and because I am such a community oriented person I really resonate with what Michael said and I just feel like I could see my whole life being About large groups of people and not a smaller unit Um, actually in episode one of this podcast my mom told me that If you don't have kids, you still have some obligation to leave a little bit of yourself behind and bring hope and repair to the world in some way.

And so I feel like I try to do that in a lot of different ways, including this podcast. And for me, that feels a little bit like what Michael is talking about. And for me, it's, it, it really could be enough, you know, that could satisfy this nurturing part of me.

Claire: Yeah, totally.

Julia: One way that Michael shows up in his community is supporting other people in their lives who have kids. 

Michael Ventura: I have loved being invited into their lives and to be a uncle who can provide something to that child that helps them have more of a communal upbringing than just one with their, parents. 

Julia: This one is one I know you're You and I can both relate to.

Claire: Yes. I really love all the kids in my life, whether it's Brits nieces and nephews, my friend's kids. I love spending time with them and having a special relationship with them. I think that's a really fun role to be celebrated. You know, even if I have my own kids one day, yes, it's been, you know, fun practice to be around kids more and learn more about them. And if I don't have my own kids one day, I really like being a supporting cast member, which is like something you and I have come up with in this conversation, 

Julia: Yeah, I love being a supporting cast member. And it's a fun, it's a fun and meaningful role to play. But ironically, There's this narrative about not having kids that means you're selfish.

Gabby: I think that people are like, this is selfish, you just wanna... Party or you just, you know, don't want to be responsible for things. And I think that while I would be a good parent, could be a good parent, I don't want to. And so, how well am I going to do something that I don't want to do? I mean, how well do you do a job that you don't want to do? How well do you do a relationship that you don't want to do? And I, and I think it's, I think it's selfish in both, both ways are selfish.

Claire: I feel like another, I don't know, kind of common, like question or response if you say I don't want kids is people think ahead, farther in life. So if you don't have a family now who will take care of you when you're old.

Gabby: Number one, like, let's talk about selfish. Like I'm going to produce a whole human so that they can take care of me. I don't know if we're going to make it to when I'm old. Okay. Like the world is on fire, literally. And so I'm not sure that I need to birth a babysitter for when I'm 80.

Julia: And another narrative is that if you don't have kids… 

Lyz Nagan: that it's lonely, that there's no meaning, like you can't have meaning in your life without children. That somehow that, the act of creating a child is like the most wonderful and beautiful and sort of pinnacle thing you can ever do. And that might be true for them, and it's obviously not true for me.

Julia: Another thing that can be tough is adjusting to your friends having kids and going into a different phase of life than you, sort of diverging. 

Gabby: I only see these, these folks every once in a while now. And, you know, kiddo is there, usually, and conversation is focused on baby. And what we're doing is focused on watching what baby is doing. And the amount of time that we can be at dinner is... It's all planned around when baby needs to eat and baby needs to sleep. And that's great. I love baby. I love each of these babies. but I don't have the, the adult friend in these scenarios, I don't have them in the same way. I'm not craving time with a two year old. I'm craving time with my 32 year old best friend. 

Claire: That one's tough because it's hard to talk about because you don't want the parent to feel like they ruined the friendship, but it is just hard. Change is hard. It is hard to go into different phases of friendships.

Julia: It's tough to Have spent so much time with someone and you're just not getting the same level of attention and care anymore. And you're available to give that to them, but they're not available to give that to you.

So it's obviously not all challenging. Not having children can mean more freedom. And we did want to celebrate some of the things we heard from these three that makes it worth it. 

Lyz Nagan: one of the gifts is being able to fulfill that part of my heart and soul that is new experiences and new people and new newness that keeps my brain and my senses like stimulated and activated.

Michael Ventura: dogs will always be in our life. They're a big part of what brings us joy.

Gabby: literally, we do whatever we want, whenever we want. 

Julia: Asking ourselves if we want kids is such a new thing for all of us in our culture today. Even being able to ask ourselves if we want kids is a new thing . And all of us who are questioning can feel kind of lonely because this isn't something that humans have really done in the past. You just have children. So sometimes it feels good to have someone else give you permission.

Michael Ventura: I would say don't look at it as a absence of something, but more, what is this giving you permission to do more of? If you're looking at it as a decision that is taking something out of your plan, also be mindful about what are you putting back in your plan, or what are you dialing up in your plan?

Lyz Nagan: all the reasons are valid for not having kids. And if it's traveling the world, if it's sitting in your room by a fire, reading 20 hours a day, just do whatever it is. If it's right for you, it's just right. Period.

Julia: I just don't think we could end it any better than that. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, I talk with Heidi Clements, who's lived a child free life all the way into her sixties.

Julia Winston: This is Refamulating. I'm your host, Julia Winston, and today we're exploring the choice to be child free. I'm a 40 year old child free woman, and I have felt so many different ways over the years about being child free. Sometimes, I'm content. I savor my slow mornings. I travel whenever I want to and I have a lot of time and energy to give to a lot of people.

Other times, though, I'm not so content. I worry that I'm missing out on an important life experience, or I feel like I'm depriving my family of something crucial. In my toughest momentsI fret about my future. When I'm at large, multi generational family gatherings, I look around and I wonder if the old lady version of me is gonna regret not having kids. So, I wanted to talk to someone older than me who didn't have kids. 

Heidi: Hi, my name is Heidi Clemens. I am a 63 year old writer turned a social media storyteller and fashion addict. 

Julia Winston: Heidi has more than 700, 000 followers on Instagram, where she posts videos of herself getting dressed and sharing little stories.

Heidi: I learned an important lesson the other night that sometimes you just need to give yourself a break. I was having dinner with a friend who's really going through it. Some health issues, the death of an estranged parent, and the constant fear of a business failure.

Julia Winston: Heidi's videos are really popular because for one thing, her outfits are tres chic, but also because of her energy. Heidi often talks about aging, being single, and being child free with so much confidence. It's a very refreshing perspective.

Heidi: Being a single person doesn't mean I'm swimming in joy every day. It takes a lot of mental work to be a single person in a world filled with messaging that says you are alone and you are less. 

Julia Winston: She says that when she started posting, she hoped that other women in their 50s and 60s would be inspired. But as it turns out, that's not who's watching.

Heidi: 95 percent of my audience is under 35. It's taught me that everybody in their thirties is terrified that their life is over at 30 and that everything they've done has been a mistake. So I've highly documented all of the things that I fucked up at 20, 30, 40, 50. And To say like, I'm still here and I'm having a great time. What I've noticed is that the younger generation, is thirsty for somebody to tell them it's going to be okay and somebody that's been through what they've been through and somebody who doesn't look like everybody else, somebody who didn't get married, who didn't have kids, who doesn't have a significant other, who was an alcoholic, who struggles with pot, who struggles financially at 63 and is still thriving. Like these are just Things that happen. It's not, this isn't a test. No one's going to grade you at the end. And if you're grading yourself, like I like to say, you're probably grading someone else's paper because you didn't even ask for half of this stuff that you're being judged on. 

Julia: I've been developing this theory over the last year that I really believe, which is that I'm going to peak in my eighties. So I'm like only almost halfway there. And when I believe that, and I do when I, because I thought, think about like, what does it mean to peak? For me, I, for me, it's like, for me, peaking is like that there's this wisdom coming through me and there's this beauty and appreciation for life that when people look in my eyes They see it and they feel it and to me that's like peaking it's not about like my tits look great I Everybody wants like you were saying or like I'm juggling a career in a baby and a this and a that it's like no I for me peaking means that I am in full like peak Appreciation of life and that people feel that oozing out of me. 

Heidi: My peak is now because right now is when I feel the most in love with myself. And when I feel the most happy with who I am, I didn't feel that at 30. I was a fucking hot mess.

Julia: what do you love about yourself now?

Heidi: I am sober. I am able to handle my problems that come up in a rational way. I don't have insane irrational thoughts about things anymore. I don't judge myself. I know how to set boundaries with people. I know that no is a complete sentence. I don't care what you think about me. Just all the things that you need to live a full, happy life.

Julia: I'd love to hear about the, the journey you've been on. Starting there, who is your family, and what does your family look like today? What does it look like in the past, and what does it look like today?

Heidi: I mean, I, My family is made up of actual family and friends, and I have two older sisters who are family to me. But my friends have been a real source of family. You're told that romantic love is the only love there is. And so you need to have a partner and start a family in order to be whole. And I never did that. And I don't think romantic love is the only love that there is. And I think your friends and your family is the love that's most important outside self love. And, uh, and I've had that in spades.

Julia: How have you cultivated community and family throughout your life?

Heidi: I've just been really honest with the people in my life. I believe in boundaries with friendships and I believe that you can outgrow people and that's okay. Everything good happens when you let go. If you have a friend that's no longer serving you, if you have a parent that's no longer serving you, like, just let go.

Maybe they'll come back. Maybe it'll work out. Maybe you can try to work it out. But if you have things in your life that are literally not serving you, serving you that are just making you feel awful every day. Just let them go. There's no rule that says just because you had a best friends at eight until you were 30, that you have to keep that best friends. They might not be part of your life forever. Like, we stay in relationships longer than we should stay because we think we're supposed to be in relationships. People don't tell you enough that you can be on your own and be really happy. 

Julia: who have your role models been when it comes to living a child free life?

Heidi: none, no one. I don't know anybody who's my age that didn't have kids personally. It wasn't a conscious effort decision to not have kids. I just got sober at 40. And that's when I was like, Oh, should I have kids? And I went to the gynecologist my best friend was going to be a sperm donor. And she told me how difficult it was going to be. And I just was like, I don't want to do it. I just decided I didn't want to do it and, and then lived with that decision. And I think there were probably moments where I was like, huh, I wonder if I fucked up on that one. Oh, well. But you know, like I said, I was an alcoholic up until I was 40. So I like reverted back and had to live all those years that I was living as a drunk. So my forties were like a blur of just trying to figure out who the fuck I was and what I was doing while dancing on the head of a pin from being an open raw wound of surviving the trauma of being an alcoholic. So the kid thing just didn't work out.

Julia: there any part of you that wishes that you had kids?

Heidi: No. None. not a moment of me Wants children and I have a ton of girlfriends in their thirties and I feel like they're my kids. So I mother them quite a lot. And I mother whoever's following me on Instagram because I get a lot of DMS, uh, with people asking for advice.

Julia: That's so interesting. So it feels like you've found like almost like a one to many mothering role that you have now.

Heidi: 100%. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to be so presumptuous to say that, but that's what people tell me that I have been a parent that they didn't have and that I make them feel safe about what they're going through. And that's pretty remarkable. My DMS are just flooded with just magical things. And it just makes me feel like my life and my mistakes were worth something, which who wouldn't want that?

Julia: Yeah. I don't know why I'm getting emotional hearing you talk about that, but I think it's just like the, Courage that you have to just be who you are as it turns out is quite maternal for 

Heidi: What a concept, right?

Julia: Yeah, have you ever felt shame or behind for how you structured your life? Like what's been the evolution around your own experience of not having children and other people's perceptions of you being child free? 

Heidi: I think I was too busy being mad at people who tried to shame me for not having kids. And I think it's what's too bad. driven me the most is the concept of not having shame about it. My very first post that went viral was about, how I was standing in a, in a studio one day with, uh, a pregnant woman and a male.

And the man said to the pregnant woman, you will never know a love as great as this love you will have for your child. And it fucking pissed me off, like, how dare you tell me that I won't experience a love as deep as what she's having because I'm never gonna have kids. And it's continued to piss me off because I'm tired of how we make women feel badly for not reaching your fucking goalpost. You know, So I've never felt shame about it. I don't feel shame about anything. I say give the shame back to the people . who gave it to you. Anytime somebody says something to you about what they don't like about you or it's all their own fear. I mean, if they're just talking to a mirror, something in you and what you're doing makes them terrified and alone about themselves and you just have to kind of feel sorry for them and move on. 

Julia: yeah, who are the other people in your life? The other women in your life who are child free, in their 50s, 60s or above. 

Heidi: I don't know that I know any that are child free above 50. I don't think, I think they all have kids. You know, that might be my own like judgment because a lot of women who are my age are like bitter and pissed off that they didn't have kids or didn't get married so maybe I'm too judgmental of them. Or I don't want to be in that club of like, Oh, you're over 50 and don't have kids and you've never been married. Like even maybe I'm still judging it as some kind of loser club. I don't know, but I don't have a lot of women in my life who are over 50 and single and childless.

Julia: have you heard from any others, you know, in your, in your online community? 

Heidi: Yeah, so many. So, so, so many beautiful, wonderful, over 50 women who are just living their best lives single and child free. Yeah. They're all over my page. They just don't live in my neighborhood. 

Julia: Does it make you feel less alone seeing them?

Heidi: I don't feel alone. Even if I was the only single child free woman in America, I would not feel alone. It makes me feel different. What's wrong with being different. I think it's cool that I didn't choose the same path that everybody else did. Makes me unique. Doesn't make me alone.

Julia: If you could give advice. about how to live a life of joy now, what would you say?

Heidi: stop worrying about what other people think about you and stop making decisions based on somebody else's list of what's the right thing to do because you didn't write that list. Why are you following it? Why are you shopping for someone else's life?

Your life doesn't end at 30, that your life doesn't end. If you don't have children or get married, that you're not a failure if you're not perfectly financially together, that everything you do, you're allowed to do, that you can throw the rule book out and, and live your life by whatever set of rules you want to create or have no rules, just to live your life. No one's going to get to their deathbed and be like, so glad I did it exactly by the book and didn't enjoy it at all. 

Julia: Yeah. 

Heidi: have the cookie, eat the cookie

Julia: I think enjoyment is something that I really see. Like you are, you're enjoying yourself. What a concept. 

Heidi: Someone asked me what my word for the sixties, my sixties would be. And I said, it's just pure fucking joy. It is just joy to be able to know who I am and be okay with it. Is it perfect? No. Is life perfect? No. If it were, then how would you know when the good things happen if you don't know when the bad things happen? So yeah, I do feel pretty joyous. 

Julia: How do you throw out that list? Like, how do you take charge of your own list? If you're still just operating off of someone else's standards?

Heidi: I mean, I did a lot of work. Um, I did a lot of meditative work. I did ayahuasca. I think I'm going to go do some ketamine therapy. I think you really have to get to the core of why you are who you are. And I did that work. I listened to a lot of, uh, meditations by Lacey Phillips, who's sort of, um, to be magnetic is the name of her podcast. She helped me a lot actually really dive deep into like reparenting myself moving the shadows from my life that were um Holding me back and I think that you have to do the work. You have to put the work into why you feel the way you feel. So that you can figure out why you are who you are So that you can make the changes that you need to make. 

Julia Winston: Heidi talks a lot about aging on her Instagram, and it came up a lot during our conversation because refamulating involves letting go of and reframing your expectations. And let's be real, most of us are walking around with numbers in our heads. I'll have a partner by the time I'm 35, I'll have a kid by the time I'm 40, I'll reach this career milestone by this age or that age.

All of these made up benchmarks can make us feel really bad when we don't hit them. And we most likely won't hit them because we can't predict how life is going to unfold. Unsurprisingly, though, Heidi sees things a little differently.

Heidi: I just think we need to stop categorizing people, you know, like, if you're this age, like, age really is just a number. It's, yes, your body changes and things happen to you, but, you know, old shouldn't be a bad word. You know, growing older shouldn't be a bad word. It Should be honored. You know, you've made it this far. 

It's like wrinkles and plastic surgery. Like if that's what you want to do fine, but just understand why you're doing it. You're doing it because someone told you wrinkles are bad and ugly. What if they told you they were beautiful? It would kill the fucking industry. So they're not going to tell you that. I just wish that we would stop making feel women badly for something that is natural, which is aging. We don't do it to men. Why do we do it to women? We don't talk about saggy nads every day, do we? You know, we 

Julia: No, let's not. 

Heidi: I know, who cares? 

Julia: I think if we can love ourselves as we age and if we can love the decisions we make, I do think there's so much more hope for us. And there are a lot more people now who are not having children. Like the numbers show us that they're, they're, you're ahead of your time, Heidi. There's a lot of people in my age group who are choosing not to have children.

I know for you, it wasn't a conscious choice. It was just what happened and you always accepted it. For a lot of people, they're actually choosing consciously not to have children. And I think a lot of people are asking themselves, like, what does community and family mean for me if I don't have What does community mean for you and what does family mean for you as you age and what do you see for the rest of us out here who are sort of following in your footsteps in that direction?

Heidi: My goal is to live on like a really big property where all of my cool friends have a house and there's like a big giant community table in the middle where we all have dinner once a week. I think community is what you make it. I think if your community is a once a week zoom meeting where you talk to your girlfriends, that's your community.

I think if it's your one best friends that you talk to, that's your community. If it's the family that you have of husband and wife and children, that's your community. Community is what you make it. It's just what you make it. It could be just you. You could be your own community. If you are giving yourself everything you need and you're happy, be your own community.

Julia: Yeah. of people say to child free folks, there's this worry of like, well, who's going to take care of you when you get old? And this question comes up over and over again. I think it's like one of those little inner critic judge fear questions. Question. What do you think about that What does that mean to you? what do you, what have you, thought about it? 

Heidi: I think more about not having a partner when it comes to that aspect of my life, you know, that I do kids. I mean, I would hate to have forced my kids to take care of me. I went through that with my parents going through it now and it's just unfair. Like you shouldn't have kids that they take care of you. That's just hideous. I think more about Do I want to be like alone at 80? Am I going to be okay with that? I probably will be, but Um, I think more about that like what if my body fails me Do I want like some nurse taking care of me? Um, but it's very fleeting that That idea. And I just try not to think about it.

I try not to borrow trouble about that concept because we all die alone. You know, I was with my mom right before she died, but she died and she knew I loved her and I got to say goodbye, but she was alone when she died, you know, and she wasn't anywhere near what she was when she was alive. So I just, it's part of life is death, and I don't think we should focus on death. I think we should on life. Again, that's just looking to the future. Like, just don't borrow trouble. Just stay here now. Maybe it'll all work out. 

Julia: Well, to that question, what comes up for you when you think about the idea of legacy, what does that concept mean to you? And you know, what do you want to leave behind once you are gone? 

Heidi: I think maybe some of the work that I'm doing on social media will stay around and matter to people, you know, maybe it will be like, Oh, remember that cool old lady that helped us through our thirties and there's when they're 60, you know, and I'm no longer around, like, that'd be cool. That somebody remembered me and that I did some good. My, my goal in life is to leave earth better than I came. And I think I'm doing that.

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Julia: okay, so Claire, we've just heard from four different people who have chosen not to have children who celebrate that choice. Three of them are sort of in our age bracket, and they're really owning it, um, warts and all. And then we have Heidi, who's like, you know, she's talking at us from the other side.

And how are you feeling at this point for yourself after hearing from these people?

Claire: I think this has been really helpful for me. Like you said earlier, I'm in the thick of really thinking about this question. I also live in Kentucky where everybody is, you know, married and has a kid, not everybody. Um, but it's always really refreshing to like, get out of the water you're swimming in and remind yourself that like, I, whatever family I have with whoever it's with, whatever kids are in my life, like what I took from Heidi is it's always going to be beautiful because it's what you're putting your energy into.

It's the love you're sharing. Um, and we shouldn't get caught up on who those people are and what the titles are and just focus on like cultivating love at whatever stage we're in. 

Julia: Oh my God. Me too. I feel so encouraged and sort of relieved and at peace and like I can do this. I think the word that would probably describe it the most is empowered. And the whole point of this show is to empower everybody out there to just own it a little bit more. Own your choices. Own your life. Own your family. Own yourself. Own it. Whoever you are and however you're approaching your family, just own it. So, whatever it is for you, own it, love it, embrace it, and just go forth, you know. Be present with what is with love. 

Claire: I write about this in our newsletter, but you and I both had very spiritual moments recently, me with an astrologist, you with a psychic, and they kind of talked about how both of us in our own lives want a big community for family, are really thinking about family differently. And um, That kind of also felt really reassuring and made me feel the same way you're feeling right now, which is like, Oh, we're just on this journey and it's okay to question and it will be okay. No matter where it ends up.

Julia: I want to thank you for joining me in this episode, Claire, and for always helping me create everything that we're creating together. And we want to thank Gabby, Liz, Michael, and Heidi for just owning it, owning their lives and sharing that empowerment with us. I hope everyone out there is also feeling empowered in some way.

Is there something in your family, whether it's about having kids or not, that you could own just a little bit more? Own it, baby. We love you. Thanks for being with us today.

07: Family Secrets Revealed: How a DNA test brought one woman home to herself

A few years ago, Alexis Hourselt took a commercial DNA test. She was hoping the results would help her with some ancestral research about the Mexican side of her family. But the day she got her results became the day everything she knew about her family changed forever. 

Alexis Hourselt is the host of the podcast DNA Surprises, a show that talks to other people who learned their biological truth through DNA tests.

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

Julia Winston: does your family have a story that has become a kind of lore within your family? Maybe it's a funny story from childhood. Like when my producer Claire was a kid, she was on an airplane with her family and asked if they'd be able to see the black lines that divided the states from up high. Her parents and brothers still laugh about this.

It could be a little scandalous, like the time in high school when my stepsister and I threw a party while our parents were on their honeymoon. We got busted by the dog sitter and our parents tried to ground us, But when best friends become sisters, getting grounded just means basically staying home and keeping the party going.

So that's what we did. A lot. 

Sometimes these stories of family lore are more than funny anecdotes. There are origin stories. 

Alexis Hourselt: I would say we had a pretty quote unquote normal family when I was younger. 

Julia Winston: This is Alexis Hourselt. She grew up in Tucson, Arizona with two younger sisters and her parents.

Alexis Hourselt: my dad is Mexican. My mom is of European descent or white, and so growing up, my understanding of my identity was that I was multi ethnic, Mexican, American, and white, basically, and that was always a huge part of, of who I was and how my family defined itself. 

Julia Winston: Growing up, one of the family stories Alexis heard was how her parents met and started a family.

Alexis Hourselt: When I was eight years old, I remember my mom telling me that my parents got married after I was born. But she explained that she got pregnant shortly after they started dating. And then when I was nine months old, they decided to get married. And so that was the story that I always believed about my origin story. And my mom only put her name on my birth certificate. And the reason for that I was told was because she wasn't sure if she was going to stay with my dad.

Julia Winston: This story had an impact on the woman Alexis grew into as she got older because it made her look up to her mom a lot.

Alexis Hourselt: I thought my mom was like this badass feminist woman because she was like, I'm not just going to marry you because I'm pregnant. And she went on, to have me and you know, luckily it worked out, but I had really romanticized their relationship because I truly believe that they chose each other and they didn't just get married because of a baby. And that was a big part of my identity, I think, in shaping who I am, because I identify as a feminist 

Julia Winston: alexis lived for 35 years with this story, letting it shape how she viewed her family and herself.

But stories aren't always fact. Sometimes they're fabricated to cover up the truth. A few years ago, Alexis learned that this story was a lie and her entire perception of herself and who she thought of as family came crumbling down.

I'm Julia Winston and this is Refamulating, a show that explores different ways to make a family. As we've been making this show, I've come to think of refamulating as a process of transformation. It's the way your family is changing on the outside and the way it's changing you on the inside. For example, when I donated my eggs and became Juju the fairy godmother, it expanded my family and it changed my identity.

I'm very much still navigating these changes. And the reality is re reformulating also involves accepting that your family might end up looking different than you expected.

Today's episode is a story of profound transformation from the inside out. When Alexis learned the truth about how her family started and the truth of her existence, she not only looked at her current family members differently, she saw the entire world through a new set of eyes.

And that all started with a commercial DNA test that was on sale.

Alexis Hourselt: I'd had it on my Amazon wish list for years. Nobody bought it for me, Then it was Prime Day, June 2021, Prime Day hit, and for whatever reason, that moment I decided I'm just going to buy it for myself, and it will be interesting, and I'll see what the results are. 

Julia Winston: When and why did you take the DNA test and what were you hoping to learn from it?

Alexis Hourselt: That actually goes back to my paternal grandmother as well. So she died in 2009 and when she died, she had been doing a lot of research into the indigenous side of the family. So for people who don't know, Mexicans generally descend from indigenous people and Spanish descent as well. And she died suddenly in a car accident. And so she didn't really get very far in her research. And so as Ancestry and 23andMe and all of those tests really got popular, I was intrigued to learn more about that side of myself. I just thought it was going to be this interesting research and maybe I find out something kind of fun, see who I was related to, maybe I was related to somebody famous, or maybe there was some part of my cultural identity that I didn't know about, and I just really thought it was going to be fun.

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The day that I got the results, I was sitting at my computer waiting to join a work call. and I get a notification on my phone that says your Ancestry results are ready.

And so I'm thinking, okay, I've got like 10 minutes before this meeting. Let me just click in and the first thing I saw was the cultural DNA piece. And it's this huge map that shows where all of your DNA comes from. And I, so I look at it and instantly I'm like, this is wrong because there was nothing Spanish and there was nothing indigenous. There was nothing colored in, in the Mexico region or anywhere. anywhere, but what was colored in was a lot of Africa and also North Carolina. 

Julia Winston: Alexis first reaction was, this is a mistake. Someone else's DNA got attached to her account and now she's going to have to call the company and sort it out.

Alexis Hourselt: So I then clicked over to my matches and I saw a parent child match. I did not recognize the person. I did not recognize the name. It was a group photo, so I couldn't tell who in the photo was supposed to be this match. And the name was a username that was like a name plus a bunch of numbers, so I didn't really know who the person was at all.

And again, I'm just like, this is, This is wrong. And I started scrolling down, and I matched with a sister that I did not recognize, and I matched with a brother that I did not recognize, and then I saw my mom's brother, my uncle. And, you might think that my reaction then would be, this is real, but instead my reaction was they mixed up half somehow, I don't know how that's possible, but there's, this is a partial mistake.

And I was kind of just going through all these mental gymnastics to try to make it make sense. So, at that point I started freaking out a little bit and I called my sister. Amanda, And I said , I just got my DNA results back and it's saying that dad isn't my dad. And it's saying that I'm black. she was speechless. She did not know what to say. She was like, I don't know. I think maybe you need to call mom. 

Julia Winston: So Alexis calls her mom, tells her she took a DNA test, and that the results are saying her biological dad is someone else

Alexis Hourselt: And she said, that's so surprising, but she said it just like that. That's so surprising. And. I was just like, that does not sound like it's surprising to you. Um, but I kind of just said, is there, is there any possibility that this could be real? And she was like, I, I don't know. Which test did you take? I said, I took an ancestry test. And then she said, well, those seem pretty accurate on the Maury show.

And I couldn't tell if she was, like, trying to make a joke or if she was just shocked. I didn't really know, but I was just kind of, like, mortified that she would say that in that moment. So I said, I'm going to order a paternity test for dad and me. Can you please talk to him? Because at that point, I started to think that maybe she had a secret that she had hidden from him.

Julia Winston: Like, maybe her mom cheated? Or slept with someone else at the beginning of her relationship with Alexis dad? Who knows, but at this point Alexis was really confused. 

She called her best friend, her husband had quick emotional phone calls, and then jumped back on her work meeting. She tried to just go back to her day as normal, but that didn't really happen.

Alexis Hourselt: I was pretty much just alternating between crying, dissociating, and denying. That was basically the cycle. Then I would feel completely removed from my body. And then I would Say, is this real? Is this really happening? This is not really happening, right? Like this, there must be some sort of mix up. My sisters came over that afternoon to support me and that was kind of the loop that they witnessed, was just me constantly going, is this real? Freaking out and trying to like, take care of my kids and not let them see me really upset. 

So trying to hold a lot of it inside. 

My mom texted me that afternoon and said, I talked to your dad. we were both seeing other people when we started dating. So it is possible, but you are still his daughter and he loves you. 

And I was just like completely devastated by that. My dad was always really close with my kids. He was my son's favorite person, and I felt like this was being taken away from him very suddenly, that biological connection to my kids. 

Julia Winston: The next day, Alexis's mom and dad came over. She gave her dad a big hug. She gave her mom a more timid one. She was still thinking that maybe her mom had been lying and hiding something from her dad. Then the three of them sat down in the living room, 

Alexis Hourselt: and the first thing that my dad said was, I met you and your mom at the same time.

Julia Winston: which completely blew up the story Alexis grew up with.

Her parents didn't conceive her and get married later when they knew they wanted to commit. Her mom had actually been a single mom and her dad. He'd always been, well, technically a stepdad.. 

Alexis Hourselt: so the story as I know it now is that my mom and dad were in the air force in Spain. That's where they met. That's where I was born. She had been dating someone and it was an abusive relationship. And when she became pregnant, he did not want a baby. He was not interested and they broke up. So she went through her pregnancy alone. Um, had me alone, like with just a friend in the hospital and a couple of months later met my dad and my dad was like, I want to raise her as my own. They said he fell in love with me first and decided to raise me as his daughter and they agreed that that's what they were going to do. 

Julia Winston: Race becomes important at this point in the story. Remember, Alexis's mom is white and the dad who raised her is Mexican. So we're back in the living room and her parents explained that when they got together, they believed Alexis's biological father was that abusive boyfriend who was Puerto Rican.

 Because of that, they figured they could pass her off as a biological child between the two of them. This DNA test also created a surprise for her parents. The story her mom and dad told themselves for 35 years was also untrue. The abuse of ex boyfriend was not Alexis's biological father. The DNA test proved that there was someone else in the mix at that time. Someone who was African American.

Alexis Hourselt: So that twist was news to all of them and brought up a lot more emotion because they'd been doing this thing for What they thought were noble reasons, and then they were actually keeping me from somebody else.

my biological father, I believe, was somebody that met my mom in a club one night. And they probably had a one night stand. Neither of them remember each other. So, he was also in Spain, also in the military. After whatever happened, happened, he went on to meet his wife and have kids of his own and he had no idea that I was out there and she didn't know that it was him. So they, I mean, I shouldn't say that they're nothing to each other, but it's kind of just a random relationship. 

Julia Winston: During that conversation, Alexis also found out that her parents had told other people what they thought was the truth. Her grandparents, aunts and uncles all knew her dad wasn't her biological dad her entire life.

Alexis Hourselt: so that really wrecked me, um, finding out that everybody knew something about me that I did not know about myself. I felt like completely untethered. And then to find out that actually what you thought you knew about yourself was completely wrong, it completely disrupted my sense of identity. And I know a lot of people will say things like, you're still you, this doesn't really change anything, but it completely changed my Where I come from, my history, my medical history, the things that have happened in past generations, the failed attempts at connecting with a heritage that really did not belong to me. 

Julia Winston: Alexis was shell shocked. It's dumbfounding to learn that something about your family isn't what you thought it was. And it can be deeply painful to discover that other people did know what you didn't. I shared earlier this season that my parents got divorced when I was a child and that years later I learned it was because my dad was gay.

 During the years when it was still a secret, I could tell that something was off. I didn't know what the secret was, but I could feel the secrecy happening. And it's unnerving to finally learn the truth. It's kind of like the bottom drops out from under you. 

When we come back, Alexis meets her biological father and embraces her new racial identity.

So Alexis has taken a DNA test. She's discovered that her dad is not her biological dad, and that her biological dad is a black man, which means that she has a totally different racial and ethnic identity than the one she grew up with.

Alexis Hourselt: Growing up, people would always ask me, what are you? I would get that a lot because I'm kind of ambiguous looking, I guess. And so I would get questioned if I was Black, I would get asked if I was Italian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, any shade of Brown person, basically. And I always just said, this is how I turned out. My dad's Mexican, my mom's white, and you never really know what's gonna happen with genetics. And I look like my sister's. I thought I looked like my dad. I thought I had features of his. And I never questioned anything about it. 

I really wanted to fit the, the Mexican side of my family. I did not speak Spanish, but I always wanted to learn. And I think I was always seeking and just feeling like it never really fit. I never felt super close to that side of my family, like outside of my dad.

I think I tried further to connect with that Mexican side like after I had my kids. I'd take them to like the south side of Tucson to go grocery shopping where there's like a lot more Mexican community. I started like taking Duolingo lessons to try to learn Spanish. Spanish, and just really tap into that part because I did want my children to be more connected maybe than I was.

Julia Winston: In the first few weeks after getting the results, Alexis had so many thoughts swimming through her head. The Mexican culture she grew up around and was most familiar with wasn't hers. Instead, she was black.

Alexis Hourselt: Growing up, I always felt connected to like African American culture and like all of these different things. And I always felt like, well, that's not for me. I shouldn't, you know, appropriate that and then to learn, well, actually that is your culture and also actively denying my culture for a long time because I was always being asked, what are you? Are you black? And saying, no, I'm not. I'm Mexican. This is just how I turned out. And to reflect on the fact that for 35 years I denied it. And now all of a sudden I'm supposed to say, Oh, actually, just kidding. I am. And to try to find connection to that. 

Julia Winston: While Alexis was wrestling with the truth around her new racial identity, she was also coming to terms with the lies her family had told her. Family was always really important to Alexis. She grew up in Arizona, briefly lived in North Carolina, ironically in her twenties and moved back to Arizona when she had kids.

So she could be close to her parents. Now she felt like she didn't really know them the way she thought she had.

Alexis Hourselt: It just made me question everything. If you could lie about that and keep that from me, what else could you keep from me? And how could you do that? That is such a huge betrayal. So it completely disrupted my family. Um, and there was a lot of distance between me and my parents after that.

For the first year afterwards, my parents thought that I wanted space, and so they didn't really talk to me that much, and it was very uncomfortable when we did spend time together. And so I think that that really hurt our relationship, because I felt abandoned, and I think from their side, the last conversation we had where they were sitting on the couch across from me, I had said, I need some space to think about this.

And they took that to mean like, don't talk to me anymore, which is not at all what I meant. I meant like literally in that moment, I needed a moment and they kind of disappeared for about a year. Um, we tried to like have family functions and stuff, but it just didn't feel the same.

Julia Winston: While she and her parents were taking space, Alexis was interested in learning more about the biological family members who were listed in her DNA results.

Alexis Hourselt: I joke that I was like prepared for this because I have very good internet sleuthing skills. And so when it came time to find my biological family, I got straight to work like that weekend. I was like, I'm going to figure out who this is.

I started digging through ancestry, looking at his family tree, trying to make connections. And I saw someone's name, someone that had died. And so then I went online and I looked up an obituary. I found an obituary for them. And then on that obituary, it broke out who So who they were survived by, and they were one of 12 siblings, and there were, I think, four living brothers at that time.

I found Cliff, my bio dad, and he had listed like every place he'd ever lived on his Facebook page and every place he'd ever worked.

I would say he's like such a good boomer because he just like outlined everything for me. And when I saw that, I saw that he was in Spain in 1984 to 1985. I was born in 1985. So I'm like, got him. So then I tried to find out as much information about him as I could without contacting him. Because when I was talking to my best friend, the therapist, she said, I'm only going to give you this advice. And that is don't reach out until you are ready for whatever outcome there might be. Because he could have accepted me. He could have said get away, I don't know who you are. And I needed to be prepared for either. 

Julia Winston: Alexis found a therapist to help her process all of this and prepare to contact her biological family. But then someone in Cliff's family reached out to her.

Alexis Hourselt: I got a Facebook message request from my biological sister. Elena. And she said, Hey, uh, this like might seem weird, but I think we're related. Let me know if you want to talk. And I said, yeah, I think we are related. And I don't remember who called who, but we ended up talking for like 45 minutes and basically just confirming that she was my sister ,that Cliff was our dad that had a brother named Jeremy and another older sister from a previous relationship. 

Julia Winston: It turns out one of Elena's brothers had taken the same DNA test and matched with Alexis. He told his mom and siblings, there might be another sibling out there. 

Alexis Hourselt: my brother and their mom told my sister Elena not to contact me. They said, don't go bothering her. She may not know, and she may not know that she's black, and she may not want to be black. And I thought that was super interesting, because that's not the world that I live in at all. But they live in the South. They live in Alabama. And so their experience of race and racism and all of those things is very different from mine. So she, said after our conversation, she told me all that. And I was like, no, I don't, I don't mind at all. Like that's, that was like the least of my concerns. I'm just so thrown off that like, this was hidden from me and all of that.

Julia Winston: Elena told Alexis that she would call their dad and tell him what was going on and see if he would be interested in talking to Alexis.

Alexis Hourselt: So eventually that week he did log on and then he sent me the nicest message and he was like, Hi, I just saw this. It looks like you're my daughter. You're so beautiful and here's my phone number if you would like to talk. And so I called him. And we talked and it was really weird, but nice. And in the beginning we talked often, like multiple times per week, just kind of trying to get to know each other. And then on veterans day, of that year, 2021, I flew to Montgomery with my husband and met him and my sister and brother.

I was hoping that I would feel a connection right away, that it would make sense. Talking to him on the phone, it felt pretty natural considering that we didn't know each other at all, but I was hoping that it wouldn't be awkward, that there wouldn't be these like weird pauses in our conversations or that we wouldn't run out of things to talk about.

That they would like me, I guess they would feel like I fit in with them. I was worried that we wouldn't necessarily get along. Um, they're all pretty religious and I'm not. So I was a little bit worried about like what that vibe might feel like. I was just worried that it wasn't gonna feel right.

Julia Winston: So describe the first time you met your bio dad and his family.

Alexis Hourselt: He met us at the airport, and I, Josh, my husband, was going to get our rental car, and like, I was getting my luggage or whatever, and I kind of just remember walking up and seeing him stand there. And we just gave each other like the biggest hug for a really long time.. 

 And then he escorted us to our hotel, um, and kind of just let us be there and like, let us chill. We are so similar in our approach to like, entertaining people, because he's very much like, let me give you your space, go do your thing. And like, we'll meet up for dinner later.

 I just took all of that in and then got ready for dinner and we met everyone at this really good restaurant. It was like elevated soul food place in Montgomery. And it was awesome. I got to meet my brother and my sister and her fiance at the time and my bio dad's wife and it actually felt okay.

Julia Winston: There weren't really any awkward pauses. It went great. And then the next day they went to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, which is all about the history and legacy of slavery. It takes people on a journey through America's history of racial injustice.

Alexis Hourselt: So it was like this really cool, sad. Beautiful moment where I got to really see, like, where I came from. Very close. And I was so grateful to them for that experience. Because it's like you learn it, you know, in school. But to actually go and see that, and like read accounts, and see photos. And to do that with my father, who, um, you know, grew up in the South and experienced some of the things that we were seeing and, and to hear him talk about that was very powerful. Um, and then that night we went over to his house and had dinner and it was just really special. It was very nice. 

Julia Winston: Wow. It's so striking that they thought to sort of, um, invite you into your new racial identity when they met you. Wow.

Alexis Hourselt: Yeah. That was really special.

Julia Winston: What has been your experience of learning and adjusting to a new racial identity?

Alexis Hourselt: I, I'm really still figuring it out. It's interesting cause I'm two and a half years in now and random things will still hit me. After I met my family, they invited me to their family reunion the following year. So in August of 2022, I went out to North Carolina, where my dad grew up, which was only about an hour from where I lived when I moved there, and didn't know that he existed. And I saw my aunts, and that was the first time that I ever really felt like I saw my face on somebody else, and like, saw my nose. You know, I always, um, was told like your grandma, she had a button nose and that's where you got it from, like my maternal grandmother. And I accepted that because when you're a kid, you accept what your parents tell you and you believe them. But when I saw them all at the family reunion, And it was like, there, I see it, like, that's who I look like, that's where my body type comes from. Like, I look so different from the family that I grew up with in that way. And it just made everything make sense. And so I think for me, while I don't necessarily feel like I've completely stepped into feeling completely connected, because I do feel like That was sort of taken from me because I have spent so much of my life not identifying with it. I'm getting there because I've been invited in, like you said, um, to be part of that family. And I feel really grateful for that.

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Julia Winston: It's crazy enough to discover that you have a secret biological parent and a new racial identity, but beyond the drama, there are also practical implications that come with not knowing one of your biological parents. Meeting Cliff allowed Alexis to finally understand some health issues she'd been confused about. 

Alexis Hourselt: After II had my kids, all of a sudden my cholesterol went up, and I could not figure out why. I was working with my doctor on making dietary changes, and exercising, and eating tons of fish, and doing all that stuff, and it was like making minuscule differences from year to year when I would get my lab work done.

So I went to my parents and I'm like, does anyone in our family have high cholesterol? And they're both like, no. It turns out after connecting with my biological father, that that is a huge piece of medical information that I was missing.

He'd had it since he was in his thirties, just like it came up for me. My sister has it. 

 It's just something that runs in our family. And I was able to take that information and go back to my doctor and unload all of this new information on her and then say like, yeah, this, this is what it is. And then finally she was like, Oh, well that explains it.

And she's like, you're the fifth person I've called. ever prescribed like cholesterol medication to, but you need it because it runs in your family and we're probably not going to be able to make a lot of other changes. it's because I was missing half of the picture.

Julia Winston: Alexis is a mom herself. Before the DNA test, she'd put a lot of effort into connecting her kids with their Mexican heritage. But suddenly, they weren't Mexican anymore. So how did this new information affect her children's racial identity? 

Alexis Hourselt: It's interesting because when I thought that I was Mexican, I checked off Hispanic for them without hesitating at all. Now that I have African American instead, I pause because my kids do not look Black. They, they don't. Um, and I don't know how they'll identify and I kind of want to leave it to them to figure that out, but I am very open with them about what happened.

I explained it to them in terms that I felt like they could understand. So I just said, You know, uh, grandma and Tata didn't make me the same way that me and dad made you. Somebody else made me with grandma, and that's my biological father, and he is actually, um, African American or black, and they kind of were just like, okay, like they to them. It wasn't really that big of a deal. I think my son did go, so are we black? And I was like, well, you know, I think that's something we just have to figure out. Um, but, you know, we've since visited my biological father, all of us, and like we went to the Rosa Parks Museum, and we're like learning these pieces that are age appropriate for them about our history.

And they've spent time with him. And I kind of just want them to decide what makes sense for them. And I feel like that's, that's kind of where I have to leave it because I understand how confusing it can be because I still haven't figured it out myself.

Julia Winston: Since finding out the truth in 2021, Alexis has started her own podcast called DNA surprises, and she interviews other people whose ideas of family have been shattered by a DNA test. It's helped her feel less alone in this experience. As for the relationships with her family, biological and beyond, they're constantly evolving. 

Alexis Hourselt: My relationship with my biological father is pretty great. We have visited each other a few times. I'm going back out for a family reunion this summer with my kids this time. We, I think, are, are similar in a lot of ways. There's just things that now I'm like, this, This makes sense. Like the first time when I went to go visit him, he sent me a list of like his preferred hotels, like in order, like, you know, here's, here's places you can say in order.

And I'm like, okay, this is like how I plan vacations and recommend things to people. 

I talked to my sister pretty regularly. We were connected like on social media and all that stuff. It's hard though, because of the distance. I think if we lived closer, we might be closer, , in our relationship. And And that's kind of something I've had to make peace with is that we just, it's hard. You can't make up for lost time like that. I can ask all the questions I want and write down all the information I want, but it's not the same as having been raised by him. And so there's kind of this radical acceptance piece when it comes to that. 

Julia Winston: This radical acceptance piece is a major part of Alexis's journey. She accepts that she lost time with her biological family. And she accepts that her relationships with the family she grew up with may never be the same.

Alexis Hourselt: We are not as close as we were before, even still.

Within the last few months, I would say things have felt like they were opening up a little bit more.

They're seeing my kids a bit more. We're doing things as a family and it doesn't feel kind of forced. It feels less awkward. And so recently I asked them. How did it feel to hold that for so long? Like, in my mind, I thought that maybe the lie had become the truth at some point, and they were just able to push it down so far that they kind of just didn't think about it anymore.

And I learned, you know, just about a month ago that They thought about it all the time, constantly. They lived in fear that I would find out the truth because it just went on for so long that they felt like the time had passed to tell me the truth. And so they were just constantly stressed out and worried and I told them, like, I just can't imagine what that must have felt like.

That must have been really hard. And that felt really good and I just explained to them that in the work that I do I Since my DNA Surprise, like with my podcast, and now I have a retreat for people that have gone through things like this, that my whole goal is just to reduce the shame and stigma that leads us to these situations.

And it's not about shaming my mom, because I feel so awful that like a lot of people Our views of sex and women are what lead to these scenarios and why women hide the truth. And so I could get on my soapbox about that forever, but really it's just, I have a lot of compassion for them and I want them to know that. And I think once that really sunk in for them, it felt like things have kind of been improving.

Julia Winston: I'm with Alexis on that soapbox. I understand why her mom might have felt ashamed to embrace the truth of her situation. I also understand why my parents might have felt ashamed or scared to be truthful about what was going on in my family when I was a kid. It was all coming from a good place. Parents just want to protect their children, of course.

But what I've learned, and I'm sure Alexis would agree, is that secrecy can hurt more than the hard truth. 

Alexis Hourselt: I just want people to realize that it's okay to be honest. There's no need for the shame. Like, we can reject the shame. associated with these things. I think all the time about how, as a society, I think generally we are accepting of people being in their 20s and having some fun. And that's what happens when people are in college or they're young or whatever. But as soon as someone gets pregnant, it's like the whole view changes and there is shame. Especially if someone doesn't know who the father of their child is. And that's something that happens for better or worse. It's just what happens.

 And there's all of these things that happen that parents hide from their children because of their own shame and stigma around parenthood and sex and Fertility, and I just want to normalize what it is to be human and these things happen.

It doesn't mean it's always okay that it happens, but we need to be open and honest about it because people have the right to know where they come from.

My story has taught me just how important it is to know who you are and where you come from, because I have never felt more authentically myself since discovering this information and working through it and integrating it into my life and accepting it, I feel more me than I have ever been.

Julia Winston: Thank you, Alexis, for sharing your story, your truth with us. Alexis podcast is called DNA surprises, and it's linked in our show notes. 

We know refamulating looks different for everyone. How are you refamulating? If you want to share your family story, send us an email or a voice memo to hello at refamulating. com. You can also send us a message on Instagram at refamulating. 

Next week we're talking all about being child free. We're choosing not to have children.

Heidi Clements: Even if I was the only single child free woman in America, I would not feel alone. It makes me feel different. What's wrong with being different? I think it's cool that I didn't choose the same path that everybody else did. Makes me unique, doesn't make me alone.

Julia Winston: If you like this podcast, please share it with someone. You can also write us a review. We want everyone who's refamulating to be able to find us as an independent podcast. We're also super grateful for any financial support. You can make a donation at our website, refamulating.

com. Refamulating is hosted by me, Julia Winston. Claire McInerney is our executive producer. Grace Berry is our manager of engagement. This episode was mixed and scored by Josh Gilbert. Our theme music was composed by Luke Top. Special thanks to Nadia Hamdan for editorial support on this episode.

Refamulating is a production of the Feelings Co. Network.