Posted on behalf of Friend of the Family, Dr. Christa Craven!

Please consider participating if you have survived a loss of this type:

There are few resources addressing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) experiences with the loss of a baby during pregnancy, birth, surrogacy, or adoption.  In fact, it is often difficult even to find inclusive language about this experience that address LGBTQ people and their families (hence, my admittedly awkward phrasing pregnancy/baby loss).

I am currently conducting research on this topic, both as an anthropologist concerned with LGBTQ health, as well as a queer parent who experienced loss and found few resources that addressed my family or my experience.

I am writing to invite you to participate (and/or to forward this information on to other LGBTQ people who may be interested).  In particular, this study focuses on LGBTQ people’s experiences of pregnancy/baby loss—including infertility, miscarriage, mid- to late-term pregnancy loss, stillbirth, loss during surrogacy, failed adoptions, or neonatal loss—and their use of related support services.

Ultimately, my aim is to use this research to suggest ways to better meet the needs of LGBTQ people who have experienced loss.  Stories collected in this study and summarized data will be used in publications aimed at LGBTQ parents, health providers and other researchers (I will alter all names and identifying information to protect your privacy and you may choose to be referred to as “anonymous”).

If you would like to participate—through an in-person interview (I live in the DC/MD/VA area), a skype or phone interview, or by responding to questions posed by email—please contact Christa Craven at ccraven@wooster.edu.  This research has the approval of the Human Subjects Review Board at the College of Wooster, where I teach in Anthropology and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies.  I am also the author of Pushing for Midwives: Homebirth Mothers and the Reproductive Rights Movement (Temple University Press, 2010) and former co-chair of the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists.

Best,

Christa

Consider this a “heads up” — we are talking with some fantastic designers about updating the look and feel of LesbianFamily and making it a lot easier for you to add yourselves to the appropriate lists.

In the meantime…sing it Ms. Aretha! Change IS gonna come.

I was asked recently, “What are you passionate about?”

It was in the context of working on my PhD, and I had a hard time answering. I’m interested in a lot of things, many of which connect to the overall area of my studies (Information, particularly in the context of law and public policy).

The professor advised me to think harder, and to think differently than I’ve thought in the past, to figure out the answer to this question. She cautioned that without being passionate about something, it is unlikely that I will successfully complete my PhD. She also framed the question in terms of developing new knowledge. What new knowledge do I want to develop in the world?

How do you think differently?

I was feeling down about not knowing, wondering if I should look for a job-job, wondering if I was doing the right thing, and generally miring in self-doubt for awhile this afternoon, when it occurred to me that as a lifelong couch potato, perhaps I would think differently if I were exercising.

So I put on some socks and sneakers, and downloaded a Couch to 5K program on my phone. Then I went outside and walked-ran for 30 minutes.

Two blocks before I got home, I had One Of Those Moments. I remembered what my life is for, and I remembered the moment when I realized it.

My life is for lesbian and gay families, and for creating a world in which our families are free to thrive.

I first realized it around the time that Jill and I got married, during a class I was taking about how people relate to and deal with money.

Since that time, a lot of things have distracted me, and I’ve found it hard to stay focused on that calling. In a lot of ways, it scares me to take on that large of a commitment. It scares me to stand up and say, YES, that is what I am supposed to be doing with my life. I don’t really know what it looks like. I don’t already know how to do it.

That very fear, the very question of who am I to take that on, the guilt of activism un-done and contributions un-made, of other interesting and challenging and sometimes rewarding work done instead…it tells me that this IS my direction.

And it is my responsibility to figure out how to join together with the many activists, thinkers, leaders, politicians, and families just trying to live their lives as who they are, so that together, we can create that world.

Right now, I don’t have a clear vision of my role in building this world.

But thinking outside of my couch potato comfort zone was a good idea. And I declare that continuing to think and exercise will clarify my next steps on that path. I’ll be the one in the LesbianFamily.org t-shirt running a 5K to raise money for Children’s Hospital in September, by which time I’ll have a much clearer idea of how I will be creating a world that is safe and fulfilling, and gives lesbian, gay, queer, bi, and trans families space to thrive. (If you want to, you can sponsor my run!)

Thanks for your patience with this site. I think it is fair to say that I’m back!

In light of the recent revelations that a number of high profile “lesbian” bloggers are actually married, heterosexual men — I would like to take a moment to assure you that Polly, aka LesbianDad, and I are actual lesbians. Our identities are not fake. Neither are our families.

I recently had the opportunity to visit Polly in her native habitat!

I have also been seen in public, although this is not technically my native habitat:

It is perfectly true that neither of these pictures prove that we are the writers failing to update this blog, nor that we are lesbians. But there are some outside sources of information that at least suggest we are telling the truth.

For example, Polly spoke at Mom 2.0 in April. And she works at BlogHer! (And if you’ve been following the fake-lesbian-bloggers story, you know that BlogHer Liz Henry was one of the people responsible for uncovering the hoax of “Amina.” BlogHers are tough to fool.)

My existence can be corroborated, too. I was live-blogged at BlogHerFood ’11, in May. I’ve even been photographed in public by people I don’t know! (I’m partially obscured by the trash can, but my face is visible.) In real life, especially when first meeting me, people often doubt that I’m a lesbian. In fact, sometimes they run away from that “straight woman” who can’t possibly be talking to them. (Vikki is also real! And not a married heterosexual man!) I don’t take it personally — my wife reacted the same way when we first met. Unlike my wife, you, dear reader, are going to have to take my word for it that I’m really not straight.

I can’t verify the existence of all of the bloggers in this directory — not by a long shot. But your erstwhile authors? Really real people. Really women. Really lesbians. With real lesbian families.

I put this together as a “page” over in our sidebar as well as here as a post. It is not meant to be exhaustive, but I’m also happy to add to it. (Most likely in a slowly-but-surely manner, much like the rest of this site.)

Children’s Fiction About or Including Lesbian or Gay Families

• Mommy, Mama & Me (board book)
• Daddy, Papa & Me (board book)
• Uncle Bobby’s Wedding
• Heather Has Two Mommies
• The Family Book (and many, many other Todd Parr titles!)
• Emma and Meesha My Boy
• The Different Dragon

Children’s Non-Fiction about Lesbian or Gay Families

• And Baby Makes 4
• And Tango Makes Three (storybook with true story)

“Young Adult” (Teen) Fiction with Lesbian Parents

• Between Mom and Jo
• Donorboy
• From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun
• Jack
• Luv Ya Bunches (tween)
• Violet in Bloom (tween)

True Stories by People with Lesbian or Gay Parents (Teen/Adult)

• Let’s Get This Straight: The Ultimate Handbook for Youth with LGBTQ Parents
• What About the Children?
• How It Feels to Have a Gay or Lesbian Parent
• Families Like Mine
• Love Makes a Family (photo portraits of gay and lesbian families)
• Women in Love: Portraits of Lesbian Mothers and Their Families (photo book)

Books About and For Lesbian Parents

• Confessions of the Other Mother: Non-Biological Lesbian Moms Tell All
• She Looks Just Like You: A Memoir of (Non-Biological Lesbian) Motherhood
• And Baby Makes More: Known Donors, Queer Parents, and Our Unexpected Families
• Waiting for the Call: From Preacher’s Daughter to Lesbian Mom
• Buying Dad: One Woman’s Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor

Books About Pregnant Lesbians

• My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy (humorous memoir)
• The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians

More Interesting LGBTQ Bibliographies

• 2011 ALA Rainbow Project List (4th Annual)
• Mombian’s Comments on the 2011 ALA Rainbow Project List
• I’m Here. I’m Queer. What the hell do I read?
• Lambda Literary – YA Book Reviews
• Queer YA – Book Reviews of fiction for LGBTQ teens
• For Youth Services or School Librarians – Serving LGBTQ Teens: A How-to-Do-It Manual for Librarians
• 2010 ALA Rainbow List
• 2009 ALA Rainbow List
• 2008 ALA Rainbow List

Bagiuo Pride March, 2009, from boggs_kulet’s Flickr photostream.

2009′s Pride in Baguio City saw the 15th anniversary of the first LGBT Pride March in the Phillippines and Asia, notes this piece in Tinig.com.

We pluck gems like these from images marked “public” over at the LesbianFamily photo album over at Flickr. Add yours there and be famous for fifteen minutes! Or, in the case of our November family, months, if we’re slow to update!

Above, please give a warm LesFam hello to DJ Rebel and her family, from brrtha’s Flickr photostream. This is from Santa Cruz, CA’s LGBT Pride back in 2007.

As we mentioned on our October 21 post below, we cull these “Picture of the Week” images from the various photos (marked as “public”) in the LesbianFamily.org Flickr group .  If anyone’s face is in the image, we ask in advance to cross-post here, and will attribute as you specify. If you want us to link to your blog, we’ll gladly do so!  Consider hooking up with Flickr if you haven’t already. It’s free if you don’t upload a ton every month. And no, this is not a paid product endorsement. Oh, for the ethical quandary of an offer for a paid product endorsement.

…

News! We’ve got our first post-hiatus updater! PurpleLaurie55 wrote to say that she’d like her blog, Creating A Miracle, to be moved from “Expecting” to “Babies!” Which is now where you’ll find it. Congratulations, PurpleLaurie!! She also asked to have her wife’s blog, Mommies Making Miracles, to the “TTC” page. Done! Now go visit ‘em, folks!

…

Help! This brave updater gives us the opportunity to query those of you who list your blogs here and are reading this: can you let us know if we should nudge your blog from one page to another? What with the onward march of time marching your kids or your family-making process along? Ideally we’d have a fleet of paid editorial staffers combing the blogosphere for new blogs to recruit, checking on the status (still publishing? needing a shift in listing?) of the blogs currently listed here. Clearly we are lacking a fleet of paid editorial staffers, and so rely on you, the dedicated Lesbian Family readership community, to help focus our To Do list.

Updating and status-checking would be most obviously needed for the TTC page (55 of ‘em!), the Adoption page (17 of em! though most post-adoption, some are about the journey), the Expecting page (25 of ‘em, pretty durn time-dated!), and the Babies page (118 blogs, people! mother of god that’s a lot of babies!). I’m no mathematician, but that makes around 215 blogs in need of a status report.

These are only four out of the 20 pages we keep here at Lesbian Family, but they’re four of the most action-packed and fun/drama-filled. As any of you know who’ve trod this path before, it takes us SO G_D D_MNED much effort to make our families in the first place, and the first several years are a mix of shock, amazement, sleep-deprived hallucinatory delerium, and sincere hunger for a CLUE from a trusted source. The stories we tell about our lives are not simply entertainment, but MAP-MAKING for one another on (for most of us) the very most important journey of our lives. Please pardon the all caps but I feel just a tad strongly about this.

If any of youse wanted to adopt a page, even for this one-time clean-up sweep, we’d be hugely grateful. Just send us a note on this post, so nobody duplicates anyone’s efforts. The main things we’d want to know:

1. Blog no longer publishing? Let us know & we’ll nix it. Still publishing? Then:
2. Obvious change in status of family? What page should the blog be listed on now? After this, then also:
3. Is the blog redirecting to a new URL? Or is there a final post directing to a new URL? We’d love to update links.

All of this is about directing traffic and connecting good people to good people, all in the service of love-love-love! for lesbian families and the stories they’re telling about their lives. A sincere thank you in advance for any help you can give us.

Happy Halloween! From Tracy & Mia’s Flickr photostream.  This image was taken in October 2007, so the cutie pie in the middle is just a weeeee bit bigger now. Like, four big years old.

And this one’s this week’s. “Me & My Moms,” from Phlora’s Flickr photostream. Anyone who keeps pictures on Flickr and includes a public photo in the LesbianFamily.org Flickr group (see that “Family Album” bit in the right-hand column down there?) is fair game, we say. (We ask in advance to cross-post here, if anyone’s face is in the image.)

Not a Halloween-themed post.  Though maybe a new post here, after (hmm… yep!) a little over a YEAR WITH NO NEW POSTS might actually be a fright.

The rag-tag skeleton crew managing and posting here (again: no Halloweeen pun intended) has been distracted by the business of parenting.  But we’re easing back up the onramp by (1) weeding through the 12, 643 as-yet unmoderated comments (any guesses as to which among these are not spam?), and (2) gloating over the fact that we finally (FINALLY!) snatched the URL <LesbianFamily.com>. It was heretofore wasted er, unappreciated by some overseas webmaster who was using it as a portal for, er, fairly salacious content. No salacious content here, folks! Unless you think ovulation cycles or adoption proceedings or spit-up rags are salacious!

So if you’re here because you went to your old familiar portal “LesbianFamily.com” and are surprised at what you find, well, BOO!  If you are here as an old chum the old fashioned way (via “.org”), welcome back. We hope to get ourselves back up and running again in proper fashion soon.