LesbianFamily.org was inspired by sites like Mombian and Babes in Blogland — great resources that help people find other families like theirs on the Internet.
It has grown into a team effort, with wonderful team members. Here’s a little bit about each of them:
Art-Sweet, Author: Me and my illegally wedded wife “Pili” live in the wilds of upstate NY. After two years of infertility treatments, we decided to “just adopt” (hahahahaha) and are currently waiting for our chubby cheeked wonder of a son, aka GB, to work his way out from under several tons of paperwork and come join our family through international adoption. I hope to write more about lesbian family-building in all of its various forms and flavors, as well my hopes and anxieties about being mommies to a son, and adopting transracially. I’m also an educator, so anticipate some book reviews and some thoughts about helping schools to welcome and support our diverse families. I’m grateful to Liza for creating this space and giving me this new soapbox opportunity to share thoughts and insights. You can also find my day-to-day thoughts, photographs, and musings on life with chronic illness at http://artsweet.wordpress.com/.
Clare, Author: for the moment is the only one writing for lesbian family who is not currently a parent or trying to become a parent. Although she hopes to start her own family in several years, she is currently working in the counter-trafficking movement and traveling around the world. Having lived in several countries over the last decade and gotten involved in the LGBT rights movement wherever she has been, she is planning on sharing some of her thoughts about being a lesbian family abroad and the difficulties that families in diverse parts of the world face. She also holds the distinguished position amongst the authors of having known Liza the longest (since Clare was 7). In her other blog, Clare Says, she talks about the counter-trafficking movement, street children, life in Chile, politics, and her dog, Harley.
J., Author: J is a married dyke living in Maine. She and her wife are on the TTC journey, though they are on babymaking hiatus right now, and focusing on their family of two, though looking forward to future expansion. In her writing at LF she plans to focus on the definition of “family” and how being queer impacts not only how society views our families, but how we see our families fitting (or not) with our straight counterparts without compromising our queer identities.
Jenny, Author: I am a 30-something lesbian living in the Washington, DC metro area with my partner of six years, E. We are both progressive activists and have spent copious amounts of time in academia. The last 3 years of our lives, however, were occupied with trying to conceive with our known donor and multiple miscarriages. Right now, I am 5 months pregnant after IVF so the rollercoaster has changed directions and is hurtling towards parenthood. I am working on my Phd in child development and plan to focus my posts in that area. Hopefully, folks will ask me questions so I don’t just ramble on about whatever I like - my expertise is in early childhood education, specifically for children with special needs. Eventually, I hope to do advocacy and policy work around education and disability rights.
Kwynne, Author: I’m a 30 year old anti-racist queer feminist academic, currently finishing a PhD in Women’s Studies. My partner and I are also new moms to a giggly and gorgeous mixed race black baby boy. Our lives are full of his chatting, our cat who scratches all of our furniture to get our attention, craptastic reality TV shows (think Flavour of Love) and our ongoing debates about how to stay true to our anti-racist politics. I look forward to coming off of my activist LOA (where I’ve been since starting to TTC our babe) by blogging at LesbianFamily.org and to raise some serious questions to the queer/lesbian family community about our commitment to anti-racist politics and to ponder on how to raise feminist boys (and girls!)
Liza, Founder, Author & Administrator: When I was first pregnant, I searched Technorati and Google for “pregnant lesbians” with not much luck.
Although I eventually found my way to some helpful blogs and blogrolls, I felt that helping lesbian moms and future moms find the blogs of other people who are in the same stage of motherhood, or who are dealing with the same issues of family, would be of service to our community. So I created LesbianFamily.org.
By day, I’m an attorney for a communications provider. I’ve been non-legally married to my lovely wife since February 2003, and am the bio-mom of our darling son who was born in February 2006. I’m also in my mid-30s, and an alumna of Smith College.
Polly, Author: I’m a parent to two kids — a daughter, born in late 2004, and a son, born in early 2007 — who were carried and birthed by my partner; our donor is known, and we all live in Berkeley, CA. I call myself Baba, a kind of lesbian dad. An erstwhile academic, I’m interested in writing about how lesbian family-making challenges and enriches notions of family, gender, motherhood, and fatherhood. The unique joys and trials of LGBT family-making are worlds different when we have each others’ stories to keep us company and to guide us. For this reason, I’m infinitely grateful to Liza and to LesbianFamily.org for clearing the path to so many other stories, and I’m honored to be able to add mine to them.
Round is Funny, Author: Round is Funny is mama to Roo, who was born and adopted in summer 2006, and wife to Non-Sequitor Girl (NSG). They came to open, domestic, transracial adoption as their first choice for building a family, and haven’t looked back. Most of her writing both here and on her own blog, is about the day-to-day work and joy of building a family in all sorts of uncommon and unexpected ways.
S., Designer, Administrator & Head Friend of the Family: The founder and coordinator of Babes in Blogland both inspired this site and created the beautiful layout, header, and little buttons.
Chicory, Author: Chicory has been sorta-but-not-really-married to the love of her life (Klove) since either 7/5/2002 or 2/14/2004 (depending on what you consider “sorta married”) after having been together since sometime in January 2001 (depending on what you consider “getting together”). Their daughter, Sassafras, came to their family on 8/18/2005 via a known donor and Klove’s body. They are currently trying to add another child to their family using the same known donor but Chicory’s body. In her writing for LesbianFamily.org she plans on focusing her attention on community building and the complicated emotional states of a non-bio mom who wants very much to be a bio mom as well (and, for the record, she hates the term “non-bio mom”). She enjoys living in proximity to the Great Salt Lake because, in her own words, “It’s just like my own little stagnant ocean — only smellier, and with sand made out of fossilized brine shrimp poop.”
Although LesbianFamily.org is primarily for and about lesbian parents, it’s a “big tent” web site. If you are a gay dad, have a lesbian parent in your extended family, or just want to show your support for lesbian families, we’d be happy to list your blog here too. Email and tell us what category you’d like to be listed in, and unless we find a compelling reason not to list you, we will.
Email: lesbianfamily @ gmail dot com
Compelling reasons not to list a blog include homophobic, racist, or sexist content, and blogs that have not been updated in 3 months or more, or only appear to have been updated every 3 months or so. We want to be inclusive, but we also want to be useful.
Also, comments are moderated. You can imagine what kind of comment spam this blog draws. Trust me, you want the comments moderated.
The decision to list or not is at our discretion and we will consider reasonable requests for reconsideration, but nasty emails will probably make us get stubborn not list you.
page last updated: 7 April, 2008