So friends, we have come to the infamous last episode.  I write this with sorrow in my heart that our time has come to an end.  This journey has been long, but ultimately rewarding, and that is thanks to all of you.  We took  deep breaths, shared our stories, bared our souls – and with a loud, resounding  cheer,  you have  applauded our normalcy, our intense and passionate love, and our determination to continue in the face of set backs and bad days.  I am humbled by the overwhelming support that has been pouring in through Facebook and Twitter, and by those we have met who have shared your stories and heartaches right with us.  

Cori and I started this journey as a love letter to our future child.  What we have now, is a love letter to all of us out there trying to beat the odds, to make families of our own, and to be out, in love, and so proud.  You have made this experience worth it, and it is with a huge amount of love and respect that I dedicate this last blog to all of you.  

As the cameras stopped rolling and chunks of our lives hit the cutting room floor, we wondered what the impact would be.  Would we be lost in the shuffle?  Would anyone care?  When I was little, I watched a film about AIDS and HIV.  It was the first time I had ever seen a gay character on film.  It changed my life.  Then, I saw another film, and with dropped-jaw, discovered Lesbians on film.  These are my predecessors to identity.  They were my compass.  To think that we were able to be that for someone else is incredible, much less representing all of you out there.

And so the final lines come to a close, and I wish you all good luck, treat each other well, and love hard – with all of your might.

Sincerely, 

Kacy  

PS, go Team Unicorn!

Well, this episode proves that Cori and I do argue.  What makes our arguments different is that we know that in the end, we will eventually have to come together, resolve the issue, and move forward together.  This has been the hardest process, harder than her or I ever imagined when we embarked on the journey.  There have been so many times when we just feel at the mercy of other things.  Cori is a master of her own destiny, and being and feeling so out of control can make anyone feel insecure.  Sometimes you lose sight of things when all of your focus is on this one thing.  We had a ripple in our pond, the boat rocked, but together, we steadied, cast out the oars and continued to row.  

I am not a religious person, despite what you saw on tonight’s episode.  I do not claim to be Catholic, I do not attend church regularly, and I do not adhere to a strict doctrine of Christianity.  I am, however, blessed with a faith in the universe, and hold as a fundamental value, that love is the single greatest driver of the human spirit.  If you live your love with utter love, then you will lead a truly good life and inspire love around you.  In the universe, I believe that the aura, or the light around you, that beams from you, is equal to the amount of love you put out into the universe.  That being said, I was raised Catholic, and some of the more personal traditions I hold dear.  So, lighting a candle with the love and hope to impregnate my wife matches up quite well to how I live my life.  It might seem odd that a lesbian would walk into a church to pray for a child – which in contemporary ideas of religion seems counter-intuitive given the social backlash of gays and lesbians in most Christian based organized religions.  Nevertheless, I felt in my heart that it was the right thing to do; to light the way – literally – for my child’s soul to see me, like a beacon in darkness, to point the way home.  I am not opposed to trying anything at this point.

This episode really encapsulated why Cori and chose to participate in this show.  One day, our child will be able to look back and see his or her parents go through the process of bring him or her into the world.  That moment, when Cori and I were holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes – all of our hopes and dreams burgeoning – that moment is so utterly precious, and it has been captured forever.  My wife, as always said it perfectly, “You and me, we’re here.”  That was one of the best moments of my life – when our lives were changing from an “us”, to potentially, a family.  It was an absolute high.

Then, for the absolute low – when we received the phone call that the second sample was gone.  I have said this before and I will say it again – I hate seeing my wife cry.  That was the longest drive home ever.  Being able to keep my composure while fighting the worst traffic, while my wife’s heart is breaking in the seat next to me, was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.  It was a mixture of very intense emotions:  confusion, frustration, sadness, anger, and anguish.  We got home, went straight into the bedroom and fell apart.

Being a Lesbian and trying to make a child is an incredible rollercoaster – high highs and very low lows.  Such is life.

If there is one thing I regret in life, it’s smoking.  It was a really terrible addiction that I had for 12 years.  Quitting was the most difficult thing I have ever had to do.  I still struggle with it to this day.  I went two years without one and then one day, right when Cori was trying to quit, I picked it up again.  The pressure of giving up “crutches”, especially when you are going through the stress that we were, is so incredibly hard.  We know that smoking is the worst thing to do when you have children, so I don’t take Cori’s struggle in the episode lightly.  I felt for her and tried to make it better in some way.  She is right though, nothing helps.  If any of you smoke, you should really considering stopping.  I know I sound like a PSA, but it’s important.  Cori and I have both lost people we love from smoking, and I would give up a lot to just have one more day with my Grandmother, Josephine.  She passed away from cancer and was a smoker.  Let’s stop together.  Are you in?  Ok, me too!

When I first met Cori, she was the unattainable girl.  Beautiful, carefree, wild as the wind would take her.  She had this aura about her that I connected to immediately: an inner softness that resonated deeply; so feminine, gentle and caring.  Sometime I look at her and wonder – even after all these years, how I landed such an awesome woman!  I have watched Cori evolve over the last five years from this fun, carefree girl into this incredible, fully realized woman, the same inner softness and with the same adventurous spirit but, there is a calmer center.  At her “Knocking ‘Em Back, Before We’re Knocking Her Up” party, Cori got to just let go!  After all of the stress and tears of this process, it was fun to watch her be free - to dance (which she never does), and to allow her “inner silly” to surface.  To break it down, Cori has 3 different personalities.  There is Cori, who we all know and love, Cookie who is super sassy, and then there is Coco, or as I like to call her: Coco After Dark.  Coco only comes out after a few cocktails, but when she’s out, she stays for the after party.  Coco is known her famous dance move, which isn’t a dance move at all… it’s more of a maneuver: She stands behind someone, bends him or her over… and Coco has conquered.  It’s all in good fun and at the end of the night, I wrap my arms around the only Cori that matters, the real one.   

Most people have a very hard time believing that my sister and I are from the same womb.  I mean, we’re night and day physically, but at our core, we are very close. I think when you are siblings of divorce, it creates a very unique bond.  You see your family get torn apart before your very eyes, and “your family” becomes the two of you.  That is exactly what happened with Niky and I.  We are each other’s family.  When I was coming out, it was very hard to reach out to her for comfort, but not because she wasn’t available.  She is one of my biggest supporters.  But because she represents “family” to me, discussing it with her, talking about fears and leaning on her for support made the entire thing real.  Nothing is really real until I tell my sister.  When I was 16, I kept things close to me until I was ready for them to be real, and so I pulled away from her until I was more ready to deal with it.  So when we found the donor and were about to embark on this journey, it became really real when we could share it with our friends and family.  Now, she is so ready to be an Auntie, and she couldn’t be more supportive.  This process has brought us together again, like when we were little.  You can see how much fun we have, and it’s so great to have her be apart of planning our next steps in life.  I am truly blessed to have such an amazing wife, and a strong support system in my family and friends.  It’s my saving grace.

In all honesty, it was a relief to move on from the previous disappointment . But we still had this nagging question, why?  So in true lesbian fashion, we decided to investigate. We’d take out two of our favorite guys, get them liquored up, and get them to give us the “goods” – which, in this case, was information.  I mean, we were really wondering what we had done.  Did Brent think we wouldn’t make good parents?  What changed his mind, really?  Were we those girls, not getting the hint that it was – ultimately – us? 

Sitting at dinner that night, I came to the realization that this was a difference at the most fundamental level:  We loved them and that is why we chose them.  They are sweet, intelligent, handsome, fun, and loving:  Perfect qualities in the sperm we wanted.  Unfortunately for us, men like that eventually make really great fathers, not donors.  We didn’t need a father, so we decided to go online to find a group of men who had already made the choice to donate and “sever” the tie that bounds them to their seed.  

But finding a sperm bank with adult photos, where Cori could look at the person and get a sense of who they were, seemed more than daunting – it seemed impossible!  We were definitely wrong, and we found an amazing bank.  They offered a variety of successful, handsome, intelligent and accomplished men who were readily available to be donors.  Plus, we were able to start searching immediately.  They have a very diverse selection, and we were able to go through so many great donors.  

Suddenly, when the situation seemed completely out of our hands, we were able to be selective – take our time with the decision – and really connect with the spirit of each profile.  And so it began, our search for the perfect seed to help make our already perfect family one bigger.  

When Cori and I first started discussing starting a family, we decided very early on that she would carry the child.  Let me be very clear: I have no desire to be pregnant.  That was never my vision of parenthood.  What I would love – and what I dream about still – is being able to make a baby with Cori that is made from her and I.  That was the hardest part to get over.  No matter how strong our love is, no matter how perfect I strive to be, I can never give her what is necessary to physically conceive a child that is from both of us.  Being the non-birth mother of a child, there is a process of acceptance I had to go through in order to be “ready” to have a baby.  We are lesbians, which by definition excludes a man in our relationship.  

Having a child, on the other hand, actually requires sperm, which after in depth research (and silent prayer) turns out to only exist in males.  That being said, Cori and I were relieved when her friend Brent was willing to forgo some of his to help us live out our dream of being parents.  It’s very hard to rely on someone else to make any dream come true, much less try and do something like this.  Aside from the legal red tape, which is not straightforward, there are all the logistics: personal, emotional, and physical.  How close is too close?  Where do you define the roles of parents vs. a donor?  We didn’t know how this was all going to shake out when we first started.  What we did know were two things:  1) Cori would carry, and 2) The donor had to be someone we knew, but who wasn’t in our everyday lives as to interfere with our role as the sole parents.  When Cori and Brent discussed him donating his sperm to make a baby, we really felt like that was the perfect solution.  She knew him and was completely comfortable, knowing his history, physical appearance, etc., and that he lived far enough away not to interfere, but close enough to have him be logistically viable as a donor.  I mean, despite the lack of materials on the market for at-home insemination (and no, butt douche does NOT count as one), at the very least we had sperm.  That had to count for something, right?  

That fateful day when Cori got the text message that our Plan A was no plan at all, we were crushed. It’s so difficult to see Cori cry.  It happens so rarely that when it does, it’s almost shocking.  And to be the person sitting next to her, her wife, partner, and not be able to do anything about it… not being able to give her a baby of our own, and now, not being able to prevent this horrible thing from happening, I felt totally out of control.  What could I do but hold her and tell her that everything was going to be all right?  Even if I didn’t know that it would be, or what the next step was, I knew that my job in that moment, was to hold her and tell her that it was going to be.