Last year she shared this with me:
"I am a lesbian who is on my way to becoming a Choice Mom. As with most Choice Mothers it's been a complicated journey that got me to this place. I was in a 5-year relationship with a woman in Florida when we decided to have a baby together. She was a single mother of a teenage daughter before she met me. I was in luck. I got pregnant right away...and then two months later I had a miscarriage.

Well, everything seemed to unravel after that. It was a real chance for me to examine my life and my choices. I had always wanted to be a mom. Somehow, even being a lesbian and living outside the "normative" culture, I STILL had very traditional dreams. I still believed that my baby needed to have a two-parent household. This breaking apart of my relationship, the grief of the loss of this baby, really set some amazing things in motion for me.

I moved back to the West coast, back to my family, to the landscape I had always called home. I came with every intention of laying down solid roots and here, in my 30s, becoming a single mom by choice. Now 2-1/2 years later, I am in a stable place with my career and am in my third month of trying to conceive. Cross your fingers that it will happen for me soon.

I know this may be outside the box in terms of the issue of 'fatherhood,' as I never intended to have a traditional family structure even with a two-parent household. But I wanted to share my story just the same."

More recently, in anticipation of meeting at the August 6 event, I asked her for an update. She gave me permission to share her story on ChoiceMoms.org as one of the many wonderful Profiles from our community.

"I am still very much on my journey. It has been a wild and dynamic journey. I feel like I have grown so much and in so many directions. The short version is that last year I started to try to conceive at home with a known donor and, after 12 months of trying with no success, I decided I needed to open up my idea of motherhood a bit and I went through the process of becoming a foster to adopt Mama. Also, while I was undergoing that process, I started shopping for donors on California Cryobank and started looking at starting IUIs in the clinic.

After I got my foster care license in February of this year, I tried twice to get pregnant with IUI, once in March and once in April. Neither was successful. But on the day I found out about my last failed IUI in April I got a call from Child Protection Services telling me they had an infant boy who needed a home.

I had just found out the day before that I was being laid off from my job and would be losing my health care! It was completely crazy, and I don't know why, but something in me screamed YES YES, this is your baby!

So 15 minutes later this perfect, amazing little boy showed up. He was two weeks old and a tiny little guy. And here we are, three months later, he is over 14 pounds and gorgeous. I start my great new job with the state government on Monday. Life is amazing.

It is crazy how this is all working out. Nothing is final yet. I am still his foster mama, with a hope that I will get to adopt him, but somehow I just have this feeling that everything will be okay. I still have two more vials at California Cryobank, but I am okay just letting things evolve right now. And I am participating in the Lesbian Pregnancy and Parenting group -- there is a section of us who are single mamas meeting every month. It is an amazing group, some are Single Moms by choice, some by chance and circumstance."

If you'd like to share your story about your Choice Mom path, please send it to me at info @ choicemoms.org.

As always, welcome to the discussion, welcome to the journey!
--Mikki