Ed. Note: 12 Nov 2012

Last week’s news, today! Our first week at the revamped http://frescohealth.com/product/organic-sulfur/ Lesbian Family was phenomenal! And phenomenally eventful. Pour yourself a cuppa, ’cause this first week’s recap is a jam-packed one.

Of course it was a ginormous week for our families generally: the presidential election and the marriage equality initiatives up for a vote in four states meant that all of us had some very clear stake in the election, and many of us were battle-weary from weeks and months of bitter campaigns that put our families and our love up for judgement.  All this in the immediate wake of a devastating hurricane, whose effects are still being felt.

Introducing our inaugural contributors

Smack dab in the midst of all this hubbub, most of our regular contributors have introduced themselves to you this past week:

• Sandra Telep: Greetings From Sandra at West Philly Mama
• Vikki Reich: Welcome to Fantasy Island
• Julieta Bonazza: ¡Hola LesbianFamily! Greetings from Julieta
• N: Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome!
• Shannon LC Cate: A Lesbian Housewife Explains it All to You
• Issa Mas: Mama in the Middle
• Deborah Goldstein: We’re going to get along just fine
• Susan Goldberg: Your (queer parenting) portal in the night

Each of their intro’s is wonderful, and in aggregate, they help paint a portrait of who some of us are, and what kind of space this is.  We got folks from as far north as Canada and as far south as Argentena, we got adoptive mamas and bi mamas and Latina mamas and Midwestern Jewish bad punning mamas. Not to mention a Baba. As Shannon says:

One of the (countless!) nice things about LesbianFamily.com is that we can all catch a little breather from the Splain-O-Lympics. While we may not all be in quite the same (comfortable) shoes, we can at least nod in familiarity at one another’s stories.

Susan put it this way: Lesbian Family is “one more portal, one soft red beacon in the night where queer parents, queers considering parenting, and then their friends and allies can check in,” with a degree of common understanding given. We hope it’s that much and more.

And this batch of folks is just to start. In coming weeks, more Family members are lined up to contribute, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, meet two more contributors:

• http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/home/young-woman-gazing-out-the-window/ Carey Casey-Brown, blogging at Life with Roozle, will keep her hand on the Pinterest/Instagram tiller, scanning Lesbian Family community blogs and the internet at large for great images of lesbian family to share here.

• CJ Field, blogging at Don’t Lick the Ferrets, is our gal on the listings: over this past weekend, she combed through and updated most every page, and will keep her finger on that pulse going forward, scouring the internet in a quest for the most complete and descriptive listing of lesbian family blogs.

A big ole LesFam thanks and welcome to both these gals (more about them and their blogs in the new listings highlights below).

Newly listed blogs this week

And speaking of listings! Each Monday we’ll highlight new blog listings or updates to old ones, as well as significant events in the Lesbian Family community. This past week twenty (yep! 20!) folks either listed or updated their blogs for us. Go check them out, leave them a hello comment, and tell them the gals at LesFam sent you:

• Gaybymama: New in Babies & Toddlers and Little Kids. Tag line: “pregnancy. mama hood. diy. softball. and a whole lotta love.” Author Zann and her gorgeous wife and adorable baby girl live in sunny Queensland, Australia with their semi-retired golden retriever Bailey.

• Bionic Mamas: New in Babies & Toddlers. “You’re not losing a vagina, you’re gaining a son.”  They live in Brooklyn (if her moniker “Bionic Brooklynite” can be trusted!) and she’s been writing since 2009, so you have a lot of back archives to catch up on!

• Life with Roozle: New in Kids.  “Two Moms. One Roozle. Life rules.” Casey’s our gal on the Pinstagram (neologism alert!), so be on the lookout from pins by her and solicitations to cross-post your adorable kid pictures here. She and her family live in the queer hotbed of Jamaica Plain, Boston without a television set, people! 

• Crunchy Granola: Updated in Teens, Tweens, & Grown Kids; Adoptive Families; and Global Families. “Chronicles from the North, where our two academic mom, one daughter family crunches its way through life’s adventures.” Susan has been around the lesbian family internets for a long time (hi, Susan!). Like, August, 2005 was her first post, which places her firmly in line in front of Al Gore.

• Creating Motherhood: Newly listed in Allies (also in Expecting and Kids). “It’s a plaid, plaid world.” We love Dresden: she’s been an ally since forever ago (she and LesFam founder Liza met in the notorious Internet Vagina Posse back in the mid-aughts), and she took this site from its old design template to the spiffy, shiny thing you see today. Let’s hope she starts a stampede of Ally listings!

• Pajama Mommas: New in Trying to Conceive (TTC) and Kids. She’s a “white queer woman” living in a “cozy brown bungalow” in an East Coast city with her partner of 10 years and their son.  A sign of the seriousness of their TTC effort: part of their Hurricane Sandy preparedness plan included packing pregnancy tests.

• Living Hypothetically: New in Kids and Families of Color & Interracial Families.  “Two moms. Two kids. Three generations living under one roof. Ai-yah.” Stacy and her family live in Hawaii don’thatethem. This is her second blog, begun in late 2009.

• Adventurous Moms: New in Babies & Toddlers and Non-Birth Parents. “The travels and adventures of two moms and their little boo!” Jen teaches photography, film, and visual arts at an inner-city high school, and started an Outdoor Adventures club at the school. The combination of photography and outdoor exploration is abundantly evident at the blog, where they also have gear reviews and trip reports.  A feast for the senses.

• The Mamas and the Babas: New in Kids and Trans Parents. “A narrative in the adventures of queer jewish parenting.”  Their story goes back to January 2007, at the beginning of their parenting journey, mid-TTC.  Fun fact I like? On the back of their toilet, for loo reading, is a book I have on my nightstand (Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation).

• a woman again: New in Kids; Tweens, Teens, & Grown Kids; Adoptive Families; and Families of Color & Interracial Families. “I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write. ~Virginia Woolf” Marta says: “My family and I are trying to live a rural, Midwestern life in a gritty neighborhood of Philadelphia.  Mostly, somehow, we seem to make it work.”

• Moms and Zombies: New in Tweens, Teens, & Grown Kids; Adoptive Families; and Non-Birth Parents. “Your basic geek-spinner-atheist-adoptive mom. Now with extra zombie head-munching action.” She’s “just your basic, average, atheist adoptive parent with all sorts of issues.”

• Don’t Lick the Ferrets (and other mom-isms): New in TTC; Babies & Toddlers; Kids; Tweens, Teens, & Grown Kids; Adoptive Families; and Special Needs. “I’m just your atypical thirty-something lesbian mom, married to my wife and raising some kids!” CJ began blogging in 1999,  took a hiatus from 2003 – 2007, and once authored Gay Girl, The Pajama Mama, Imperfect Christian and Three Kids and More.

• One Urban Nest: New in Babies & Toddlers; Tweens, Teens, & Grown Kids; and Adoptive Families. “The ongoing chronicles of one queer family cohabitating in an urban nest.” Gus is one of the two “matriarchs” in the family, and as you can see from the ages their kids span, their stories include fresh wet cutie-pie toddler ones and mind-bendy teenage ones (e.g., this dilemma posed by the teen son earlier this year: ““What would you do if zombies broke into our house?” well? what would you do?).

• Mama Hears a Who: New in Kids and Children of LGBT Parents. Mama writes about raising her young son (almost-three), about her teaching, at times, and about feeling “simultaneously like an awesome parent and the worst parent in the world.” Like pretty much all of us.

• coastal waves: New in Kids. “One of two mamas raising the amazing Baby and sharing my experiences.” They’re in British Columbia, and the story begins way back in 2007, when they settled into their Vancouver townhouse, before Baby came on the scene. No matter the year, she was always either volunteering or on the board of the Dyke March, though. Key.

• Gnome and Fairy: New in TTC. The authors of this blog are a writer and a doctor living in Asheville, NC, with a love of limericks, food, travel, and cocktails and trying to start a family.  If I could write this in a limerick/ I’d be prouder than punch and no dimwit/ The problem, I see/ Is that rhymes, unlike me/ Should be perfect: like some gals feel in lipstick.

• CarrieMac: New in Babies & Toddlers and Kids. Carrie’s an award-winning author, and her blog is a portion of her author site. She lives in Vancouver with her family, and made the bright suggestion that we include ‘queer’ or ‘genderqueer’ or ‘butch/femme’ as cross-listing categories. So we did! BAM!

• Reproducing Genius: Updated in TTC; Expecting; Babies & Toddlers; Kids; and Special Needs. T mostly writes (though sometimes J), and has been doing so since 2007, the early pleistocene in blog years. Their son was diagnosed just this past August with a rare form of leukemia, (a little post about that here) and so their loving parenting blog has recently morphed into a buoy and triangulation point through the harrowing journey such a diagnosis brings.

• Pepibebe: New in TTC; Families of Color & Interracial Families; and Global Families. “A journey of two Mamas in a modern yet old fashioned way.” Pepi means “baby” in Te Reo Maori, the indigenous language of Kare, Pepibebe’s author. Bebe is French Kweyol (Creole) for “baby”; Toku, Kare’s wife, is Afro-Carribean. They live outside Aukland, New Zealand, and are healing from miscarriage and embarking on the journey again.

• The Falco Project: New in Expecting; Non-Birth Parents; Trans Parents. Co-written by the parents of one “Falco,” due in late April next year. C is a 30-something queer woman, K, her handsome hubby, a faggy transguy who’s carrying Falco. It’s an amazing journey, and they’re totally up for it. And sharing it with us all. For which, thanks.

Don’t these blogs sound fantastic? Don’t they sound amazing? Filled with every range of human experience and emotion, from all over the place? Yeah, I know! WE ARE ALL THAT FANTASTIC, THAT IS THE SIMPLE CONCLUSION TO BE MADE HERE. Thank each of you for sharing your lives with others, and hooking up with the community here.  It makes us all wiser, more compassionate, and stronger. Which of course means our kids will reap that benefit. Win-win-win.

Parting pitch: Join us! And get yer friends to!

So! Do you have an old listing here you want to update (i.e., you’d like to revise or add categories in which your blog is listed)? Are you not listed here and want to get in on all this fun? Do you know someone whose blog has to be here? Then waste no time, and hie thee (or your chum) to this List your blog page and give us your fresh deets.  We’ll list your blog within that week and trumpet you the following Monday.

Remember, too, to let us know whenever you have a choice post you’d like to cross-post here and share with the larger Lesbian Family family. You’re welcome to submit it whether or not your blog is listed here (yet!).  You’re also welcome to submit original content here.  It’s an ideal option for anyone who has something to say, but either doesn’t have a blog, or wants to separate their personal storytelling life online from whatever they might hold forth on here.

Now start rummaging around in these freshly reorganized, recently restocked blog listings, and bathe in the amazing.