140. Still a Family

When Dave and Anaya met and fell in love, they knew they wanted to be parents together. But after years of trying to conceive (and thousands of dollars later) it hadn’t happened. So they built a new version of life that also made them happy and fulfilled. 

This is an excerpt from the Terrible Thanks for Asking Episode ‘Still A Family’.  

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Nora McInerny: One of the most frustrating parts of being an adult is that we have to accept that life. Won’t always go the way we want it to. We can have expectations. We can make plans. But often the universe will let us know that we are not in fact in control. This can be annoying when it’s. Say your flight to a dream vacation is canceled and you have to rebook the entire trip or you don’t get the job that you thought you were a shoe in for. It’s more devastating. When it’s something like the person you love with your whole heart doesn’t feel the same way or your family doesn’t love and support you the way you wish they did. Or for Dave and a nail Lee. When your family doesn’t come together the way you hoped it would. 

Anaya Lee: So most of my life, I didn’t think that I wanted children. And um, in my previous marriage, I, we had had that conversation. I was fine not having kids. And then, you know, I’m on my own, I’m 30 and something just happened. I can’t tell you if it was one day or over time. I just thought, Oh my gosh, I really want to have children. I could be a good mom. And I was so excited about feeling these new feelings. I had never thought about wanting children before and I was so excited.

I’ll keep it in my mind and maybe I’ll meet somebody. But when Dave Lee came around. Two years later, that was what really solidified even though we weren’t there yet. I thought wow This is somebody I could really have children with and he would be an amazing father.

Nora McInerny: Dave and an Anaya tried really hard to conceive. They spent thousands and thousands of dollars on IVF treatments suffered multiple miscarriages, but never had a baby. And eventually after years of trying, they decided to give up that dream. The medical process had taken a toll physically and mentally and financially. And there was a lot of grief in that choice. But eventually. They found the joy in their child-free life. 

There was a lot of grief in that choice. But eventually. They also found the joy in their life together. 

Dave Lee: It’s, it’s, it’s incredible how your family gets chosen when you don’t have children. And I think for me, I learned that I don’t have any living children, but I have friends that have two really great girls. I have friends that have, uh, twins and we can be there, we can grow up with them, they can call us, you know, uncle Dave and Anton Nene, and a wide variety of things. And your world just looks different. And I think going through this, it allowed me to figure out that one, my emotional capacity is much higher than it is that I’m willing to sit in it with a lot of people. But also our family structure may not be what society continue could considers to be like the nucleus or the way of doing it, but it is our family and we get the opportunity to to be there and grow and mentor and be by their sides, and we get to experience kids growing up. It’s just in a very different way.

Anaya Lee: We’re not victims of our story at all. It’s something that happened to us. It’s something that will always be a part of us, but it’s not a make or break. We’re still two pretty awesome people that love each other and plan to have a very fruitful life. And so I think that is what gave us the courage. In January, I just sat there and talked to Dave one day and I said, what if, what if we post about this finally? And we had a long talk about it as we do. And we, and with some help from our support group, we went and we shared it on a social media post. I did this whole production of pictures that I chose to share and I did this one picture with all of the needles that I had saved. Because I don’t know if you’ve ever seen these pictures that people, um, who go through, uh, infertility treatments do. They’ll take a picture of a onesie or their baby and they’ll put it in the middle of the floor with all the needles and all the medicine around it. And so I created this huge circle of needles. We had hundreds and hundreds of needles, and I put them all on the ground. And then there was an empty space where I put a broken heart in the middle, and it just felt so raw and vulnerable and sad and real. And it was like taking a picture of myself naked and posting it on the internet. I was scared of judgment. I was scared of But have you tried this? You should do this. I was scared of people not respecting our boundary of, no, we’re really done. We don’t need your advice, we don’t need your suggestions. And I even put a hard boundary in the post and I said, please don’t ask us if we’re going to adopt or if we have thought about adoption because obviously we’ve had that conversation and when I say we’re done, it means we’re done. So please accept that. And so it was, I, I, I think that’s what I was afraid of, but I also, what I gained from that was seeing how much the people in our lives love us. I remember I just threw my phone down and wouldn’t look at it for hours. And then when we finally picked it up and looked at the tons of comments that we had, I was just sobbing cuz I could feel their love. It felt like everybody you love and care about wrapping their arms around you and just giving you comfort at the same time. It was incredible. It was incredible. So that was, that was a very scary bandaid to rip off. But it honestly was the most freeing thing. I it, if I hadn’t have done that all these years later, I wouldn’t be able to talk about it still. 

 We’ve never been the couple that says, well, we don’t have children, so we don’t wanna be around yours. We absolutely wanna be around your children. We love them. We care about them. We go to dance recitals, we go to soccer games, we go to rugby games. We go to whatever you ask us to go to, we are there. And we find a lot of joy in that. 

Nora McInerny: Accepting the circumstances that life gives us is difficult. And Dave and NAS still feel grief for the kids they wanted to raise. And yes, they sometimes think about the family life they dreamed of that never materialized. But they’ve also accepted that. Life without kids means that they get to travel more than they ever thought. And more importantly, it means that they get to expand their definition of family. And have relationships with children where they get to do only the fun stuff that aunts and uncles are especially good at. It is different from the life that they wanted. But it’s still okay. And in fact. It’s actually amazing. 

THEME MUSIC

Dave and, and ale shared their whole experience of trying to conceive. In a terrible, thanks for asking episode titled still a family. We’ve linked to that episode in our show notes. If you’d like to hear the whole thing.