A Sad Day

Two very sad things happened today, both pregnancy related, though not my own. First, a woman who I know from my online parenting site, who's due at the same time I am, learned that she may be losing her baby. Then, a good friend of mine, who was due a month after I am, began to miscarry. These two pieces of news, so similar, and yet, from such different people, both made me so terribly sad.

My friend's loss is gut-wrenching. She has had a difficult pregnancy, with various health obstacles throughout. I feel like this miscarriage is the last thing she deserves. And, selfishly, I feel so sad for myself as well - I had these beautiful visions of our kids, born just weeks apart, becoming best friends. I was also so happy to have another queer pregnant friend. As my therapist says, it's a small tribe, and though I know lots of people online who are doing this, I don't have a huge network of gay and lesbian friends with families in real life.

The woman I know from online, I've never met in real life. I'm fairly sure that I never will. We are, it seems, incredibly different. I am a queer who chose to become a single parent in a fairly unconventional way. She is straight, Christian, married, a stay-at-home housewife - all of the traditional, conservative things that I will never be. We are on opposite ends of so many spectrums, and indeed, though we are taught to embrace diversity, these are precisely the types of differences that scare me. And yet, as we have journeyed through our pregnancies together, virtually at least, I have felt this affinity for her, this closeness grown out of our shared experiences. And so, I am deeply sad and worried for her, and indeed, though I'm not sure that I even believe in God, I have, for her sake, tried to pray.

It's funny, the connections that pregnancy forges. I feel intimacies with people that I'm sure I would not share were we not both becoming parents. And yet, these connections are real, and valuable. I hope that as I become a parent, as I raise my child in this wild, wild world, that I continue to find ways to expand my notions of community, and indeed, of love. This is, after all, the radical potential of family-making.

For now though, I am just feeling sad for my friends, these two women who don't know each other and probably never will, and yet, who have both touched my life.