A Queer Community of My Own

M. and I have always been integrationists when it comes to being lesbians. It's easy to be this way in Seattle. Being queer here gives you no more in common with another person than if you both had blonde hair. Considering that Seattle is a stand-offish town in general, the protocol when you run into other lesbians is simply to ignore them.

That's always been pretty much okay with me...until now.

The process of TTC then being a pregnant lesbian has made me long for community. For the first time I'm starting to realize that my needs as a mother-to-be and as a parent cannot be met through the largely straight world. I guess we've gone from being a minority (queer) to being a super-minority (queer parents).

I want my people. I want support groups and queer only birth classes. I want play groups stuffed full of queer parents. I want to be understood. I'm tired of my needs being sacrificed over and over again because pregnancy and birthing are the territory of the heterosexual.

M. has been telling me there are a lot of same-sex parents in Seattle. If so, where are they? We've started to search for some groups that would support our need to be in community with other people like us and have come up with zilch.

I don't think this is an isolated experience.

I've seen other lesbians who are already parenting talk about the isolation they feel from The Community when it comes to support and child-friendly places. I don't want to turn into one of those parents who behave like the world should be formed in the image of a giant family-friendly restaurant, but I do want to be able to find a place where I, M. and LB can belong, even if just for a hour or so a week.