Staying Grounded While Choosing a Different Path

And there's a lot of differences out there, especially as a single mom by choice, right? We can face challenges and expectations every single day around those things of, okay, you should be married by a certain point in your life.

you should become a mother before you're too old and your eggs will die off you know the timing of all those things and then if you put religion into that as well that's a completely different thought process that goes into factoring all these expectations of society around us culture and just in general society what people think our lives should look like it's crazy so i think that so many people on this path can relate to feeling deeply sure of their decisions of doing this on their own because we all want to be moms, right? That was the point.

That's the goal here is we just want to be a single mom by choice while navigating the complications and the emotions and reactions from the people around us because there's so much of that every single day.

And so from your perspective...

Tell us a little bit more about the strong reactions of the non-traditional choices that people make when going into motherhood as an individual.

Yeah.

I think it really comes down to...

Well, at this point in my life, I look at it and say, gosh, where are you coming from with that reaction that you're having? But it also feels really personal because the question can feel like it's attacking my choice, my way of being.

And I think what's at the heart of somebody's curiosity or somebody's judgment or somebody's even like, boy, advice, you really ought to do it this way.

I think it really is.

That's the way they think it should be.

That's what's normal for them.

And the key there is the for them, right? Yeah.

Culture is the way we do things around here.

It's the set of beliefs that we were taught would help us solve problems.

It's our values.

It's the shared assumptions of a particular group.

The question is like, well, which group is that, right? And if you've been paying attention as you get older, you realize you belong to multiple groups.

Some folks have stayed kind of in one primary group.

And to see someone who's stepping out of the typical behaviors or expectations of that group, they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on? It's not I don't think it's necessarily malice of like you have to.

Yeah, so it's not malice, but it can be like if you're not doing it the way that the group does it, then what does that mean for the group? Like is the integrity of the group called into question? Is my membership called into question when you do something different? Right.

And so I think we underestimate the extent to which.

Being a choice mom can be a cross-cultural situation if people are asking about it, right? Like when I work with differences, we talk about the differences that make a difference.

And sometimes it's race and gender and skin color and nationality.

And sometimes it's being left-handed or tall or short or being a choice mom or being an introvert or being an extrovert, right? All of these differences...