Family

Yesterday was Easter. I love Easter! It reminds me of my Nelson grandparents and the family parties we used to have. More than that, it gives me good reason to reflect on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

I went to church in the morning. I go to an awesome church with awesome music and every time I go I leave feeling motivated to be my best self and treat myself and others with love. 

After church I went and toured my city (it is still weird to call Seattle my city).

Then I went to Bainbridge Island on the ferry and explored the cute little island. I love Bainbridge. Mel, my cousin, introduced Bainbridge to me. I think of her every time I go.

When it was time to walk back to the ferry there were 4 people ahead walking on the street. They were laughing and skipping and having so much fun. So I went and introduced myself. We sat next to each other on the ferry on the way back to Seattle.

We laughed and talked and got to know each other. Among other things, I ended up sharing that I was from Salt Lake City. The first question that was asked after I said that was, 'are you Mormon!?' 'Yes, I am.' 'Does your family hate you?!' I became awkwardly silent and the people around me laughed at the awkwardness/forcefulness of the question. 'Of course not. My family loves me.' 'But you're gay.' 'And??'

And then the conversation moved on. Someone (thankfully) changed the subject.

But I kept thinking about the question. And the reason for the question. Sadly, I have lost count of the number times that question has been asked.

Love is love is love. And although my family and I disagree on things, just as all families do, they love me. They welcome me in their home. More importantly, they welcome me into their hearts. They care for me and want me to be happy. Their religious beliefs don't complicate their feelings for me. And Im not only speaking about my family - a lot of friends feel the same way.

I feel sad when people ask if my family still loves me because of my sexuality and I feel sad because I know where the question comes from.  It comes from reality. Reality is there are a lot of gay people who have lost relationships with their family because of sexuality. Not just Mormons. But Mormons get a bad rap.

I am thankful for my family for loving me. And for a lot of other reasons, too.

But of course they love me. They are my family.

So happy for Candice and Megan!

I am over the moon for my friend Candice and her wife Megan. I was going to paraphrase their story but decided to (with their permission) to cut and paste. 

I am so excited to have this experience someday. :)


A student came up to me and told me that I looked different and that she and her friends were taking bets on something. 
She explained that her friends thought it was impossible for me to get pregnant, because I was a lesbian... so they think that I'd been eating too many hamburgers.

Then she said that she disagreed with them and thought I could be pregnant. She wanted to know who was right... 
When I told her that she was right, she got a huge smile on her face and cheered. "I knew you were pregnant!" 

Believe it or not, Lesbians can have babies... 
Lots of people have asked how we got pregnant and I made this blog to explain. Here is our story:

One of the main reasons Megan and I wanted to get married was because we wanted to start a family. Coming from LDS homes we both valued families and children and dreamed all our lives of being mothers. We talked about kids even before we talked about marriage. 

There are so many options. Megan considered getting me liquored up and throwing me into a bar and then picking me up in the morning and seeing what happened... but then we decided to look at other ideas.  ;)

We considered talking to close male friends of ours to have a known donor. We even had one of my best friend's husbands offer to donate for us, which was really sweet. Truth is, there are pros and cons to every option, and in the end we decided to look into cryobanks. 

Choosing our donor from the cryobank was really fun. Cryobanks are really particular. Not anyone can donate. Our cryobank recruits boys from Ivy league schools. Most families want someone who has a clean bill of health, good grades and achievements through school, and looks like their partners. We felt the same way.  Our cryobank has a strict selection process. of the boys they recruit, the only take 1% of the applicants. The family of the donor is also screened for health issues, birth defects, and disease. We looked through 300 donor profiles and baby pictures before narrowing it down to 9 boys we liked best.

We wanted someone with light eyes, like Megan, that would look like a combination of the two of us. Megan, hoping for an athlete, had a specific height she wanted and some mention of sports in their profile. It was easy to choose our donor from the nine. 
We don't know his name. We don't know what he looks like as an adult, but we know enough to know he was perfect for us. 

Here is what we know: Our donor has green eyes and brown hair. He has dimples, like Megan, and squinty eyes, like me. He looks like he belongs to us. He's currently 21 and goes to an IVY league school where he is on the tennis team. His whole life is tennis. He even drew a terrible crayon drawing of a tennis court for our future son or daughter. He plays the guitar and sings. He loves to skydive and did his first jump was when he was 19.
His ancestry in German. He is a Christian and his major is exercise science.  
His best friend is his father. His father and mother are teachers, like us. So are both of his aunts and an uncle. He has a younger sister. 
His favorite animal is a dog; favorite food is steak, burgers, and pasta; favorite subject is math, and he loves to run.
His entire family line has a clean bill of health.  

And to top it off, look how cute he was as a kid:

Using frozen sperm is not only expensive, but it is more difficult to get pregnant. The doctors say that it usually takes around 6 tries for a couple to get pregnant. In consideration of this, we bought 16 viles of sperm. We plan to take turns so that we both have an opportunity to bear at least one of our children.
We figured with 16 viles taking about 6 times each... we could plan for around 3 kids. We want them to have the same donor so they'll be biologically connected together.

I'm first because I'm older, and Megan is terrified of pregnancy.  

Tracking ovulation for three months before trying was a pain in the butt. It was nerve wracking and all consuming. We planned to start trying in February with a doctor's office, but through the stress of preparing, we had a random thought to do a simple ici procedure at home... Just to see. we knew that the procedure would be very unlikely compared to the iui they would do in the doctor's office. We only had a 6% chance of it working. 

The cryobank shipped us the sperm vile in a cryotank. The huge box arrived on Monday the 11th of December and we did the ici on Megan's birthday the 12th of December before school.

The Two week wait before you can do a pregnancy test is terrible. I didn't feel much and figured it didn't work. Coincidentally, our two week wait ended on Christmas day... a year to the day that Megan proposed to me. 
We tested at 2 in the morning and were shocked when we saw the tests:

Megan wouldn't believe it until I peed on every test we could find from every brand.

As soon as we knew, I couldn't wait and told my sister. She cried more than we did.  :)

We told my family on Christmas day and Megan's family as soon as we came home from Texas.
Everyone is super excited. None of us can believe that it worked on the first try. Now we have 15 viles left waiting for us in California... and we are not having 16 kids!

When I was 6 weeks pregnant we had our first ultra sound. Lucky for us, my mother was in town for grandma's birthday and she and Megan's mom were able to come- Anna too. 

I am 8 weeks and 5 days pregnant now. I've had to keep myself away from my Tumblr and Facebook pages because I don't trust myself to not tell people. I swear anyone who has looked at me cross-eyed now knows.

Yesterday, we got to hear the heartbeat on the doppler for the first time and I can't wait anymore.
Hearing that was the most exciting moment so far. 

I am so grateful to science, to New York City marriage laws, to our families, to Megan... I can't believe I get to be a mother. 

I haven't felt as sick as I thought I would from watching movies. Even still, Megan takes such good care of me. She makes me food and makes me comfortable and runs to the store. I can't imagine doing this without her. She is going to be the best mother. 

Prayer of thanks

Wanna know what feels good?! Saying a prayer of thanks - just listing off everything you're thankful for. The good and the bad things but sincerely being thankful for both.

My mom and dad and childhood teachers are the best! They taught me how to be thankful and how to express gratitude and those things have made my life beautiful.

God and life have been so good to me despite the hard things. I have more than the most wealthy. I am certain. I have knowledge. I have love from myself and others. I have God. And tonight as I wipe the tears away that are coming from being completely overcome, I am so thankful!

Oh - forgot to mention, mom is okay!

Disease

I have had a lot of good days lately. The kind of days where I wake up and go to bed happy. The kind of happy when you feel like your insides are smiling - the kind of happy that even when bad things happen you still feel it.

Today is NOT one of those days.

Today I am sad. And mad.

Yesterday I got on facebook and saw that a friend posted something about cancer. I could tell, from her post, she was directly impacted by cancer- either her or someone close to her had it. Well - I randomly bumped into that friend last night and it turns out her 32 year old brother was just diagnosed - for the 4th time.

We talked for awhile. She told me that her mom died of cancer and that other people in her family had cancer, too. She said she is sick of cancer coming up in most family conversations. She was understandably upset. And I could relate.

This morning I called my mom. I have been trying to get a hold of her for a couple of days. It turns out that mom can't really move. Something is going on with her back and she literally can't move without being in agonizing pain. It has been like this since Friday but today had been the worst day yet. She is thinking back surgery will happen soon. She was talking to me through her tears. She never has done that. She normally tells me that everything is fine - that she has her good days and bad days but that everything is fine. My mom never complains but something is always going on. During Christmas something was going on with her eye. It hurt - and she couldn't really see. Sometimes she can't move her elbow. Other times it's her hip.

I hate disease. I fucking hate it.

I got off the phone with my mom and cried for along time. Not just for her but for my friend and my friends brother. And for everyone that I passed in my car that is going through their own personal battle. Everyone is going through something - and if they aren't now then they did or they will.

I realize from time to time that despite the joy and beauty that is all around, life is really hard. Really, really hard. And sad. And sometimes you don't feel like having a positive outlook because when you're in soo much pain or when you see someone you love in so much pain, there is nothing positive about that. It just plain sucks. Bad.

I wish a million times that I could take my moms pain away - and not just her physical pain. Disease impacts a lot more than your physical self. It impacts everything. I would give my arms or legs or both to take it away. I would crawl coast to coast or, well - I can't think of anything I wouldn't do.

I believe in miracles - and I do believe God has a plan - but even believing that doesn't make things better. Sometimes, the only thing that seems to make me feel better is to feel really really sad. And to cry. A lot.

Closet finds

When I got home from work today I completely tore apart the two (small) closets I have in my little house because I've been looking for something and I've been going nuts because I can't find it. I did find the missing thing I was looking for, and I also found other things that made me laugh and cry and remember and reflect.

I found pictures of people from my past. Of Ashely and Jamie and the pups Supa and Koda. And I found pictures of Becka from the start of our relationship and a few pictures of Derek and Brad, too. I found old pictures of myself - but the person in those particular pictures doesn't exist anymore. It's amazing how much someone can change in a few short years.

Among my favorite closet finds was a birthday card I received from Jamie on my 25th birthday. Jamie was my first love - it was fun to read about our young love and how crazy we were about each other. But it was also sad because it reminded me how scared and unsure I was of myself. It reminded me of the self doubt and self hatred I experienced. I'm incredibly thankful to be far from that place!

Finding all of these things from my past made me want to call a lot of people and thank them and love them. Especially the people I have been in relationships with. One of the worst things about breaking up is that a lot of the time, you can't be friends anymore. Which is a  total bummer because I have dated really awesome people - amazing people that have come in and transformed me. I am so thankful for the people who have been closest to me throughout my life. And I miss them. And wonder what they are up to and how they are doing.

Life is a beautiful, beautiful thing. We experience good things and bad things. We experience self doubt and self hatred but we also (hopefully) experience joy and happiness. Our hearts break but they get better again and they love again and that's amazing. We live in a big beautiful world with so many incredible sights and sounds and people. And we have the opportunity to experience those things how ever we want. And that is awesome!

I'm happy about my closet finds. And for finding the missing thing.

Sun

I have been thinking about the sun lately. A lot. Because I don't see it often. And I miss it. A lot.

I have a collection of suns. My collection started when I was 16 and left the country for the first time. I went to Peru. My group visited an orphanage of kids with special needs. Most of them had down syndrome. A boy, who couldn't have been older than 12, gave me a ceramic sun that he made and beautifully painted. And he told me that he gave it to me because I reminded him of the sun - I was bright and happy and made people around me bright and happy, too.

From that moment on, the sun has been a symbol for my life.

The sun gives warmth and love and life to everything it touches - and asks for nothing in return. There is a story of a boy who found a piece of a wrecked motorcycle mirror during World War 2 and used it to reflect sunlight to the darkest places he could find. With help from the little mirror, light would reach the most impossible places.

Light and darkness cannot exist in the same place - unfortunately there are so many dark places in the world - and in the hearts and souls of people around me. Loneliness, sadness, loss, lack of confidence - those are all dark, dark places.

I strive to be a light not only in my everyday life and in the world - but I hope to use little tools - tools like awareness and kindness and love to shine my light to the most impossible places - inside the hearts and souls of those around me.

I need

I woke up feeling weird this morning. Some of the weirdness was motivating so I cleaned my little cabin of a house. And some of the weirdness just made me feel - well, weird.

Lately I have been having little self discovery's and learning little life lessons everyday it seems. I feel freedom when something clicks but sometimes the truth stings for a bit.

Yesterday Mel and Aubry had a little party to celebrate their marriage. I found out by looking on Facebook and saw friends checking in and posting pictures. Facebook is awesome and dumb. I felt happy for Mel and Aubry - and betrayed and pissed at the same time. Aubry is a girl that I liked a lot and dated for a hot second. Mel is my cousin and was one of my best friends. They met and fell in love when Mel was staying at my house.

So anyway, my little discovery last night - sometimes you miss things/people in your life even when they aren't good for you - which totally makes sense. The drug addict misses the drug. The alcoholic misses the drink. Sometimes I miss eating really bad food or I miss being a kid because I didn't have to worry about what I worry about now. I miss people in my past that were bad influences and that didn't bring the best out of me. I miss old lovers. I miss old friends. I miss innocence. I miss Utah. And my family. And so many other things.

But sometimes you have to move on and move passed how things were and even how things are to get what you want and what you need.

Which brings me to the question, what do I need?

When I am able to quiet the outside noise and listen to my gut, I know what I need.

I need goodness in my life. I thrive off goodness. Good conversation, good music, good fun. I need to be inspired. I need to be doing and changing and making a difference. I need purpose. I need love. I need God. I need beautiful sights. I need children. I need forgiveness and I need to forgive. I need to write. I need to learn new things. I need to be around family. And friends that feel like family. I need to better than mediocre. I need to be Chelsea.

Things that aren't Chelsea, I need to stay away from those things. I need to stay away from the things that aren't life giving. They keep me from being my best true self. And I'm not interested in being anything but my best true self.

Let me keep waking up feeling weird. Because the weirdness is provoked my a life lesson that I'm in the middle of learning.

Jef with 1 'f' or Bieber

While exiting the parking garage this morning the parking attendant said I looked like someone. Sarcastically I said people think I look like like Justin Bieber. She said she could totally see it but she thinks I look more like Jef from the bachelor. Awesome.

Anne Hathaway

This morning I woke up forgetting I had to go to work - since I haven't been in about a week - gotta love the holidays! Luckily for me, the sun was shining which made it easy to jump out of bed. Harley and I went for a morning walk and man-oh-man Seattle is beautiful! Perhaps it is the most beautiful on days like today.

just blocks from my house!

After work I ran home to put the pup in the car and jet down to see the sunset. I'm telling you, sometimes I have to pinch myself just to be sure this is real life. And it is real life. And I am so blessed!

Golden Gardens - a few miles from my house!

And just because I love it and am excited about it- I got a haircut today. It might not look much different in this particular pic but notice the side of my head. It is short - it was cut with clippers instead of shears. But the top is long- no length was taken off - and there is no fading in to the short. It's dramatic. And fun. And I got it cut like this because I wanted to.

To end my night I went to see Les Miserables. My heart and my eyes swelled. That story will always and forever move my soul. I think I might sing to Harley in my sleep. And I have a crush on Anne Hathaway. 

What a beautiful life I live...

2013

Today is the first day of 2013. And it is the first day of the same year I am going to turn 30. And for some reason, that feels significant.

I started my year at a cabin a few hours away from Seattle with friends. It was absolutely beautiful - tucked away in snow covered mountains and overlooking the Columbia River. The cabin was in Hood River - a place that I had visited what seems to be 100 times (probably more like 20) - but it was in the far west end of Hood River - so it felt like I had never been there.

My friends and I played games and watched football and sat in the hot tub and talked. And the majority of the group drank beer. We got lost in conversations about changing the world and a few of us listed our new years resolutions and we told stories about our families.

Lisa said her new years resolution was to exude love and kindness no matter the situation. She said she wants to be a blessing to the people in her life. When she said that, I knew I wanted to do the same thing because I felt warm and fuzzy inside. I want to be a blessing. What a cool thing to be.  Erica said she wanted to change the world. Jackie said that, too. They are dating. They're a powerful couple. And they are already changing the world  - they are that cool and good and inspiring. They make people feel important and special.

My New Years resolution isn't anything as inspiring or awesome. But mine feels good to me. I want this year to be all about Chelsea. I want to do what makes me feel good and what makes me happy. I turn 30 this year - and I hear the 30's are the best of your life - and I am determined to make mine the best of my life - until my 40's of course - so this year is me.

I will be true to myself. And my heart. And my feelings. I will be honest with myself first so I can be honest with everyone else around me. I will stand up for me and who I am and who I love. I will eat what I want and drink what I want and go on hikes and bike rides because I love doing that. I won't try and be anyone else. I will be me. And I will love myself through mistakes and learn from them. I will love hard - I will love myself hard and if/when the opportunities arise, I will give my heart to others and love them hard, too. But I won't lose myself while loving others. I will make myself even more ready to be a mother - by working hard and experiencing life the best I know how to. I will write. Because I love to write and I know I have things to say that people should read. This year I will create new hobbies and read so I can learn about this amazing world I live in.

I am excited about this year. And I am excited for my 30's.

2013, I hope you're ready for me. I am certainly ready for you!