In May, we celebrated mothers! At Creative Family Connections, we have been reflecting on the significance of the Mother’s Day holiday and on what motherhood means to us. Many CFC team members are mothers, and many of them have served as egg donors or surrogates as well. They shared with us their invaluable insight about motherhood and their surrogacy or donor journeys.
Mother’s Day has a rich history rooted in prioritization of peace, community, and celebrating the love we have for those who have had the deepest impact on our lives. Ann Jarvis, a prominent peace and women’s rights advocate best known for her work during the Civil War, was a mother to 13 children. After losing many of her children to disease, she began community building by founding women’s organizations in her area. She later created “Mother’s Friendship Day” to establish a sense of community between families on both sides of the war. Jarvis inspired fellow wartime activist and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” lyricist, Julia Ward Howe, to issue her “Mother’s Day Proclamation.” The Proclamation sought to form an international women’s group tasked with creating pathways to peace. This led to Howe’s establishment of “Mother’s Day for Peace” in 1872, which families across the world celebrated annually until the early 1900s.
Ann Jarvis’s daughter, Anna Jarvis, founded Mother’s Day as a tribute to her mother’s life. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson fulfilled Anna’s request to recognize the holiday nationally. Anna’s original vision for Mother’s Day consisted of children gifting white carnations and thoughtful letters expressing gratitude to their mothers. Over time, Mother’s Day celebrations have grown to honor all women who provide nurturing, including stepmothers, grandmothers, and even chosen mothers.
At CFC, we include donors and surrogates in our Mother’s Day celebrations because we know how crucial they are to our mission to build families. Several of our former-surrogate and donor team members shared stories from their journeys that informed their understanding of motherhood. They have helped loving parents create beautiful new lives, and in turn build community through assisted reproduction.
Samantha S., one of CFC’s incredible paralegals, has twice been a CFC surrogate and has two beautiful children of her own. During maternity leave with her second child, Sam was inspired to become a surrogate. She found such joy in carrying for and delivering her own children that she wanted to share that experience with other families by helping them to build a family they otherwise could not create. She helped two sets of married dads bring a baby into the world, and she remains in contact with both sets of parents. She enjoys receiving pictures and FaceTime calls so she can witness their joy in parenthood. Samantha said that to be a mother is to be nurturing and caring– something she has seen parents embody in many diverse family types.
Carrie J., one of our amazing journey coordinators, has also been a surrogate for two families. When Carrie was expanding her own family, she and one of her close friends intentionally conceived at the same time so they could experience pregnancy and parenthood together. While Carrie had a relatively easy pregnancy, her friend, unfortunately, did not. Her friend faced serious health complications resulting in her inability to conceive future pregnancies. This moved Carrie to become a surrogate. She now reflects on surrogacy as one of the most incredible things she has ever been able to do. Indeed, Carrie has found that by helping others build their families, she has expanded her own. Carrie explained that motherhood is embodied by wearing your heart on your sleeve. The sacrifice and love in everything you do for your children is what makes a mother, regardless of genetics or ability to carry a pregnancy.
Morgen C. is another wonderful CFC journey coordinator and an experienced surrogate. When she was pregnant with her first child, Morgan read a book of pregnancy stories from women in all walks of life. Many of these stories depicted the struggles and significant complications pregnant people can face. Morgen did not have the same struggles in her pregnancy, but reading these stories moved her to help other families. As a surrogate, she wanted to ensure the baby’s parents experienced the pregnancy in full, despite not carrying the pregnancy themselves. She bought a speaker to play recordings of the parents’ voices through her belly. At the parents’ request, she wore a necklace with a tinkling bell throughout her pregnancy. She gave the necklace to the parents immediately following the birth, so the sound would be familiar when the baby came home. She even made a “belly baby book” for the intended parents. Morgen sweetly defined motherhood as, “teaching my little humans to be good humans.” She modeled this for her little humans with all the ways she connected with the intended parents throughout the journey!
Kathleen G. is another one of our incredible journey coordinators and a two-time surrogate. Kathleen loves being a mom, and she had easy pregnancies with her children. Like the team members described above, Kathleen wanted to bring the love she experienced to other people. She delivered a lovely baby girl for a very deserving set of intended parents. Unlike with her own pregnancies, Kathleen experienced various fertility issues and loss with a surrogacy journey. She ultimately found that through these experiences, she could relate to other mothers’ family-building challenges. Kathleen beautifully defined motherhood as, “selfless love.” Whether that involves sidelining certain dreams to prioritize becoming a parent, undergoing shots and surgeries to conceive, or working with a surrogate, being a mother involves selflessness, motivated by pure love. Kathleen saw this embodied in the intended parents for whom she carried. In her first journey, she realized just how much the intended mother had to trust her to allow her to carry the baby. To Kathleen, that is the mothering instinct on display. Whether you are trusting a surrogate to carry your baby or trusting a friend’s parents to supervise a playdate, the love, trust, and community is always at play in parenthood.
Amanda Z. is CFC’s operations and lead matching coordinator. She is also an eight-time egg donor. She chose to be an “identified donor” meaning that she has the privilege of knowing some of the families, including the children, who received her donations. Working in an OB/GYN office in her early twenties illuminated different pathways to parenthood for Amanda, including egg donation. After Amanda donated her eggs, the IVF clinic offered her a job, and she has been in the assisted reproduction industry ever since. In relation to motherhood, Amanda explained that, while she knows the donor babies are genetically related to her, she does not have a motherly attachment to them the way their parents do. Instead, she knows the babies belong to wonderful families with unwavering commitment to parenthood and she appreciates the role she played in their journeys.
Our team members’ stories echo the same motifs of love, community, and strength that informed the establishment of Mother’s Day. Even with these throughlines, motherhood is ultimately a unique experience. At CFC, we find beauty in that uniqueness!
What does motherhood mean to you?
Sources
https://womenshistory.si.edu/blog/history-mothers-day-global-peace-greeting-cards
https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/mothers-day-for-peace/
https://www.oed.com/dictionary/mother_n1?tab=meaning_and_use#35652823
https://www.today.com/parents/teens/mother-meaning-slang-rcna160787
https://creativefamilyconnections.com/about-us/about-cfc/
https://peacealliance.org/history-of-mothers-day-as-a-day-of-peace-julia-ward-howe/