Finding Family: Telling Our Stories is a compilation of our most precious memories: our children’s birth stories.  They are written in the first person, in the voices we use to speak with our children everyday.  They have been tailored not to the reader, but to the individual child.  As gay and lesbian parents, we want to prepare them for their lives, letting them know that we are loved and giving them the tools to grow up healthy.

We revise the stories as our children grow, adding details that will help them understand who they are.  In addition to giving them a sense of their own identity, these stories arm them for when it is time to do battle in our world--to defend their families and themselves.

In 2007, John Ireland made a documentary entitled, Finding Family: Gay Adoption in the U.S., which detailed the patchwork of laws across the country governing adoption by gays and lesbians.  It premiered in San Francisco at Frameline, the nation’s oldest gay and lesbian film festival.  Since then, it has screened at film festivals across the country and aired on PBS during the Summer of 2009.

The film tells the legal story of gay parenting, from the outside, looking in.  The enthusiastic response to the film by gay and lesbian parents “in the trenches” across the country gave way to this book, which tells the story from a different perspective--from inside these families.

Whereas the film deals with laws and politics, the book does not.  They are both designed to educate, but the book is an intimate look into gay parenting, illustrating perhaps the only difference between gay and straight families--the importance of telling our stories, so that our children can learn to deal with society’s ignorance and discomfort with our families.

These stories are so important to our children as they grow up.  They have relevance, too, to our greater society because they illustrate the simple message of love and acceptance that all children deserve to know.  Someday, society will reinforce the inherent worth of gay and lesbian families.  Until then, as gay and lesbian parents, we must prepare our children with their unique narratives and send them out into the world surrounded by love and affirmation.

Read The Preface...