International Donor Conception Awareness Day
Parenting Through Donor Conception: Centering Both Your Child’s Needs & Your Own
When you choose donor conception, it’s often in response to a deep longing—whether for genetic connection, embodied pregnancy, or the dream of raising a child with your partner. Those are real, valid needs. And for many queer families, donor conception is one of the few viable, accessible options available. Since many of us don’t have experience with not sharing DNA with our own family members…you may find yourself asking:
How will we choose who will be the biological parent?
How will we choose a donor?
How will I feel—or how will my partner feel?
Will it matter more… or less… than I expect?
How will we talk to our child about it?
And what it will mean for our child?
It may feel tempting to brush off the importance of DNA—especially if your own relationship to biological family members is complicated, fraught, or distant.
But conscious parenting means centering your child as much as you center your own needs. Which means recognizing that they get to have their own story, too—and their own feelings about it.
And when your child’s needs and feelings are met with an open heart — it lays the groundwork for a relationship built on mutual respect, belonging, and a lifelong sense of self-worth.
How Do I Center Both of Us?
Sometimes, your child’s needs and your comfort won’t point in the same direction.
Maybe they ask a complicated question about their origins and it hits a tender spot you didn’t realize was still there.
Maybe you’re choosing a donor and feel pulled toward what reassures you—even if something quieter inside wonders what your child might wish you’d prioritized.
But comfort and needs aren’t always the same thing. And untangling what you need from what is comfortable requires sitting with emotional complexity. To sit with emotional complexity is to resist the urge to collapse one feeling into the other—to avoid binary thinking like, “If my child is struggling, I must have failed,” or “If I feel uncertain, maybe I shouldn’t do this.” In those moments, its tempting to collapse discomfort into meaning—if you decide that struggle equals failure, or that uncertainty equals a bad decision—you cut yourself off from the very values you’re trying to live into, like courage, resilience, joy and connection.
You can’t lead from your values if you’re sprinting toward emotional escape.
But when you can stay in the emotional complexity long enough —you uncover what matters most to you, and your child.
Your child’s needs may include:
Space to feel what they feel without managing your reaction.
Questions they don’t yet know how to ask.
A narrative that holds complexity, not just celebration.
A sense of belonging that doesn’t depend on pleasing you.
And to truly meet those needs, you can’t rush in with your own comfort strategies—you have to stay with their truth, without making it about you. And if you’re willing to sit with the discomfort long enough to discern the difference between comfort, control, and care.
Which means: the very skill you’re building in yourself—to stay, to feel, to untangle—is also the safety you’re offering to your child.
And when you do that, you can also meet your own needs in a way that don’t conflict with your child’s:
To feel bonded and secure as a parent to your child
To create physical and legal safety for your family
To shape a family culture and childhood that reflects your values and identity
If You’re Still Deciding Your Path & Donor…
These decisions aren’t just about getting to parenthood.
They’re about building a foundation your child can stand on—with pride, clarity, and belonging.
That starts now, with:
How you relate to autonomy, to respect, and to the possibility that your child might someday see this path differently than you do.
How you define success as a parent, and a philosophical question of what makes life worth living.
Understanding the options today - the pros, cons of each for you and your future child’s needs.
And as you build this muscle of living in complexity and uncertainty now, the more equipped you’ll be to hold your child’s questions later—without rushing to fix, defend, or explain. And when you can hold that space, your child will grow up knowing they never have to choose between being fully themselves and being fully loved.
If You Are Parenting a Donor Conceived Child…
If you’re parenting a donor conceived child (or adult), you may already be discovering how layered their experience can be.
Even when everything was chosen with love, even when you’ve been open from the beginning—questions can still arise. Feelings you didn’t anticipate. Longings you hoped they wouldn’t have. And in those moments, what your child needs most is to know their story doesn’t threaten you. That starts with your willingness to stay open when they feel differently than you hoped. To let their questions breathe. To show them that your love is big enough to hold complexity—and that their truth doesn’t have to shrink for you to feel safe.
In Honor of IDCAD
Founded by one of my favorite teachers in this space, Jana Rupnow, International Donor Conception Awareness Day is a reminder to pause. To reflect. To do this work consciously—not just for ourselves, but for the children whose lives are shaped by our decisions.
I created a visualization to help you practice sitting with emotional complexity, uncertainty and uncomfortable emotions— so you can center both your needs and your child’s—not just now, but across a lifetime.
Because you don’t have to pass down the pain you inherited— from caregivers who couldn’t sit with your autonomy, your questions, your voice. The foundation of your family doesn’t need to be built on fear or fragility. It can be built on the quiet courage to pause, to stay, and to say: “You get to be fully yourself here. And I won’t need you to shrink so I can feel safe.”
That’s the kind of story worth building.
And it begins with the small, steady choice to stay open—even when it’s hard.
I needed this today. Thank you!