What’s Your Parenting Story?
What Inspired This & Who I Am
Launched in the summer of 2025, this project seeks to illuminate the hidden corners of parenthood by collecting raw, anonymous stories from people of all backgrounds. The purpose is not to judge or sensationalize, but to create space for truth: the joy, the grief, the guilt, the love, and everything in between.
By bringing these stories together, I hope to challenge the cultural silence not only around regret, ambivalence, and disillusionment, but also to celebrate the joy, wonder, and delight that parenthood can bring. In doing so, this project seeks to expand public conversations about family, identity, and choice with greater empathy, nuance, and understanding.
I am a woman in her 40’s who has wrestled with the decision of whether or not to have children. For years, I reached out to parents in my life, searching for authentic accounts of their journeys. What I often heard was reassurance that parenthood was wonderful, which of course it can be, but the harder realities were rarely spoken aloud. That gap between what was said and what I sensed beneath the surface left me longing for something more real.
This project was born from that longing. I want to hear the full stories: the vulnerability, the unexpected challenges, and the quiet wisdom that emerges from lived experience and share them with others.
