My parents divorced when I was 11 years old. There are 5 of us children and I’m in the middle. When I was young, my father was a preacher, and I became a born-again believer in the Lord Jesus Christ at the age of 6. During this part of our childhood our mom was a...
Stories
Claire’s story | “My parents developed the idea that they deserved to have a baby, and it didn’t matter how much it cost, how many times it took, or how many died in the process.”
A miracle baby. That's what my parents always said I was. After 12 years of marriage and much agony, I had been conceived. They had never been so happy. I had never doubted that I was wanted. But there it was... right in the baby book my grandmother had put together...
Emmaline’s story | “As I look back now I see the impact divorce has had on me…I fear for my marriage and that of my siblings. I don’t want us to continue the cycle. It has to end.”
I was raised in a Christian family by a loving Christian couple in the 90’s and early 2000’s. In the Midwest where there is a church on every corner, we grew up going to a Christian school and supportive church. It was in my early teenage years when divorce started to...
Louise’s story | “Not knowing donor identity is like being lost in the middle of a great, featureless ocean.”
(Originally published on Tangled Webs UK) Discovering, aged 32, that I was donor conceived was, to put it mildly, a bombshell. It made complete sense, explaining the lack of similarity to my social father, not to mention the tensions between us. It explained why I...
Evangeline Kippling’s story | Transgender mom and meth addict dad
My parents were separated before I was even born and they got officially divorced when I was 1. My mom started dating women after that...and she also cut her hair very short and dressed kind of manly. My dad went to prison twice when I was younger for possession of...
“…I was just filled with anger all the time. That’s all I really feel about my existence. Anger.”
(Originally published on AnonymousUs) Growing up it was just my mom, my two very involved godparents and me. I always knew I was missing a biological father. I always had to explain to my friends since the age of five why I don’t have a dad. I liked it, I got...
Susan’s story | “I was 13 years old when Dad left the second time…Is it any surprise that I deal with depression?”
My adoption was in the works before I was born. My adoptive parents had been married about 9 years and had been unable to get pregnant. My adoptive mother wanted nothing more than to be a mom. My bio-mother was married, but had been intimate with another woman's...
“I hated growing up with gay parents”
(Originally published on Reddit) Right away, I want to make something clear: I’m not a homophobe. My sister is gay, many of my friends are gay. If anything, even though I’m straight, having gay parents made me more comfortable with people in the LGBTQ+ scene. It never...
NPE Alicia’s story | “In the process of trying to help my mother and try to heal my family tree, I opened a larger wound. I suddenly did not know who I was anymore.”
I have been watching several of your interviews and it feels good to know I am not alone in my beliefs and perspectives as a Christian and also as someone who has experienced childhood trauma, as well as an adult trauma of an NPE Discovery. For so long, I’ve felt I...
Sarah St. Onge’s story | “I needed a father, as do most other girls growing up in single parent homes.”
In 2016 I purchased an Ancestry DNA test. It sat on my counter for a week before I spit into the tube and mailed it out — sending my genetic material off into the universe, hoping to find some information about myself and where I came from. The idea was terrifying in...
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