Medical stuff makes me queasy. Organs, systems, processes — amazing, love them, but I don’t want to see it and I don’t want to know.

I *literally* passed out in the A&P lab in college.

And the female …

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I sang a solo at my high school graduation.

I’m from a town of about 3,000 people. I remember standing at the microphone, looking out at all those faces, and realizing what that number actually means when it’s in front of you.

Within hours of announcing that Ryan and I are moving forward with starting a family, that’s how many people unfollowed me.

I understand that social media isn’t a room. People follow and unfollow all the time. But 3,000 isn’t abstract to me. It’s a stadium full of every person I grew up around. And behind each of those unfollows is a real decision — not just about my content, but about me, and the family I hope to have.

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I grew up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In my community, family isn’t just important — it’s central. I was taught from the time I was small that becoming a parent is one of the most sacred things a person can do. That building a home matters. That it’s worth shaping your entire life around.

It feels strange that the same people who worked so hard to instill in me a desire for family are the ones who struggle with me wanting it.

I understand where some of the tension comes from. In the doctrine I was raised with, families are centered on a man and a woman. That’s the model people are taught to hold sacred. So when a gay couple says they want a family, people don’t see it the same way.

But that understanding doesn’t make it feel any less isolating.

This isn’t the first time I’ve lost people for living my life honestly. It happened when I came out. It happened when I got married. There has always been a version of me people were comfortable with. As long as I stayed within it, I was easy to support. But each time my life moves forward in a visible way, a new set of people decide they’re done.

Being gay in this community often means your life is seen as one step behind what’s considered whole. You can be loved in theory, but not in practice. Supported in identity, but not in outcome. Accepted, until your life starts to look complete. So when you’re straight and you want a family, it’s treated as something sacred. But when you’re gay and you want the same thing—a marriage, a home, a family—it becomes a point of departure.

I know it shouldn’t matter what other people think. And I know there are far more people who support my husband and me than those who don’t. But that doesn’t change the weight of it. Because these aren’t strangers. These are people who knew me. People who read my book and told me it changed something in them. People who are part of the same faith I love and am still trying to belong to.

What I wish — more than anything — is that people could stay a little longer. Sit with the discomfort instead of leaving it. Because I really do believe that if you look closely enough at any person’s life, you find someone trying their best with what they’ve been given. We are all children of God. That’s something this community taught me too. And I think being a community — a real one — means being willing to seek to understand one another, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Especially when it’s uncomfortable.

So I think about my graduation. What it felt like to sing in front of everyone who had ever known me and have them listen without walking away.

I just wish more people could do that now.

Ryan and his Mom, circa 2011

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I don’t remember exactly what time it was when we finally looked up and realized we’d been talking for hours.

We were on the couch in our little studio apartment, buried in throw pillows and blankets, screencasting my laptop with about 100 tabs open. We were talking seriously about building a family, and facing the first big question: Which path do we take?

Adoption, foster care, or IVF?

I could picture our family through any of those windows. Ryan leaned toward a biological child, but we both wanted to hold all the options honestly before landing anywhere. To do the work and go in with eyes wide open.

Over the next few weeks we talked to trusted families who had adopted or fostered, and the more we learned, the more our appreciation for those paths grew. The love these families had for their kids was full and unmistakable.

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There was something so beautiful about a child finding a family — about parents opening their lives and saying, “you belong with us.” The families called to these paths were doing something extraordinary, showing up for a child in an unstable moment and offering them something solid.

Alongside all the beauty, they shared the reality. Timelines were unpredictable. Legal processes could be fragile. Birth family relationships continued long after placement, evolving in ways that required ongoing navigation. And there were children — loved children in good homes — still working through questions of identity and origin years later.

Around the same time, a training came up at work. I’m a therapist, and our clinic brought in an expert on supporting clients who had been adopted. I sat there taking notes on identity formation, attachment, and layers of grief — and couldn’t stop thinking about the decision we were in the middle of making.

When I got home that night, we went straight back to the couch. I shared what I’d learned, and we started imagining what it might feel like for an adopted child to grow up in our specific life.

We’re a gay couple living in Utah, publicly visible, inside a religious community with strong and sometimes divided feelings about families like ours. A birth family relationship — already complex — becomes harder to protect when one family lives in public view. A child’s story can reach them from directions no one anticipated. Legal uncertainty early in the process, at a moment when attachment is already forming, felt especially fragile in that context.

We kept asking ourselves one question:

What actually gives our future child the strongest foundation?

For us, the answer kept coming back to simplicity. To removing layers.

With IVF, there would be no birth family relationship to navigate. No legal fragility in the early days of attachment. No story that exists before our family does. Our child would still grow up with complexity — two dads, a religious community, a world that doesn’t always know what to do with families like ours. But those were layers we could walk through together, as a family, from the very beginning.

That clarity didn’t come without some guilt along the way.

Adoption is a generous and loving path, and I felt the weight of that. I had been sitting with the question of whether choosing IVF was the more self-interested choice, but the truth is, I wanted a biological child, too. And I realized that’s allowed to matter.

I want to see my husband in our kids — his steadiness, his humor, the quiet way he takes care of people… I want to watch those qualities find their way into a whole new person (and hopefully his curly hair!) The thought of a little Ryan or a little Charlie, some sweet combination of who we are finding its way into the world — that image doesn’t just make me happy. It feels like it was always part of the plan for us.

That night, we both felt the confirmation we had been praying for.

And just like that, the question shifted from which path to how to begin. We closed about 80 of those 100 tabs, opened a fresh one, and typed in a new search:

“Fertility clinics near me.”

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“Aren’t you sad you won’t be a dad?”

The question came up almost every time I came out to someone—no matter how kind or supportive they were. It was always there, sitting underneath everything else.

And the truth is, yes. I was.

I was raised in a big, close family where everything revolved around each other. Long before I understood anything about my identity, I understood what it meant to belong to something bigger than myself.

I wanted to bring a child into the world. To pass on more than genetics—creativity, humor, curiosity, faith, resilience. To build a family culture that felt like its own little universe. To care for someone, protect them, guide them, and grow alongside them.

So when I realized I was gay, it didn’t just feel like I was navigating who I was. It felt like I was losing something I had always longed for.

I wasn’t just sad. I was devastated.

I—and honestly, everyone around me—assumed that because I was gay, I wouldn’t be a father. Not that it would be harder or look different. Just that it wouldn’t happen. I barely knew other gay people, let alone ones building families. So I told myself I would be the best uncle I could be, fully showing up for my siblings’ kids. And for a long time, I let that version of the future settle in.

But little by little, something started to shift.

It started when I met Ryan.

I saw how he shows up for people—the steadiness in him, the way he takes care of things, how he creates safety without even trying. It was easy to picture him as a father.

After we got married, we started to build a life that felt like ours. And somewhere along the way, I started to see how we could actually become a family. It wasn’t this big, impossible idea anymore, but rather something within reach.

Then last year, it became clear in an instant.

Four of our nieces were born in four months, and I had never been around newborns like that before. I was suddenly in it—around babies all the time, seeing what those early days actually look like.

And when we went to the hospital after my younger brother’s baby was born, I held her for the first time—and it hit me. Nurses moving in and out, everything happening around us—it all faded. It was just her in my arms—her little blue eyes, her strawberry blonde hair.

Something in me shifted and locked into place.

It was abundantly clear: I still want to be a father—and I still can be.

This week, we’re meeting with a fertility clinic to talk through our options. We’ve spent months getting here—researching, talking it through with each other and our families, and praying to know how to move forward.

It’s a small step, but it holds so much. And it feels right.

For a long time, I thought being a dad might not be part of my story.

Now, we’re stepping toward it, and I can’t wait!

I’m documenting how we’re building our family!

Major milestones and highlights will be on Instagram, but THIS is where I’ll share more unfiltered details—the decisions, uncertainty, emotional weight, financial reality, etc. I imagine there will be a LOT to learn, and a lot that doesn’t go as planned, but there’s so much to look forward to!

If you’ve ever wondered what this process looks like (or if it’s something you might want someday) I’m going to show the process as clearly and honestly as I can.

If you subscribe, you’ll get a closer look at everything as it unfolds, and your support will go directly toward helping us pay for fertility treatments.

It honestly means so much to us—and it’s helping us build our family, which still feels a little surreal!

<3 Charlie (& Ryan)