It’s going to be complicated; it’s going to have moments of real depth and beauty
When Mariana invited Toni for drinks, she was looking forward to simply catching up with the younger sister she helped raise, but ended up getting a surprise that changed her life. Mariana noticed Toni wasn’t drinking and when she inquired about it, Toni pulled out a onesie. It read, “My crazy Titi lives in Brooklyn.”
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, you’re pregnant!’ I was really excited. I spent a lot of my childhood and adolescence helping to raise my sister when my parents split up, so the thought of her having a child was just super important to me knowing that our biological lineage could carry on in some way,” Mariana recalls.
Mariana was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure at the age of twenty-seven and has had difficulty becoming pregnant. “I was unsure if I wanted to be a mother, but when I was told that it was going to be really hard and likely impossible, it created a sense of urgency around it for me,” Mariana shares. After unsuccessful attempts at conceiving with her then-partner, Mariana decided to put having a child on the backburner. “I really just wanted to explore my own self and figure it out.”
Toni had also been diagnosed with premature ovarian failure, but she was able to get pregnant and give birth to her daughter Sonja. Where one might expect pain or resentment about her sister’s pregnancy, Mariana only had love and support to give and wanted to have a significant role in her niece’s life. Mariana committed to supporting her sister.
Mariana’s willingness and desire to be a support to her sister was partly inspired by the safe haven their grandparents had provided for them as children. “Our relationship with our grandparents was really important. When my parents broke up, we spent a lot of time with them. That idea of intergenerational caregiving is a deep-rooted value to me. I just always want Sonja to feel like in me she has that level of unconditional love and somebody that is helping to raise her and that wants to see her succeed and love herself.”
Early in Toni’s pregnancy, her relationship with Sonja’s father was rocky. In order to support her sister and fill the gaps, Mariana made arrangements with her employer for flexibility in her schedule, allowing her to act as part-time caregiver to Sonja. “I had basically brokered a deal with my boss that I was going to take care of my niece and provide childcare for my sister one day a week for six months. They didn’t have a policy around family members that are not primary caregivers, but…I negotiated that for myself. I did that from the time Sonja was three months to nine months and provided other kinds of support as well. I was really a primary caregiver.”
Expanding ideas of who is considered family is critical to support families as they are today in America. Too many workplaces have policies that revolve around assumptions of and about marriage and nuclear families. Mariana’s personal experience has impacted how she thinks about those kinds of policies for organizations she works for or runs.
“After that experience with them it made me realize that if we want to be really progressive in our organizations, we have to really expand the concept of family and trust that the people that we’ve hired are incredible and amazing…What a beautiful gift it is to be able to allow someone the space to provide support to their loved ones and their family however they choose to define it.”
As for her own feelings about motherhood, Mariana recently revisited the question of whether or not to have a child. She says her acceptance of the likelihood that she won’t have her own biological child has created room for her to imagine building a family in a different way, if she and her partner decide they definitely want a child.
Mariana’s caregiving for Sonja has evolved over time. First, Toni’s partner stepped up to the role of father, shifting how Mariana engaged with Sonja. “He moved in, and there was a way in which I moved out a little,” Mariana recalls. “I think somewhere in the back of my head I thought maybe I would move in with my sister and Sonja, like we would live together and I would be supportive and I’d have this sort of niece-slash-daughter. Then I realized that actually that’s not really what my sister wanted. She wanted my support and she wanted my love, but she wanted Sonja’s dad to step up. As he has stepped up…I have taken less of a role in the relationship with Sonja.”
While Mariana is no longer Sonja’s primary caregiver, she maintains a critical role in Sonja’s life and works to maintain their close relationship. Mariana and her current partner Joseph take care of Sonja overnight, take her on special trips, and try to expose to different things. In particular, Mariana tries to discuss race and anti-blackness with Sonja, who is Black and Cuban. “She is a little Black girl growing up in the world and we need to be building up her self-esteem all the time,” Mariana shares.
“I recognize that my relationship with Sonja is going to be like all of my relationships. It’s going to be complicated; it’s going to have moments of real depth and beauty; and it’s going to have moments of distance, and my hope is that she and I can continue to build a deep and loving bond throughout our lives together so that we can have a really profound relationship with each other. I just hope that we can continue to foster real closeness with her throughout her life.”
This piece is part of Family Story’s All Our Families story-telling project.
Family Story is dedicated to shifting the conversation about families today from one of judgment, hopelessness, and despair to a beautiful new vision of families and family life to which we can each aspire.
Our mission is to create a conversation that meets people where they are, embraces the dignity and value of a wider range of family arrangements, and elevates models that illustrate the resilience and creativity of families today.
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