Make a family with a friend.
Anyone who has ever raised children knows that it’s easier to do with more people. Part of our society’s attachment to the nuclear family is predicated on the idea that without two, married parents, kids will not have the love, support, and care they need. But not everyone wants to — or can — be married even if they want to be a parent. Increasingly, people are figuring out ways to create families that include children, but may not include romantic partners. These families can provide the kids and adults involved with the love, support, and care they need. We need more models like this that allow for the reality of our lives and provide the freedom we need to make those lives on our own terms. Tena LeBeau and Terri Fyock provide a beautiful example of how we might do it.
Tena is the mother of two kids: Scarlett, 12, and Declan, seven. “It’s sort of the classic. I got pregnant; oops,” Tena shares. And Scarlett’s father and I had broken up. It was a very short relationship and I would’ve stayed in California had he wanted to co-parent, but he did not. I was a live-in nanny at the time. My options for employment were diminished because I was about to become a mom. I was terrified because I thought that Scarlett’s father and I might work something out, but we didn’t. So, I decided that I had to come home to Pennsylvania. My brother built on to his home so that I would have somewhere to go and I stayed with him until I had Scarlett.”
Scarlett was born prematurely. Living with her brother, Matt, meant she could take some time to get on her feet and find her own home. Five years later, under similar circumstances, Tena was again pregnant, this tie with a son, Declan. “I always wanted to be a mom. I didn’t plan on it. I tried to be careful, but I have allergies and issues with chemical birth control and that kind of stuff, and obviously, I wasn’t careful enough. I’m very pro-choice and I have chosen not to have children before, during pregnancies. At the same time, I was 30, so I was okay with it. At 30 and 35, I was okay with making the choices I made and I’m of course happy that I made the choices.”
Tena largely parented on her own for a decade. This challenge was exacerbated by having kids with special needs — Scarlett has autism and Declan has both Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder. “Even when I lived with my brother, he worked a lot and you know, he just wasn’t really there. He had his struggles with addiction, and I didn’t realize that’s what it was at the time, but I just knew he wasn’t there. He wasn’t available. He was supportive in some ways but not parenting-wise, not truly having a buddy.” That all changed when Tena met Terri.
Terri has two adult children from her first marriage and raised her second husband’s son, Elijah, until he was five. While Terri is not Elijah’s biological mom, she played the primary parenting role in his life from the time he was two weeks old until his biological mother got custody of him four years ago. Nine-year-old Elijah visits Tena and Terri’s home every other weekend. “He is part of the family, too.” Tena explains.
After two marriages, Terri was happy to be single again. And after a drunken night with her best friend, she realized she was happy to be done with men as well. While that relationship ended, she has only dated women since then. Being gay in a small, conservative Pennsylvania town is not easy. But the roller derby community that brought Tena and Terri together has been a sanctuary of sorts, and it’s this sanctuary that created the possibility for their relationship.
“I was going to an away match,” Tena recalls, “and one of the gals let me know that Terri needed a ride, so I picked her up and then we just started talking and chatting and became friendly. At some point a few weeks later, Terri mentioned that she had to leave her sister’s home where she was living and she didn’t want to go back to her old house.”
When her sister — a pastor — became ill, Terri moved in to support her. A member of their family, uncomfortable with the fact that Terri is gay, threatened to out Terri to her sister’s church. “My sister was absolutely, totally, completely fine with it,” Terri says. “She said, “I tell you what. If the church comes to me and tells me to kick you out, I’m just going to quit my job. I am not going to pastor in a church like that.” And I said, “No, we’re not doing that. This is how you live. This is how you pay your bills.” I packed my stuff and the very next day I was gone.”
When Tena and Terri met, Terri had recently moved out of her sister’s home and was couch surfing. Tena immediately offered her a place to stay. “I said, ‘Well, you know, I have an extra room. You can stay upstairs until you figure out what you want to do. Get your own place or whatever. This will give you some time to think.’” That was nearly a year ago and as they’ve become a family, everyone’s life has become better.
“Having somebody who backs me up and helps me keep my head on . . . I mean, my head blows off on a regular basis, but she helps put it back on,” Tena says. “It has made all the difference. I remember what happy is. I remember what it’s like to laugh. It’s been tremendous. Before Terri came along, I was the kind of lonely that . . . I was in despair . . .”
Terri adds, “When I first moved in, you could actually feel the . . . I don’t know, the darkness, the tension, the depression. I could feel it when I moved in.” For Terri, who was dealing with her own depression from lack of acceptance from her family and the community around her, moving in with Tena was a comfort. “She accepts me,” Terri says simply.
“I didn’t blink an eye,” Tena continues. “Because we grew up knowing it was just fine for you to be however you are. There isn’t anything wrong with her. I think when you’re surrounded by people who are saying the opposite of that, it is soul-crushing.”
Tena and Terri co-parent together well. “We work. It works,” Tena says. “We were just talking yesterday about how well it works, and I hadn’t imagined that anybody would be able to step into this craziness and not only exist here, but make it better — make it happier and help — and she has. She just jumped right in with both feet and pitches in, whether it’s helping with the chickens or redirecting Declan or calming Scarlett down or whatever it is. She does it and it’s just . . . it’s really been helpful.”
“It seems to me just so easy,” Terri adds. “I would be alone in an apartment someplace and I do not like to be alone whatsoever. I really enjoy being in a family. What I get out of this is a family that I want.”
While the arrangement works well for Tena, Terri, and their kids, they do encounter obstacles. Benefits like health insurance assume a romantic relationship and financial dependence between adults who live together, and when Terri was applying for health insurance, they wanted information about Tena’s income. While the two share some expenses, they don’t share everything, and benefit and policy systems don’t know how to deal with that. They’ve also had to navigate the resistance of systems that don’t want to consider them family.
“Terri will defer to me because I am their mom, but my kids know, if Terri says so, that’s that. I think that we co-parent and I think that’s legitimate. We are a legitimate family. It’s not a family that looks the same as yours, maybe, but it’s just as legitimate. We have had a lot of trouble with systems that don’t want to accept her as a co-parent.”
In addition to what Tena and Terri get from the arrangement, they are both clear that their kids benefit tremendously. “Our home is warm and stable and predictable,” Tena says assuredly. “The kids understand why we are set up the way that we are and what the rules are and what the expectations are. It’s consistent.”
Unsurprisingly, given the oddity of their family in their community, a lot of people assume Tena and Terri are romantically involved. “It’s really funny,” Tena chuckles, “because we get a lot of questions from people about what our really relationship is. There are a lot of assumptions made, but, to me, it’s a no-brainer. Why don’t people do this? As a single mom, there are already so many limitations on you. You are limiting yourself in more ways by not being open to the idea that you could move in with a friend, that you could make a family with a friend. So many people need that and we’re not open to it. I mean, if only I’d have thought of this 10 years ago!”
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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