I was carpooling to a friend’s housewarming out in the country with two women from the women’s land community. I told them about the story project, thinking they might know some moms. To my surprise they said they both had kids. Spes had a baby when she was twenty-three; that child was adopted. Rita had to leave her kids with her husband when she came out. I was finding out that lesbian moms are everywhere.

Spes is eighty-four. She lived in Saskatchewan when she got pregnant by an Indigenous man. She tells the story of her daughter’s open adoption with a wonderful Metis woman, Lorna. She became very close to Lorna and her extended family. When Lorna died, Spes connected with her birth daughter on Facebook, where she keeps up with her grandchildren. She says, “I was a perfect mom. I had the baby, and I gave her from the hospital to the perfect mom.”