a practice in hope

2025, so far

“Poppies, Isle of Shoals” by Childe Hassam

as i write this, i’ve just come back from my third trip to the bathroom where my insides have decided to officially purge now that i am 4 days into my stim medications. and i did this whilst simultaneously scrolling my phone for news report updates on a potential government coup, the countless number of new ICE raids, the myriad other pieces of political theater we are being subject to witness, and checking in on my brother and his family now that they’ve finally secured long-term housing a month after evacuating their altadena home.

the dichotomy of this situation is almost too baffling for me to accept.

here i am, having come off a year of fertility treatments about to enter into our first round of IVF, all while still reeling from the grief of seeing my hometown burn, and having to be constantly vigilant as to what political power play happens next—what new executive order will further erase my experience as nonbinary and queer? will my marriage to my wife continue to be legally recognized? are our chances of starting a family with the only safe option we have available to us in jeopardy now?

i’m so damn tired. and yet, i know i can’t be. this overwhelm that can so easily fall into apathy and defeat is exactly the kind of strategy that’s being employed. and i’m doing everything i can to step away from the chaos, take moments for breath, and renew my energy to come back to the fight in a more sustainable fashion.

but at the center of it all, there’s one thing that won’t stop nagging me. and it feels so much more pedestrian and menial than any other worry i have running through my mind right now.

as the world burns and people are forcibly taken from their homes and separated from their families, i can’t help but feel guilty for what i’m striving for in my personal life—is it selfish of me to pursue IVF in a time when the world is literally on fire?

despite only “actively trying” for a little over a year now, the journey to make it to IUI/IVF land has been a long time coming. from finding a doctor who actually listened to me and helped to surgically remove a dermoid cyst after years of being told there was nothing to be done to address my chronic pain, to pursuing eating disorder recovery to do both the physical and mental work required to help me live a healthier life and potentially prep me for becoming pregnant, i’ve both inadvertently and very intentionally spent my 20s laying the groundwork for our family to come full bloom.

now, after having undergone 6 IUIs in the last year—one of which actually resulted in a pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage—transitioning to IVF feels both like a personal failure and an unnecessary bout of having to jump through hoops we had once desperately hoped to avoid.

in the month and few days of 2025 alone, we got word that our insurance would be denying us IVF coverage because we don’t fit their criteria of “infertility” as a same-sex couple (appeal and potential lawsuit pending). and just this week, in anticipation of our impending egg retrieval, we got a notice from our fertility clinic that louisiana lawmakers are threatening to halt fertility treatments due to civil and criminal liability issues, similar to what happened in alabama.

at this point, time is of the essence—because i don’t know how much longer IVF will be available to us or what repercussions we may accrue should we be able to develop viable embryos for transfer.

so, where is the hope in bringing a child into this erratic and dangerous world?

“Motherhood” by Tijana Lukovic

it’s true that there has never been a good time to have a child, at least not within the last several decades. there’s always something going on in the world, whether those threats are operating on a macro- or micro-level (or both). but in thinking through ways to resist the onslaught of hatred and bigotry being hurled at queer, trans, immigrant, disabled, and BIPOC communities, i’ve had to reckon with an admittedly fucked up fact about myself—my typical go-to is to become invisible, especially now that i live in the south.

growing up, i was taught to use the protections and privileges i benefit from (being white-passing, cis-passing, having my legal first name recognized as “anna”) to my advantage—to become palatable to whomever or whatever entity is actively looking to annihilate my existence as a queer, nonbinary, mixed-race second-generation japanese american. and so it makes sense that i would be questioning whether i am deserving of bringing a child into the world when i myself hardly feel i am deserving of being able to live authentically as myself.

but aside from matters of physical safety and necessary protection, the last thing i want to do is pass on to my child the lesson that they should live inauthentically in order to survive.

a lot of my work these past few years has been about reparenting myself in ways my parents couldn’t. they “looked out” for my safety in ways that ultimately taught me how to hide, shrink, conceal, or otherwise disappear. but i’ll be damned if i let all of this self-work and effort to reparent myself go to waste.

if choosing not to go forward with our family plans that we’ve been actively pursuing for the last fifteen months is just a generational cycle of trauma, self-abuse, and disempowerment, then i want to be the cycle breaker—the one who pushes through to realize their dreams even in the face of an uncertain and unprecedented world, and yes, even a world that is literally on fire.

maybe doing the thing that scares you most is the only way to know what you’re truly capable of—what patterns you’re willing to dismantle, and what convictions you’re willing to stand for in the face of institutions that wish to kill you.

we’re all told that parenthood changes you in one way or another. so why not entertain the possibility that parenthood might change me into a more mobilizing force? what if becoming a parent makes me more readily able to stand up for those within my communities and forge a path forward toward the world i want to create for my future children?

maybe no one’s truly “deserving” of bringing a child into the world—rather, parenthood is a wholly different experience that demands of you to take accountability for your actions and disseminate care to more parties than yourself.

while i may still wonder whether there is room for individual aspiration when there’s so much collective suffering, i also have to make space for the possibility that choosing to forsake my unique calling and gifts might actually prove to be a disservice to the movement for a more just and equitable world.

maybe the practice of hope is something we all need to tap into right now—not only to sustain ourselves in what will be a long and arduous fight, but to cultivate our gifts to bring back to the collective so that we may come together with a greater sense of self and purpose toward our ultimate goal: creating a world and society we’d be proud to raise children in.

— misao