Since my Donor reveal post, where I significantly lightened my load by telling you about Marcel’s donor, Tree, many questions came up for readers, friends and family.  Here are the answers I’m willing and able to share:

Yes, the donor has seen pictures of Marcel, and will continue to, as long as he maintains contact with us.

Yes the donor met Marcel once, before Marcel was old enough to remember.

The donor has agreed to a more significant and open relationship with Marcel when Marcel is 18.

The donor and Marcel share many traits, both physically, and in how they move in the world.

The donor and I had legal counsel, and have a legally executed donor arrangement.

It was actually Sam who brought the donor into our lives.  Sam met him in a store, and they struck up a conversation. I was only feet away. Sam was not yet two. The universe intervened, and numbers were exchanged.

I had no idea what we were getting ourselves involved in when we set out on this journey together–all four of us now. The “known donor”  route has very few models to go by, and creates lots of room for interpretation, and feelings to emerge from all parties involved. It not something to be undertaken lightly. At times I have felt intense longing to share more of my experience raising Marcel with him. At times I have been fiercely protective of our arrangement, as spelled out to the letter. It has been a source of loneliness, anxiety, confusion, anger, longing, joy, ease, independence, and intense growth.  I can only speak for me, but I’m hazarding a guess, he’d nod his head in agreement, with at least part of that list.

We have reached an amazing place of peace, and mutual understanding in the last six or so months, thanks more to the work he has done around the subject, than me. I had to let go of my fear of not having complete control of this arrangement somehow, in order for it to become, what I had always wanted it to be: all about Marcel.