Author Chelsea Austin Montgomery-Duban Wächter (who also goes by Chelsea Austin) grew up with two gay dads in the 1990s. In this memoir/self-help book, she looks back at her childhood and young adult years not only to share what her life was like, but also to draw lessons from it in order to help readers define their own self-worth, reach for their dreams, and even start over if needed.
Each chapter looks at a different era of her life—starting in fact before she was a life, as her dads planned to start their family through gestational surrogacy, at a time when it was still rare for two-men couples to do so. Some chapters focus on lessons she’s learned from her dads, or on how she’s had to respond to people’s comments and questions about her family; others are snapshots of school days, speaking at the HRC National Dinner as a teen, life in college, her early career as a real estate agent, facing family deaths, and various romantic relationships, including with the man she eventually marries. She also looks at the period of her life when one dad, an accountant, is sent to prison for tax fraud after (as she explains it), trying to help an elderly client and friend (but also clearly not declaring certain items that should have been declared on the friend’s tax return).
At the end of each chapter, she shares some lessons she draws from that phase of her life, and asks readers to consider how those lessons might apply to their own lives. In the first chapter, for example, she writes, “I was created out of what seemed to be an impossibility,” and asks, “What would happen if, for just a second, you suspended reality and believed that anything was possible? … How would your life look if you gave yourself the chance to believe you are capable of all your heart’s desires?” In other chapters, she asks questions like, “How can you find ways to start asking for what you want and need in your life?” and “How can you give yourself more grace when you are experiencing an unfavorable emotion?” Gratitude, change, being present in our lives, valuing ourselves—Austin shows how these have played out in her life and invites readers to welcome them into theirs.
These reflective sections keep the book from falling into the trap of some memoirs, which simply plod through event after event in a person’s life. And there seems to be a small trend of books that combine memoir with interleaved advice (see No Blanks, No Pauses, by lesbian mom Shelly McNamara, and How We Do Family, by gay, trans dad Trystan Reese).
Not all readers will enjoy this approach; it may seem too touchy-feely to some. And although Austin acknowledges “the blessings and privilege I have benefited from have given me an advantage, a huge one,” some readers may feel that her life growing up in Malibu, “where everyone thought being gay was cool,” in a family that owned “several income-producing properties in Las Vegas,” does not resonate with their own experience. Yet as Austin herself asks at the end of one chapter, “What is the worst thing that could happen by opening yourself up to someone who is vastly different from you?” Austin writes with verve and occasional humor, as well as a deep commitment to self-reflection, and it will be a rare reader that doesn’t take away some positive insights from this book.
