Gail McCormick

The devastating loss of motherhood hit me hard in my early forties when, after three miscarriages, my husband, Michael, and I stopped fertility treatments and decided against adoption. The future looked like a black hole to me and I felt like I had imploded. I didn’t yet know a seedbed was born in the ashes of that implosion.

I loved my work as a psychotherapist, my husband was incredibly supportive, and I had close friends my age who didn’t have children. Even with those solid resources and my skills as a healer, I sank into a deep depression I thought might never end. My sense of self was so diminished I hardly recognized myself in a mirror. I was experiencing soul loss, a trauma that requires tapping into a creative and spiritual process to heal.

I turned to nature, working with a therapist, writing, and meditation to provide the structure and tools I needed to reconnect with my essence. The process of finding myself and a new direction was slow and painful. The only clarity I had was that I needed Mike to engage in some joint endeavor with me that would expand our relationship with meaning and purpose beyond ourselves. But I had no idea what that might be.

During that long, dark period of grieving, I saw a brief news report on television about the Children of Chernobyl Northwest, a humanitarian aid group that was bringing children from the former Soviet Union to Seattle, where we lived, for summer reprieves from radiation exposure in the aftermath of the nuclear explosion of Chernobyl. They were looking for volunteer host families.

I didn’t know or even question why that news clip spoke to me so deeply. Obviously, it was an opportunity for us to care for and nurture children temporarily, but there was something more—something I couldn’t explain until later. Mike and I contacted the group and volunteered to host two girls, instead of one, so they would have someone to play with while living in a home with no other children. Soon, the coordinator called to inform us that the Ukrainian/Belarusian girls who would spend the summer with us were sisters.

“Twins!” she announced.

The word splashed in my heart. Stunned, I stopped breathing for a moment. Though I’m not a religious person, I suddenly knew that some holy Mystery was at work. My heart filled with hope and curiosity. When our conversation ended, I hung up the phone and wept.

As a young child, I had fallen in love with the twins played by Hayley Mills in one of my favorite Disney films, “The Parent Trap.” Ever since then, I had wanted to mother twins and I had prayed for twins each time I conceived. I thought my chances were good because there were two sets of twins in my extended family. But all three of my pregnancies ended during the first trimester.

The twins we hosted, Vika and Maria, spoke no English and we spoke no Russian, but we pieced together our own mother tongue, and a new legacy took root. Filling our house with mayhem and magic, the enchanting and mischievous girls awakened in me a long-dormant dream that had been germinating in me since childhood.

Growing up during the Cold War in the 1950s and & 60s, I was deeply immersed in fears of nuclear missiles, bomb shelters, and threats from the Russians. Yearning for a world shaped by love instead of fear, I dreamed of creating a human bridge of peace between the US and the Soviet Union.

Now, as I watched that all-but-forgotten dream unfolding, it struck me as sadly ironic. The Soviet Union had already collapsed and the Cold War was over. My bridge ambition no longer seemed relevant. I didn’t fully comprehend the importance of building bridges whenever and wherever the opportunity exists, to heal our fractured world. I didn’t realize how quickly alliances can shift, nor could I have predicted the emergence of a new Cold War or Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The twins spent four wild and wonderful—and sometimes challenging—summers with us, planting the seeds for what would become a global family. Between visits we stayed connected through letters and later through video calls. After they aged out of the program, I longed to see them again and I knew our bridge wouldn’t be complete until I had crossed to the other side and immersed myself in their culture. But I was afraid to travel to Belarus, a country where, even to this day, free speech is not allowed.

In 2007, after wrestling with the Cold War fears still embedded in me, Mike and I took our first trip to Belarus and Ukraine to reunite with the twins and meet their family of Chernobyl survivors. On that life-changing journey my heart opened fully to the joys, complexities, and healing power of reaching across the divides of culture, language, class, and politics. My vision of motherhood and family expanded. I found my place as an honorary mother and babushka in a four-generation family.

After that trip, I received an invitation to speak to a group about my experience of healing from the wounds of infertility. On the eve of presenting my most vulnerable self in public, fragments of shame bubbled to the surface from somewhere deep inside me. After years of grieving, working with a therapist, and living a life I loved, I had reached the threshold of another giant step beyond the loss of motherhood, one I hadn’t expected.

Knowing shame can survive only when hidden, I rose to the challenge by standing in a spotlight and facing an audience to share the story of my life as a woman without children and my legacy of peacemaking and connecting cultures. That act of courage dispelled the shame and lifted me to a new level of freedom and joy.

Our global family is now over twenty-five years strong and our story continues. The girls are both now mothers, still living in Belarus. War and politics currently prevent us from visiting each other in Belarus, Ukraine, or the US, but the bonds that hold us together are unbreakable.

In May of this year, Maria and Vika traveled with their children, Vika’s husband, their mother Zoya, and their sister and her children to Turkey to meet Mike and me in a country we all could visit. There against the backdrop of the Mediterranean Sea, our relationship deepened further, and our bonds grew even stronger.

We embraced the twins and Zoya with joyous tears. The last time we’d seen Maria’s and Vika’s children they had been babies and toddlers. Now between the ages of eight and twelve, they and their cousins greeted us with big smiles, warm hugs, and instant rapport. In no time, we were communicating with a few words of English, a few words of Russian, hand signals, and translation apps on our cell phones.

Tourists from the United States were rare in the part of Turkey where we stayed. Most were Russian-speaking people. On several occasions, curious Eastern Europeans and Russians asked the Russian-speaking children with us why they were on holiday with Americans; my heart soared when the children replied matter-of-factly that we were their grandmother and grandfather. One Russian woman who asked about the constellation of our family kissed me on the cheek and told us she’d never seen anything so beautiful.

The evening before we parted yet again, my Belarusian family presented me with a journal; embossed on the cover was a tree, and the names of everyone in the family, including Mike and me, were inscribed on the leaves. I felt like a treasured elder. That sentiment grew when our honorary grandchildren asked to hear stories about our global family’s history and their mothers’ trips to the United States as little girls.

Knowing I was exactly where I belonged, living the dream of creating heartfelt connections between cultures, my heart soared.

Have I fully healed from the heartbreak of infertility? I would say yes. My prayers have been answered not as I had pictured but in a deeply satisfying way I couldn’t have planned. Still, that doesn’t mean I never grieve. I do. Sometimes my grief surfaces unexpectedly while talking to friends, watching a movie, people watching, or encountering other triggers. Often I am thankful I don’t have the family obligations, expectations, and heartbreak that comes with raising children and grandchildren. Always, I am thankful for the solitude, freedom, creativity, and travel time my friends with kids and grandchildren miss. And I am grateful to have had the privilege of touching more lives than I ever thought possible, as a therapist, aunt, friend, honorary mother and babushka, and writer.

Zoya’s Gift - Gail McCormick

“an intimate memoir of love and grief that shows how, with willingness and courage, there are many ways to create a family of the heart when a family of the womb is not to be.” - Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women and author of Living the Life Unexpected

“Gail McCormick’s memoir reminds any woman who has yearned for children…there are many ways to ‘mother.’ When one dream ends, an extraordinary life may begin.” - Melanie Notkin, author of Otherhood: Modern Women Finding a New Kind of Happiness