Love Makes A Family: Black LGBTQ Couples On Their Journey To Parenthood
A decade ago lesbian moms Juana Mendenhall, 44, and Angel Mendenhall, 41, were just writing their love story. They’d both ended long-term relationships, and Angel, a flight attendant based in Ft. Lauderdale was living her best life on the beach and getting paid to travel—motherhood and a life in Atlanta with Juana, a scientist and college professor was not on her to-do list. In fact, on their first date, Angel says she wasted no time making one thing clear to the beautiful stranger sitting across from her at a Midtown Thai restaurant: “I hope you know, I will never move to Atlanta because I will never commute again.”
Angel was serious, but so was Juana. If Angel was unwilling to move, then Juana would have to, and according to Angel, she “talked a good game.”
“She was like, ‘oh yes, I'm willing to move,’” Angel sarcastically recalls. “She totally sold me, right?”
“I knew when I saw her, I was like, that's my wife, no doubt,” Juana says.
Through some matchmaking by a family friend that led to a flurry of text messages between the two, Angel flew into Atlanta to be greeted curbside at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport for a lunch date in the city with Juana that would change their lives.
“We were inseparable from that day. It was full speed ahead,” says Juana. “Normally in the past, you would meet someone, and you'd be like, we gotta take it slow…we’ve gotta wait 90 days. And with her, it was just like hand in glove. It was no drama, it fit.”
“Normally in the past, you would meet someone, and you’d be like, we gotta take it slow…we’ve gotta wait 90 days. And with her, it was just like hand in glove. It was no drama, it fit.”
The same couldn’t be said for Angel’s living situation with her roommate, which had run its course, providing Juana with an opportunity six months into their relationship to extend an invitation to Angel to move into her Atlanta home. But besides the Atlanta address, there was another hurdle Juana would have to cross before the future she pictured with Angel on their first date became a reality.
“I had another disclaimer that I would never live with anybody until we were married or engaged to be married,” says Angel.
But rules are written to be broken, right? So Angel broke her rule, packed up her old life in Ft. Lauderdale, and boarded a flight to start a new chapter with Juana in Atlanta.
“I took the latest flight back. I was funky, in my uniform, I hadn’t showered and I was starving,” recalls Angel. “She'd made dinner, I sat on the couch, and I didn't even know what she was saying. I'm just shoveling food in my mouth, and I wasn't even paying attention. Then all of a sudden she got on one knee. And I was like, wait, what are you saying? She said, ‘I want to do this right. We discussed from the very beginning of our relationship that if you were ever going to move in here, we were going to be engaged or we're going to be married, and I'm going to do it right,” Angel recalls Juana saying. “Will you marry me?”
In a state of shock, Angel says, “I did not see it coming, honey.”
And she wouldn’t be the only person in her future circle to be blindsided by love.
Becoming Broussard-Cormier
Nearly 600 miles away from Atlanta in Lafayette, Louisiana, and years before Angel and Juana’s paths would cross, Derek Broussard-Cormier, 36, a business analyst, and Donnie Broussard-Cormier, a realtor, were friends working in the same telecommunications office with a mutual attraction that demanded they operate outside the friend zone, but there was one problem—Donnie was already attached.
“We were only friends at the time, but our friendship felt like it was turning into something else,” says Donnie. “So we took a step back from the friendship so that I could deal with the relationship that I was in with someone else.”
“I’m a one guy type of person,” says Derek. “I don’t want to get in the mix and mingle of what you’ve got going on. It's me or that’s it,” he says, which resulted in Derek temporarily ceasing communication with Donnie while he dissolved the relationship he was in.
“We worked in separate parts of the building. And I was missing him terribly,” says Donnie. Even though we said we couldn't be friends anymore. And so, I picked up the phone because I was going to call him, and he was calling me at the same time. At that point, we knew our emotions were on another level.”
It was also during this time that Donnie says it became clear that his relationship was dead and no longer serving him. So with the promise of a future with Derek, he reevaluated his relationship.
“What are you going to do? You can potentially miss out on an opportunity to experience something with someone who makes your heart skip a beat, who makes you excited when you see the phone ring, who makes you feel loved,” Donnie says.
He chose Derek. And with both men expressing interest in experiencing life outside of their small Louisiana hometowns, the couple took off for New York City, however, their residency was short-lived.
“What are you going to do? You can potentially miss out on an opportunity to experience something with someone who makes your heart skip a beat, who makes you excited when you see the phone ring, who makes you feel loved.”
“We wanted to start building our lives together, and we just didn't want to do that in New York. We didn't want to raise a kid and we also didn't want to buy real estate in New York,” says Donnie.
“We had that conversation before we initially started dating, that [children] was in the plan,” says Derek. “We just didn't know how it was going to happen.”
But with the couple’s move to Atlanta in 2007, the roadmap for their future as parents and spouses became clear despite marriage equality being legal in fewer than half a dozen states prior to the 2015 Supreme Court ruling legalizing marriage for gay and lesbian couples nationwide.
After a romantic dinner inside the restaurant at Atlanta’s Intercontinental Hotel, Donnie popped the question.
“We were leaving the hotel and then I turned to him. I said, do you really want to leave? And he said, 'What do you mean? Do I really want to leave?' Then I told him, let's go upstairs,” says Donnie. “I’d already booked a room, and I had one of my friends come earlier in the day and put candles and roses in the room.”
A fan of boots, Donnie says he gifted his soon-to-be fiancé a new pair with an engagement ring inside.
"I can't tell you what he said. It was a blur," says Derek.
Donnie tells The Reckoning that he “never thought he would get married.”
“It just never crossed my mind. But I did know that after being with Derek for some time that I could definitely marry him,” he says.
“And I knew I was getting married,” says Derek. “ Period.”
However, their soon-to-be friends, Angel and Juana, would beat them down the aisle in 2012, a year before Derek and Donnie officially tied the knot.
Love Makes A Family
“We just decided that we were going to get married and we were going to New York, says Juana.
“And we weren’t going to tell anybody because we didn’t want anybody’s opinions,” Angel says. “We just eloped. We spent the day in New York, got married, and had a great time. And then after we got married, a couple of months later, we said we were engaged to our families and we had our wedding ceremony on our one-year anniversary. And that's when they found out we'd already been married for a year.”
Angel and Juana tell The Reckoning that their families “came in droves” to the ceremony and have continued to be supportive of their union.
“People that we didn't think were going to support us, they did,” says Juana. “One of my cousins told me at one point he didn't support gay marriage, ‘but seeing you guys’ life really changed my opinion on gay marriage and same-sex couples.’”
But would they support two women raising children together? Angel and Juana would soon find out after starting IVF treatments in 2013.
“They put two embryos in and one took, and that's how we got our son Blake and then we froze the rest,” says Juana.
“We were on the borderline of whether we were going to have the second one or not,” says Angel. “So we were giving it one last try, because I was like, I am not gonna be 40 years old, rocking a baby bump.”
“People that we didn’t think were going to support us, they did. One of my cousins told me at one point he didn’t support gay marriage, ‘but seeing you guys’ life really changed my opinion on gay marriage and same-sex couples.’”
Angel tells The Reckoning that she took a home pregnancy test that came back negative, which resulted in her resuming life as normal.
“It wasn't meant to be. We have our son. It's great. We went to a quinceanera, honey. And I had a great time. I was doing tequila shots,” she says.
“And then Monday came. I got the blood work done. We were at the bar having a beer and the doctor called and I was like, yeah, I already know it didn't work. It's okay. And he said, ‘well, why would you think that?’”
“Now I see her eyes water up and she pushes her cup away. It was a positive pregnancy test, says Juana. “And now we have our daughter Layla. We named both of our kids within the first few months of us meeting.”
While Angel and Juana’s love now included two babies, Derek and Donnie had already started the open adoption process in 2010 that expanded their family to include their son, Dax, which delayed their trip down the aisle.
“We did some research and we understood that adoption is more expensive than a wedding. So we said, let's do the most expensive thing first,” says Derek. “We'll do the wedding after that. So that's what ended up happening. We were the only gay Black men out of hundreds of couples [being considered by potential birth mothers]. So we kind of stuck out,” he says.
“Which we found out from our birth mother is the reason she chose us,” says Donnie. "It's a process. And probably the most strenuous part of the process is when you're trying to match with a birth mother, because you can match and unmatch, and you can get scammed. We were scammed a couple of times, even though the particular agency we were working with was great and they caught it. But just that process of matching and unmatching, it can be heart wrenching and traumatic,” he says.
Now eight years old, Derek and Donnie tell The Reckoning that Dax “stole the show” in their family upon his arrival and prompted Derek’s mother to move to Atlanta to be closer to her grandson.
“Three years ago she decided to leave Louisiana and move here. And now she lives seven minutes down the street. So he spends almost every weekend with her and she spoils him like crazy,” says Derek.
FCO Parents
Dax’s grandmother is just one source of love and support that he, along with his friends Blake and Layla, enjoys. “FCO Parents,” an offshoot of the popular Facebook group, “For Couples Only,” created by Atlanta residents Jerome Wilson and Cass Carr to provide support and community for Black LGBTQ couples, expanded its mission in recent years to include gay and lesbian families. The group has proven itself to be invaluable for both couples and is where their paths first crossed.
“I think one blessing of FCO has been the community support. And again, just being our authentic selves, we have organically bonded with a lot of the couples, Derek and Donnie is one,” says Juana.
“As the kids get older, I think it's good for them to be around other children that have same-sex parents,” says Angel. “For them to be around other kids that are just like them, that's comforting for them too. And it gives them emotional support, like, ‘Oh, I'm not the only kid that has two moms or two dads,’ it's good for them as well.”
“The trips that we get to take together as a family, and watching our kids see other families like theirs, I think it's just worth its weight in gold,” says Donnie.
“I cast no judgment on you for the family that you have and that you want to put together, just don’t cast any judgment on mine.”
And to the critics that say same-sex couples shouldn’t raise children, the couples had this to say: “I like to remind people that there are single moms out there that have raised children that didn't have a man in their life and they did a fantastic job. It’s the same concept. You reach out to your support system,” says Angel.
“Fall in love with someone and have a family in whatever way that works for you. And that’s just the bottom line,” says Derek.
“I cast no judgment on you for the family that you have and that you want to put together, just don't cast any judgment on mine,” says Donnie. "We'll do us, you do you, and if anybody tries to infringe on what you’ve got going on, I'll stand up and say something about it because that's your choice, that's your right. And I would expect you to do the same for me.”
