At GWK Academy, we’re thrilled to welcome Marea Goodman (they/them) as our newest family-building coach, specializing in helping people with uteruses navigate their journey to parenthood. A midwife, author, parent, and passionate advocate for queer family creation, Marea brings a wealth of lived experience, professional expertise, and heart to their coaching work.

Marea’s own family-building journey began when they were 27 and partnered with someone already raising a seven-year-old and preparing to welcome a second child as a solo parent. Some years later, Marea conceived using the same sperm donor their partner had chosen, creating a beautifully blended family. Later, both Marea and their partner legally adopted each other’s children. Though the couple eventually separated, they continue to co-parent, building a supportive, evolving family structure for their kids.

For Marea, the decision to pursue a biological path to parenthood was deeply personal. Even as a child, they knew they wanted to be a parent. After attending their first birth in 2011, Marea was drawn into the world of midwifery. “I knew I wanted to experience pregnancy and birth in my own body,” they explain. “It’s such a profoundly powerful and connective experience, and I feel so privileged that I got to do it.”

Midwifery, for Marea, has always been about affirming body autonomy and empowering individuals to trust their own strength. After supporting hundreds of families through home births, they transitioned to focus on fertility coaching and at-home IUI, bringing the same sense of empowerment and trust into this next phase of their career.

Seeing a deep need for community during the vulnerable phases of conception, pregnancy, and early parenthood, Marea co-founded the PregnantTogether community. They realized, while writing Baby Making for Everybody: Fertility and Family Building for LGBTQ+ and Solo Parents (which they co-authored), just how often queer and solo parents feel isolated during family-building. PregnantTogether was created to offer a space where queer parents-to-be can find support, resources, and connection at every stage of their journey. “We so rarely see our experiences and families reflected in the mainstream world,” Marea notes. “PregnantTogether is about showing people that they aren’t alone.”

As a GWK Academy coach, Marea hopes to help parents-to-be simplify and clarify the family-building process. “There’s a general lack of access to info on how to grow a queer family,” they say. “Through my work with GWK Academy, I hope to guide people to the help them simplify their choices so that their conception journeys require less time, money, and emotional energy.”

Marea also brings a unique sensitivity to the emotional realities of queer family-building. “Grief is part of this process,” they explain. “People grieve not being able to create a child with someone they love without outside support, the high costs, fertility challenges, and even the fact that we can’t protect our kids from the world. When we normalize that grief is part of this process, it helps people set realistic expectations and not blame themselves when things don’t go as planned.”

Above all, Marea encourages those on the path to parenthood to move through it with compassion for themselves: “I encourage my clients to be gentle with themselves through the many ups and downs that this process provides.”

We are so honored to have Marea joining the GWK Academy team, and we know they will be an incredible resource to those pursuing parenthood.

All photos and feature image by epli: https://www.epliphotography.com/