Ode to Aunties

If you’re in the Bay, come see me and Savala Nolan in conversation on Friday! (Remember, her genius here?) Deets on the event here.

Cool news! Have you been wanting to brush up on your public speaking skills and learn more about how to actually get paid to talk about what you love? FRESH Speakers has just launched a version of our FRESH Speakers Academy for individuals. Previously we’ve worked with institutions like Pivotal Ventures, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and others who buy the training for their grantees, but now for the first time, you can sign up solo. Go here to learn more.

I’m excited to be collaborating with the amazing Elissa Strauss on something called the Eldest Daughter Club: A 90-minute live exploration of the all too human complexities of being THE. ONE. WHO. CARES. Join us!

Thank you so much to this community of readers, so many of you who I know are just the kind of aunties today’s reflection describes! Your subscriptions are the “safety net” of this little Substack oasis of meaning-making and weird, small projects. Thank you thank you.

There is so much talk about attachment these days. And as a mom in the midlife of both life life, but also acute parenting life (my girls are 9 and 12), I am more and more aware of what a beauty and burden the idea really is. Of course I want my girls to be “securely attached” to me, but I also crave that they develop real, deep exhale, safe-and-somatic-level attachment with others. Namely aunties.

I remember the first time that Allison came over to be with my oldest daughter Maya while my husband and I went out to dinner. Maya was a toddler, determined to wear her long-sleeve star dress and carry her shabby bunny at all times. She was sort of an odd mix of presidential and shy. Allison knew the way to her heart. She walked in the door with one perfect cupcake with purple frosting in a tiny Tupperware. Maya’s favorite color was purple. The rest of the night was parentless heaven for Maya–something she didn’t (and we didn’t) know was possible up til then.

Allison has somehow never been a try-hard with the girls, but always shown up for them in the most attuned, generous ways. Last weekend, she came over and dyed the end of Maya’s long blonde hair a deep red velvet color. Last summer, she had my younger daughter, Stella, for a week-long sleepover while Stella attended a theater camp right near her house, and even threw a perfect 9th birthday party for her with a giant T-bone steak for our carnivore (the rest of us are vegetarians). She knows how to tease the girls when they’re being whiney and praise them genuinely when they’ve done something cool.

Somehow that one purple-frosted cupcake has come to symbolize something very deep and comforting for me: an auntie safety net.

Sure, my husband and I will strive to always be there for our girls in the ways we know how, but there are a lot of ways we don’t know, that we can’t embody. Their aunties are doctors, artists, and corporate executives. They are queer, straight, married, single, and in open relationships, have kids and don’t have kids. Some love to cook, some would prefer a protein bar to an elaborate meal. Some think the best thing in the world is a dog walk at sunset, others are deathly afraid of dogs and would prefer a snuggle on the couch watching a reality show. We want all of these ways of being human to be legible to them.

My husband and I are also sometimes too close to see the girls accurately or without all the projections and attachment that seem to be an occupational hazard of parenting. Sometimes I’ll tell one of their aunties a story about my girls and they’ll say the equivalent of, “slow your roll…I’m not sure that’s exactly what’s going on,” and make me take a step back from my too simple story. Sometimes they’ll do the opposite, reminding me of a fundamental truth I’ve learned about my girl and encouraging me to humble myself in the face of that truth. Turns out parents think we have more control than we do much of the time, and aunties have the spaciousness to see that lovingly.

The girls are rich in aunties, actually. Auntie A, as they call Anna, folds us into her Brooklyn apartment when we visit, spoils the girls with snacks, and indulges all of Stella’s requests for her to say particular words in her British accent. Erin knows her way around a Sephora (my personal hell) and Sarah not only took Maya on a shopping spree, but made a social story before the kids had to get their covid vaccinations for the first time (very helpful to have a fashionable child psychologist for an auntie, I’m telling you).

Neela, who is a pediatric palliative oncologist, and Stella go on dates to the movies. Neela lets Stella get as much candy as she wants–no limits–and they giggle and talk about their shared love of dogs. When I explained to Neela that I had made a spreadsheet of all the considerations as we look towards getting a dog of our own, trying to impress her with my bullet points and thorough research, she smiled conspiratorially at Stella and said, “That’s great, but you know what Stella is thinking?”

“What?” I asked.

Neela shouted, “What do we want? A DOG! When do we want it? YESTERDAY!”

Stella fell on the floor laughing with the joy of being really seen by an auntie.

After their last date, Neela texted me, “Thanks for letting me borrow your oxytocin machine.” Neela hangs out with a lot of sick kids. Turns out her auntie duties are pretty healing for her, too.

Maya also has Wendy, who takes her on the weirdest, most perfect auntie dates. Last time it was a pedicure, cemetery combo. They got their toenails done and then went to do rubbings of the cool gravestones at the local cemetery. Usually the agenda is aesthetics and art with these two fierce and visionary Scorpios.

And would you believe these girls have aunties by marriage, too!? Stella’s godmother, Megan, has always been home to her–like a second mom when we are with her giant paternal side in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When Stella stumbles out of the cousin pile (there are 17 kids, ages 4 to 18), Megan knows just which snacks to feed her and how to snuggle her if she gets hurt. My brother’s wife, Mary, created an auntie foraging badge for Stella when she got jealous that her big sister was old enough to be in Scouts. Mary and Maya have a shared love of Alice and Wonderland and poetry, which they nurture through little gifts to one another.

When I think about this wide web of brilliant, generous women, the world doesn’t scare me as much. Aunties don’t make the polycrisis disappear, but they make the power of women and their ways of relating and creating outside the lines of nuclear family legible. They embody the magic of collective care. I imagine my girls, moving through the world–maybe Maya is in film school in New York and Stella is performing at Second City in Chicago–and both are walking with the stride of women who have been well loved by their parents, sure, but also by a wide variety of aunties.

Allison has a daughter now too: my Ida bean. Strangely similar to Maya in her mix of presidential and shy, I strive to be a safety net for her, too. She’s in kindergarten now, obsessed with all things animal and has a way of wearing headbands that makes her look like the most tiny, glamorous flapper girl. I’ve got her back. Forever and ever. It’s a calling and a joy.

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Share this piece with the amazing auntie in your kid’s life! Or someone who you have an auntie crush on for your kids! (Ohhhhh “auntie crush” might need to be a whole thing, right?)

And if you’re wondering… “Dang, how did Courtney hoodwink all these gorgeous, brilliant women into hanging out with her kids?” here are some ideas for further reading from the fantastic newsletter The Auntie Bulletin: How Aunties and Families Can Find Each Other and The Nuclear Family is a Failed Experiment. Lisa Sibbett offers a wealth of reflection and pragmatic communitarianism that never fails to inspire me. Subscribe today!