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My name is Kitty Chambliss. I am an advocate for the choice for all human beings to have the option to live traditional or alternative lifestyles if they so choose, without discrimination. I myself live an alternative lifestyle in that I live an ethically non-monogamous life. I am a married, polyamorous woman who lives with both her husband of eight years and her boyfriend of four years. It is an unusual, charming and often times challenging choice. But for me, it has been less of a choice, and more a statement about who I am inside.

Polyamory = having multiple, loving, possibly sexual relationships at the same time, with everyone’s consent and knowledge.

I came to the polyamorous lifestyle somewhat by accident, but looking back, I was always polyamorous but did not know this lifestyle was available to me. I grew up in a Catholic school setting being taught that sex was dirty and only for procreation, that masturbation was strictly forbidden, and that homosexuals were sexual deviants and therefore “going to hell.” I have spent much of my adult life undoing the damage that was done by this teaching in my formative years. It wasn’t until high school and college that I really started to question these teachings as not fitting my belief system and who I was becoming.

I considered myself a “cheating serial monogamist” for much of my dating life in my twenties and beyond, and eventually developed a distaste for the lies, secrecy, and feeling of not being authentic that went along with it. When I met my husband-to-be, we both agreed that our previous NON-ethical non-monogamy (aka “cheating”) was a behavior that we no longer wanted to engage in. We decided to manage our relationship and later our marriage how we saw fit, and not necessarily along the lines of what we felt society dictated that we do. If it felt good and healthy to us, we were going to write our own rules.

Eventually, a good friend introduced me to a book called The Ethical Slut, which is regarded by some as the “bible” of polyamory. I was deeply moved by the writings in this book, and shared it with my husband. It was quite exhilarating! We felt that we had finally found a text that described who we were, who we wanted to be, and how we saw our lives possibly unfolding.

And unfolded they have, and in a very non-traditional way. We tried to lead the traditional life, at least somewhat. Shortly after we were married, my father fell ill to cancer. He passed away months later after many failed surgeries, much heartache, and many, many tears. I was completely devastated. Several years later, we decided to start making a family, to carry on our collective family line. At that point in my life, almost all of my close friends had been married and had young children. We decided maybe it was time to follow the herd. And the thought of seeing my father in our offspring filled me with renewed hope and joy. Sadly and rather tragically for us, we found out that we were infertile. Even a team of doctors and an entire clinic could not figure out how to make me pregnant with our genetic material. And it cost a small fortune just to even get to the point of absolute failure to find all of that out. Again, I was devastated.

Then my mother started to deteriorate from dementia, diabetes, and cancer as well. We spent many months helping care for her, finding her a place to live, selling my childhood home to fund it, all while watching my mother deteriorate until finally, she passed away as well. I had no family above me or below me. No parents. No children.

I needed to heal. Big time. Around this time, I started going to therapy. And around this time, I met my boyfriend. And my healing began. It was a long, slow process…of self-discovery, introspection, confusion, pain, revelation, elation, joy, jealousy, an entire multitude of both emotions and personal growth. I found that by creating my own unusual family, finding love in untraditional places, I was slowly healing myself. Between talking to my therapist, experiencing joy in multiple, loving relationships, my little world was slowly getting better. And little by little, the awful fog of depression, sorrow, and anger was lifting. It did take many years though. Later I found that writing about my experiences: the good, the bad, the ugly, of both infertility and ethical non-monogamy, not only was I helping heal myself, creating my own self-discovery awareness campaign, I was also helping heal and offer much needed advice to others. It was like magic! By helping others, I helped myself, and vice versa. What a bloody miracle!

As I decided to live a more authentic life, I started “coming out” to my close friends and family members one by one. I hoped that they would continue to accept me and love me, even though I was following a very non-traditional path. I was leading quite an unusual life that they may not be able to fully understand, just like they could not fully understand the traumas that I had been through with all of the loss of not only my parents, but my unborn children. Overall, I found some acceptance, definitely love, but not a lot of understanding or the desire to understand. Most people like to change the subject away from both infertility and polyamory. It seems they want to pretend that both do not exist.

Well, I’m here to tell you that not only do they both exist, they will increase to exist. I believe both will be much more prevalent in years to come. Adults are getting married later and later in life, following career paths, and starting families much later, sometimes after their best fertile years have sadly passed. And the divorce rate is still quite high, at about 50 percent of all marriages ending in failure, quite often instigated by one spouse cheating on the other, and the ensuing devastation of that. People don’t understand that there is another way. I’m here to tell them there IS another way, if they decide that it may be right for them and their life.

I have also become an advocate for anti-suicide campaigns. There are droves of LGBT young people who feel they are misunderstood, ridiculed, forgotten, and they can’t cope. Many sadly choose to end their life. Why is there so much intolerance in the world for those that are not like us? Those that are suffering, sometimes from mental illness or being emotionally distraught? Why can’t we learn to help each other more? We NEED each other. That is clear to me now.

I have found my new purpose in life. It is to help my fellow man, regardless of relationship choice, age, family lifestyle, heritage, race, social status, or whatever else separates us from each other. Heck, I want to help animals too. I want more joy and happiness not only in my life, but in the lives of the entire world. Earth would be such a better place every second of every day, if we could all just “show up” with an attitude of generosity and gratitude, and acceptance for one another. Would you like to join me? I hope to walk beside you, and cheer you on.

[Photo credit to Nicolas Raymond]

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