How Unexpected Motherhood Brought Clarity to Gia Warren’s Life

Gia Warren always tells people “When God writes my book, it’s probably going to be a comedy.” Everything Gia said she would never do and never be, that’s exactly what she’s become.

“I’ve never been with a man before,” Gia explained.  “Didn’t want to hold kids. But at 38, I woke up a mother.” 

Gia is the family fixer. And four years ago, her first cousin contacted her with an issue. Her sister, Gia’s other cousin, was going to give birth and the baby was in danger of becoming a ward of the state. Gia sprang into action. The intention was for her cousin’s sister to take the child but something fell through. She contacted Gia in another panic. After some back and forth with the system, someone finally asked Gia, “You qualify. Do you want a baby?”

As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, there is often talk about allyship. While Gia never intended on becoming a parent, she had to question what allyship in her own family might be.

“If I say no to this, knowing that I was in a position to act, what does that look like for us?” Gia asked herself. 

She decided to take the child. 

“It’s been me and Ishayah rocking this thing on out,” she explained. “The thing about it is, I’m so happy it happened. My life has never looked as purposeful. I really don’t know what I was doing for that first half of my life, now that I have someone to be responsible for.”

Gia knew from the onset that she needed to ensure that she did everything in her power to prepare herself and her environment to give Ishayah a head start. That has meant moving with intention in every aspect of her life. 

“Even her Halloween costumes are intentional,” Gia says. “Our theme is the sky is the limit. One year she was an astronaut, another year she was Amelia Earhart. It has to be limitless, boundary-less except for the ones she establishes for herself.”

While Gia has been taking care of Ishayah, the now four-year-old little girl has been Gia’s lucky charm. Her presence brought a clarity to her life she hadn’t experienced before. 

She reevaluated the way she showed up at work, shifting her schedule and finding a new job that honored her new role as a mother.  The people she allowed in her life romantically changed as well. 

“Once she got here, I realized I had been slumming it,” Gia said. “I had to ask my therapist, why is it when I look back–the choices that I made were ok for me but wouldn’t be okay for my life with her? It’s a good thing I had a lot of activity before she showed up. I became very protective of what I allowed in my household.”

Being Ishayah’s mother, Gia’s learned a few things about herself as well. 

“I didn’t do hair,” Gia said. “And she has hair! She’s a girl. I don’t wear girl clothes. It just looks really good figuring it all out even though it’s been chaos behind the scenes.”

Like all of us, our identities contribute to the type of parent we’ll be. For Gia, those identities are queer, Black and woman. 

“It’s my intersections that are informing who I am as a parent,” she explained. “I had to battle how I was going to live within my identity while remaining anchored to my spirituality. That has informed it. It’s just something that was. My parents told me I could be and do whatever I wanted to be so I chose to do me. My queerness speaks more to the spirituality of all of this than anything else. I just woke up a mom and because of how crazy that is, who else but God?”

Through this unorthodox road to motherhood, Gia has learned or relearned that she was born equipped for the life she’s currently living and whatever it becomes in the future. 

“The beauty of who we are as human beings is we learn different things along the way but we’re all born with everything it is that we need to be exactly who it is that we’re supposed to be,” Gia said. “All I need is to figure out how to keep unlocking all that I have within.”

Read a note Gia wrote to Ishayah below. 

My dearest Ishayah,

I thank you for being. Without your existence, I may have never come to truly know my own. I lived a concept of depreciation, unaware that my life was waiting—for you. I have never loved anything or anyone as much as I love you. Now there is no greater purpose than the honor of embarking on this motherhood journey—with you. Today, I am “Mommy” and it is my hope that in each of our tomorrows I have lived up to every idea you have of who that person should be. I am intoxicated by the joy and fullness you have brought to my life. It is my prayer that you become in purpose and in presence the kind of greatness my mind holds no capacity to fathom.

Still, my love, this world we have crafted for you is not always what it seems. It is my full intention to spare your realization of this for as long as I can.

At the point in which you discover it as the rest of us have, please anchor yourself to Mommy’s five pillars:

1. Believe in every audacious ambition of your mind. It’s the purest connection to God.

2. Speak life into every breath you take. It will revitalize stale air and purify your soul and the souls of others.

3. Know thyself. By gift you are black, by gender you are woman, by geography you are African American, and by GOD! all of it makes you great. A divinely designed convergence of power. Never let this world define you.

4. Ignore the mirror’s myth. Beauty is not in what you see. It is in the grace and intellect of who you are and the courage and empathy of what you do.

5. Don’t be good. Good is to join, fit, or conform. It is prescriptive, perceptive, performative and too often defined by those who benefit from your silence. You are not here to conform and perform. You are here to transform. Get into “good” trouble by positively disrupting every space you enter.

I believe you have been here before but not in the sense of reincarnation. In the sense that you have come here in other generations and are here to transfuse who we as a family are truly meant to be. 

If ever you are unsure of your footing, come back to this letter. Come back to me. You are not alone. Never have been and never will be.

With all the love I have ever had to give,

Mommy