Reader's Digest Australia Dec/Jan 2025

named them all starting with the letter M,” he likes to say. Karen maintains a spreadsheet with the ages, birthdays and interests of a dozen surrogate grandkids ranging in age from 1 to 13. At MeLea’s house, her three boys, ages 2, 4 and 7, are a cyclone of energy, showing off their rock and feather col- lections, playing nonsense songs on a toy guitar, plucking daisies from the yard to present to us. MeLea and Karen swap church gos- sip over glasses of lemonade. They first met through their congregation: When a mutual friend heard about Karen’s forays into the Facebook group, she encouraged Karen to reach out to MeLea, whose mother had died of lung cancer. Their surrogate process was fairly seamless. MeLea had known Kar- en’s youngest biological daughter and had prayed for them when the two became estranged. At the kitchen table, the conversation turns to goats and soap. This year, Kar- en’s goats had a lot of kids, and MeLea asks if she needed to wean them. No, Karen says, the mother goats do that themselves, kicking away their grown-up progeny when they try to nurse. The only exception was Lucy, one of the first two goats she got with her biological daughter, and the mascot for Rapha Farms. “She was the best mom ever,” Karen says. “The other moms would reject their kids, and Lucy would nurse her kids until they didn’t want to nurse anymore.” When we go to leave, MeLea’s boys groan and ask Karen for hugs. They wave dramatically as they hang from the play structure on the front lawn. “They’re so sweet,” Karen says once we’re on the road. She seems filled up by the interaction. Not everyoNe sees this situation as Karen does. WhenMeLea first talked to Karen about becoming a surrogate grandparent, she wanted her sister, Tanya*, to be involved too. Tanya was skeptical—and she wasn’t looking for a new mother. “I don’t view Karen as my mom, because my mom’s dead,” Tanya says. “An arranged marriage is how I view it.” Of course, even among those who willingly join Surrogate Grandparents USA, there are hazards. One prospective grandma from Missouri told me about four failed surrogate families. She’d been ghosted, hit up for money and dumped. Another surrogate grandma had a relationship with two girls that got complicated after their parents split. She didn’t agree with all of the parenting choices but didn’t feel as if she could say anything. The Facebook group also hasn’t given its founder, Donna Skora, all she’d hoped. When I asked about the found- ing date of Surrogate Grandparents USA, Skora knew it off the top of her head: The group is the same age as her grandson, whomshe has never met. Her son and daughter-in-law cut off contact with Skora’s side of the family when he reader ’ s digest 132   December 2025/January 2026 *not her real name was born. Still, she thinks about her grandson daily. The Facebook group is a way to commemorate him, though every login is a reminder of her loss. Skora often sees people come to the group too fresh from the pain of estrangement or loss. “Some people are going through an emotional time, so they want an over- night fix,” she says. “This is not an over- night fix.” Tanya’s take is that it would never be a fix. She thinks Karen and Dave are “super kind,” she says, but she is wary about the other side of the story: “I wish I could sit down with her daughters and be like, ‘What did you see? What did you hear? What was it that broke that relationship for you to the point where you felt like there was no repairing?’” And then there’s the question of what might happen if Karen’s daughters come back into her life. Karen still expresses frustration and sadness about her daughters and keeps up with their whereabouts through mutual friends. Karen’s daughters didn’t want to speak on the record. For her part, Karen considers Tanya part of the surrogate family, patiently waiting for her to come around. Karen has just finished mixing goat’s milk shampoo when Meghan, the fourth surrogate daughter, arrives at the farm with her husband and their 4-year-old son, Owen. Karen wears a shirt that reads “Promoted to Grandma.” Meghan’s light brown hair is pulled back in a tight ponytail. She closes her eyes and takes a deep whiff. “It smells so good in here,” she says. All of us move to Karen’s office upstairs. It’s crowded with supplies and, somehow, more bars of soap. Owen lights up when Karen offers him sam- ples and places each bar one by one into a paper bag. When Meghan and Karen met through the Facebook group in 2023, Karen was in the midst of moving to her farm. Meghan offered to help her and Dave prep their old home for sale. Meghan’s husband is a contrac- tor and didn’t mind lending a hand too. Karen and Dave took them up on it and paid them for their time. Meghan and her husband even came over to the house while Karen and Dave were off on vacation and painted the whole basement. Despite the way she dove headlong into Karen’s life, Meghan had been careful about selecting a surrogate grandparent online. She and her husband have battled substance abuse and were still adjusting to their sober lives. “Since we got clean and moved, we don’t hang out with anybody,” she says. KAREN WEARS A SHIRT THAT READS “PROMOTED TO GRANDMA .” readersdigest.com.au     133 National Interest