Jonathan and Nikyta

Hello! We are Jonathan and Nikyta. Thanks for taking the time to learn a bit more about us.

We live on a small, rural island in Western Washington. We are deeply connected to our home, our community, and our friends and family. It is an amazing place to live that we hope to share one day with our child and their birth parents.

We were married in 2018 and share many values in our relationship: A focus on love, kindness, equity, respect, environmental stewardship and especially play! Nikyta creates many events on our island, leads parades, dances, and performances and Jonathan is never afraid to jump into costume and join in!

We feel really lucky to have Jonathan’s mother living in the unit below us and Nikyta’s chosen father close by on the same island. Jonathan’s sister and her children live near-by as well! We love this place for the many opportunities to be outside in nature, but also the inside time spent with loving friends and family.

Jonathan moved to the Northwest as a teenager. He is a Hospice Social Worker, which is a challenging profession but deeply meaningful to him. Jonathan likes to bake his own bread and cook, but also enjoys travel and the outdoors.

Nikyta is an artist and creates in many different ways. She worked in expressive arts with struggling kids for many years and founded two different programs for unhoused teens. She has a lifelong yoga practice, having taught yoga for over twenty years to all kinds of diverse folks ranging from little kids to elders, even some celebrities. Now she runs creative, community programs at our local Library and is also an environmental educator.

We chose our island home as a place to live not only because we love it, but because of the amazing support we will have through our friends and family. We hope our child will grow to share our love of the beautiful Pacific Northwest, but also see the world around them and want to protect it. We want our child to have many different viewpoints in life and to care about the people around them. We believe  we will have done a good job if they know they always have our love and support, so they can take chances and learn from challenges.

For so many reasons, one of the most important parts of our child’s life will be their ongoing connection with their birth families. That connection will help them understand their past and will always be a part of their future. Some things we simply cannot know or express as well as birth parents can, and we will need that help in raising this amazing human!

It is our hope that our child’s birth parents will be an extension of our own family. Our holidays might be a bit more complicated, but no less joyous.

Thank you for taking the time to read about us.