Mara and Jeremy

Hi, we’re Mara and Jeremy, and Dyna. We live in Portland, Oregon, where Mara is a People Ops Manager for a creative agency, Jeremy is an IT technician for a nonprofit organization, and Dyna is a cat.

We’ve been together for about 17 years, having both moved to Oregon from southern Maine separately, and then reconnected here in Portland.

The idea of becoming parents via open adoption is appealing because to us family and community are inseparable; two facets of the human condition. We love the idea of a large extended family loving and caring for a child, who is supported in exploring their relationship and history with their birth family. We both have strong, positive relationships with our existing family, and also love the idea of sharing that. We both have pretty progressive ideas about parenthood, with no rigid preconceptions about raising a child in a particular religious or political tradition, or assuming that they would follow in our footsteps in terms of career or interests. In that sense, we are just along for the ride. That said, we both highly value empathy and social justice and would always do our best to raise a child in light of these values.

We initially bonded over realizing we shared a similar absurdist sense of humor, and we share a pretty laid-back and positive general affect. We’re both very much on the same page as far as how we treat each other – kindness and the benefit of the doubt are our prime directives, and when we disagree about something it’s important to us to work it out with love and mutual respect.

Jeremy: I work in technology, which I moved into sideways after mostly studying biology and education. Helping people in a nonprofit environment solve their problems gives me a lot of the same job satisfaction that my initial forays into science and education did. Outside of my career, I’m a musician and amateur recording engineer, playing multiple instruments and recording other musicians in my community. I dabble in DIY electronics, drawing, and building props for costumes; I love old video games and riding my bike; I enjoy going to and playing local shows, cooking, and keeping up with science and political news.

Mara: I studied art history and graphic design in college, but eventually ended up in people operations in the PDX creative agency world. I’m a fan/critic of all sorts of pop culture, especially from the 1960s. I love drive-in movies, spending time with friends, and trying new vegan recipes. Each summer I visit my family in Maine, enjoying swimming and kayaking at the lake, and I do a lot of casual hikes in Portland’s many parks and wooded areas. I’m a popcorn connoisseur and am constantly trying out new ways to make it. I also love curating playlists, including a yearly mix of deep-cut and obscure Christmas songs that I post online, for which I enjoy creating original cover art. Not least, I’m a die-hard cat person (at this point, we both are) and have volunteered at the cat shelter that Dyna came from.

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Mara and Jeremy