Welcome to the Auntie Collective
The Auntie Bulletin is a twice-weekly newsletter for people who choose to be involved in the lives of kids who aren’t our own. It’s also for the people who love us. Readers include Aunties of all genders, both familial and chosen, as well as parents, foster parents, grandparents, step-parents, godparents, childcare providers, educators, coaches, and anyone else who aims to live a “childful” life – whether or not we have kids of our own.
When you subscribe to, read, comment on, and share The Auntie Bulletin, you are joining the Auntie Collective – indeed, you’re helping seed an Auntie Movement. We have robust and fascinating conversations in our comments threads. For example, check out the abundant wisdom in the comment thread on this one:
In 2025, I’ve got plans for things to get even more participatory around here. Look for lots of opportunities to weigh in, share your experiences, explore challenges, and celebrate joys with the Aunties. It’s really wonderful here — join us!
Building Kinship-Based Communities of Care
Daniel Hunter from Choose Democracy has a great way of thinking about the different roles we can play in building a better future. We can help protect vulnerable people and groups; we can defend civic institutions like schools or departments of public health; we can disrupt unjust policies and disobey unjust laws; and/or we can envision and help to build sustainable alternatives. All of these roles are necessary and important, and they often overlap.
Here at The Auntie Bulletin, though, we’re all in on envisioning and building alternatives. In dominant, mainstream, capitalist societies, Aunties are marginal, rarely-acknowledged figures. But I think we may be carrying the keys to a better world. Those of us who choose to love and build kinship ties with kids who aren’t our own are modeling what it means to build the beloved community. We’re showing the way toward a collectivist future.
About Lisa
I live in a small co-housing community in Seattle with my partner, our friends, and our friends’ kids. Although my partner and I decided not to have children, there are so many kids in our daily life that labels like “childfree” or “childless” just don’t fit. Instead, I’ve started describing my life as “childful.” It is abundant with picture books and art projects and middle school plays, exhortations to pick a snack with protein in it and battles of will over the brushing of teeth. I used to worry that, as I aged, I would no longer have young people in my life. I’m not worried about that anymore.
My writing at The Auntie Bulletin is informed by nearly twenty years of teaching kids and adults, including about a decade teaching adults how to teach kids. I have a Ph.D. in Education and a background in academia that’s proved surprisingly useful for writing a weekly newsletter about kinship.
More Auntie Bulletin Posts to Check Out
