How to live your life by design.
It could have been a night like any other when marketing CEO Kylie Green found herself weaving through the backstreets of downtown New York en route to a dinner party she’d been invited to by an industry colleague.
But what she didn’t know was that she was about to experience one of the most serendipitous encounters of her life and one that would shift the shape of it, forever.
“Don’t look back”. These were Kylie Green’s closing words after sharing her story with us (life-to-date!), whilst demonstrating how we too can design the life we want.
Kylie’s openness and honesty were extremely generous, as she shared details of her journey as a successful business founder, executive leader and solo Mother of one through donor conception. Most definitely a talk we won’t be forgetting anytime soon!
Kylie is one of a new generation of Australian women, edging close to one million, who are balancing the dualistic daily demands that come with being both a working professional and single mother. She’s held an outstanding career having founded, built and sold a successful marketing agency and now heads up two of Australia and New Zealand’s leading activations agencies for a global communication group. Kylie is also part of a rising trend of women who are solo-parents by choice after giving birth to a child through donor conception.
“I had always wanted a family but during my younger years I was so focused on my career that I didn’t have time to even think about relationships, let alone have a baby!” she recounts, sitting in the living room of her house in Sydney’s bayside where she resides with her three-year-old daughter. “I just never met the right man, and before I knew it, I was almost forty and still single – yet the desire to have a child was alive and deeply burning.”
Insights led Kylie to consider something completely different; an option she had initially dismissed as ever being an opportunity for herself. “At the time, I didn’t know anyone who had ventured down the solo-parenting path through donor conception. It seemed far too complex, difficult and expensive. That’s when I met Maddi – that night at the dinner party in New York. We got along instantly and as we chatted she shared her own experience of having two donor children with her husband after discovering there were medical issues that made them unable to procreate.”
That one conversation became the impetus that transformed Kylie’s entire perspective, “Maddi became my donor conception advocate! She inspired me to believe that having a child of my own was possible.” With a rejuvenated will, Kylie found a Sydney-based fertility clinic offering a donor conception service and took her first step on what was still to be a very long journey. “I was so fortunate to have a family who were incredibly supportive of my decision,” she says, then admitting “but there was still this small hesitation. I was hoping for a miracle that a man I could love and have a child with would appear in my life. I was scared; naturally, I didn’t want to do it alone and was yearning for the easier path.”
Not long after, Kylie got what she had wished for – someone did appear. The possibility of the road most-traveled opened up for her once again. So, she called her clinic to advise them she would retire donor conception to the back shelf – for now. Two years later, after attempting to avoid what was to be unavoidable, Kylie at the age of forty-two realised that the man whom she thought could have been her life-partner and father to her children was, realistically, not the one. “I was not going to compromise my happiness, not even to bring the baby into the world that I wanted to much. Instead, I chose myself.”
The time was now: on a year-long sabbatical having sold her agency, Kylie seized the moment, ran head first towards her fears and picked up at the clinic from where she had left off. What followed was a whirlwind of experiences; from the surreal of sitting in the clinic, digging deep to allow her intuition to guide her as to which donor would be the father of her child from a choice of mostly limited, factual and unidentifiable profiles. To the quaking unknown of what was to come once the procedure delivered her fertilised egg back into her body.
Six months after seriously embarking on her pursuit, Kylie became pregnant. “I slowly began telling my wider circle of family and friends, most of whom from I’d kept my experience private. Of course, there were mixed reactions – but for the most part, the people around me were amazingly loving, supportive and proud.”
Her pregnancy was like any other woman’s except with a noticeable difference. There was no partner’s hand to grab a hold of and place on her stomach to share those twinkling moments when her baby kicked at night. There was no one to spend hours with pillow-talking around names and nursery colour options.
It was truly a solo flight into the unknown and, like any pioneering adventure, one that was remarkably brave. Like all blessings of this nature, nine months later in January 2012, Kylie gave birth to a beautiful, strong, blue-eyed daughter. Since becoming a solo-parent, Kylie has mentored five women who, for personal and individual reasons, have explored the option of donor conception for their own lives. “What I always say to women first is, one: I don’t know it all, and two: every person’s experience is unique – what happened for me, might not happen for someone else,” she explains.
“I try to be as honest as I can. There are many misconceptions about the process, particularly pertaining to the upfront financial cost which is not as high as most people assume. I don’t attempt to sugarcoat the tougher moments. This is not the way for everyone, and I see my role as providing women with as much information as I can give so they can go and make the decision that is right for them.”
Like any single parent, the persistent question from anyone on the exterior is: how does she manage the tricky balance between maintaining a career and raising a child? “It’s challenging,” she replies, “but with super organisation, a fantastic support network – with both a great family and team around me who I can rely on -we seem to manage it all. I always say to people, if I can do it anyone can.”
“It has been the hardest, staggering, amazing, and most rewarding experience of my life,” she says, amongst a house sprinkled with photo frames and selfies of a Mother-and-Daughter team traveling through the world by each other’s sides. “There are no regrets – I love my daughter and I love our life together. It’s paradoxical because, in one way, I wish I had never hesitated, but in another, I believe too much in the concept of perfect timing. She was meant to come to me, exactly at the moment she came to me”.
For some of the women who Kylie has mentored, they discovered through the raw recount of her own solo-journey that donor conception was not the way for them. For three others, they have all since given birth to their own healthy donor children and now proudly call themselves solo-parents. “I understand so well the gravity it can have on someone when you share your story with them. I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had never met Maddi that night in New York and if she had never been so courageous to open up the interiors of her life to practically a stranger!”
So, I ask Kylie: was it empty coincidence, a dose of Beginner’s Luck, a fated meet-cute, or just, simply, the magic of the unexplainable?
“Well, I’ll never forget the moment I asked Maddi for her business card and contact details before we left the restaurant that night. She handed over a small, white card with no name or number, except for a single quote on the underside that read:‘Expect a Miracle’.
That card has been pinned to my vision board ever since. Maddi and I are still friends today, in fact, recently we caught up for a Mother and Daughter lunch with our two girls and recalled that very moment, giggling in amazement. She made me believe that a miracle could happen,” Kylie says smiling, “and that’s exactly what my daughter is – an absolute miracle.”
Kylie’s generosity continues… read on for the full story behind her keynote ‘Life By Design’. Enjoy!
