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Like many women growing up in Allendale, Kim Bode was raised with a set life plan: go to college, find a husband and have kids.

The west Michigan native recalls feeling like her sole purpose in life was to become a mother. “That's just what everybody did, you know? You just got married, and you had kids,” she said.

She spent her 20s focused on her education and starting her own communications company. By her 30s, she’d become adept at sweeping away questions about when she would have children.

Now, at age 46, she lives in Grand R

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