Looking back, Stokes admits it took time for her to accept the situation after Chelsea's first daughter was born, especially since Stokes didn't have a daughter of her own at the time.
To Tia Stokes, family is everything, but she'll be the first to tell you that family looks a little different for everyone.
In recent years, Stokes has made her name on social media as a staunch advocate for hope and positivity. She initially went viral while undergoing chemotherapy for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Despite the toll it took on her body, she danced every day of her treatment. The ritual earned Stokes, 40, a following of over 1 million Instagram followers and 2.6 million on TikTok.
Though she built her online community documenting her cancer journey, Stokes has also consistently posted broader lifestyle content. She regularly opens up about raising her five kids and about her personal life, including some of the more complex aspects of her background.
While Stokes was still in treatment, she introduced her followers to her friend, Chelsea, and Chelsea's daughters Giselle and Odette, both of whom she welcomed through IVF using eggs donated by Stokes.
Today, Giselle is 9 years old and Odette is 7, and Stokes compares her relationship with them to that of an aunt with her nieces. Her own kids -- sons Major, 17, Legend, 15, Maze, 12, Tazz, 8, and daughter Rose, 6 -- call Chelsea's children their "cousins," though the parents have never lied about the biological facts.
"We've always been open with it," Stokes tells PEOPLE. "It's so funny, the other day my daughter was like, 'Mom, Giselle was saying that she's my half-sister. Is that true?' We've talked about it before, but kids, they forget. I was like, 'Yeah, Rose. She is.' So it's cool."
Chelsea and Stokes’ relationship goes way back, years before viral fame and her AML diagnosis in April 2020. They were on the same dance team, and Stokes offered friendly support for Chelsea while she underwent an extremely difficult IVF process. Eventually, her doctors said that she and her husband needed to look for an egg donor, and when Stokes heard the news, she offered herself.
“I just felt bad. Your heart just feels bad. I had two kids at the time and I wanted to give her the gift of motherhood,” she says. At the time, she only had one concern to voice to Chelsea, and it hardly struck a nerve.
“I was like, ‘Well, just know if it works, you’re going to have brown babies.’ She was like, ‘Oh, please. Yes, I want.’” Stokes recalls. “So now she has two little girls that look like me.”
Once Giselle arrived in May 2016, Stokes’ feelings on the matter shifted slightly. She went from being “gung-ho to help” to realizing she might not have thoroughly thought it through. She didn’t regret donating her eggs, but she admits it was difficult to process the reality of the situation.
“There was a time where it was hard for me to see pictures or videos of Giselle with Chelsea, because she also looked a lot like me ... and I didn’t have a little girl of my own at the time,” says Stokes, who had three sons at the time when Giselle was born.
“A part of me was like, ‘Oh my gosh, maybe that was my daughter,’” she adds. “I think it was guilt. It wasn’t envy. I wasn’t envious. I just felt bad.”
It took time for Stokes to let everything sink in and come back around to appreciate what she had done for Chelsea. The TikTok star says she made an active effort to "disconnect" herself from Giselle's birth and "really dive into the why behind it." She wanted Chelsea to be a mother; that was the plan the entire time, and eventually it was Stokes' husband Andy who drove home that truth for her.
"I remember we were sitting in my kitchen and I was struggling with it like, 'Oh my gosh, did I give my kids away?'" she explains. "My husband was like, 'Tia, those were never your kids. Those were always her kids. You were just the vessel and just the tool to help her have a family.'"
He reminded her, "Families all are built differently; that's God's plan," as Stokes recounts it nearly a decade later. "And when he said that to me, the whole weight just lifted. The physical body is just that; those spirits were always hers."
Since Stokes shared that part of her story online, she has opened herself up to comments reminiscent of the ones she used to hurl at herself. Some people accuse her of giving away her children. However, she treats that type of negativity the same way she does all criticism aimed her way regarding everything she shares: if her messages bring some small measure of good then that renders the rest inconsequential.
"If I can help [one person], then that's enough," she explains. "And that's the same thing with Chelsea. We felt that this story was very important to people that are struggling with IVF or struggling to have a family or feel loss of hope that don't have that and can't see it."
Stokes continues: "When I share -- whether it's my cancer story or family or kids or donating my eggs -- it's because I want people to have that perspective like: 'Okay it can still be there but it's going to be different; I can still have that but my road's going to be just a little different and that's great too.'"