COMING OUT

Hearing stories of how others have dealt with issues similar to your own may help you strengthen your relationship with your family. This is only the beginning of your journey. PFLAG can connect you with other people and families that have faced and tackled issues similar to your own.

My First PFLAG Meeting
Connie

Hi Cris, It has been a while since I last emailed you. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. I did go to the PFLAG meeting in November. I was so nervous. I looked for you but you had already left.

I parked and found the meeting. But, after the meeting, I knew that I was meant to be there that night.

When I got there, I felt like not going in but it was my good fortune to have a gentleman at the meeting open the door and ask me if I was there for the meeting. He showed me in and told me what to do.

As I looked around for a seat I noticed that the only seats open were in the front. I felt that everyone in the room was looking at me. I could feel every inch of the cold brown metal chair I was sitting in. Every second that I was there I felt like getting up and leaving, but I was in the front. I could not just get up and leave while people were up there talking, then Dolores said we were going to split-up into groups.

I was going to make my escape, but again, someone asked me what number group I was in. We were in the same group so, I just followed everyone into the room and I stayed. Something was at work on me, I wanted to leave but I wanted to stay.

The group meeting started with introductions, as other people were introducing themelves I said to myself, I will just say my name and that's it. I am not going to tell these strangers my problems, but when it was my turn I was so clam. Here I was in a room with a group of white people I did not know and I was telling them more then just my name. The stories that the parents shared were so concerning to me. I felt so sympathetic to what they were going through. As some of them talked, I could see their tears and the struggle they were in. I sat and listened to all of them not saying a word, still not planning to say much more then I had already shared.

Again, someone in the group said that I had not talked yet and asked if there was something I wanted to say. I wanted to say 'No' but then I shared where I was at in accepting my life as a Lesbian. I told then about my family, my culture, religion and me. When I was done I felt such an intense sense of peace. I felt from the other gay people and mostly the parents that I was among friends. Everyone was so consoling, encouraging and supportive. The group meeting ended.

We had a short break and the nights presentation started. When the speaker was done, I almost lost it because one of the mothers in my group came up behind me, gave me a strong shaking hug and said she was proud of me, encouraged me to stay strong, and good luck. As we separated I saw the tears in her eyes, the same tears that were in mine. That night was her first time also and her son had just come out to her. This woman, that I did not know, was proud of me. I have never experienced such overwhelming power to overcome.

I will continue to go to more meetings and educate myself to come out to my family.

I Thank You and PFLAG for being there for me.
Gracias, Connie

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TESTIMONIAL
Barbara Rosof - First Unitarian Universalist Church, 7/99

There's a Chinese curse I'm fond of: May you live in interesting times.

When I was 47, in the space of 6 months, I came out, stopped drinking, published a book, and had a breast biopsy that came up positive. My life was about as interesting as I could tolerate.

Coming out didn't just burst upon me. I've known what I wanted since Tommy Osgood's birthday party in the third grade. That's a story, but for another day.

The story that concerns me this morning is how I stood for four decades between my self and my heart's desire. Because that story is not only my story, nor is it simply a gay story.

Most of us in this meeting house have feared some piece of who we are, or we've despised part of who we come from. Maybe we've recoiled from some aspect of what we wanted, or have had to deny who we've wanted to become. Gays and lesbians do not have a corner on spurning a vital piece of ourselves. We are not the only people with closets.

RuPaul, who should know about such matters, says "We're born naked. All the rest is drag." I had reason to stay in drag.

When I was 11 my father told my brother, my sister, and me that he was divorcing my mother. His words came out of a bright October sky and blew my world apart. He moved away, and he didn't send us any money, and I didn't see him for two years. My mother went to work. In 1957 in my very conventional Ohio town, nobody's parents got divorced, and nobody had a mother who went to work.

What I wanted desperately, from then on was to be normal. If I could just be like everybody else, then maybe I could rebuild the life that my father's leaving had shattered. Through high school and college I worked very hard at being like everyone else.

Problem was, I liked girls the way I was supposed to like boys. Nobody else had that kind of feelings about their field hockey teammate. Other girls at college just liked their friends, and other girls didn't have to work so hard to look enthusiastic about a date.

How could I rebuild the life I'd lost if I was queer? I couldn't, and so I choked off that part of me. Ignored those longings, shoved them into the closet. I didn't notice how much of my heart I shoved in there.

I went to graduate school, and became a respectable married lady, with a handsome home, and a glossy social life and in time, two wonderful daughters. I built a psychotherapy practice, and was Board President of Jewish Family & Children's Services. I got the life I wanted. What I hadn't reckoned was what it would cost me to live in it.

My life felt lukewarm. Always a rehearsal. Waiting for the real thing. It's hard to love your life when your heart isn't part of it.

I'd been several years divorced, closing in on 50, when my life turned into interesting times. All that rainy winter as I worked to finish my book, I stared into the branches of the pepper tree outside my window, and asked myself what I wanted for the next 50 years. The answer was easy. I wanted what I had always wanted, a woman to live with and share my life.

The first coming out is always to yourself. Owning what you've always known, and forbidden yourself to know.

The change has been an amazement. I am free where I hadn't known I was bound. My dealings with everyone, intimates and strangers, are more honest and more consistent. My life flows from a sense of wholeness. Meg said it so well in our responsive reading: once I accepted myself, I was complete.

Please understand; being lesbian is not now, nor has it been, a cakewalk. Not everyone has seen my coming out as cause for celebration. Who I am is deeply uncomfortable for some of the people who love me. What sustains me is my conviction that my coming out has been a transformation of the most profound kind. Claiming my desire, I've reclaimed my heart and opened the path towards wholeness.

I want to invite you to join me in supporting everyone's right to claim all of who they are. Come on the 24th, march [San Diego Pride Parade] with us at Pride, and show your commitment to wholeness your own and your brothers' and your sisters.' I'll see you there.

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Be sure to get support and information - "R" did, here's his story...

Okay, I've got online at home now and I've got some huge news.

Well, after so much help from all of you guys, I finally came out to my mom on the 28th of May. It was a really great feeling of being open of who I am, where I am going, what my relationship is b/w certain people, et cetera.

She took it better than expected. I had not planned to do it or anything. I was telling her good night and I said in my childish way,

"Do you love me'"

She said, "Of course I love you."

"No matter what'"

This is what tipped her off. She knew that something was up somehow. She kept asking me if I had something to tell her and I kept saying no. Then I started out saying "I'm not ready for that" and "I'm just not ready" and eventually she changed the subject. She asked about friends that were out having fun and wondered why I wasn't with them. She asked about who they were and where they went. Then all of the sudden she said, "Do they date girls'"

"No."

"I didn't think so"

[Long Pause]

"I don't either Mom"

"I didn't think so."

Then this is where I started crying like a giant baby and telling her everything that I could possibly think of that I've always wanted to tell her. We talked about it for hours through the night and afterwards I must say, I felt a lot better. I was in shock that I had even told even though I knew that it had to be done eventually.

Since that night she's had lots of questions about it and asking a lot about my current boyfriend who she really doesn't have any idea what our relationship really is. I didn't really think that she needed to know that.

She hopes the best for me she says and she worries about a lot of things like diseases and such.

Here lately she's been getting on my nerves. She says she's trying to change my mind and make me str8 which leads me to believe she's denying the fact and still wanting to live in the false world that I've let her live in for so long. She's been trying to get me on a date with certain girls and introducing me to some younger friends of hers. It really is getting on my nerves and I'm not exactly sure what to tell her. I guess she'll face reality when I really come out to everyone else. She's the only relative I'm out to and the friends that I'm out to have really lost interest in me. College really makes people different.

Well, I just wanted to say, yay, I'm out to my mom and thank everyone who gave me the stories and courage to do it.

Yours, "R"

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