Coming Out with Your Child

There is no right or wrong in acknowledging who you are. Most people do not find out who they are until they are well into adulthood. Even then you may discover you what to be someone else or do something other than. Nothing is written in stone and change is inevitable. I can only image the pain of repressing who you are because you are fearful or ashamed of letting the true you be known. A few years ago, I had to face the fact that I am the mother of a gay man. This is my testimony that coming out is a family affair. I hope to provide you the reader with a reference where I had none. I hope to encourage your heart and allow you to know it will be okay.

I grew up in New York City but people are still ridiculed for being different. To be sexually different was the worst type of different to be. In my home no talked about homosexuality and I remember getting into fights with boys who called my younger brothers the f-word. After all my brothers were not homos. Homophobia at ten is difficult especially when you don’t know what it means. I understood the danger of hate. I knew how hard it was to be picked on because you are different or at least viewed to be different. So when my only son showed signs of being gay-I was mortified and unable to express it.

I knew my son laugh was high-pitched like a girl, played with his younger sister’s hair too much and loved perfumes. I knew for years that he might be gay but I did not have a reference. There were no positive experiences with good outcomes that I could use to measure how-to-handle my feelings. I resorted to negative words, ugly words and unjustifiable statements. Somehow my son knew I was not able to accept his true identity so he hid it, he denied who is. I thought of only myself. The grandchildren I would not have; the ridicule I would face, the alienation from family and friends. It was better for both us-there in denial. So in denial we stayed for years.

As a mother you want only the best for your child and your child looks to you as a parent for approval and acceptance. It was these reasons that led my son and me to have had heart-to-heart when he was seventeen. My son took me out to dinner and came out. Finally, there over dinner I had my suspicions confirmed and my heart did not stop. I saw relief come into his eyes as I absorbed his words, “Ma, I am bi but I still your boy.” I remember joking with him about him being freaky or loving kinky sex. There at dinner and on the way home we laughed and joked. I cautioned him on being safe physically, sexually and emotionally.