Coming out is a profound and pivotal moment in any queer person’s journey. And coming out to parents, specifically, can prove to be particularly challenging, to say the least. Obviously your parents political, religious, and cultural beliefs play into this, and telling them that ayou’re part of the lgbtq+ community can be received with a wide range of reactions from love, joy, and celebration to heartbreaking rejection, shame, and in the worst cases, disowning. I am incredibly grateful that I never had to deal with the latter - but I also can’t say I was met with joy and celebration when I first came out to my mom 10 years ago. 

There was a lot of fear initially for my mom - fear that my life would be harder because I was bisexual. Fear of the unknown, you know there was a lot that she didn’t know and didn’t understand. But in the last 10 years - and even really just in the last 2 years - my mom has come so far in her evolution as an ally - so much so that she participates in TikToks on my very queer-focused TikTok - at whits_tiks - and has even watched The L Word. Yes, my watched the L Word. She’s also stepped into her allyship in other ways, such as wearing rainbow and ally-related shirts and accessories like pins and sticker for her water bottle. So today, I’m having a conversation with my mom - 10 years almost to the day since coming out - to discuss how she got from point A to point B.

2:45 - revisiting my coming out moment (we remember it VERY differently lol)

7:00 - my mom’s initial HONEST feelings about me being bi

10:35 - I ask my mom if she ever suspected I wasn’t straight growing up 

16:14 - my mom discusses her experience with, and view of, queerness growing up in the 60s and 70s

23:18 - "live and let live" - my mom discusses her view of queerness throughout her adult life prior to me coming out when she was 50 

25:25 - the grief process some parents experience when their kids come out (grieving the vision they had) 

27:00 - my mom talks about ending friendships with people who don’t accept my queerness 

32:14 - “there’s something very gay about homophobia” 

36:35 - my mom speaks on the expedited growth she's undergone as an ally just in the last two years 

38:40 - asking my mom if she has any lingering fears or worries about me potentially ending up with someone who's not a man

41:40 - my mom speaks on what helped her get to a place of peace with it all

43:40 - my mom watched the L Word and it changed her life lol 

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