My husband of 26, soon to be 27 years of marriage, and I have two children.
A daughter 20 years old and a son 23 years old. It was in 1990, when our son was barely 15 years old answered a question with “Yes, I am gay”, that would change the course of our lives forever and lead us on a most incredible journey. I literally thought that I was going to die right on the spot. It was the darkest day of my life. It was like this little boy that we’ve nurtured and watch grow up died, at least all the hopes and dreams and aspirations my husband and I had for our son went right out the window. We became very reclusive with our friends and family members. It’s like a dark cloud was lifted off our son’s shoulders when he “came-out” to us and fell right on our shoulders and now we are in the preverbal “closet”.
I did remember, after taking numerous parenting classes that parents are suppose to “unconditionally” love their children. And thank goodness, while I tried to mask my feelings, I had the where-with-all to tell our son that we still love him, however he would have to give us some time to understand this. I also wondered with him being barely 15 years old, and not seeing him go on any dates, how did he know that he is gay? He said he knew that he had known he was gay since middle school. We did however send our son to a psychiatrist-not to change him to straight, but for him to make sure that this is who he is. The psychiatrist turned out to be not to our son’s liking, in fact our son got the feeling that this doctor was trying to change him. A red flag immediately went up to get him out of this person’s office. And so we did. We called three other psychologists who all proceeded to tell us that our son sounds like he’s doing fine, it’s the two of us that need help. The last psychologist gave us the names of three books and told us to call PFLAG/Detroit. That phone call turned our lives around. We were able to talk to parents with gay children and realize we were not alone. It was and continues to be a most wonderful organization. We have met some of the most wonderful parents and gay people through PFLAG. In our journey of understanding our son and what it means to love someone gay, it has opened our hearts, our minds and our souls and taught us to be less judgmental. It has been an incredible journey. I can honestly say that the darkest day of our lives has turned out to be the best thing that could have ever happened.
(Editor’s note: This story originally appeared at: http://www.pflagdetroit.org/Stories_Pg5.html)
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