When my child was eleven years old, she told me she was gay. This is our story of learning to accept what is, loving your child no matter what and finding peace:
When I was six months pregnant, I was diagnosed with Lupus (SLE). My child was born six weeks early from complications.
By age three her father and I had divorced. If anything, my kids are resilient. This divorce did not seem to affect her. She was a happy kid and spent hours outside playing with all her animals. She was also the quiet one and loved spending time alone. None of this alerted me too much, because that was precisely me as a child.
Each day when I picked the kids up from pre-school, we would discuss their day. I would tease them about any boyfriend/girlfriend they might have. Every time she would say, “I don’t like boys,” and I would tell her that someday she would not feel that way. I was wrong.
Until age nine, she was a typical tomboy. I was at that age too, so I thought nothing of it. It was about this age when she asked me if she could have a poster of Britney Spears for her room. Britney Spears? When I was nine years old, it was Rick Springfield that covered my walls. Again, I didn’t overthink it. She was still hating on boys at this time but felt maybe she was a late bloomer.
Sometime later, around age 11, she got her first boyfriend. I thought ok this was all just a phase. They had been boyfriend and girlfriend for about six months when she came home from school and proclaimed that her boyfriend had kissed her for the first time.
Upon hearing this information, my brain was saying things like, “what the hell kind of school are they running in that town?” Then my mind went to “It took that kid six months to kiss her?” to “What’s wrong with kids these days? I had my first kiss at age 9. You know the typical things a parent thinks when your little girl tells you she just got her first kiss. Right?
Then when I got my thoughts together, I asked my child, “Well, what did you do when he kissed you?”
The answer is something I will never forget my entire life. “Mom, I felt sick to my stomach.”
And I knew.
She knew too. I took her into her bedroom and sat down for the “talk.” She told me she liked girls, not boys. I was trying to process this while having a meaningful conversation with her. Do I tell her dad? Do I tell anyone? Oh my, like what are people going to think of us? What caused this? Was it her dad being an alcoholic or me having Lupus? Was she born this way, or is this a choice? I’m one of those people that must know why things happen. I wanted to know why my child was gay.
Neither of my children was exposed to alternate lifestyles. I was a single mother, and we lived in the middle of nowhere on a farm. There wasn’t a lot of exposure to this where we live. It wasn’t that I was keeping this from them, it just never came up! And it wasn’t that I cared that she liked girls or boys. It didn’t matter to me and still does not matter to me. She is my child. She came from my body, and I love her, regardless.
The thought of someone hurting her ran vividly through my thoughts continuously. I decided to keep it to myself. But wait? What do I do if she has girls spend the night? And what do I do if your child likes girls, does that mean her friends are boys and boys can spend the night? My mind was racing with what the hell am I going to do about this. I decided to let it be what it was and wing it with every moment. Which, by the way, got me a lot of flak.
First, I wanted to argue to anyone who wanted to say bad things about gay people. I got into a few battles based on someone talking about gay being a choice. What the hell does it matter? It doesn’t, and I was trying to be a right fighter when dealing with someone that had never faced this in their life. Who am I to change their minds, and why do I even care? I quickly stopped doing this when I realized that it wasn’t doing anything but getting me upset.
Then it came to her father. I thought he should know. She begged me not to tell him. She was always very private, and I was worried if I went against her wishes, she would never tell me another thing again. I decided at the time to keep my relationship with her on the level where she could trust me. It was important that she felt she could tell me anything. I decided I would let her tell her own story to her father when she was ready.
Her father and I always got along fine, except when he was dating someone. Then I had to hear the rules of how his new girlfriend thought I should parent, and those rules changed with each one of his relationships. This time was no different. He had recently got married. His new wife had found out that a boy was in my daughter’s bedroom with the door closed. That garnered me my very own post on her Facebook post. My child came home and showed it to me. According to the comments, I was the worst mother ever.
I’ve always been a “Seek first to understand” type of person, so I was a little dismayed to see people that had no idea what the story was judged me in this way. Not to mention that I have never been a fan of slandering a parent, especially when they are aware that their child can see that. But to each their own.
Now you might be making your judgment about this as well. However, if you knew your child was gay, would that make me a bad mom for this situation? I knew the boy’s family my entire life. I knew this boy was harmless because this is the boy she kissed the year before that made her sick to her stomach. They’d immediately broke it off, but remained friends. Now, they even liked the same girl.
They were “learning” to play their guitars, and let’s say they were not accomplished, guitarists. So I closed the door. If you know all of that, would you still judge me as a parent?
The point of this was that I had no clue as to how to parent a gay child. None. At the time, I didn’t even know another parent of a gay child to ask. I didn’t know what was ok and not ok. What I did know was my child. I knew I had to trust her and that’s what I did.
I’m not the only parent in this situation, other parents are unfairly judged as well. That judgment usually comes from those who’ve never had to walk the same path. Did I make all the right choices? Probably not.
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