This story by Thrives Director Meg Gonzalez originally featured in our June 2021 E-blast. To receive our monthly E-blast sign-up HERE.
Supporting Queer Youth
I am the mother of a gay child. I am also the mother of a heterosexual child. I love them both for who they are, and I am grateful that having a daughter who is gay is not an issue for our family. But I know, that is not the case for many in the LGBTQ+ community.
When my daughter came out as gay about 5 years ago, I realized that, in order to support her, I needed to understand more about what that means. Educating myself has been an incredible journey! I now know what all the letters in LGBTQ stand for (but don’t ask me about the “+”, yet). I also know I am a cisgender, heterosexual because: I present as a single sex, the sex I was born as, and I am attracted to men. But, while I may fit into a box, for others, sexual orientation and gender identity are more fluid. Knowing this helps me understand the importance of pronouns. I still struggle with using they/them/theirs, but I keep working at it because I want to acknowledge and respect people for who they are.
Queer Issues are Important Local Issues
Since joining Thrives, I have learned more about the struggles and challenges that our LGBTQ+ youth face here in Windham County. I feel fortunate to have a team and network of partners with the skills, commitment and lived experience to help support our queer youth and their families. Current efforts include: supporting Leland & Gray’s Gay Straight Alliance(GSA), providing relevant trainings, partnering with state-wide and local organizaitons such as Outright Vermont and Out in the Open and offering resources such as the LGBTQ+ Parent Handbook, developed by the Windham County Prevention Partnership (https://www.windhampartnership.org/).
Being anything other than a white, cisgender heterosexual should not inherently make life any harder, but it does. As a parent of someone who is “other”, I want to do my part to help this world be more accepting of who she is because, regardless of our sexual identity or gender orientation, we all deserve to feel supported, seen and loved.
Understanding Our Children
Understanding who our children are is best done by asking them. So, I have shared highlights from a more recent conversation with my daughter during which I asked her to reflect on her questioning teen phase and her decision to come out as gay. Here is what she shared:
We live in a world that genders everything and operates on a binary, and if you’re in the wrong category, or not in one of those categories at all, then it’s easy for people to assume things about you. I think it’s because of these assumptions that I fought my true self for way longer than I had to. It wasn’t until I went away to college and surrounded myself with all different kinds of people that I was able to reflect on my own sexuality and just my personality as a whole.
My entire life I was made to believe that boys were the end all be all for women. I made myself believe that I just hadn’t met the right boy, or that maybe I was the problem. When heterosexuality is the societal norm, anything else becomes taboo. But I can tell you now that there is nothing taboo about loving whoever you want to love, being whoever you want to be, and kissing whoever you want to kiss.
Gender and sexual orientation are not things that you can turn off or change at will, but outward self-expression is something that we get to choose everyday, so it starts by accepting the choices that your children make.
Nobody has the same coming out experience, and I was extremely lucky to have parents who love me for who I am (and who they raised me to be), and parents who have evolved along with the ever-changing world.
Nobody is required to come out. I came out to those around me because I felt comfortable doing so, and I wanted to release myself from the shackles of heteronormativity. Some people don’t have the luxury of coming out in a safe environment, some feel like they HAVE to come out in order to have their existence validated, and some people just don’t ever want to come out. The important thing is that each individual is happy and confident in their decision. I would love to live in a world where there are no assumptions based on gender or sexuality.
I think this generation of kids has an incredible advantage when it comes to representation because TV shows, music and media are being flooded with queer voices and LGBTQ+ people. Obviously there is so much more work to be done, but I hope that younger folks can see themselves in books and movies and feel comfortable embracing who they are.
This is all my opinion based on my own experience and what I’ve learned from other queer people. I am a cis-gender queer woman who likes other women and non binary folks.