- We had to walk through that fire together,
and then we had to heal from that fire together,
whether we liked it or not.
The weird thing about the coming out process,
it's infinite, it has no end,
but it has a very, very definite beginning.
I remember a day in high school,
and I was driving, and my high school best friend,
she was asleep in the passenger seat,
and I looked over at her and for the first time in my life
I thought is this that love thing
that I have heard so much about?
And I remember telling my sister
I don't think I'm gonna live past like 23.
There was no example set for me;
I had never met another gay couple;
I had never met an older gay person to explain to me
you're just at the beginning
of something really, really long and crazy.
And I really thought that was gonna be my destiny.
I went on to date the girl
that I had a crush on in high school,
and it was an amazing relationship
until the family got involved.
One of the most hurtful and helpful things
that my mom said to me was
she told me to go to the hall of records and change my name,
because I wasn't her daughter anymore.
And those words stay with me every day of my life,
and like I said, it's not in a bad way.
It's not a set of words
that sends me to a bad, depressed place.
It's a set of words that remind me of how much I've grown
and how far I've come.
It's a set of words that demonstrate to me every day
the growth that my family has shown.
We're not still in that closed-minded state of mind.
At my college graduation,
my mom met the woman that became my wife,
and eight years after that we got married.
And my mom sewed a little pillow,
it was a little heart-shaped pillow like this,
and it was for my nephew to carry
to be the ring bearer in my wedding.
My mom saying go to the hall of records
and change your name because you're not my daughter
is the most untrue thing she's ever said,
and I think she's very aware of it,
because I think the fact that I'm standing here,
that I can tell this story, I think it very much illustrates
that I am my mother's daughter.
This is the kind of strength and foundation
that she built me with.
- I always knew that I was gay,
but between my parents and being so afraid
of what they might think when I told them,
and growing up in a more conservative suburb of Philadelphia
I didn't come out until I was 30.
When I first visited L.A., as soon as I got off the plane,
there were two women, John Hughes movie style,
hand in each other's back pockets,
and I just knew, I was like L.A., that's like my safe space.
This is my place, I'm definitely gonna move there.
When I moved here, I made a pact to myself
that when I started dating someone that I actually liked,
I would come out to my parents.
And I met someone, National Coming Out Day was coming up,
so I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna do it.
I'm gonna FaceTime my parents, I'm gonna come out.
I was on the iPad with my parents,
and my girlfriend at the time
was like pacing behind the iPad.
My dad was like, oh is that your roommate?
And I just lied and said yup, yeah it is.
And then my girlfriend just gave me like laser beams.
I put my head down and I said no, it's not my roommate,
it's my girlfriend, I'm gay.
My mom immediately got up
and started slamming cabinets in the kitchen,
and she was the one that I was the most nervous about,
because she had always been a bit more vocal
about her conservative side.
My dad just put his face in his hands,
and I got really upset.
So we wrapped up the call,
and my girlfriend started taking photos of us and selfies,
and I'm crying and she's smiling next to me,
taking all these photos.
And it was the last thing on earth
that I wanted in that moment.
I said please don't put this on social media,
not everybody knows.
And so of course she immediately posts it
on Instagram and everything.
And the next day at work, I walked in,
a coworker had his phone out
and he was going to everybody's desk,
saying look at this picture, we thought she liked the D,
meaning, you know...
You know. But she really likes the V,
which we all know what that means.
I was devastated, I was really upset.
The one thing that I wanted to do was just cry
and call my mom, and I couldn't.
And fast forward a few months later to Christmas,
my dad called me and he was, he's not one to get choked up,
but he was choked up and he said,
please come home for Christmas.
I know you're not going to, you're not planning on it
because you're afraid of how your mom might act around you.
Please come home.
And I went home, and hours before my flight,
my mom called me and I was so hesitant to take the call
but I took it, and she said I don't care if you're queer,
I just need someone to complain to.
The washer broke, your dad doesn't know how to fix it,
I have so much laundry, the cats are goin' crazy .
I'm excited to see you, I don't care if you're queer,
but also I hate your girlfriend .
She annoys me.
I said to my mom, you know what?
We agree on that, I cannot stand her either.
So I went home, and just like that, it was back to normal,
like everything was good again.
So yeah, she's just been an awesome ally.
And I did break up with that girlfriend
right after Christmas.
When I heard that you didn't think you would live past 23,
that really, that killed me.
I kind of felt similar.
Like you were saying, there's no examples to live by,
kind of felt like I would be alone and kind of siphoned off,
and be the fun aunt with a roommate, you know?
- Yeah, and I think that's where the visibility
and the conversation comes in,
and the coming out process never ending.
Because even me casually,
if I'm in a grocery store or coffee shop,
and I say oh, my wife really wants to get this couch--
- Yeah.
- Depending on the coffee shop I'm in,
someone's gonna turn their head and say, wife?
Or they're gonna be like oh yeah, cool,
I'm on my third wife.
And that's the importance of the visibility.
And the freedom to feel safe enough to talk about your wife
or your partner or your life or your experiences,
because if we don't do that, we have that generation of kids
that don't see past 23, you know?
And part of the story that affected me the most
was the moment where you just had to do it.
- Yeah.
- The moment where you just had to do it,
I know that moment, I've been in that moment.
For me, I think it was a little bit forced,
it was a truth that I wanted out there,
but it wasn't the way I wanted it to happen.
I felt like my family
was really just pushing and pushing for truth
and they were upset about it and they were angry about it.
And in a perfect world, I would be able to, you know,
it would be a brightly lit room,
and there would be a breeze coming through the window,
and I'd gently sit down and we'd have tea.
But this was literally like,
yeah leave me in a living room.
So, that part of me felt a little bit outed involuntarily,
but it was also just a truth that needed to happen.
- Retroactively, I feel like
so much of my relationship with my mom
wasn't the fullest it could be throughout my life,
because I always knew
that I would eventually have to do this,
like come out to her.
And so I never fully opened up to her
and I think I guess I wish
that I could have shared more of my life with her.
I mean, it's nice, 'cause I still can,
but I just wish that I could've fully opened up with my mom
for my entire life,
and talked about crushes and stuff like that.
- I do feel some reassurance
in that without the absolute breakdown
of my relationship with my mom for those five years
that we were adjusting, like after the coming out process,
we wouldn't have the bond that we have today,
and I have to say, I have such...
I have a bigger bond with my mother now
than I ever thought I would have in my life,
and it's because we went through that,
and it's because we continued growing after that.
And I feel like the rewards have been immense
past that point, but we had to go through that.
We had to walk through that fire together,
and then we had to heal from that fire together,
whether we liked it or not,
and it just made us this amazing team.
- Oh yeah, I wanna hug you.
- Let's hug it out, oh yeah.
- I made a joke to my parents after I came out.
Oh don't buy me flannel for Christmas,
and that year my mom had a whole stack of flannel
just as a joke,
but obviously I do wear them, this is one of them.
- But you're warm, aren't you?
- I am, I'm warm.