**JUST*BECAUSE*HE*BREATHES*LEARNING*TO*TRULY*LOVE*OUR*GAY*SON**
Just Because He Breathes: Learning to Truly Love Our Gay Son
On the night of Nov. 20, 2001, a conversation held over Instant Messenger changed our lives forever. Our 12-year-old son messaged me in my office from the computer in his bedroom.
Ryan says: can i tell u something
Mom says: Yes I am listening
Ryan says: well i don’t know how to say this really but, well……, i can’t keep lying to you about myself. I have been hiding this for too long and i sorta have to tell u now. By now u probably have an idea of what i am about to say.
Ryan says: I am gay
Ryan says: i can’t believe i just told you
Mom says: Are you joking?
Ryan says: no
Ryan says: i thought you would understand because of uncle don
Mom says: of course I would
Mom says: but what makes you think you are?
Ryan says: i know i am
Ryan says: i don’t like hannah
Ryan says: it’s just a cover-up
Mom says: but that doesn’t make you gay…
Ryan says: i know
Ryan says: but u don’t understand
Ryan says: i am gay
Mom says: tell me more
Ryan says: it’s just the way i am and it’s something i know
Ryan says: u r not a lesbian and u know that. it is the same thing
Mom says: what do you mean?
Ryan says: i am just gay
Ryan says: i am that
Mom says: I love you no matter what
Ryan says: i am white not black
Ryan says: i know
Ryan says: i am a boy not a girl
Ryan says: i am attracted to boys not girls
Ryan says: u know that about yourself and i know this
Mom says: what about what God thinks about acting on these desires?
Ryan says: i know
Mom says: thank you for telling me
Ryan says: and i am very confused about that right now
Mom says: I love you more for being honest
Ryan says: i know
Ryan says: thanx
We were completely shocked. Not that we didn’t know and love gay people; my only brother had come out to us several years before, and we adored him. But Ryan? He was unafraid of anything, tough as nails and all boy. We had not seen this coming, and the emotion that overwhelmed us, kept us awake at night and, sadly, influenced all our reactions over the next six years was fear.
We said all the things that we thought loving Christian parents who believed the Bible, the Word of God, should say:
We love you. We will always love you. And this is hard. Really hard. But we know what God says about this, so you are going to have to make some really difficult choices.
We love you. We couldn’t love you more. But there are other men who have faced this same struggle, and God has worked in them to change their desires. We’ll get you their books; you can listen to their testimonies. And we will trust God with this.
We love you. We are so glad you are our son. But you are young, and your sexual orientation is still developing. The feelings you’ve had for other guys don’t make you gay. So please don’t tell anyone that you are gay. You don’t know who you are yet. Your identity is not that you are gay; it is that you are a child of God.
We love you. Nothing will change that. But if you are going to follow Jesus, holiness is your only option. You are going to have to choose to follow Jesus, no matter what. And since you know what the Bible says, and since you want to follow God, embracing your sexuality is not an option.
We thought we understood the magnitude of the sacrifice that we — and God — were asking for. And this sacrifice, we knew, would lead to an abundant life, perfect peace and eternal rewards. Ryan had always felt intensely drawn to spiritual things; He desired to please God above all else. So, for the first six years, he tried to choose Jesus. Like so many others before him, he pleaded with God to help him be attracted to girls. He memorized Scripture, met with his youth pastor weekly, enthusiastically participated in all the church youth group events and Bible Studies and got baptized. He read all the books that claimed to know where his gay feelings came from, dove into counseling to further discover the whys of his unwanted attraction to other guys, worked through painful conflict resolution with my husband and me and built strong friendships with other guys — straight guys — just like the reparative therapy experts advised. He even came out to his entire youth group, giving his testimony of how God had rescued him from the traps of the enemy, and sharing, by memory, verse after verse that God had used to draw Ryan to Him.
But nothing changed. God didn’t answer his prayer, or ours, though we were all believing with faith that the God of the Universe, the God for whom nothing is impossible, could easily make Ryan straight. But He did not.
Though our hearts may have been good (we truly thought what we were doing was loving), we did not even give Ryan a chance to wrestle with God, to figure out what he believed God was telling him through scripture about his sexuality. We had believed firmly in giving each of our four children the space to question Christianity, to decide for themselves if they wanted to follow Jesus, to truly own their own faith. But we were too afraid to give Ryan that room when it came to his sexuality, for fear that he’d make the wrong choice.
Basically, we told our son that he had to choose between Jesus and his sexuality. We forced him to make a choice between God and being a sexual person. Choosing God, practically, meant living a lifetime condemned to being alone. He would never have the chance to fall in love, have his first kiss, hold hands, share intimacy and companionship or experience romance.
And so, just before his 18th birthday, Ryan, depressed, suicidal, disillusioned and convinced that he would never be able to be loved by God, made a new choice. He decided to throw out his Bible and his faith at the same time and try searching for what he desperately wanted — peace — another way. And the way he chose to try first was drugs.
We had unintentionally taught Ryan to hate his sexuality. And since sexuality cannot be separated from the self, we had taught Ryan to hate himself. So as he began to use drugs, he did so with a recklessness and a lack of caution for his own safety that was alarming to everyone who knew him.
Suddenly our fear of Ryan someday having a boyfriend (a possibility that honestly terrified me) seemed trivial in contrast to our fear of Ryan’s death, especially in light of his recent rejection of Christianity and his mounting anger at God.
Ryan started with weed and beer, but in six short months was using cocaine, crack and heroin. He was hooked from the beginning, and his self-loathing and rage at God only fueled his addiction. Shortly thereafter, we lost contact with him. For the next year and a half, we didn’t know where he was or even if he was dead or alive. And during that horrific time, God had our full attention. We stopped praying for Ryan to become straight. We started praying for him to know that God loved him. We stopped praying for him to never have a boyfriend. We started praying that someday we might actually get to know his boyfriend. We even stopped praying for him to come home to us; we only wanted him to come home to God.
By the time our son called us, after 18 long months of silence, God had completely changed our perspective. Because Ryan had done some pretty terrible things while using drugs, the first thing he asked me was this:
Do you think you can ever forgive me? (I told him of course, he was already forgiven. He had always been forgiven.)
Do you think you could ever love me again? (I told him that we had never stopped loving him, not for one second. We loved him then more than we had ever loved him.)
Do you think you could ever love me with a boyfriend? (Crying, I told him that we could love him with 15 boyfriends. We just wanted him back in our lives. We just wanted to have a relationship with him again… and with his boyfriend.)
And a new journey was begun, one of healing, restoration, open communication and grace. Lots of grace. And God was present every step of the way, leading and guiding us, gently reminding us simply to love our son and leave the rest up to Him.
Over the next 10 months, we learned to truly love our son. Period. No buts. No conditions. Just because he breathes. We learned to love whomever our son loved. And it was easy. What I had been so afraid of became a blessing. The journey wasn’t without mistakes, but we had grace for each other, and the language of apology and forgiveness became a natural part of our relationship. As our son pursued recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, we pursued him. God taught us how to love him, to rejoice over him, to be proud of the man he was becoming. We were all healing, and most importantly, Ryan began to think that if we could forgive him and love him, then maybe God could, too.
And then Ryan made the classic mistake of a recovering addict: He got back together with his old friends, his using friends. And one evening that was supposed to simply be a night at the movies turned out to be the first time he had shot up in 10 months — and the last time. Ryan died on July 16, 2009. And we lost the ability to love our gay son, because we no longer had a gay son. What we had wished for, prayed for, hoped for — that we would not have a gay son — came true. But not at all in the way we had envisioned.
Now, when I think back on the fear that governed all my reactions during those first six years after Ryan told us he was gay, I cringe as I realize how foolish I was. I was afraid of all the wrong things. And I grieve, not only for my oldest son, whom I will miss every day for the rest of my life, but for the mistakes I made. I grieve for what could have been, had we been walking by faith instead of by fear. Now, whenever Rob and I join our gay friends for an evening, I think about how much I would love to be visiting with Ryan and his partner over dinner. But instead, we visit Ryan’s gravestone. We celebrate anniversaries: the would-have-been birthdays and the unforgettable day of his death. We wear orange, his color. We hoard memories: pictures, clothing he wore, handwritten notes, lists of things he loved, tokens of his passions, recollections of the funny songs he invented, his Curious George and baseball blankey, anything, really, that reminds us of our beautiful boy, for that is all we have left, and there will be no new memories. We rejoice in our adult children, and in our growing family as they marry, but we ache for the one of our “gang of four” who is missing. We mark life by the days B.C. (before coma) and A.D. (after death), because we are different people now; our life was irrevocably changed in a million ways by his death. We treasure friendships with others who “get it” because they, too, have lost a child.
We weep. We seek Heaven for grace and mercy and redemption as we try not to get better but to be better. And we pray that God can somehow use our story to help other parents learn to truly love their children. Just because they breathe.
On June 20, 2013, at the invitation of Alan Chambers, my husband Rob and I shared an extended, unedited version of our story at the final Exodus International conference in Irvine, Calif.:
In the presentation, Rob read a letter that he’d recently written to Ryan, which you can read here. We also shared a slideshow of photos of Ryan through the years:
Mail to Ryan…Our Beautiful Boy
My husband, Rob, wrote this letter to Ryan as part of our expanded “Just Because He Breathes” presentation for Exodus International. The video below was shown in our presentation, after Rob read this:
Dear Ryan,
I miss you so much. I don’t really know how heaven works because you might already know everything I’m about to say but just in case you don’t there’s some things I want you to know. I love you so much and it hurts so bad that you were not here last weekend to celebrate Riley’s wedding with us. We all missed you so much. Riley and Abby left an empty place for you, and Lindsey was the only bridesmaid who walked unescorted down the aisle, because you should have been with her. Even though the day would have been difficult for you in some aspects, you would have been so proud of your brother. And I know that you would just ADORE Abby. Your handsome face and easy laugh would have made the day complete for me.
That said, I am not angry that you relapsed on that day In late June 2009. I know you did not intend to let things get out of hand like they did. In fact I would not be bitter or angry even if you had taken your life. I have nothing but compassion and respect for how well and how long you battled your difficulties. Only now by reading your journals, do I more fully realize how much pain and difficulty you were facing. Whenever I feel like I need a good cry, all I have to do is to pull them out and it puts me in touch with the deep pain you were in…and how, as your earthly father, I let you down in many ways.
I am so very, very sorry for the things that I did to contribute to your despair. I so desperately wish that I had known back then what I do know now. I thought I was so right when you first came out to us. Little did I know how much I had to learn. Please forgive me for letting fear control my decisions and the way I responded to you, instead of faith. I should have trusted God, who loves you so much more – and better – than I do, and who never stopped chasing after you.
I so regret how slow I was to truly understand and love you without any conditions.
But you always had such grace for me. You were so patient with us while we learned what really mattered.
Thank you for trusting us with your deepest thoughts and fears and sharing so much of your experience as a gay teen, and a gay young adult, attempting to reconcile his faith with his sexuality. Thank you for all your letters and emails; the ones that made us laugh and the ones that made us cry. Your handwritten letters are priceless to me.
I so wish that I could introduce you to some of my dearest friends now, men and women who love Jesus with their whole hearts. They have helped me to understand that gay is not a deal breaker for God…that gay and Christian can co-exist, and that God isn’t wringing His hands over this issue. He is way bigger than this. I know that God did not reject or abandon you, or anyone else.
I wish I could take you to dinner tonight and tell you all the ways that your life…and even your death…blesses ours every day. We have learned so very much from you. God, through you, has opened up a whole new world for mom and I.
I wish we could make that snowboarding trip to Mount Baker that we had planned.
I wish you could see how we’re still using the zip line you designed. I will never forget the joy on your face as you concocted yet another way to creatively fly across our back yard.
I wish I could take you backpacking again, and that we could talk and talk and talk as we hiked.
I wish you were here to have backyard bonfires, and to come up with ever increasingly crazy ways to alarm our neighbors.
I wish you could call and tell me all about it when you met a guy you were interested in…and that I could meet him, too.
I wish that we could have a barbeque on your roof, with the view of the Space Needle that we loved so much.
I wish we could ride down the driveway together…one of us on my rip stick and one on my long board…and that we could teach each other new tricks as we laughed and crashed.
I wish you were here to help me hunt the raccoons that threaten to eat our Janie cat…I will NEVER forget the time you pegged that one 30 ft up in the tree in our front yard, and then 20 seconds later, got the second one on your first try.
I wish you could cook your specialty eggs in our kitchen, adding that fire sauce, while you sang funny songs and worship songs and whatever else came to mind. I miss your voice.
I wish you were here in the audience, sitting with Larissa and Cam and Lindsey and Grandma Pat and Uncle Ronny and Uncle Don and all our new friends from Biola Queers, who I know you would love so much.
I wish I could hold you again.
I love you, Ryan.
I miss you. Oh, how I miss you.
I am so very, very proud of you.
I am sorry for EVER wanting you to be anyone other than who God made you to be. I am so very sorry for all the things I said that caused you to feel that I would love you more if you were straight.
I know now that you were EXACTLY who God intended…and that you were BEAUTIFUL.
You were, and will always be, my beautiful, beautiful boy…
We showed this video to accompany the letter during our presentation:
64 thoughts on “Mail to Ryan…Our Beautiful Boy”
In Christ’s love and mine,
Trista
Next time our paths cross, lets plan on having coffee and talking more! Tons of love to you!
I cried as I read your letter and watched the video.
Thank you for sharing your deeply moving and personal story. Each of us is on a different place on the path to God; thank you for reminding me of the most important commandment. Love one another. It’s so easy to forget and become confused and distracted. Your honesty and grace humbles me and inspires me to be a better person. This story could be the story of many families-Ryan’s goodness lives on in the love of your family, and your willingness to share and spare others pain.
unconditional love thats what i beleive we shall i do in are hearts
may God bless yous has much has he did with your story for me, i dont know how i will get back to god, but i will …..
If a Christian or person of faith rejects you…that is not evidence that something is wrong with you…that is evidence in the limits to their understanding of God.
God is love.
Learning just what it means to love is a lifetime experience…. One that is worth all the painful experiences. God is love, God loves you…
Our value is not based on our sexual orientation any more than our value is based on our bodies, beauty, bank accounts, education, successes or perceived failures…
We are something far greater…God is love and we are created in his image. You are love.
Our world needs more love, Go and be the love that you are…regardless if it is understood by those around you.
It’s ok… We don’t have to have all the answers or profess a faith that is based on misunderstanding of God.
Above all else God is lovr.
God understands all…
We are all works in progress… Allow yourself to wander and seek with curiosity and interest -vs -out of fear, duty or society pressure…
You will find your way. God is with you.
If you would like to join a private group of Biola alums – both LGBT and allies – please find me on FaceBook and send me a message. There are SO many amazing people in that group…people who are seeking the Lord and wrestling with just the same things you are.
Your message has me in tears…because you have reminded me of what – and why – we are no longer staying silent. God has used you powerfully in my life today…Know that I love you, and that He loves you far, FAR more.
I salute you for the courage. The pain of losing a child is the worst. My parents lost their girl while she was only 9months old. But God is there, to give you the power to face life. Since I read your article online, I searched more and found this letter. Extremely touching. I am probably very lost right now, hence wish to stay anonymous, but I must tell you, there has been many days where I wish I could die, I prayed to God to make me die… I’m 23 years old, a human being, and unfortunately a lesbian, and things are not that way in my country as in the US. I wish my parents were like you. Coming from a hindu family, my mum goes to the temple very often, we are a happy normal family, my parents just celebrated their 30th anniversary, and they love me a lot. But… They will never understand this. People in my country just won’t try to be open minded. And at times I feel I should not even have been born. But I can not ‘go’, as my parents have already lost a child, and they would never see things that way though. It’s so frustrating, but honestly, it’s a life of misery. I love God, and wish God could just take me away from all of this and give me shelter, protect me from all this suffering. But I would never blame my parents, as I love them and know how much they sacrifice for me, how much expectations they have of me, I don’t blame them, cause the way they’ve been brought up, the way religion and society has influenced my mother, it’s hard for someone of an age of 55 to change his beliefs and opinions… I love mum and dad so much… but I a m so tired of this life. Sorry for using this space as a therapy to my own suffering, while this is about your loving son. May God bless him and I’m sure your angel is happy where he is, looking after his parents from paradise. The same as I feel for my sister, who must also be with God.Take care.
Lots of love.
YOU are beautiful. Exactly as you are. I know that I know that I KNOW that God ADORES you…He DELIGHTS in you! We are praying for you to have strength to face each day…that God Himself will reassure you of HIS love…and that you will know, deep within, how precious and valuable you are to Him.
Thank you SO much for writing…YOU are the reason I have started sharing our story.
My 18 year old son told me three years ago he was gay. It was hard and I cried and asked God to take of him – and I don’t believe in God. Our son is a wonderful and brilliant and talented young man and we love him very much.
Our daughter might be gay, too. I am not sure and you know what – it doesn’t matter. She – like you – are who you are and have every right to feel how you feel and be who you are. I cannot tell you what to do but I would ask you to love and accept yourself and know that there are others who do and will love you for who you are and without conditions.
Take care of yourself
Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
(Matt 6 : 33)
Be nice to each other
Don’t steal and don’t kill each other.
Treat each other with dignity and respect.
Little easy-to-remember things like that. In the end, in my opinion, it is about choosing to do the right thing, because it is the right thing to do, not because you are afraid of the consequences if you do not. Unfortunately, “the right thing” is a terribly subjective issue, and depending on who you ask, it may be polar opposites. But if you go back to your beliefs … to be nice to each other, not to steal and kill each other, to treat each other with dignity and respect … and so on … it is hard to misunderstand.
It pains me that you were forced to learn that lesson in such a tragic, horrific way.
I myself have lost my family, only to regain them. When I “came out” to them, almost fifteen years ago, I ended up losing all contact for a while. My father came around first, but he had to hide it when he contacted me, or my mother would have his hide pinned to the wall. For years, she denied my existence, rejected all contact with me …
Then my grandmother died. An old lady whose only wish had been to see the family reunite before she passed on. I offered my dad that I could go to the funeral parlor the day after the ceremony so my mom wouldn’t have to spend time with me. Shocked and horrified, he told me to be there on the day, and that if my mother gave me any kind of grief, he would stop it.
“Your grandmother loved no human being on this green earth as dearly as you. Of -COURSE- you should be there!” he said.
So I went. I spoke … at the wake. I got up and spoke about this remarkable human being that had made it her mission in life to be “Grandma”. She was “Grandma” to everyone, even people who met her for the first time. The only person in the world who didn’t call her that was her own daughter … my mother … who obviously always called her mom.
My mom … who had to sit there a whole day in my company. Who could not get up and leave. And who finally had to come face to face with the daughter she denied having.
A few months later, after much soul-searching, she came around. We all celebrated Christmas together that year for the first time in eight years.
In the end, my grandmother got her wish. But she had to pass on to faciliate the bringing back together of the family that she had so desperately wanted.
Sometimes, even something as tragic as someone’s death can be a catalyst for good. It can bring people together. Make them see each other in a new light. Make them respect each other … even realize that yes, they do love one another.
It can make them forget their fear.
Their insecurity. Their lack of comprehension.
I am not Christian, but I hope you will accept it when I say that I will say a prayer for your family regardless. It is earnestly meant. It is genuine and heartfelt.
It is honest.
I wish you and your family the very best. And thank you for speaking up and sharing your story. It is important, and it is appreciated.
Sincerely,
Thank you and God Bless!!!
Thank you again, and it is my hope that the memories you have of Ryan will bring you peace. I didn’t have the privilege of knowing Ryan, but I can tell you this: I will not forget him.
Sincerely, Allie
The pain you feel for the loss of your beautiful son, Ryan, is momentary. Just like the mother in “Prayers For Bobby”, parents of gay children do not know how to take the news that their children are gay and “defective”. Rather, they are not “trash” as many so-called well-meaning Christians try to point out. They are what you, Rob, called Ryan, “beautiful”. I know, because I am gay and a Catholic Christian. The Catholic Church does not say gay men and women are lost, but acknowledges them to be children of God. It does however, condemn their behavior as intrinsically evil. It prompts a question, “When one acts according to their nature as a human being, why are they evil.” Grace confirms nature. Your beautiful boy was an act of Love given to you by God. It is really sad that he had to fall into the wrong crowd to be accepted. I don’t blame you for your “Christian” upbringing. My heart goes out to you that you had to be taught the hard way through “loss” to accept what God knew all along, that Ryan was good and beautiful as He made him to be. Our Christian heritage and religions make me wonder some time, that when we stand before God at our judgement and he asks us, “Why did you not accept others, different than yourself, as images of my love?” that we will be hard pressed for a good answer.
You loved Ryan as a son; there is no question of that. The question really is, why didn’t you love Ryan as your gay son, and one in which he fought to reveal to you through deep prayer and thought at the time, that there wasn’t anything wrong with him, just because he was gay?
It was the pain of that dissolution and loss that sent me out looking for the one pain-killer guaranteed to help me forget. It took several years of hard work supported by the efforts and love of others for me to find my way back. The pain the loss of a child elicits is staggering. The pain of drug abuse and its associated features is likewise breathtaking. It is with gratitude and Grace that I am now able to acknowledge my gifts, grieve my losses, and face each day with a clear head.
What your family has endured is nothing short of a nightmare. I appreciate the courage you demonstrate by telling your story. It hits on two extremely important and inflammatory topics: sexuality and addiction. Thank you for sharing it. Your devastation is palpable. If only love were enough to end active addiction. However, if love were enough to keep us clean, there would be very few addicts.
Similarly, I have not met parents who have no record of mistakes nor children lacking evidence of lapses in judgement. Be kind to yourselves. The hurt takes one’s breath away, I know. The what-ifs are endless, indeed. However, I think we all do the best we can with the tools at hand at any given moment. The trick is whether we see a way to use our histories to enrich our futures and the futures of those around us. You are doing that. Brava.
I wish you all the peace and Grace of a gentle healing.
Lissa
It can leave a person overburdened and depressed with little direction… It is much more useful to do as this family has so beautifully demonstrated in seeking new understandings, & choosing new perspectives. Leaning away from judgement & into the space of love… and finally learning just what it really means to forgive. Which usually includes forgiving ones self… Their willingness to be open about such a painful experience is an opportunity they offer so that others…us/ unknown strangers to them…to learn and possibly avoid such a devastating experience in our own lives…I am truely gratiful and in awe for this gift.
WES FROM BRAZIL.
I was so touched by your story and also so sorry for your loss. We too have a gay son who came out first to me at the end of his freshman year in college–I wasn’t totally surprised. And a few days later he told his father–we never for a moment thought of disowning him. We are a Christian family and just because he was gay didn’t mean we would suddenly stop loving him. We also told him that we would continue to pay for his college education and we did.
During his years in college–he was in an apartment in the same city-he knew he was welcome to bring his friends to our house. I had more than one of them tell me how much they appreciated us opening our home to them because their parents didn’t want to see them again. And one of those young men also committed suicide because he was rejected by his parents.
Our son graduated but over the next 4-5 years he was let go of three jobs when they found out he was gay but he has now had a wonderful job for 10 years and is successful. He’s also been in a committed relationship now for 10 years and he and his partner adopted two brothers 8 years ago. I might add here that they were chosen to adopt these two boys over 3 ‘traditional’ couples. It was a tough few years because the boys had really had a rough start in life–the epitome of tough love. We love our ‘adopted’ grandchildren as much as our other 5 grandchildren.
But, I also think back to the time when our son was 12 and he said to me, “I don’t feel a part of this family–I don’t feel like I belong in this family–I don’t know what is wrong with me.” We went to family counseling but after he came out to us 7 years later I realized that he was struggling all those years with his sexuality–I think he knew something was different and I really don’t know at what age he finally figured it out–probably about his sophomore year in high school.
We love our son, his partner and our grandchildren and I think–what if we had disowned him–what would have become of him. But we would have missed seeing a fine young man find the love of his life and then having two super kids for us to love.
I wish you both peace.
Thank you!
this is the most heartwarming, most beautiful letter ever
Thank you for sharing your story.
It takes great courage to look at what you believe and how you live your life and then even more courage to own what needs to be owned in order to make vital changes… I can only imagine how gratiful your son in heaven is for this amazingly powerful message of love. God is with you.
I’ve never written on any blog like this, but I stumbled on the film and letter tonight. I’m 67, lesbian, married, and my wife and I have 13 year old twins, a boy and a girl. A life beyond my wildest dreams. A life I wouldn’t have even known to want. I realized I was gay when I was 25 and I had been what I thought was happily married to a wonderful man for 7 years. A very painful mess. I wish I could have handled the situation with him better. I wish I had been capable of being kinder to him and to my mother who was, of course, shocked and frightened by what seemed to her an inexplicable declaration.
You brought up addiction. I’m a recovered alcoholic and drug addict, a devoted member of Alcoholics Anonymous for 32 years now, and it took a lot of years of sobriety for me to make genuine peace with my sexuality.
What you are doing in the world with this exquisitely moving film and letter is an incredible gift to all who still struggle about these issues. I thought I was beyond this struggle now, but when the Supreme Court struck down DOMA last week, I wept. It’s been hard to hear people discuss whether or not civil rights are for all of us. I once heard a call-in poll on CNN (okay, it was awhile ago) about whether gay people should be allowed to go to churches.
When I got sober, I did try to give organized religion another chance, but it’s not for me.I find the god of my understanding in the unconditional love in the rooms of AA. Because of that, I can feel clearly the unconditional love you have for your son, and for all of us who have had to figure out on our own, in the face of much condemnation, that God made us the way we are.
From my heart to yours.
Blanche
I do not know what to say. I am very touched by this story.
I wish my mom can also accept me for whatever I am. But I am still afraid of it. I am afraid to say it to her .