Hi, my name is Mandie. I’m 17 years old, I’ve been out since I was 14, but I’ve known since I was about 10 or 11.
When I first came out as lesbian I was terrified of what my mom would say, how she would react, basically I was scared that she wouldn’t love me anymore. My family is a very Christian family. I’d always been taught that being attracted to the same sex is not okay. I even remember that one time my brother came home from school and said to mom and dad “I’m a homo…sapien!” and when he took a pause between the two my dad and mom flipped thinking he was gay. After that I was scared to come out, if they reacted like that to a joke, how were they gonna react to me?
After 4 years of knowing that I was definitely attracted to women I decided to tell my mom. I had been dating a girl for one month at that point, and when I told my mom that she started to cry. She told me to get out of her room and did not stop crying. I was scared that she was gonna kick me out of the house, but she didn’t. Instead she started acting like I didn’t exist, in my opinion that was worse then being kicked out. After about a week of this she finally started talking to me again, but it was never the same. I used to be her babygirl and her ball of sunshine, but she never treated me the same after I came out to her.
Then last year something changed and she finally started accepting me for who I am. She even took me to a Pride Parade for my birthday.
I’m putting this here so that everyone knows that even if at first it seems bad, it could always get better.
With much love from Mandie 🙂
Aww, that’s a hard story but I’m glad it got/is getting better. Thanks for sharing! You’re brave!
Nice to see your mother accepts you, even if it was a bad start. At least it got better now. You went out to your mother and told her who you are. Very brave.
I talked to my best friend, who is a lesbian, and said if I had a child and he/she said they were gay I would be torn to tell them to start coming out or to wait till after high school. The reason is I honestly wouldn’t know how to protect them from people. She let me know she understands why a person would think that, but for her all she wanted was support, someone to accept her and be there for her. Which hey Dad was when she was younger.
I know there are those it there that will never accept people of the LGBTQ+ community, but sometimes family are the ones you choose to be in your life.
Your story make me smile in this uncertain time and thank you for that. 🙂