COMING OUT AS BEING DIFFERENT

~ FROM EXPECTATIONS INSIDE A FAMILY 

Growing up, I never heard a conversation about gay people, only a stray comment in my family. It was easy to glean from this, that it was "forbidden" or in the least, unacceptable to think being gay is natural. As an adult, it became clear that homosexuality is totally unacceptable inside my family. I, personally, accept that no one chooses, but is born, whatever way you and I are. Being born straight, being born other than straight, weren't supposed to be thought of as equally acceptable in my family.

I have been the outsider inside my family. I didn't choose this role. It was appointed by my family members. Seems like for the whole of my life. Because I am different in what I believe. And don't believe. To me, whatever way a person is, is equally acceptable. Saying this inside my family, actually takes courage. Seems like this shouldn't be true, at my age. But age doesn't change your family's expectations. 

For me, human rights is an important issue: acceptance, welcoming. Encouraging. I want to be a part of a world that doesn't make 13 or 18 year olds, someone of any age, feel they aren't fully worthy of acceptance for who they are. The result of society, religion or family judgment can easily become anxiety, depression, or suicide.

I love being fully present, fully me. Fully alive. The isolation, the alienation, the despair to have to hide who I am, because who I am doesn't fit the acceptable person, others deem me to project, can easily suck the vibrant life out of me. Being myself inside my family has never been easy. I'm considered to be a sinner. Not by me. Just by the others in the family.

A child is just a child. No child says, I think I will be heterosexual. Or something else. Being born into a world that decides who is and isn't acceptable due to things that by birth are what they are, can create a confusing world and a hole that is hard to live in. I want to be part of a world that loves people for who they are. And supports, honors, appreciates, heals, not denigrates or dismisses souls. That is a world we can dream of only if every soul is welcome, nurtured to truly, wholly, be who they are born to be.

There are choices. We can choose to love with judgment or choose to love without judgment. But love that judges cripples. We make decisions every day that bring light to the world. Or contribute to the world - by way of speech and behavior - that creates an atmosphere that is inhibiting or limiting to someone else.

I am coming out to say this deliberately. Because remaining in the background is to be part of the problem of which many young people feel unaccepted, alienated and have to hide their true feelings. I feel this is not healthy mentally, which follows, is not healthy physically. Because I also think mind and body health is connected and one affects the other.

The article Russell Tovey - the unlikely lad is 3 years old. 

Excerpt from the article: At school he always had girlfriends. It was only when he got into his mid-teens that he realised they didn't do that much for him, that he was attracted to boys. "Looking back, I always knew. But you don't really know till you get to a point where you go, oh, that's what makes me happier." At 18, he came out to his family and his father tried to talk him out of it. "My dad was of that generation where it's changeable if you get it early enough."

How would he have changed you? "Hormone therapy or shock treatment, all of these horror things that you watch. You see, they had all this Aids thing. It was all, 'Don't die of ignorance.' My nan thought being gay was a disease. It's just a generational, educational thing. And Dad was like, 'I wish you would have told us sooner because we would have done something about it.'" Were you surprised by the reaction? "No, I was prepared for it." Was it based on prejudice or fear? "Not knowing. Not knowing anybody else who is gay, not experiencing it, hearing of people dying of Aids and seeing, say, Larry Grayson on TV and thinking, that's it. Seeing gay men appear in stories in which they were miserable and sad. And I think he felt sad and worried for me, that I'd have a terrible life if I made this choice. And he thought it was a choice, because being straight is so natural, why would you want to be anything different from that?"

It's touching how determined Tovey is to understand his family's fears of his sexuality. "You want your kids to be perfect and at that time it felt like it was an imperfection. Whereas now a lot of people are like [enthusiastic voice], 'Are you? Cool! Well, make sure you look after yourself.' It seems like it's a different time. I sense that with younger generations, when they have after-school clubs where they talk about being gay. I meet a lot of kids who've come out at school, and I'm like, 'What! You came out at school! Did you get bullied?' 'No!'" He smiles. He's just remembered something that amuses him. "My mum used to think it was the pill that made you gay. There was too much estrogen in the water, and people started taking the pill in the 60s and it made everybody gay.

Personally, I believe this world is still homophobic. I know my family is. Can you imagine, if those of us who are heterosexual had to have the conversation with our parents that we are heterosexual? Though, I didn't have the pressure for that conversation, I still managed to be the one in exile from the family. Anyone who stepped outside the limits of my family's beliefs had to make it on her own. I don't regret it, in the end. But, it allows me to have a little understanding of anyone who has had to make their own way. 



September 16, 2016, I started a facebook page Russell Tovey Planet 

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I now blog about Rafa Nadal exclusively at Rafa Nadal Bring Back Sleeveless  

INSTEAD OF CHILDREN GROWING UP WITHOUT A SENSE OF WORTH

IT WOULD BE WISE TO HELP EACH CHILD KNOW THEY ARE WORTHY 

Many TV ads and many facebook posts are for the kind treatment of animals, pets. Those who have been mistreated, neglected, abused, abandoned. I agree that animals and pets should be treated with kindness and loving care.

But at the same time, I know that there are thousands, probably millions of children who are mistreated, neglected, abused, witness things that no child should be witnessing, they are abandoned, are sold (some by their own parents), are sex slaves (some by their own parents), are married off when only 8 years old or younger, are taken from their parent(s) forced to be child soldiers and forced to kill others, the list could go on and on. Much of this happens in the USA. And I think probably most countries have children who suffer childhoods of great voids and survival needs that aren't met.

But, we don't see ads, explaining the lives of these children. We don't post about them on facebook. Because children legally that are in foster care, for example, cannot have their lives laid out for public consumption, notice. It is called "right to privacy". But in many ways, these children continue in damaging lives, because this so-believed saving of their "rights to privacy", means that we, the public, don't know, don't do anything to help just one of these human beings, don't witness the hell that these children live 24/7. I know personally stories of a few of these children. As a teacher for 30 years, I got to know some of these children. I adopted one of them. I have read the file. It is excruciatingly painful for me because of the empathy that I feel.

And I know that many of these children don't get one posting for them on facebook, a posting at a Huffington Post, an article in a newspaper or magazine. They are simply unknown to us. Their pain is not even conscious often to themselves, because it is called "Life" for them. They know nothing else but the need to find ways to survive daily.

I ask you personally, if you have gotten this far in this post, to at least think of these children today. Tomorrow. And each day after, say a word in your heart for them. Apparently, trusting that God will take care of them, isn't enough. Peace won't come until we give our children on the planet the basic needs to eat, sleep, dress warm in cold weather and have at least one person in their young lives who thinks they are worthy. We say we don't want abortions, but we allow "this" to happen to those children who weren't aborted, but they certainly are invisible to us in our hearts and minds.

Many older foster children who are free for adoption, don't get adopted because people prefer to adopt babies. In this video, are older foster children who were adopted. But many never have a home, know love, or a sense that they are worthy for anyone to love them. I send out love to them, each one and all.

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