It's time to Celebrate your gay straight queer bi trans questioning poly pan asexual self.
The coming out process is as diverse and unique as the individuals experiencing it. For a few of us, it’s like ripping off a band-aid: mildly painful, but quick. For most of us, however, it’s a continual process of unwrapping a gauze that encircles all aspects of our lives. Sometimes we are pushed out of the closet by external circumstances. At other times, we simply put one foot in front of the other and walk out on our own.
Others of us don’t come out until the pain of “staying in” has become unbearable.
The benefits of coming out are great, but they might not be quickly or readily apparent. It’s unlikely that we’ll make an announcement over our school intercom, to the sound of wild applause. We don’t get a shiny new toaster for being the 500,000th person to come out. But the bounty of inner cash and prizes is magnificent. It comes in the form of self-respect, integrity and congruence. We stop relating to ourselves as if we were broken, flawed, or perverse and we can finally release the dead weight of our secrets.
Secrets live in a grungy duplex which they share with an impudent neighbor named Shame.
And when secrets and shame get together, they turn our internal experience into a rude and noisy house party. The way we feel about ourselves suffers and we can turn to addictive or compulsive behaviors to momentarily quiet the ruckus.
In my work as a Marriage and Family Therapist, my clients and I have found that the best way to evict these unmannerly tenants for good is by blowing the doors of our fears wide open. It’s certainly not easy. It takes great courage. Courage, which has nothing to do with freedom from fear, and everything to do with having the heart to turn towards what scares you.
I believe that all coming out stories are love stories.
They tell the tale of a great love for our deep and truest selves. Like any good love story, there are twists and turns, villains and forces beyond our control. But like any good love story, an alchemical process of transformation occurs: Turning shame in self-love, anxiety into excitement, and secrets into our greatest sources of personal strength.
Lonely Forever? No way.