Grow Through It: LGBT Challenges
Taylor Brorby, author of Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land, describes being outed by his aunt when he was 22.
At that point, he had been coming out to friends in college, which he had just finished. Three months earlier, he came out to his sister. They had agreed since he was moving out east to attend seminary that it probably wasn’t best to tell his parents. He was somewhat out of the closet in his day to day life, but not out to his immediate and extended family.
The outing ultimately resulted in becoming estranged from his parents.
Brorby got through it with a lot of support from friends, former teachers, and new friends. He describes it as an ongoing process. When he meets new people, makes new friends, or moves to any new region in the country, he has to explain to people why he isn’t traveling home for the holidays.
He learned that most everyone is on their own journey and to take care with how people identify at any given point.
He believes you can only really know what people tell you about who they are, and to respect it. If you have hunches about people, it is probably best to ask them directly, rather than going through back channels to spread rumors or create concern where there may be none.
Brorby says he learned that the big myth in American culture is that your parents will love you no matter what. He thinks that is a very damaging phrase to live by because if you’re someone that really feels your parents aren’t loving you, then you can turn that on yourself and say ‘there’s something wrong with me’ — rather than, maybe there’s something wrong with them or this relationship we’re in.
He believes that relationships are not necessarily fossilized in a given moment. If you’re outed or come out and someone has a negative reaction, give them time and space to see if they will come around.
And his advice is to find trusted people to keep in your back pocket and openly communicate that you may need them to lean on should things get rocky.
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