Most of you probably noticed that June was pride month. If you weren\u2019t already aware, the plethora of rainbows on social media probably gave it away. Around the world us gays are got the chance to celebrate being..well….really gay (in the very best way). There were photos of parties and parades, posts and articles of support and visibility and inclusion.<\/p>\n
So it wasn\u2019t a shock to see a link like \u201c11 LGBTQ Stories to Celebrate Pride Month\u201d from Off The Shelf<\/a>. The contents of the list though WAS a bit of a surprise, a lovely one. And an opportunity for a different sort of pride.<\/p>\n One of the books on this list was Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write about Leaving Men for Women,<\/a> which happens to contain my coming out essay. The hardest and most essential piece of writing I\u2019ve ever released to the world. My first ever in print.<\/p>\n I remember the day I got my author copies in the mail. I tore open the package and opened the cover. I ran my finger down the table of contents and there it was. My name. In print. I’d never seen my name in a book before. Never even imagined such a thing was even possible.<\/p>\n Breath held, I quickly flipped to page 86 and read my own words as if I had not read them a thousand times already trying to make them perfect.<\/p>\n Perfection is not easy to achieve in a story that holds so many jagged edges and broken parts.<\/p>\n My heart was pounding. My body had chills. I felt on top of the world – and also sick to my stomach. Not just because my story was in a book (a REAL LIVE BOOK. with pages and ink and new book smell!) but because *this* story was in a book. This story that had, until then, lived only online and only anonymously.<\/p>\n Back then I was I was Jen, the faceless blogger behind “Awakenings: Navigating the Spaces Between In and Out”<\/em>. There I poured out the rawest, most visceral and most true stories I had ever written.<\/p>\n Perhaps – because of the safety of anonymity, the truest stories I ever will.<\/p>\n Before then I was what we now call a mommy blogger. Talking childbirth and breastfeeding and gentle discipline and chronicling life in suburbia way back before blogs were even called blogs. It was all very safe and light and entertaining. I even had a little base of loyal readers – but I wasn\u2019t a writer. Never would have dared the audacity of claiming such a thing.<\/p>\n And then came Awakenings.<\/em><\/p>\n My entire undoing was chronicled there. The breaking and the becoming. The raw and messy and real. The fear. The confusion. The loss and the ache.<\/p>\n And still – there are parts of the story – the ones where I walked entirely outside of my own integrity, the ones where the shatter cut too deep to bring words to the reality – that remain untold.<\/p>\n When this book came out I had to make the choice. To keep the sanctity of that space where I could say whatever I wanted, or to step fully into owning the story.<\/p>\n It was another choice I didn\u2019t know how to make.<\/p>\n But I remembered how it was, in the early days of my own discovery. How I scoured the internet, searching with everything I had – desperate to find these stories somewhere. Someone who was walking this path. Someone who had survived. Anything to cling to make this feel less impossible.<\/p>\n I had a wonderful husband and two beautiful children. I was a small town preacher\u2019s daughter from the Eastern Canadian Coast. Nobody in the most immediate layers of my close-knit family had ever been divorced.<\/p>\n I had no fucking roadmap for this.<\/p>\n I needed to find something that would make me feel less achingly alone. Needed it like I needed air. Someone or something to tell me that I could and would survive.<\/p>\n Back then – I couldn’t find it – not the story I so desperately needed. And so I did what those of us driven by story must do.<\/p>\n I began writing it.<\/p>\n And then others – other women on their own dark and desperate nights – began finding me. Was it worth it?<\/em> They sent message after message. I read their words, held their tears. Knew their desperation. Read those letters again and again until I had some of the memorized.<\/p>\n Yes – even then the words created a circle so that we could save each other.<\/p>\n Some of them – as deep as I was in the dismantling of my own life and in the stickiness of my own chosen grief – I couldn\u2019t even answer. I\u2019m ashamed of that. But how could I provide any sort of viable wisdom when I was making such a royal clusterfuck of it all? Hurting and damaging and bringing my entire life down to the rubble – making that impossible choice that wasn\u2019t ever a choice at all.<\/p>\n Choose my life – and all that I love? Or choose myself?<\/p>\n But you can\u2019t un-know something once you know it. You can\u2019t undo what has been done.<\/p>\n I got caught in a tailspin and when the force finally died down life as I knew it was over. And there I was – standing underneath that big ole’ rainbow flag – wondering what the fuck I was supposed to do now.<\/p>\n It\u2019s true. In the end, it wasn\u2019t a choice at all. The choice to come out and live true, and the choice to attach my name to these words of truth in that book.<\/p>\n I had to do it for my own integrity – an integrity I would have to scratch and claw my way back to owning over the course of many years, an integrity that came at a high cost and that left me broken before it found me whole.<\/p>\n And I had to do it for the others out there who needed my story more than I needed the comfort of my hiding space.<\/p>\n And so there it was. My name. In a real-life book.<\/p>\n I didn’t talk much about this book when it came out. I didn’t shout from the hills that I was a published author. I didn’t tell my family or post more than the merest whisper on social media. I didn\u2019t blog about it or give copies to my friends. I tucked it away as if it hadn\u2019t happened at all. I was aware that this wasn’t just my story. And that it hadn’t been long since the fallout and the breaking and the collateral damage.<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t proud of my reluctance to own this in a bigger way – I just didn\u2019t want to cause any more hurt. I couldn’t live with myself if I caused any more hurt.<\/p>\n Please, don\u2019t let me cause any more hurt.<\/em><\/p>\n Just like the blog – this book brought so many souls to me. Women who had been, like me, desperately searching for a story that made them feel less alone. In the years since I\u2019ve met many of in person. To so many more I’ve been able to be a hand outstretched in the dark to say “Here I am. This is my story. Tell me yours. You are not alone in this. Not now and not ever again”.<\/em><\/p>\n Because here is the thing. Telling our stories matters. Not just the ones that follow the hero\u2019s journey. Not just the stories of happiness and light, of glittering freedom or triumph – though they have their place and should not be forgotten.<\/p>\n It matters most that we tell the real stories. The hard stories. The stories of the dark and desperate nights. Of the demons and the devastation. Of the things done to us and the things we have done. Of our want and our desire. Of our sex and our back-door pathways to whatever or whoever we called savior at the time. Of the trauma stored in our bones, and the things we have broken on our path to saving ourselves.<\/p>\n
\nMore and more of them. From all over the world. They sent emails. Long emails drenched in grasping hope. Letters that left their entire lives and hearts splayed out on the screen in front of me.<\/p>\n
\n Would you do it again?<\/em>
\n I\u2019m not as brave as you, I can\u2019t leave.<\/em>
\n I love her, so much – I can\u2019t live without her.<\/em>
\n When I touched her skin – everything changed and I couldn\u2019t go back.<\/em>
\n I took off my wedding ring today.<\/em>
\n I\u2019m afraid of losing my children.<\/em>
\n I\u2019m afraid of losing my family.<\/em>
\n I am so very afraid.<\/em>
\n I can never forgive myself.<\/em>
\nI can\u2019t do this.<\/em><\/p>\n