Tag: Self Acceptance

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Springtime, by Gillian

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. 
– Mark Twain

And I thank you for that, Mr. Twain. Thanks for telling it like it is – that Springtime is a sneaky, unpredictable little critter full of unpleasant surprises. T. S. Eliot wrote of April being the cruelest month, but most poets wax lyrical over the ‘rebirth’ that is the Spring, but they tell only half the story. More reliable is the old adage that if March comes in like a lamb it goes out like a lion, or vice versa. The old folks, tied much more closely to the seasons than many of us today, knew just how unreliable Springtime can be. In the England of my childhood those April showers so romantically trilled about in song had a bad habit of coming in one long shower beginning shortly after the New Year and ending temporarily for a few days in late July.

Arriving in sunny Colorado in 1965, I was welcomed by a seemingly endless Fall of clear days under a deep blue sky. Then, suddenly, one day winter arrived and the weather remained pretty cold and snowy for a couple of months, then suddenly one day the temperatures shot well above seventy and stayed there. The birds sang, early daffodils and tulips poked out their heads, buds appeared on the trees. Spring, I believed, had arrived. Wrong! A huge cold front moved in, temperatures plummeted, blossoms froze, flowers struggled to breath under three feet of snow. Of course, I now know that that is standard Springtime procedure around here, but that first year of my Colorado life it sure did take me by surprise. That ‘Springtime in the Rockies’ that we sang about in grade-school was even more given to shock and trauma than that Springtime in England so beloved of poets.

Contained in the lyrics of the Simon and Garfunkel song, A Hazy Shade of Winter, is a reference to ‘the springtime of my life’. I somehow missed mine; at least the first time around. Not surprising; I was stuck in that hazy shade of winter. Not that I was unhappy in the first four decades of my life, before I came out to myself. I just wasn’t there, which hardly lends itself to happiness or unhappiness. There was someone playing my part, but I didn’t care whether she was happy or not. She was not me and so signified nothing. And so I continued in that hazy shade until suddenly, about midsummer to continue the seasonal metaphor, I burst out into the sunshine – and entered my Springtime. I guess because I flunked the first one by my complete absence, I was forced to do it over. And I did not flunk this one. I blossomed. I bloomed. I unfurled my petals and felt the sun enfold me in it’s warm caress. I felt no fear. I was free to discover my own true beauty and to display it to the world. Maybe there would be some cold rain, some damaging winds, maybe I would struggle to survive under a snow drift, but I would survive to thrive in the summertime of the new me.

And so I must apologize to all those poets and songwriters. They have it right. There really is a magic in the Springtime air. Ellis Peters writes that ‘every spring is the only spring – a perpetual astonishment.’ She describes, perfectly, my life since I came out; one of perpetual, breathtaking, astonishment at my joy in life.

Continuing in A Hazy Shade of Winter –

…. Look around
The grass is high
The fields are ripe
It’s the springtime of my life
Seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry ……

And it occurs to me that one of the many blessings of aging is the ability to look back and see so clearly the seasons of our lives, and that time does, indeed, weave a tapestry; a tapestry design which we cannot see as we live it. Only when we look back does the picture become clear. We are finally able to see, and to revel in, our own life’s tapestry.

© April 2018

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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Self-Acceptance, by Phillip Hoyle

I believe that my self-perception of being religiously more liberal in a conservative environment, an assumption I learned at home as early as my junior high years, trained me to be self-accepting. In that theological context which was salvationistic and somewhat Calvinistic, I knew the ultimate goal of religion was to love God and neighbor. The moral/ethical code was flexible. I knew I was different but didn’t worry over it. I accepted my differences as not being eternally fatal. I didn’t worry over fitting into something I could not do. I believed I had a place in the larger picture of things. I worked from an introvert space although I knew how to participate in extrovert activities and with extraordinarily extrovert personalities.
I was responsible; adults liked that in me. I laughed easily; kids liked that in me. I liked life. I liked myself. I liked others. I was able to fit in easily enough. I did good class work, was polite, enjoyed choir, went to Boy Scouts, worked at the store, and saved money to go to college. Furthermore, no one around me ranted about sin.
What happened in my early teen developmental phase was quite positive and in most ways reflected the norms of developmental theory. I liked myself with my many projects. I was singing in two choirs, taught myself how to lead music (meaning, gestures for choirs and congregations), and practiced them in front of the mirror where sometimes I fantasized being an orchestral conductor. I worked on merit badges, I read books endlessly, and I learned steps for pop and rock and Native American dancing. I made Indian costumes. I collected Native American art prints. I carried out groceries. I made friends.
In the next few years I watched carefully as life changed for me. I realized the sex play with my friends, the boys among them, still attracted me after the others lost interest. I didn’t turn down opportunities for similar liaisons with newcomers, but I didn’t find many. (Actually, I found only one, and too soon his family moved away.) Still I developed friendships with girls and with straight guys. I was busy. Still am. I liked my life. I was entrusted with leadership, even leadership I didn’t especially want. Still am.
Lucky me—I didn’t get kidded much, was rarely taunted, and never beat up. Because I was used to being different, when I did encounter the occasional put down, I didn’t believe it and even might interpret it as a kind of intimacy. I liked myself and knew other people liked me too. Besides, I was too busy to worry over it.
In high school years I undertook interior decoration as a supplement to my Indian fascination, took an interest in fine art and frames, and engaged in more visual artwork. I continued taking music lessons and played piano and sang. I listened to all kinds of music and sang at church, school, and civic functions.
All my adult life I have kept busy, busy, busy! When I worked I did several jobs and in some ways contributed a lot more work than any church paid me for. I composed and arranged music for my choirs. I taught training workshops, led discussion groups, and taught core curricula in bible and theology. I taught a class in congregational education organization for the Missouri School of Religion. And I attended endless meetings, worked on boards and committees in churches, among clergy, within the denomination, in interdenominational settings, and the larger community. I led a denomination-wide professional organization, planned camps, coordinated conferences, on and on. Eventually I wrote religious education resources for a publishing company. I deeply enjoyed my family, deeply loved my wife, and deeply loved a few men.
My eldest sister said it most clearly, “At home we learned that the big sin was to be bored.” I guess I was an over achiever. Still am. Still accept and love myself. Still write and read and entertain. Still do many social things with my diverse pool of friends.
My urologist saw something in me besides my much enlarged prostate gland. He said I was lucky. I attributed it all to my genetic inheritance. He thought it was something else. He and I finally agreed my luck was due to both nature and nurture. Besides my genetically inherited Pollyanna tendencies, there were the open attitude of my family, attendance in integrated schools, and working in a grocery store from age thirteen. Even the church I grew up in and worked in was not sectarian and pursued an ecumenical vision. I am its child and I like life. I like and accept myself with all my differences. And especially, I like my differences.
© 12 Dec 2016 
About the Author 
 Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
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Self Acceptance, by Ray S

The beauty of our Story Time to me is that it makes me face up to a reality-need weekly. The older one gets, the greater life’s little challenges become.

The Monday challenge is usually confronted the day before or early Monday morning.

This Sunday I wandered around the place in my robe, downing several cups of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal. Seemed like it was decision time to live or die. No not really bad, maybe to just go back to bed and tease my muse for tomorrow’s creative writing.

It was an easy choice—go back to bed. On my way to bed I picked up a book I’d recently been reading. There it laid, speaking to me from its bright yellow and black cover whispering, “Take me to bed with you.” Then my muse and the book’s author started contending for my attention and Story Time’s.

Realizing how much easier it would be to open the book and review the last chapter, I followed the path of least resistance. It was like meeting an old friend at the coffee shop and agreeing about the story and the author’s writing skills.

Muse empathetically nudged me back to tomorrow’s work to be done saying, “Remember Self Acceptance?”

I was reminded of my one time fifty five minute weekly with my Father-Confessor-Buddy, Dr. Ed. Ed’s job was to listen to me babble on for a given time about my self-love/hate relationship, that time period discovering what homosexuality meant and how I fit into that denomination, basic insecurity which used to be known as “inferiority complex” before the new age set in, envy and not measuring up in every way, etc., etc., etc.—

Did Ed accomplish any emotional miracles with his patient? Guardedly I can answer, “Yes.” Somewhat. Or perhaps I grew so weary of all that baggage I dumped it—another word for acceptance.

So now I’ve set my Self Acceptance goals on moving into 28 Barberry Lane with Ms. Anna Madrigal’s other tenants and living happily ever after.

© 12 December 2016

About the Author
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Self Acceptance, by Louis Brown

Amazons, Nose-Job, and Varicose Veins

This prompt will most likely inspire certain people to say something like, “I did not know I was gay until I was 50 years old or 60 years old.” To many people, that reaction sounds unbelievable and preposterous. I am from New York City, but I do believe these people. Our society used to keep telling us that gay people do not exist. Women never kiss women, and certainly men never kiss men. So many people assumed that that must be true. That is why large numbers of gay people used to go through life not really knowing who they were, as fantastic as that may seem.

Personally, I did not have that option. When I was in the 8th grade in elementary school and a year later as a freshman in high school, although my parents had no idea, certain street people knew I was gay. If you went to any high school in those days in New York City, you were not safe unless you had protection from a gang. I was approached by the head of the girls’ gang who told me something like, “You’re a faggot so you are going to be constantly assaulted by the toughs. Join our gang, and you will not have to worry. We know how to fight.” They called themselves the Amazons and they prided themselves on their really long fingernails that they painted meticulously with vivid red nail polish. They told me that those were their weapons. They did in fact assault and neutralize a large number of male toughs. I was safe.

I occasionally had to attend Amazon meetings. I am proud to say that, once, when they said they wanted to assault a bookish Jewish boy, I pleaded with them not to, and they didn’t. On another occasion, they wanted to assault a pretty, extremely passive, soft-spoken girl named Monica. I pleaded with them not to. So they didn’t.

So, to survive, I had to accept who I was at an early age.

About 12 years after that, I was applying for a job that required me to get interviewed by a psychologist who happened to be a woman. I spoke with her for a few minutes before she read my application. After a while, I told her yes I was gay, and I wondered if she could tell by talking to me. She said she could not tell, in fact she would not have guessed so. The psychologist assured me that she was not the one doing the actual hiring and that their company did not have an anti-gay hiring policy so that I need not worry. I did not get the job, gee I wonder why.

My point is that, if you contrast what the Amazons knew about me right away, right off the bat, and what the trained psychologist could not even guess at, what is going on? I guess sometimes street people are just more insightful in judging people than the so-called professionals.

Two examples of what I did not accept about my own body. When I was say 12 years old, a high-flying baseball came right at my face and hit me in the nose. I bled, but my parents did not take me to the doctor. That is one reason I am not a baseball enthusiast, never will be. I would prefer a sewing class any day. I had a bruise on my nose for a while, but a few years later I realized my nose was off-center, and I had to breathe through my mouth.

I was being harassed at the office, so I said to myself this is a good time to take a month or two off and get a nose job. I went to the Plastic Surgery Department of New York Hospital, and made an appointment. I had to go two or three times in advance to make sure I was physically a good candidate for surgery. They said I was. When I was talking privately with the nurse, she told me I lucked out. My plastic surgeon was going to be a famous Italian plastic surgeon who has reworked the faces of several Hollywood actresses and actors.

On the day of the surgery, I took the anesthesia, but, when I woke up, I barfed. I only stayed a day or so longer in the hospital. I had large dark purple bruises that covered my nose and the areas around my eyes. I looked like a raccoon. I could not go out in public, so I stayed with my brother Charlie in Flushing New York. After about a week I bought a pair of sunglasses with enormous lenses. When I wore them, I could go out and resumed my daily routines.

After that surgery, I was able to breathe through my nose and was more aware of my septum and sinuses. Where there used to be bone and cartilage, now there was a large, comfortable cavity.

About 15 years ago, I noticed I was getting a lot of varicose veins on my left leg. I thought to myself, don’t pregnant women get varicose veins when they are having some medical problem? Why me? Men do not get varicose veins. After the embarrassment phase was over, I went to the cardiovascular department of New York Hospital, got an appointment for an evaluation, and they said yes to surgery.

This consisted of me lying on my right side with a sort of leaden blanket to cover me up above the waist and my right leg. They anesthetized my left leg so that it was numb, then they zapped me with an electric current in several different locations, i.e. they stuck in needles to conduct the electricity. A couple of weeks after the surgery all the varicose veins were gone. Amazing.

So now with my nose job and my freedom from varicose veins, I accept myself.

P. S.: New York Hospital, unfortunately, no longer has the liberal policy of letting any one walk in to their buildings to set up medical procedures such as surgery. What if an elderly person wanted a varicosectomy operation in Denver? What happens?


© 7 December 2016

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

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Self Acceptance, by Pat Gourley

Well this phrase certainly sums up the entire “gay agenda” now doesn’t it?

One of the insidious accusations pitched our way around a “gay agenda” is that we need to recruit to our ranks. Reproducing, per conventional wisdom, is not one of our strong points, this despite the fact that many queers do reproduce.

I would though argue that self-acceptance is really a very potent recruitment tool. That is if you define recruitment as the creation of safe space for people to get in touch and express their intrinsic identity. No brainwashing or perverted sexual enticement needed, just provide a bit of sunlight and water and voila. Not to indulge too much in a trite metaphor but it is like a flower blooming. When given the chance queerness reaches its full potential and gloriously presents itself for all to see and appreciate. Homophobia both from external sources and the more insidious internalized form can prevent this from happening.

I could pontificate on this for a few more paragraphs and come up with a few more cheesy metaphors but since this is meant to be a personal story telling exercise I’ll just say a few words about my own self-acceptance. I was very fortunate to come of age sexually in my late teens in an environment that was in rebellion on many fronts. Civil rights, women’s liberation, strong anti-war sentiment and exploding gay liberation were all ingredients in the stew I found myself in.

We will mark the 50th anniversary of the summer of love this coming year, 2017. I strongly encourage pilgrimages to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco. The neighborhood is suffering under the ravages of gentrification but a bit less so than other parts of the City. Since I rarely pass on the opportunity to quote lyrics from my favorite band these couple of lines seem appropriate here:

Nothin’ shakin’ on shakedown street. used to be the heart of town.

Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart. you just gotta poke around.

Shakedown Street. Garcia/Hunter

If you get the chance to visit slowly amble along Haight Street and poke around a bit.

My own coming out was certainly facilitated by the social, political and cultural upheavals of the late 1960’s. It is however the personal self-acceptance on a deep soul level that provides the spark for queer actualization and this can take awhile. It is a process and rarely a single bolt of enlightenment. There were ups and downs along this path for me during the first 10 years of that self-discovery. I would date those years of maturing self-acceptance to be roughly from 1966 to 1976. It was capped off and really cemented with the “coming-out” letter I wrote to my father.

His response to my letter was rather unexpected, loving and astonishingly thoughtful. He said that my gayness explained a lot and he now understood better why I had always been sensitive to the underdog. Being Catholic he also encouraged me to search out the Gay Catholic group Dignity. I did that but my participation was fleeting.

I truly regret loosing his letter and not following up better with inquiries as to how he found out about Dignity; dad died in August of 1980 a few short days after the second national gathering of Radical Fairies ended here in Colorado. I suspect though that the Dignity referral came from the same parish priest who I came out to in the early 1970’s. This man, who after a painful counseling session involving my expression of personal doubt about my gay path, put his arm around me and said I would make a great priest! That did not happen.

I do realize that my own personal self-acceptance was much less traumatic that it has been for many. I was truly lucky in this regard and so fortunate to have had a great dad in my corner to help the process along.

I have for some reason been listening to lots of Lucinda Williams these days, especially it seems since November 8th. She has a song that seems apropos to the whole self-acceptance gig for us queers. The title of the tune is “A World Without Tears”: Here is aYou Tube link to aversion of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-W-qKAQJQo

© December 2016

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Away from Home by Gail Klock

Home to me is not a place so much as a state of being. It is a place deep within me, where I am loved unconditionally, where I’m accepted and understood. It is that place where my thoughts come to my defense when under attack, like a mother lion defending her cubs. It is that place where I am allowed to make mistakes, and take ownership for my actions and make amends to others if those actions cause them pain.

I am going to be okay no matter the circumstances, are the feelings which reside in that place called home. They are the indescribably good feelings deep within me, like the ones which come coursing through my body when listening to a beautiful piece of music, or when I laugh from the depth of my soul, or cry in empathy for another’s pain. It is the beauty, grace, and power of a hawk soaring through the sky, treating me to the joys of nature.

It has taken me a long time to find home… I was away from home most of my life. I found it difficult to find peace within myself, due at least in part to my homosexuality. It was, and on rare occasions still is, hard to find serenity within, especially when being viewed by others as a deviant person.

I was a pioneer in the gay movement back in the 80’s when I chose to have children through artificial insemination and to be out, knowing to not do so would place my daughters in the position of having shame about the family they came from. But as I was traversing this unknown world I carried abashment within me. My inner world was still not a place of self-acceptance and tranquility. I look back on those times now with admiration for my courage, but I would rather have realized my inner strength at the time. I was still away from home. I was looking at a young lesbian the other day and admiring her hair cut with one half of her head shaved and the other side cascading across her head like a waterfall. I would not have had the courage to wear my hair like that when I was young. But then I kind of chuckled inwardly as I realized I now sometimes wear my hair in an equally brazen fashion.

As long as I remind myself where home is, I can get there. It reminds me of the last time I parked at the Pikes Peak parking lot out at DIA. I dutifully told myself to remember I had parked in the F section. That was all good and fine until I exited the shuttle bus at FF after only 3 hours of sleep the night before. I reminded myself of this lack of sleep as I fought off the notion that someone had stolen my car, after all no one else had my keys. Wandering back and forth several times along rows EE, FF, and GG …dragging my luggage, I knew I had to develop a strategy to find it. I then thought okay, I’ll just go up to section A and walk up and down every lane until I’m successful. As I reached section YY it occurred to me I had parked in F, but I had been searching in FF. I found my car where I had parked it. Of course it was there all along just waiting to be found, which is true for my inner sense of home as well. My serenity was always available to be, I just had to find the correct strategy to get to it. I get there with less angst now, especially when I remember to delete the old tapes which play within my head about the perversion of being gay.

© 2 August 2015

About the Author

I grew up in Pueblo, CO with my two brothers and parents. Upon completion of high school I attended Colorado State University majoring in Physical Education. My first teaching job was at a high school in Madison, Wisconsin. After three years of teaching I moved to North Carolina to attend graduate school at UNC-Greensboro. After obtaining my MSPE I coached basketball, volleyball, and softball at the college level starting with Wake Forest University and moving on to Springfield College, Brown University, and Colorado School of Mines.
While coaching at Mines my long term partner and I had two daughters through artificial insemination. Due to the time away from home required by coaching I resigned from this position and got my elementary education certification. I taught in the gifted/talented program in Jefferson County Schools for ten years. As a retiree I enjoy helping take care of my granddaughter, playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the storytelling group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT organizations.


As a retiree I enjoy helping take care of my granddaughter, playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the storytelling group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT organizations.

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Acceptance, by Gail Klock

There are many different nuances to the meaning of acceptance. I’ve always been at ease with “giving approval to others” and put great effort into understanding their points of view and actions even when I don’t agree. However, I’ve struggled with the aspect which involves “believing in favorably” when it has come to myself. It is only recently after experiencing some difficult situations and engaging in years of therapy that I can truly say I accept myself.

As a young child I struggled with a positive sense of self due to my lack of connection with my mother. I sensed her depression after the death of my brother and somehow came to the conclusion it was my responsibility to make her happy and in so doing I lost myself to her needs. I did not establish a strong sense of who I was. Now this is not to say that I was an unhappy child. I had many friends at school and in the neighborhood and thought of myself as a capable kid. At home I fought continuously with my brothers and often felt left out because they sided with each other against me, they enjoyed their commonalities of being males and in sharing a bedroom with one another. I did not have a safe place at home.

I was happiest when engaged in sports because this was the one place I felt a sense of wholeness. However, society at the time did not for the most part accept tomboys… especially as I entered the teen years. Furthermore, an unconscious part of me realized I was different sexually as well. It was at this point I began to crumble inside due to my lack of an acceptance of self and the lack of support from my environment. My parents were not negative about who I was- I think it was more of a benign neglect. But I certainly did not go to them to help me through the hard times. It was a struggle I had to face on my own. All outward appearances reflected a very confident young lady, only a very keen observer of human nature would have known otherwise. I recall a situation in junior high which reflected this dichotomy of how I felt inside and how I was perceived by others. In eighth grade we had elections within each of our homerooms for student council members. I was in a classroom of the popular kids- the future high school queens and kings, athletes, and honor students. I was nominated by one of my classmates along with three or four others and was directed to go to the hallway while voting took place to determine who would represent our class. When we came back into the classroom the teacher announced I would be our representative. Although I was pleased with the result I was very frightened by the outcome as I felt somehow I had been set up…if I allowed myself to believe my classmates really wanted me then they would all start laughing and tell me it was just a trick…they just wanted to be able to laugh at me. It wasn’t until many years later I realized they really did like me and wanted me to be their leader, they accepted me even though at the time I did not accept myself. I had learned how to play the game of appearing to be confident to avoid any inquiries as to my state of mind, I was afraid to let anyone know how fragile I was… to do so was too vulnerable- it was scary. I was very good at accepting others and helping them to feel good about themselves but I didn’t have anyone doing the same for me, largely due to the fact I never let anyone know I needed that help.

In college I was very confident in my field, I felt I was receiving a very good education, and I was going to be successful. I had a girlfriend that loved me very much and was very supportive, but I was still very confused about my worth as an individual. I could not look at myself in the mirror and say I really like you, you are a good and valuable person. Within two years I had moved from an awareness of knowing I was different to “you are a homosexual”. And along with this change in knowledge came an awareness that I was socially deviant. I, who had always gained my positive sense of self from helping others feel better about themselves, became a person who was to be feared. I felt totally isolated at times from those around me. I really needed to go to the student health center to see a counselor, which my girlfriend Connie was trying to get me to do and was even willing to arrange for me, but I couldn’t bring myself to go as I was afraid of being in the waiting room and having others staring at me and wondering what was wrong with me. I felt like I had a contagious deadly disease which I had to keep to myself so no one else would catch it- I think it came to be identified later as “the homosexual agenda”. It’s probably good I didn’t go for help as the mental health field at the time would have determined my homosexuality was a mental illness which needed fixing. This is not just a projection on my part, as I have mentioned in a previous story that a few years later when I did finally get up the courage to see a psychiatrist he told me shock treatment might cure me of my homosexual urges.

Once out of college I had far more acceptance of myself as a professional than I did as a person. The love and acceptance I received from my friends did not penetrate my own lack of self-acceptance. I felt like a fraud. There were very few people who were aware of my sexual preference which I think contributed to my feelings. I was liked for who I appeared to be, not for who I really was. I thought if people found out I was gay I would no longer be a “good person”. I would become this person with an agenda who was out to seduce every straight female I met. I wouldn’t even let myself look at women with any awareness of their physical attractiveness- I kept those thoughts buried so deep they never saw the light of day. The closets I hid in for twenty years created a dungeon in which necrosis of my soul and spirit took place.

I made a great deal of progress towards self-acceptance in the twenty-seven years I was with Lynn. But my self-acceptance was based a great deal on the two of us as a couple and the family we had created with our children. I was very proud of us and glad to be out of the closet. But when Lynn decided to leave the relationship for personal reasons all my old abandonment issues from childhood came rushing back. I barely made it through the dark days as I had no good feelings about who I was, I didn’t know I had the strength to make it through this soul wrenching sadness, and I certainly didn’t have the desire to. I’m not really sure where the light was that led through this dark, damp, miserable tunnel. I do know being needed by fourteen 3rd and 4th grade students gave my life the purpose I needed at the time to survive. With this purpose and intense, well administered psychological care from Vivian Schaefer I was able to regain my footing and slowly make strides to reach a point of self-acceptance I had never before had. I gained an awareness that the person other people had seen and loved for all those years really was who I was. With this self-acceptance I am the happiest I have ever been. I am looking forward to attending a solstice ceremony tomorrow morning- it will be an emotional event for me as I know the importance of living in the light. For me it is symbolic for an acceptance of myself, full on exposure to the sun with no closets to block the light, be they closets built by others or by myself.

© 21 December 2015

About the Author

I grew up in Pueblo, CO with my two brothers and parents. Upon completion of high school I attended Colorado State University majoring in Physical Education. My first teaching job was at a high school in Madison, Wisconsin. After three years of teaching I moved to North Carolina to attend graduate school at UNC-Greensboro. After obtaining my MSPE I coached basketball, volleyball, and softball at the college level starting with Wake Forest University and moving on to Springfield College, Brown University, and Colorado School of Mines.
While coaching at Mines my long term partner and I had two daughters through artificial insemination. Due to the time away from home required by coaching I resigned from this position and got my elementary education certification. I taught in the gifted/talented program in Jefferson County Schools for ten years. As a retiree I enjoy helping take care of my granddaughter, playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the storytelling group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT organizations.
As a retiree I enjoy helping take care of my granddaughter, playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the storytelling group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT organizations.
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Acceptance, by Ricky

While I was under 6-years old, I enjoyed playing with both boys and girls whenever they were around. I was not particular as to the items we played with either. If I was at my house, we played with my toys and if at another’s home, we played with their toys, which would include dolls if the playmate was a girl.

Somewhere between 3 and 4-years old, one of the girl playmates and I played doctor and we both learned the difference between girls and boys. Of course we got caught, but the visual images could not be erased.

As I aged to 6-years old and above, I gravitated to playing with boys only as the girls suddenly had cooties. I gave up playing with dolls and chose to play more active games like cowboys and Indians or war in an obvious imitation of the movies on television. For some reason, I never wanted to play Peter Pan after I saw the Disney animated feature. Perhaps I did want too, but my other playmates thought playing it was too sissy like.

At age 9 ¾ (not to be confused with platform 9 ¾ in the Kings Cross station), another boy and I fondled each other two nights in a row. Up until then, I never desired to see another person naked, but from those two days forward, I wanted to see other boys’ genitals. I had no desire to see girls’ private areas because I had learned playing doctor that girls have nothing to play with down there whereas, all boys have a built-in toy.

I experienced both oral and anal sex at age 10, learned about masturbation and had my first orgasm at age 11. At 11 I also noticed that I was attracted to some boys but not others. Since, I was still in the girls-have-cooties frame of mind, I thought nothing of it. However, as I continued to age, I became increasingly aware that my schoolmates no longer believed in females having cooties. That is when I began to feel different because I was not attracted to girls, only boys. I didn’t dislike girls and had several classmates that I got along with really well. If the opportunity had presented itself, I would have willingly gone to bed with them. But no such opportunity occurred and I became more and more confused and worried. I kept telling myself that I would probably “grow out of” my interest in males and I accepted that and internalized it for years.

I remained hopeful until 2010, when I finally accepted that I was never going to change and I was, in fact, gay. But now I am confused again.

Based upon my life experience growing up, I believe that children about 5 or 6 began to prefer being around members of their own gender. It is just my opinion as I have never read anything about child development in that context. It is just a self-declared fact I “made up” based upon my observations. So, why am I confused now?

I have recently watched several “coming out” stories that pre-teen and young teens have posted on YouTube. Most of them parallel my experience at that age except for one major difference. In most cases the boys state that they knew they were different at young ages. I didn’t know at that age, so how can they know? Is my so called natural-preference-for-one’s-own-gender-when-young theory real or is it just a desire to play active “boy games” and not passive doll games? Is it really a sexual attraction these video coming out story boys feel or just a non-sexual desire to be with and do boy things that they are misinterpreting as evidence or proof they are gay? Are they, in fact, in the early stages of puberty (as I was) at ever increasingly younger ages and these desires really are “sexual” in nature or just curiosity?

I just don’t know the answer to my questions. Until some straight boys of the same ages tell their stories on how they came out as heterosexual, there is nothing to compare the experiences of the two groups. So, I’ll just accept that I am going to be confused about these questions and probably something else as well for the foreseeable future.

© 21 December 2015

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com