When my mom disowned me for being gay, it was my freshman year of college. I remember going to the Financial Aid Office to consider my options as a suddenly-and-unxpectedly financially-independent 16-year-old, and they had me fill out some surprisingly simple paperwork and register for ten sessions of therapy. The therapist I was assigned ended up being the best to come form the Financial Aid Office -- of all places! He really helped me find a new way to approach my relationship with my mother.
He said I could be "White," "Black" or "Gray." "White" meant I could go back in the closet as my mom hoped and prayed and return to the church and fight this "sin" and have the old relationship I had my mother. "Black" meant resuming our silence, letting the rift grow larger and learning to live without a relationship with my mother because neither of us was going to change. I was always going to be gay. She was always going to believe that homosexuality was a choice and a sin. Or I could try to find the "Gray." He highlighted the fact that my mother was a single parent and I was an only child and that our relationship, while incredibly messy, was important to each of us. And perhaps we could find a gray area in which I would accept the likelihood that she was never going to change her belief system, but I would learn to have compassion in the face of her homophobia, or ignore her ignorance, and let her words that were meant to hurt just go through one ear and out the other. Love by example, even when it may never be reciprocated in the same fashion. Am I always successful at this? No. I mean, I find a weird form of catharsis by writing about it and sharing it with the world. But I think the intention is pure. And maybe if we found the gray area in our extreme points of view a little bit more, then maybe we could have a little more understanding in the world. A little more love.
-- Daniel K. Issac, The Huffington Post Interview
