letter to my mother


Dearest Mother,

            Firstly, I understand I have broken your heart and you are very sad for the decisions that I am making in my life. I need you to understand that the decisions that I have made in the past 6 months have not been easy for me. I have emotional scars that will never heal some of which started back when I was a young child.
           
            I want you to know that my love for you will never change. We have never have open dialogue as a family; we choose not to talk about things. I understand you wanted us to have a childhood that was better than yours. I have no doubt that you were doing the best you could do as a parent. My heart is broken for you and the childhood that you endured. You have always been a great mother when it comes to support with extracurricular activities. I felt this was your way of showing love and support and I have the deepest gratitude for this love and support. When it came to emotional support, I feel like our family just avoids the issue of showing any type of uncomfortable or sad emotion. I know you have called me your most emotional child and I hope now that you understand why I was so emotion. I have known about being gay since before age 5. I hope you understand that being gay in a culture that it is strictly forbidden is confusing and difficult.  

            I am so grateful that I was raised with good standards, manners, and morals. You and dad did a great job of teaching us the importance of work ethic and working for everything you have. I am so appreciative for this because it has taught me to be a responsible adult and make well thought out financial and personal decisions. You raised us to be independent and problem solve when obstacles came our way. I could go on and on about the great parenting you provided your children.

As an emotional child, being sent to my room for crying and then not being able to come out until I was done taught me how to keep all my emotions and feelings to myself. This could have been an effective parenting technique if we talked about the reason that I was crying in the first place so that we could try to resolve the issue. This caused me to think that I shouldn’t approach you or dad with any of my problems. It took me more than 32 years to come out to you as gay because I felt like I couldn’t tell you. I was sexually abused as a child and I could not talk to anyone about it for years because we weren’t supposed to have emotions or feelings of sadness or negativity. That was a terrible thing to keep all to myself with no one to talk to until I was in therapy as an adult.

You and dad took an authoritative approach to parenting. I am not sure if you wanted to instill fear in us children so that we would make the right choices or what the end goal was, but now it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I have made all the decisions in my life for you; out of fear of disappointing you or making you upset. The only reason I served a mission was because the thought of embarrassing you, upsetting you, and making you ashamed of me was more than I could bear.  I have made every decision in my life until recently because I was afraid of what you would think and that you wouldn’t love me anymore. I can imagine that having a gay son in the church is embarrassing and is probably something that you avoid talking about. My new life decision is going to take some adjustment and tolerance from all parties involved. You have no idea how hard it is growing up gay in the church. You will never understand what it is like to be gay and I don’t expect you to.

I am making progress and finally accepting myself for who I am. I honestly believe that I can be happy and begin trying to cope with the emotional scars that I have. I believe in love and I believe love is not only emotional but also physical and I have never been able to have a physical connection with anyone. Because of this Heidi and I have scars that will never heal, but I believe we can learn to cope with these scars and move on. Heidi and I will always love each other and when she remarries we will still love each other contrary to what you might think. 

The reason I am choosing not to talk to you is because I am not ready to approach you with this. I have some things that I am dealing with from my childhood that are causing anguish and sorrow. It is too painful to have a reminder of things that I need to cope with before we can talk again. The only reason that I talk to Katelyn is because she has been there for me to talk to about anything. She knows how to deal with emotions and feelings.

With all this being said, I think that you have done a better job of approaching emotions and feelings in recent years. I think that you are a great grandmother to all of your grandchildren. Please don’t harass Katelyn about me talking to her instead of you. I will call you eventually. I am not sure when that will be, but whether it is tomorrow or a year from now I will talk to you again. I just need time and I think that you need time to accept and tolerate my new life decision. I choose love and I refuse to believe that real love between two men can’t exist especially because that is how my brain is wired. I hope one day when I choose to remarry that you will accept him into the family like anyone else.

I have a lot to deal with and have no anger towards you and please don’t try to take it personally that I need time before talking again. Heidi and I are beginning to discover normalcy that is working. We both have broken hearts but we are coping and going through it together. She gives me the love and support that I need right now and I often seek out her advice. I am doing better and better each day. I love you and I will always love you.       


                                                                                                With love, your son,
                                                                                                            Jordan



My mother was extremely offended by this letter and it put a rift between us. Feelings are always valid, both hers and mine. We really don't talk and that's ok because I am trying to get used to it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE OG

Image
My name is Jordan and I grew up in the mormon church. I have had the perfect mormon family from onlookers, five children, four returned missionaries and five temple marriages. This is a perfect record for any mormon parents to be proud of. They can puff up their chests in church a little higher because they have done their jobs as good parents, well according to mormon standards. I have nothing against the mormon church and in fact I think that if people truly live by the teaching of the church they can be some of the nicest people. The animosity that I feel is against the culture that has developed over the last 200 years of church history. In the almost 34 years of my life I have met the nicest mormons and the meanest most judgmental people. I am not here to bash the church because my family are all practicing mormons and they love it and stand true to their beliefs and that is something that is commendable. Just a little but about me. I am a gay male who took 31 years to come ...
Read more
I am currently in therapy and my therapist asked me to name the top five influential people who have impacted my life whether it is good or bad. The three most influential people who have impacted my life are my mother, my ex-wife, and my sister both in good ways and bad ways. The other two people who have influenced my life are my brother Justin and my partner Derek. I am supposed to write a narration about my brother just to describe how he has influenced me. Where should I start.......I didn’t start looking up to him until I was a freshman in high school. He was always mean to me as a kid and I am not sure why he felt why he needed to be mean to me and tease me but he felt a need to and I have never asked him. After he graduated high school I thought that he was the most perfect person in the world. He was preparing to serve a mission and he didn’t do anything wrong. He went away to a small college and lived on his own for a year before leaving for a mission and he decided that ...
Read more

Being in a mixed orientation marriage

Growing up mormon you learn from a young age that as a male you will grow up, go on a mission, come home and get married in the temple. They teach this starting at a really young age. I wouldn’t necessarily call it brain washing but it is form of psychological conditioning that works. Even though I was gay and mormon and knew that I could never overcome my homosexuality I, like every other little mormon kid, sang songs in primary about going on a mission and going to the temple. From previous posts, you can read that I went on a mission because it was what I was supposed to do and maybe I had a little bit of home that my homosexual feelings would go away but I knew deep down inside that was not going to be the case. When I was in my stake president interview before submitting my paperwork to serve a mission, he asked me straight up if I was gay......This took me by surprise. Of course I am gay but I did not dare tell him that I was. He also said that he would never send a gay man out...
Read more