Finally Out To A Family Member

[Guest Natalie92]

Hey everyone!! Sorry that I haven't been on here lately, but I've been at a week-long music festival in Pennsylvanian and the internet access at my aunts house is spotty at best. Anyway, one of my cousins was there for part of the festival too so I took the opportunity to come out to her. She isn't my closest cousin, but I figured if anybody would be accepting of me it would be someone who did marketing work for an NPO in New York City. She actually took it VERY well, so now I at least have 1 family member who will accept me for who I am.

Also on Friday there were these 2 guys telling everyone that gays, drinkers, stoners, transsexuals, and people who commit various sexual acts (ie, anything sexual not involving vaginal intercourse with a spouse of the opposite sex) are all going to hell. Well, since there was A LOT of drinking going on (the police make an exception to the drinking in public laws for the festival) and there are a number of LGBT people there as it IS a music festival and for whatever reason the artsy crowd likes us more, there was a protest to their protest. It was absolutely AWESOME to see how accepting people become of gays when you link drinkers in with them. They made some really bad comments of course, one of them being "Women need to be women and men need to be men. That's what has ruined this country..." Well, the women especially didn't take kindly to the statement that they shouldn't hold a job and the even the most macho, chauvinistic males out there weren't too happy about that remark either.

Anyway, this led me to making 3 wonderful new friends (all GGs) coming out to each of them as transsexual. I do have to say that I found it a bit weird that each of them described me as "precious". Nice, but still weird. Long story short, hate filled bigots made me some very lovely friends, and convinced me to not be afraid to admit who and what I am.

Coming out can be great, can't it? It always seems that what you THINK will happen before you come out will be much worse than what actually happens when you do.

Great to be back!!!

Natalie Alexis

[Carolyn Marie]

That's great news, Natalie. Congrats. Even one member of your extended family is a plus, because now you have someone to talk to

and confide in. Every step forward is a good one, no matter how small.

That's a great story about the event. Sounds like the bad guys were a bit outnumbered. Wow, and you even found some new GF's, very

cool. I think "precious" is cute, just as long as they weren't looking at you funny and mentioning something about a "ring of power."

Carolyn Marie