Untamed

Dear Glennon,

My teenage daughter just called us from her boarding school and told us that she’s gay. We are happy for her. We believe that love is love. My problem is this: My parents are staying at our home for Christmas. They are fundamentalists who I know will spend the holiday trying to shame and “convert” her. How do I handle this?

Respectfully,

M

Dear M,

When Abby and I fell in love, we kept it to ourselves for a while. Then, when we decided to build a life together, we began to share our relationship with others: our children, our parents, our friends, the world. People had big feelings about our news. Sometimes their responses would make me feel afraid, defensive, angry, too exposed.

One night, Abby, who knows I understand life best through metaphors, said this:

“Glennon, I want us to think of our love as an island. On our island is you, me, the kids—and real love. The kind of love novels are written about and people spend lifetimes trying to find. The holy grail. The most precious thing. The thing. We have it. It’s still young and new, so we’re going to protect it. Imagine that we’ve surrounded our island with a moat filled with alligators. We will not lower the drawbridge to let anyone’s fear onto our island. On our island is only us and love. Leave anything else on the other side of the moat. Over there, it can’t hurt us. We’re here, happy on our island. Let them scream fear or hate, whatever. We can’t even hear it. Too much music. Only love in, babe.”

Every time an internet troll, journalist, or fundamentalist minister shared self-righteous judgment, I’d smile and imagine his tomato-red face screaming on the other side of the moat, while Abby, the kids, and I kept dancing on our island. None of it could touch us. But things got more complicated when my best friend, my champion, my mother showed up on the other side of the moat, carrying fear in both her hands, asking us to lower the drawbridge.

My mother lives in Virginia and we live in Florida, but we talk every single day. We are intricately intertwined in each other’s lives. Recently we were talking before bed, and she asked about my plans for the following morning. I mentioned that I had a haircut scheduled and I was thinking about getting bangs. We said good night. The next morning, my phone rang at 6:00.

“I’m sorry to call so early, sweetheart, but I’ve been up all night worrying. It’s the bangs, honey. You don’t do well with bangs. You cut them and then you regret them, and it becomes a whole thing. Your life is stressful enough already. I am just worried that bangs are the wrong decision for your family, sweetheart.”

If my decision to get bangs had kept my mother up all night, you can imagine her reaction to my decision to divorce my husband and marry a woman. I could hear her fear in every question and in the long silences between her questions. But what about the kids? What will their classmates say? The world can be cruel. She was shaken, and that started to shake me. That day she told me not to get bangs? I didn’t. My mother loves me very, very well, so I’ve always trusted her to know what was right for me.

It’s not the cruel criticism from folks who hate us that scares us away from our Knowing; it’s the quiet concern of those who love us. My mom’s fear started to pull me away from my Knowing. I lost my peace. I became defensive and angry. I spent weeks on the phone with her, explaining myself, trying to convince her that I knew what I was doing and that it would all be okay. One night I was talking to my sister, working myself up, replaying to her my most recent conversation with my mom. My sister interrupted me and said, “Glennon, why are you so defensive? Defensiveness is for people who are afraid that what they have can be taken from them. You are a grown-ass woman. You can have what you want. No one can take this from you. Not even Mom. This is yours, Glennon. Abby is yours.”

We hung up, and I thought: My mother loves me. And she disagrees with me about what is best for me. I am going to have to decide who I trust more: my mother or myself. For the first time in my life, I decided to trust myself—even though that meant moving in direct opposition to my parents. I decided to please myself instead of my parents. I decided to become responsible for my own life, my own joy, my own family. And I decided to do it with love.

That is when I became an adult.

That night I told Abby, “I’m not going to spend one more second explaining myself or justifying our relationship. Explaining is fear preparing its case, and we are not on trial. No one can take what we have. I can’t convince my parents that we’re okay by talking incessantly about how okay we are. I think the only way to convince anybody you are okay is just to go about being okay and let them witness it. I don’t want to leave our island to be an evangelist for us anymore. It’s too tiring, and every time I go and try to convince other people that we’re fine, I’m not here, with you—being fine. So I’m adding a sign to our island. This one isn’t facing outward at the world, it’s pointing inward, toward us, as a reminder. It says: ‘Only Love Out.’ ”

No Fear In. No Fear Out.

Only Love In. Only Love Out.

The next day, I stood underneath a tree at my son’s cross-country meet, trying to find relief from the hundred-degree heat. I was on the phone with my mother, and she was asking to come visit her grandchildren. Her tone was controlled, anxious, shaky. She was still worrying and calling that love. She just couldn’t trust my Knowing yet. But for the first time, I did. I trusted my Knowing.

Here is the part of the story in which a mother and a daughter become two mothers:

I say, “Mom. No. You can’t come. You are still afraid and you can’t bring that to us because our children—they’re not afraid. We raised them to understand that love and truth—in any form—are to be honored and celebrated. They haven’t learned the fear you carry, and I won’t have it taught to them through your voice and in your eyes. Your fear that the world will reject our family is causing you to create the very rejection you fear exists. Our children are not carrying the fear that you are carrying—but if you bring it here, they will help you carry it, because they trust you. I do not want that unnecessary burden to be passed to them.

“Is this the easiest path for me, for Abby, for Craig, for your grandchildren? Of course not. But it’s the truest one. We are making a true and beautiful family and home, and I hope with all of my heart that one day soon you will be able to come enjoy it. But we cannot be the ones to teach you that you can love and accept us. I have to tell you this hard thing, which is that your fear is not my or Abby’s or the children’s problem. My duty as their mother is to make sure it never becomes their problem. We don’t have a problem, Mama. I want you to come to us as soon as you don’t, either.

“This is our last conversation about your fear for us. I love you so much. Go figure it out, Mama. When you are ready to come to our island with nothing but wild acceptance and joy and celebration for our true, beautiful family, we’ll lower the drawbridge for you. But not one second sooner.”

My mother grew quiet for a very long time. Then she said, “I hear what you’ve said. I am going to go think about all of this. I love you.”

We hung up the phone. I stepped out of the shade and walked back to my family.

M, listen to me.

You have a child on your island who is doing what few teenagers are able to do: She is living from her Touch Tree. Her tree is small, just a sapling on your island. Do not throw open the door and invite in a storm that will take her out before she’s had time to grow roots.

Protect your island for her. She is not yet old enough to be the keeper of the drawbridge; that is still your duty. Do not lower your family’s drawbridge to fear—not even if it’s from people she loves. Especially not when that fear is presented in the name of God.

A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter. When she finally understands that she is creating something different from what her parents created. When she begins to build her island not to their specifications but to hers. When she finally understands that it is not her duty to convince everyone on her island to accept and respect her and her children. It is her duty to allow onto her island only those who already do and who will walk across the drawbridge as the beloved, respectful guests they are.

Tonight, sit down with your cobuilder and decide with honor and intention what you will have on your island and what you will not. Not who your nonnegotiables are but what they are. Do not lower the drawbridge for anything other than what you have decided is permitted on your island, no matter who is carrying it.

Right now, you are being required to choose between remaining an obedient daughter and becoming a responsible mother.

Choose mother. Every damn time from here on out, choose mother.

Your parents had their turn to build their island.

Your turn.