One time when I was a teenager I was rifling through my mother’s room and found a book called Home Truths: Lesbian Mothers Come Out To Their Daughters. Someone had written on the flyleaf “dear [my mother’s name], remember to always tell the TRUTH.”

Well!! I immediately felt very guilty because clearly my mom was queer and we (her children) hadn’t created a safe enough environment for her to come out. What had we done? Had we said something inadvertently homophobic? I knew I had to fix it, whatever it was

So the next time she was driving me to work, I was like, “mom, I’ll love you no matter what.” She was like “ok, cool.” And I was like “no I mean, no matter who you are.” And she was like “ok, cool?” And I was like “whatever your sexual preferences are!!” And she was like “what..”

So then I had to be like, “listen, I wasn’t snooping, but I found this book during the time when I was going through everything on your bureau in a non-snooping way, and I just want to let you know that we love and accept you! You don’t have to be ashamed!”

She started laughing and was like, oh, no, my friend wrote that book and I bought a copy from her, that’s why she wrote an inscription in it!” And I was like “cool, but if you ever want to date women ..... just know that we accept that!”

It was funny at the time, but in retrospect I’m glad my immediate reaction was “I will make my lesbian mom know that she is good and accepted and we can’t wait to meet her girlfriend.”

I was so ready to make my sisters fall immediately in line and also fight anyone who might be crappy to my mom (we lived in a very conservative place at the time)