Relating to LGB Research: A journey from marriage guidance.

It is not easy to admit to having been heterosexist, ignorant and unaware for many years of one’s counselling career – indeed of one’s life! But that is how it was for me, until twelve years ago I was catapulted into a strange, unsafe, parallel world by my son’s disclosure that he was gay. I was surprised by the strength of my emotional eaction –akin to a bereavement process. Davison (2001) tells us about a parent’s altered expectations, together with feelings of loss, grief and personal responsibility. I came to terms with this unexpected turn in life, in therapy with a counselling psychologist, who was fortunately gay-affirmative. My personal reflexive journal, some of which I share here, has been important and charts the progress I made in my journey of acceptance. I needed to educate myself to make sense of what had happened. Some of my discomfort was that, by virtue of my son being gay, by association I felt ejected at once from the ‘charmed circle’ (Rubin,1992, p.281) of heterosexual, married, monogamous, ‘good, normal, natural, blessed sexuality’ and cast to the ‘outer limits’. I now understand the
‘coming out’ process from my own perspective in telling family and friends and appreciate that for parents too, this is an ongoing process where every occasion is carefully weighed up, but without the extra element of danger that is experienced by LGB people.