Should I come out to my parents?

Hi Betsy,

I'm writing you today because I feel like I'm at the very edge of my mind. You see, I'm a 17 years old girl who comes from a very religious family. When I was 11, I started having random crushes on girls and at that time I thought it was normal. The more I grew and matured, I realized that people actually have feelings towards the opposite gender and I started noticing that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't bring myself to like a boy. It's always been girls. To make things worse, 6 months ago I fell in love with a girl who's actually 6 years older than me. It's not just a crush, because what I feel towards her is different. I've been struggling to tell her about my feelings because of the age difference and I'm pretty certain she is in a relationship with a man. I know she will never see me the way I see her but I have a need to tell her how I feel. I have two questions to ask if that's okay. First, do you think I should come out to my family even though they are very, very homophobic and religious or should I keep quiet and endure the pain I feel in my chest every day when I look at their faces and imagine the horror that would appear instead of their smiles when they find out the truth in the future one day. My second question is, should I tell the girl I like how I feel and possibly ruin this friendship between us, or should I just keep quiet and watch her from afar be happy with someone who's not me?.

Hi Nina,

First off I’m so happy you reached out to me it sounds like you’re going through a rough time. From my perspective, your two questions, should you come out to your parents and should you tell your friend how you feel about her, basically have one theme that is… are you going to step out of the shadows and speak your truth. My father had a saying that resonates with me every day. The things we worry about the most usually don’t happen. I’ll start with coming out to your parents. You’re entertaining a lot of negative thoughts right now. That is you’re having future fantasies about how your parents will react to you being gay but you really don’t know what you don’t know do you? What if they did react badly? What if that wasn’t so bad and your life continued to excel exactly as it was supposed to? Do you think that you would feel any worse than you do now? If you’re going to think about the future, something we really cannot predict then why not come out the winner? I can’t tell you what to do or when to speak your truth to your parents but I will say if you believe in a higher power prayer may bring you a lot of peace and possibly answers as well. When our minds are quiet and we aren’t in turmoil many times we get the answers we are searching for by having an “insight.” This may happen when we aren’t worrying but we are doing something relaxing or joyful. It may happen when we’re falling off to sleep for instance. The same goes for the second question. Should you tell your friend how you feel about her? What if the worst that happened is that she said she isn’t gay therefore she isn’t interested in you in that way. Would you feel better than you do now holding it in? You started your message to me stating that you’re “at the edge.” I would offer that sometimes jumping off into unknown and uncomfortable territory is where we learn and grow the most. My guess is that when you start to speak from your heart and speak honestly and openly it may feel very liberating. In closing I’ll tell you what I tell myself and my son’s. Don’t let anyone dim your light. Shine bright!  I hope this helps and I’m sending you so much love…

Good luck! xo Betsy