Happy Coming Out Day!!

Whether you're lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgendered, questioning or just too fabulous for words, you've got the whole world wide web to help in the Coming Out process!

While Coming Out is almost never easy & is usually a life-long process, a life of truth & freedom is worth it! Having said that, I feel the need to say that very few of us ever take this step on a lark or take this task lightly at all. You always need to make sure you have someone somewhere in this world (if at all possible, someone who is geographically close to you) to whom you can turn if the reaction you get is not what you expect.

In my own coming out, I only ever had one experience that was even close to bad. A friend of mine, who was deeply involved in "the Church" & with whom I had been able to share so many good times & even a secret or two told me that she loved me & that she will always be my friend, but that she didn't want to hear about my "lifestyle". How she expected me to take this huge step in sharing my heart & then keep quiet about it when I was around her, I will never understand. She & I have since parted ways & I do miss her sometimes, but if the only way I could keep her in my life was by hiding my heart again, then it was too high a price to pay, in my opinion. Besides, God has blessed me with so many other friends who know & love me for EXACTLY who I am.

Coming Out was one of the most difficult, most wonderful things I have ever done. Sometimes, though, I feel like I really didn't have much of a choice. My old "sinful lifestyle" in hiding was killing me, and coming out was the only way I could ever hope to make things right in my life. As I've described here before, it was a leap of faith into the Everlasting Arms that God had been telling me for so long I needed to do to save myself from living Death.

If you are at that place in your life where you feel like you're able to take that huge step out of the dark & into the light, remember, you're doing this NOT just for yourself, but for those who love you & who are missing out on the TRUE GIFT you are!

For sure, October 11th is a great day to Let The Sunshine In, but, whatever you do, don't feel pressured to do it one moment before you feel you're able & ready!

If you have any questions or doubts, a great resource is the Human Rights Campaign's website.