amelia blogs. . .
My beloved uncle posted this to Facebook after seeing his family rail against the election results and vow to stand up for all citizens.
My grandmother was a devout Irish-American Catholic woman, who taught me how to love. She had eleven...

My beloved uncle posted this to Facebook after seeing his family rail against the election results and vow to stand up for all citizens.

My grandmother was a devout Irish-American Catholic woman, who taught me how to love.  She had eleven children. 

And she stood up for them, including her own gay son, well before the days when this was at all easy or simple. She taught me to believe in equality for all people. And she lived what she believed.

Before she died, she told me how proud she was of the writing I was doing for the Huffington Post. She told me “Of course young children are gay!” 

She loved me when I wasn’t very lovable. Her love for me did not change when I chose to not follow her faith.  She loved ME and that did not come with exceptions or qualifications.

If I can be one tenth of the woman she was, I will be doing something right.

I am proud to be one of hers.

Trump Voters: A Message From The Mom Of A Gay Kid

I don’t post pics of my any of my children on social media, or here on the Huffington Post. And not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t. It’s not safe.

In 2011 I became an advocate for LGBTQ children. It isn’t something I set out to do, but something that happened quite by accident. But when it did, I embraced it, and not just for my gay child, but because of the countless children who wrote to me. Children from all over the world sent me their messages of fear, violence, and pain. They shared their stories with me, and the horrific acts perpetrated on them not just by peers, but by their families, even their parents. They thanked me for loving my own child, and nearly always ended their messages with “I wish you were my mom.” And I nearly always responded, “Sweetie, I wish I was your mom, too.”

So, for more than five years, my husband and I made the decision to keep writing and sharing the story of our family. It brought people hope. And hope is important, especially to those children who have no reason to have any at all.

It has also brought hate. People have threatened to kidnap our children. People have threatened to beat me to death. People have threatened to rape our gay kid—so he would know what gay sex was like and no longer “want” to be gay. He was 8 years old when that particular threat was made.

We have not let these cowards stop us from bringing that hope. But we’ve also had to keep our kids safe. So we’ve kept them off social media. We have hidden not just their faces, but their names as well. Because the threat to their safety is real. And now it is astronomically worse.

Our country has elected for vice president a man who thinks all gay children, children like our son, should be given conversion therapy to ”cure” them of being gay. This typically involves electroshock. He believes the government should be funding this torture, despite the fact that every credible medical association has condemned the practice and stated it is 100% ineffective. But still this “therapy” is happening EVERY DAY to children in this country. If this man had his choice it would happen to my son.

I am angry. We live in the Midwest and in a red state. I am furious that people I know would vote for such a man. I am allowed my anger. I am allowed my hurt. I am allowed my fear. But when I express this, I am told to calm down, and to stop being so melodramatic. I am told to “stop drinking the kool-aid” the media is feeding me. Well, fuck that. This isn’t rhetoric. This is reality.

When I point out the views of the new government-elect, these people tell me “but I don’t think that way.” So what? That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that they voted for someone who does. By putting those people in power, they are implicitly condoning—and expressly endorsing—their actions.

I am allowed to pissed off that people think I should now break bread with those who voted for someone who is a direct threat to my child. I’m allowed to be offended that even people who claim to love my child valued their pocketbooks and privilege more than that child’s life, my child’s health, my child’s safety, and my child’s future.

That’s not what love is.

I am allowed to not forgive them.

And I don’t. I don’t know if I ever will.

To all those scared LGBTQ children out there, I have this message:

I am so sorry that this country chose not to protect you. But those of us who truly love you will work hard to keep you safe, so that you can continue to grow into the extraordinary adults you are already on your way to becoming. We will not abandon you.

To the people who are so offended by my anger, I have this message:

Please feel free to be pissed off at me if I ever vote for someone who thinks your child deserves electroshock torture in the vain attempt to “fix” something that’s not a problem. I’ll deserve it.

To the new government-elect, I have this message:

If you try to come after my child, be warned, you will have to come through his mama. And she’s one thick bitch.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/58257225e4b057e23e31406d

When My Son Met Another Out LGBTQ Kid
On The First Day Of Middle School
The first day of school. It’s always embarrassing. Embarrassing for me, that is. Normally, I’m the too cynical, too loud mom, who curses too much. But on the first day of school...

When My Son Met Another Out LGBTQ Kid 

On The First Day Of Middle School  

The first day of school. It’s always embarrassing. Embarrassing for me, that is. Normally, I’m the too cynical, too loud mom, who curses too much. But on the first day of school my internal chant of “You are not going to cry” starts before we are even into the car. There is no precedent to excuse this. Nothing particularly horrible has ever happened on a first day of school. It just turns me into emo-mom extraordinaire.

And this year was worse. Not only was it my oldest son’s first day of middle school, but I wasn’t going to be there. I had back surgery a couple of weeks ago (I’m going to be fine), and I am not yet supposed to do things as exciting as leaving the house for major emotional events. This was the first year I was going to miss. It sucked. For me. My son was totally cool about it and absolutely blase about my inner turmoil.

All day I waited. And I worried. And scenes of bullies in John Hughes movies kept scrolling through my head, and I just knew there was some barely pubescent little hellion who would be totally deserving of my wrath before the day was out. It didn’t matter how carefully we had picked his school as somewhere that would embrace and celebrate who my kid is, the awful scenes of bathroom swirlies and kids being bashed against lockers kept rolling. And by 3pm, I was mess.

Instead, that afternoon my kid burst into the house, all smiles and said, “I made a transgender friend today! She has other gay friends!” He was bouncing. My oldest son is gay, and the idea of having other gay kids in his classroom for the first time (there were no other out gay kids in his elementary school) was what made him really look forward to middle school.

My son went on to tell me that his new friend’s parents want her to be a boy and not a girl. “So I told her my parent’s will like her a lot.”

I leaned over and kissed his forehead and both of his cheeks. “I am sure we will, baby.”

“Mom!” he swatted my hands away. “Just stop.”

(I am going to stop here and take a moment. I don’t have a trans kid. My gay kid is about as gender conforming as you can get. I have no experience having a transgender or gender nonconforming child. But if you are a parent with transgender or genderqueer kid, it’s time to get with the program. Your kid needs you to love who they are, and not who you think they should be.)

I really wish I had been a fly on the wall at the school that day, but instead I just tried to get the story out of my son of how this conversation had transpired. I just couldn’t imagine some 11-year-old transgender girl announcing her gender identity to my kid out of the blue.

So from the details I can piece together from my 11-year-old (who thinks his mother is ridiculous) here’s what happened:

My son was lost and couldn’t find his next class, so he found someone who looked like they were lost too.

He walked up to this other student and said, “Hey guy, what’s up?”

The other student said, “I’m not a guy. I’m a girl.”

“Oh,” said my kid. “Hey girl, what’s up? Are you transgender?” The girl looked at him for a minute and then nodded. “That’s cool,” he continued. “I’m not transgender, but I’m gay.”

“That’s cool,” she said back. “I have some gay friends who go here too.” My son was very excited to hear this. It turns out they were both lost and looking for the same classroom.

Then they walked past the bathrooms, and the girl explained she needed to go, but wanted to go into the girls’ room because that was her real bathroom. My son said he would stand outside the door while she was inside and wait until she was done, and then they could find their class together.

After that was completed, they continued through the halls and she asked him how his parents felt about him being gay. He just shrugged. “It’s fine. We know a lot of gay people. A lot.” She told him about her parents, and things went from there.

They found their classroom, and afterwards promised they would find each other the next day.

And now I feel like my kid really is in some 80s movie, but the 2016 version. Because come on!? For real? I am 40 years old, and the idea of two lgbt kids just happening to randomly find each other both looking for the same class just seems too perfect a set up, too unreal. If I watched a movie or a TV show where a conversation like that happened, I would probably roll my eyes at the too-perfectness, the fakeness, of it all.

But it did happen, and it made my kid’s first day of middle school awesome.

So, maybe it is time to put emo-mom away for awhile, and just let his life happen. Because we are in a new age, a new world, a new reality. Will there be assholes and homophobes? Yes, always. But there will also be two LGBTQ kids who find each other randomly walking down the hall. And that is pretty fantastic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/Amelia/when-my-son-met-another-o_b_11577642.html

This book was written all for me. (Not really.)

Let me tell you a story…

I don’t usually post about books. . frankly, because if I started I would never stop. I love books. I love every last little thing about them. I love all kinds of genres and writers, and just books, man, books!

But I have to post about this book, Adulting 101 by Lisa Henry.

image

Last year at GRL I asked Lisa to write something fun. Some totally funny NA story. Because I love comedies, and she’s fabulous. (And truth be told, I was probably a little drunk at the time to be so bold and adamant about it, especially to a woman I had only met in person just a couple days prior.)

And what showed up in my email on a cold February night at 1:44am? Adulting 101. I looked at the email, absolutely stunned. I had asked an author, who I totally adore, to write a book…and she freaking did it! It was there just sitting in my email. I lay in bed looking at my phone and staring at the wonder of it, the unrealness of it all.

But it was late. I needed to sleep. I had kids to get to school in the morning and work the next day. I was going to go to sleep and read it the next day…and I managed to last about 15 whole minutes, before I was dragging myself out of bed, stumbling down the steps to living room, and booting up my computer.

At 5am, I looked up from my screen, completely and totally blissed out, cheeks sore from laughing, and in love. This book was not only a book I had asked for, it was the exact book that I didn’t know I wanted and needed. It was perfect. Funny, silly, and so, so, heartwarming-ly wonderful.

Thank you, Lisa, for writing this book. It means more to me than the mere words can say. I am bringing it with me to the hospital and plan to make people read out my favorite parts (read: the whole damn thing) whenever I need a smile. Shocking the poor, unsuspecting hospital staff will be loads of fun.

So, do yourself a favor a get a copy of Adulting 101 by Lisa Henry. You will not regret it. Available now.

http://riptidepublishing.com/titles/adulting-101

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KECDDMU

parentsproject:

One of our writers needs your help.

Friends,

One of our brilliant, insightful, wise, and caring writers for The Parents Project, Amelia, is reaching out for help after a series of tragic events in her family life. Amelia has been a fearless advocate for the entire LGBTQIA community, using her voice to give advice to parents all over the world, and never asking for anything in return.

We hope you consider donating and/or sharing the link to Amelia’s GoFund Me page. Asking for help is one of the hardest and most vulnerable things we can do in this life, and we believe with all our hearts in Amelia’s strength and ability to persevere. 

xo,

Kristin, Grace, and the rest of The Parents Project Team

rachelhaimowitz:

My dear friend (and also Marketing Director at @riptidepublishing and also a beloved LGBTQ community figure and contributor to @huffingtonpost‘s Gay Voices) is having a very, very hard time right now, and I want to do more to help her.

To that end, I will do a free professional critique of your pitch package* or first 10 pages of your manuscript or fanfiction to everyone who donates at least $25 to her GoFundMe. Just send your donation receipt to rachel@riptidepublishing.com and let me know what you’d like me to review. (Please allow some time for this; it may take a couple weeks.)

If you don’t know me, I run Riptide Publishing, and have been working editorial in publishing for eleven years (I’ve done time at Avalon and Pearson, as well as indie houses, and obviously at Riptide, which is an award-winning, critically acclaimed LGBTQ house). I’ve read literally tens of thousands of queries, and I know what makes one catch an editor’s eye. Same with opening pages. I love helping people reach their dreams, and if we can help Amelia be safe and secure in the process, well, that seems super win-win to me :)

*If manuscript pages are a part of your query, I will not review these. Pitch package review focus is on the query letter (intro, blurb, author bio) and synopsis.

If you want to help but can’t afford to donate, please consider a signal boost. Thank you!

holdmelikeagrudge:

My friend Amelia went in for some serious back surgery recently and while she was under, her husband Dave had a stroke. They’re wonderful people both recovering in all the ways that they can, but they could really use our help right now. I know Amelia and Dave through their writing for HuffPo Gay Voices where they are fierce advocates for LGBT youth (and the adults they become). 

They’ve both got a lot of healing to do & Dave is currently in rehab to rebuild his motor skills. If you’ve got any money set aside to help some excellent people along in a tough time, or fantastic social media skills to get the word out, we could use your help. 

Please help my friends. 

mggardner:

Before marriage equality was the law of the land, @getstooobsessed and @littlebluemaxrebo helped me marry @cggardner.

They have hit a rough patch and could use a hand. 

Donate if you are able, signal boost if you are inclined to do so.

thanks so much

MdrewG

getstooobsessed:

We’ve been sharing our lives here online for five years now, and we’ve come to a spot, where we need some help.

We’ve been sharing our lives here online for five years now, and we’ve come to a spot, where we need some help.