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ROF is an online support email group for families and friends experiencing feelings of isolation during the neverending process of coming-out, treating each other with the same respect with which society hopefully will treat our kids & providing a safe place to share & vent feelings without the fear of reprimand. A sense of humor would also be an asset. My personal focus is to provide a safe place for moms who are having a myriad of feelings especially a feeling of being alone. The internet is a limitless resource for support and everyone should seek the most comfortable places for their personal needs. Below I have links for other email groups and message boards.If you want more information about ROF's email, click on the onelist link at the bottom of my page. I also offer another Onelist called POM for "Pissed Off Moms" (AKA:"Parents of Meanagers") who need a safe place to vent about anything and everything & welcome a huge amount of email. If interested in POM, please E-mail horsemom2@aol.com Please note, this is neither a dating service nor a substitute for professional therapyand anyone who is disruptive to our focus will be banned.Near the bottom of my page beneath the resource links are descriptions of the stages of acceptance and a wonderful analogy written by other families which may help both parents and kids to understand that their feelings are perfectly valid and expected and that time and communication will help. Whether you are a parent of a gay child or a gay child,Remember - you are NEVER aloneplease allow me and some other moms to make an appeal to all moms out there who find themselves in the depths of despair from the recent revelation of a child's coming-out:Whatever you are feeling has been felt by me and other moms like me. Allow yourself the time to grieve then eventually try to heal and adjust. Please read the stages of acceptance at the bottom of my page. Speak to other moms either in real life thru PFLAG or support groups like mine, trying to remember your child as the same person you knew before. If you prefer personal and one-to-one correspondence, I can introduce you to one or two moms with whom you may be able to make a special connection. Initially, a child's different sexual orientation seems like a curse to most families but if it is a family that was united by love, it can with time become a blessing in ways you just cannot see during those earlier stages.Try to imagine living your life without love.Imagine the handicap of having your child never experiencing loving another person or receiving love from another person. To be gay means having to fight for the right to love and risk losing everyone who you thought had loved you up to then. Whom better to learn the importance of love from than those who risk everything to find it and keep it? I am sorry if at times my enthusiasm can turn off others who are suffering but if most could know that I went from every possible homophobic reaction to this level of acceptance, maybe people can have hopes that they and their loved ones will also. Your child is not asking for your permission when coming-out but for your unconditional love & support with the hope of your eventual acceptance. Who your child loves is not your choice but you do have a choice in how to respond to your child when your child needs you most.A plea to kids from a mom named Janet:Give your parents time. Don't expect them to be happy about it. You may have felt better when you told them the "news". But you laid a shocker on them. They are saddened but maybe in time they will realize that the love they have for you can't be shut off like a light switch. They still love you; they always will they just need time to adjust to what you told them.Another way to look at it from Barb:OK let's put it this way. For the kids who expect morethan their moms can deliver........A mother does not give up having her own set of feelings because she brings a child into this world. You are not going to change or control another person's feelings whether you are the parent or the child. Your mom is who she is just as you are who you are. You will live your life the way you want to and she will feel & react the way she wants to. Nothing may change but she does have her own honest feelings and reactions as you do. She does not love you any less nor should you love her any less.Tolerance to me means allowing another person their feelings whether you agree with them or not.Sometimes I think people expect too much.Expecting a mom to accept your homosexuality 100% to make you happier is as unrealistic as your mom expecting you to change to being str8 to make her happier.Somewhere people assume that it is an unwritten law that a mom has to accept & support everything a child does. Sorry folks but moms are people with their own feelings, opinions and reactions whether they are PC or not.Am I making any sense here??I would like to share an essay with you that can apply to the coming-out period which often produces a delayed and prolonged adoloescence:WHEN CHILDREN TURN INTO CATSBy Adair Lara I just realized that while children are dogs - loyal and affectionate - teenagers are cats. It's so easy to be a dog owner. You feed it, train it, boss it around. It puts its head on your knee and gazes at you as if you were a Rembrandt painting. It bounds indoors with enthusiasm when you call it. Then around age 13, your adoring little puppy turns into a big old cat. When you tell it to come inside, it looks amazed, as if wondering who died and made you emperor. Instead of dogging your doorsteps, it disappears. You won't see it again until it gets hungry -- then it pauses on its sprint through the kitchen long enough to turn its nose up at whatever you're serving. When you reach out to ruffle its head, in that old affectionate gesture, it twists away from you, then gives you a blank stare, as if trying to remember where it has seen you before. You, not realizing that the dog is now a cat, think something must be desperately wrong with it. It seems so antisocial, so distant, sort of depressed. It won't go on family outings. Since you're the one who raised it, caught it to fetch and stay and sit on command, you assume that you did something wrong. Flooded with guilt and fear, you redouble you efforts to make your pet behave. Only now you're dealing with a cat, so everything that worked before now produces the opposite of the desired result. Call it, and it runs away. Tell it to sit, and it jumps on the counter. The more you go toward it, wringing your hands, the more it moves away. Instead of continuing to act like a dog owner, you can learn to behave like a cat owner. Put a dish of food near the door, and let it come to you. But remember that a cat needs your help and your affection too. Sit still, and it will come, seeking that warm, comforting lap it has not entirely forgotten. Be there to open the door for it. One day your grown-up child will walk into the kitchen, give you a big kiss and say, "You've been on your feet all day. Let me get those dishes for you." Then you'll realize your cat is a dog again.Why do teens become difficult & then more human into their 20's?More from Barb about adolescents:"The Key to Understanding Teens"Why do teens become difficult & then more human into their 20's?Why do our sweet adorable younger kids who loved us like puppies turn into cold cats? Why do teens seem lazy & unfocused & unresponsive? The answer is simply Sleep Deprivation cause their hormones make them have a completely different sleeping and waking pattern or internal clock from the rest of society.It is all about their internal clock more than striving for independence IMHO. Or maybe, their internal clock reversal is Nature's way of making them seek their independence? Most teens til their 20's prefer being up late if not all night and sleeping into the afternoon. This is incompatible with the rest of the family & society so the result is grumpy, sleep deprived kids, many of whom do poorly in school, especially in the mornings. Many become more prone to infections too. The kids are just doing what comes naturally.Then the parents disturbed by these sleeping patterns, grumpy attitudes and school failures become grumpy, sleep deprived adults. There is a movement in this country to start the high school schedule later in the day when the kids are more alert but I wonder if that will be working against Mother Nature's general plan?About stereotyping from Joel:Sometimes when you have one picture in your head of someone, and find something more about them, it makes it difficult to seem that person clearly. If someone who you always thought was Irish came to you one day and shared with you that they were actually Mexican, you probably wouldn’t expect them to start speaking Spanish, eating tacos all the time and start wearing a sombrero. Most likely because you know the person for who they are, and realize that though that may be their nationality, it’s not what makes them who they are and that it’s only a part their makeup.What do tacos, stereotypes and integrity have to do with me? Well, I’m not sharing with you that I’m Mexican, I’m sharing with you that I’m gay... I consider myself very spiritual and religious, I believe that God made all of us how he wanted us to be, and that we are all here for a reason. I also consider myself to have very high morals, I care a great deal about those around me and about myself, and being gay doesn’t take away from that to me, though it took years of pulling myself apart like an onion against all the bad stereotypes we’re raised with to realize that none of them relate to me in any way, that I’m me and I’m a good person with a good heartHorsemom2's experience and focus of support group:The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" but in reverse(The Ugly)Just about 2 years ago my then 16 yo son Greg saw the Broadway musical "Rent" for the first time. Previously, he assumed he was asexual not identifying with the feelings his str8 friends felt. He was very deep in denial to the point of being outwardly homophobic which totally removed any suspicions that he was gay from my mind as well. During the performance, it hit him loud and clear that his sexual orientation was homosexual and that is why he could not identify with his str8 friends. He was almost immediately self accepting and happy he had a future with another human being afterall. Of course, he was only out to himself and a few close friends at this point.The rest of the family (my husband, younger son and myself) returned from a short family trip in August 1996 to find evidence that Greg had violated our trust and had guests in the home while we were gone without permission. He was at work and I called my mother who told me they had taken Greg and a strange new friend out to dinner while we were gone. When she told me the name of the friend, I went a bit crazy cuz he was well-known as the local drug supplier. Not only did Greg violate our trust but he had a drug user & dealer in our home!!! Needless to say when he returned from work, we were already on the warpath and told him he was not allowed to have this new friend in our home. He replied: "But I love him".(The Bad)I was suicidally depressed for the first 24 hours. My husband showed incredible strength and held the family together. Eventually with time and therapy and reading I was getting to be more OK with it. I had an incredible need to speak to other moms but believe it or not my therapist with a gay uncle never even suggested PFLAG. I found PFLAG in a book and had both my phone call go to a disconnected number and my snail mail go to a nonforwarding changed address. We made a contract with Greg allowing him to see this new boyfriend only with adult supervision in the homes of his friends. Deal was if they were still a couple when he turned 18 in 13 months, we would accept the man into our home. Greg was still 16 and the man was almost 22. Fortunately, Greg came to his senses before making any serious mistakes with this first boyfriend who died a few months later after walking onto a highway stoned.(The Good)My quest for other moms came to a wonderful completion after signing onto AOL in January of 1997. I thought Greg was nuts pushing to go online, not realizing what a wonderful resource it was for both gay kids and their families. Anyway, I am now in my second email support group or cyberfamily and have made good friends who have helped me become a better person.There is alot going on when a teen or even a young adult comes-out that is alot more than just sexual orientation issues. Adolescence is when a child realizes his/her folks are not perfect and has a strong instinct to become independent. This adolescence process is delayed because a gay child is also struggling with self-acceptance. Also, their peer socialization or dating has been delayed. Soon after a child comes-out that child can become a moody teen or meanager just when their folks need the most patience from them. The child has had years to struggle and accept themselves and is not patient with their folks if not immediately accepting. Even a parent trying to be suppportive feels rejected by the child. The parental acceptance can also be delayed if the child starts to jump too quickly into their new social life taking risks that send chilling worries to the parents. The parents need to know their child is the same person but unfortunately, the child's new behaviors and attitudes can put up even more barriers.Coming-out seems to be a never-ending process with new events triggering new worries and emotions for all involved. My advice to parent and kids is to get to know other parents and kids. Even if we cannot connect with our own parent or kid, meeting and connecting with others works miracles. That is the focus of my support group. It makes you realize we are all more alike than different whether mom or kid, str8 or gay, male or female, young or old, American or foreign born.Here is an example of a topic we recently discussed: |
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