1987

The year the power of Michael Stipe’s voice took its hold on me, helping to mold me into the woman I’d become. Two years before I stood before him and a woman I’d follow for all of my days beyond, Amy Ray, who taught me to be unapologetically exactly who I am and to stand tall for those who cannot. The 1987 March on Washington was not far from my home where I was a young teen in a small town void of diversity. Those were days before cell phones, social media, texting, and even 24-hour news, in its first decade, was reserved for war until a white Bronco left a California estate several years later creating the all too familiar yearn for access to what’s happening around the clock.

We heard about the 1987 march where we were. Rumors of what was happening in Washington cycled around real estate offices and grocery store aisles. “Those people” tossed out into the air from the mouths of ‘those other people’ — the ones who wouldn’t understand no matter how hard I tried to explain. It would be another six years before I came out, except my mother was the first to tell me she knew long before. 1987, the height of the massive loss as the result of the AIDS crisis and pleas for help and acknowledgement, was a time when our community united to be heard. Almost twenty years after Stonewall, we were still fighting to be seen, acknowledged, helped, loved… and of course, allowed to love.

It’s been an amazing journey for this community. Today, because of this Great March on Washington in 1987, is National Coming Out Day. It’s not only a day we reserve for people to step out and speak up in safe spaces; it’s also a day we acknowledge our own coming out journeys.

So, celebrate love today. Relish in the rich threads of our history that allow this day to be acknowledged and accepted. And come on out or share your personal coming out story.

Mine can be read in a short memoir I wrote years ago, titled Father, Mine and Someone’s.

Be well (and unapologetically you)
~Stella