Tag Archives: life

Breaking Barriers

17 Jun

The Portland Gay Men’s Chorus will be performing its ICONS concert this Saturday, June 21, at 7 p.m. at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. In our performance we will be showcasing several different storytellers depicting different aspects of our lives in the LGBTQ+ community. While my piece wasn’t chosen, I decided to share what I wrote here as an example of what you might see during our concert. In the section entitled “Breaking Barriers,” we were asked to tell the audience about a time we “broke through” in some way such as an achievement, transformational conversation, or just a monumental event relevant to our LGBTQ+ experience. My answer to that question is below.

Long before I’d learned the word “intersectionality,” I was very much aware that I lived in several distinct communities. Unfortunately, I also knew that I’d likely be facing various levels of prejudice simply by belonging to them.

I was born with an extremely rare neurological disorder known as Moebius syndrome which left my face bilaterally paralyzed. Because so few people knew what Moebius syndrome was, I was subjected to a great deal of bullying and misunderstandings from people who thought that I was mentally impaired. Even though I had a strong support system at home, I still suffered from crippling self-doubt and fear about how others perceived me.

When I came out of the closet at the age of fourteen in 1983, I was already aware that being out at that time was incredibly risky. Although I came out of the closet to my mothers and some close family friends, because of my prior experience of being bullied, I had no desire to face even more prejudice against me and didn’t tell many other people at first. As a result, my coming out process was a slow one, which ultimately culminated with me joining the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus in 1992 and becoming almost completely out of the closet in the process.

About two years after joining PGMC, while driving home with my stepmother, I turned to her and said, “You know, I’ve counted five ways that people could be potentially prejudiced against me. I’m gay, disabled, Jewish, short, and left-handed.” My stepmother thought about this, then turned to me and said, “Well, yes, that’s true that people might discriminate against you. But what would happen if you looked at all of these things as gifts?”

That thought floored me. I’d learned to accept the various pieces of myself over the years, but many times they’d felt like obstacles to be overcome. Not once had I ever felt that these components of my life were gifts. I don’t remember the rest of that conversation. I only knew that my self-perception had been upended by a very timely insight.

Today, many years after that conversation, I now understand what my stepmother meant, and it taught me an important lesson: Sometimes, for you to best see yourself, it takes an act of compassion from another person for you to best recognize your gifts.

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The Fragility of Spring

7 Apr

Every year I make an effort to go down to the Waterfront Park in Portland, Oregon to capture on film the blooming of the trees. Throughout much of my adult life, I’ve made it to the park without fail, but it’s only in the last few years that I decided to photograph the event. And every year, I wonder what would happen if the flowers didn’t bloom.

There’s a very old myth about how the seasons came to be. In Greek mythology, the fertility goddess Persephone was kidnapped by Hades in order that he might make her his bride. There are several variations on this myth, but for the sake of brevity, after eating a pomegranate, Persephone was required to remain in the underworld for a set period of time – usually three months, but sometimes more depending on the the number of seeds eaten and according to who is telling the story. Her return heralded the beginning of spring, at which time her mother Demeter rejoiced at her return. Persephone’s return to the underworld signaled the beginning of winter.

But what would happen if the flowers didn’t bloom?

Each year I watch the trees as the buds start to sprout. What would happen if they didn’t emerge, or the buds remained in stasis rather than fully growing into leaves? How would this affect our outlook if spring never came? It may sound a bit silly at times as many of us take spring for granted, but I often look at this season as my favorite, as well as the most ephemeral. The beauty of spring is offset by its fragility. The cherry blossoms bloom once a year and then vanish. The birdsong begins and continues throughout the summer as they find their mates before flying away in the autumn. And no spring is ever completely the same.

If Persephone chose to maintain her residence in the underworld for a longer period of time, I imagine the spring season would be very brief, and summer would begin sooner. I have no doubt the harvest season would be affected as well. And of course the length of spring changes in different climes anyway, including here in the United States. Our spring here in Oregon is quite different from what you might see in Minnesota. But if Persephone never returned, the flowers wouldn’t bloom, and many of these seasonal changes wouldn’t come to pass. We’d see a much more barren planet than we’d ever want without the advent of spring and the return of the crops we need for our very survival.

I celebrate spring for many reasons. The return of warm weather and the blossoming of the cherry trees are only a very small part of it. I celebrate the return of possibility and growth, even though I’m aware those things have never really left us. I celebrate spring for the renewal of romance or of finding of new love. But mostly, I celebrate it because the alternative is that we remain in stasis, forever immutable and depriving ourselves of new opportunities for changing who we are, even if those changes are necessary or inevitable.

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