Similar Journeys

This afternoon I joined a friend at her home to do some cooking for a cause.

Our mutual friend recently lost a parent- a tough situation for anyone to deal with.  This particular death is compounded by difficult family relationships and an impending pregnancy.

We got together and talked about doing something for her and decided quite quickly that our friend is not a "flowers as a gift" kind of woman.  She is, however very much into food.  So we gathered and cooked up four lasagnes and five mac and cheese dishes.  It was fun to cook with friends, and I did get some cheesy goodness out of it.

My friend also invited someone else to come along, her friend "S".  She was up for baking up some delish cookies for our friend, so it was the three of us cooking along.

As we were grating and melting and stirring my friend asked me how I was doing after my coming out to her last night.  I responded with "doing well today" and talked about my coming out process briefly, letting S know about the "big reveal".

Then S shared that she was going through difficult time as well, that she was at the beginning of a divorce between she and her husband of eight years.  She was some much so at the beginning that her partner doesn't even know yet about her intentions.  S shared that she just started to say out loud that this is what she wants and is trying to figure out what she needs to do first, how to tell people, how to tell her husband, how to start the legal end of the matter, and how she was going to negotiate their families discovery of the separation and the reasons for the separation (infidelity on the part of her partner in a pretty fantastical way).  She was nervous about how it would affect her mother, and is anticipating how her difficult mother-in-law will process the news and how it could affect others.

As S was talking I was struck at how similar our experiences were.  No doubt that the situations are different.  But the emotions that she was talking about were crazy.  She talked about feeling emotional, angry, scared, upset and at the same time happy and excited.

It was helpful in a way to know that I don't always need someone who went through this coming out process to understand exactly how I'm feeling.  Don't get me wrong- I need to talk to people who have had this experience, it is essential.  But knowing that there are others who have had similar kinds of emotional journeys?  That was a good reminder today and something that I'm very grateful for.

 

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