One of my most defining moments of transformation from fear to feeling to freedom happened in my forties. When I met the true love of my life, I knew that my relationship with her was too amazing to keep a secret. I could not allow the innuendos that had occurred in my previous relationships, when my mother would play investigator and try to figure out how good a friend each woman in my life was.

One day on the phone, my mom asked me something about my new friend Barbara, and I asked her why she was interested. She told me she could tell I had a new friend and then asked, “Is it a man or a woman?” Well, I was no longer willing to fluff off that question and change the subject. I had become really good at avoiding what was being asked—but not today. That day, I felt the fear and the feelings, and I was ready for my freedom. I was tired of being tired and drained from not being real with the woman who had given me life. I was ready to be born and to stop dying from lying.

I was not a person who had certain types and colors of lies (i.e., white lies and shades of gray lies). I had always believed in the practice of telling the truth, but not about this. I might die if I told the truth, for that was the memory that lay deep within me, that had cost my mom so much at an early age and had also led my grandmother to part with me at the pearly gates. I simply couldn’t do it anymore. To lie was to die energetically.

So I told my mom I would call her later. I called her back that afternoon, and when she answered, I was sitting in my bedroom. I said, “Hold on, mom, I need to close the door.” I needed to create a container around me, for I was facing my deepest fear for the first
time in my life. Closing the door was so symbolic for me, for I created my own closet to comfort myself, and I had lived in the closet with my family of origin way too long.

I said, “Mom, do you love me?” She said, “Well, of course I do.” I said, “Will you always love me?” and she replied, “Yes, of course I will.” And then I said, “Even if I love a woman?” and she said, “No matter who you love, I will always love you. You are my daughter and I will always love you.” And then I said, “Well, let me tell you about BB. She is the greatest love I have ever known.”