Author’s Note
The first fifteen chapters of Raised by Pride told the story of my childhood. The beauty, chaos, and lessons of growing up in a queer household.
This chapter marks a turning point. From here, the story moves into adulthood and how that foundation shaped the man I became. How I carried it into uniform, into marriage, and into a world that still struggles to see past its own ignorance.
The love that raised me never left.
I’m still learning how to honor it out loud.
The Morning After
The morning after our wedding, Stephie and I boarded a plane north.
I had a uniform, a wife, and a four-year enlistment waiting for me in Michigan.
It felt like the start of everything I’d ever wanted: stability, direction, a future that finally had structure.
For the first time, I wasn’t running.
At least, not from the outside.
But before I tell you what came next, the Coast Guard years, the moves, the kids, the promotions, I need to stop for a minute.
Because while I was building a life that looked perfectly straight, I was also building walls around the parts of myself I’d learned to keep quiet.
Silence in Uniform
In the Coast Guard, silence could feel like survival too.
The rules were clear about a lot of things back then, but there were plenty they didn’t have to write down.
You just knew. You learned what was safe to say and what wasn’t.
So, I kept quiet.
When I heard slurs tossed around in the galley, I didn’t laugh, but I didn’t speak up either.
When someone made a joke about “those people,” I found something else to do, some task to look busy.
I told myself it wasn’t my fight.
But deep down, I knew that was a lie.
Because it was my fight. Maybe not by identity, but by love.
I’d grown up in living rooms full of people who’d been ridiculed for being themselves, who risked everything just to love honestly.
And now, here I was, sitting at tables where the same kind of ridicule lived, pretending not to hear it, pretending it didn’t matter.
It mattered.
Every time I stayed quiet, it felt like a betrayal of my mother, of Sue, of everyone who’d built me out of their courage.
The Safe Mask
The thing about silence is that it’s easy to mistake for strength.
It makes you blend in, and blending in can look like discipline, especially in uniform.
I told myself I was just doing my job, that I wasn’t there to make waves.
But I can see it now: I wasn’t protecting my career; I was protecting my comfort.
I had the luxury of fitting in; of being seen as one of the guys.
I had the privilege of not having to explain who I was or where I came from.
And I used it.
Not maliciously. Not even consciously most of the time.
But I used it.
There’s a kind of guilt that grows in the space between knowing better and doing nothing.
Mine grew quietly, right alongside my pride in serving.
What Fear Teaches You
Fear is a strange teacher.
It can teach you discipline. It can teach you caution.
But it can also teach you the wrong lessons if you let it.
As a kid, fear had taught me to keep my family’s truth private. That love could be dangerous if the wrong person found out.
As an adult, it taught me how to disappear behind the right words, the right smile, the right uniform.
I thought silence was neutral. I told myself it wasn’t my place.
But silence isn’t neutral.
Silence is permission.
It took me years to admit that.
The Things Left Unsaid
There are people I’ve known for decades, mentors, friends, colleagues, who still don’t know anything about my upbringing.
Not because I was hiding it out of shame, but because it never came up.
Because in our world, it doesn’t have to.
When you look like me, people assume they already know your story.
White. Straight. Married. Three kids. Coast Guard veteran. Economist.
They fill in the blanks before you ever get a chance to tell them otherwise.
Every once in a while, when someone does find out about my childhood, about being raised by two women, about the dinners, the laughter, the world I came from, they’re shocked.
“I never knew that about you,” they’ll say.
And they mean it kindly.
But that kindness comes wrapped in something heavy.
Because what they’re really saying is:
“You didn’t look like that kind of person.”
That’s the ignorance our society builds into us.
We stop looking at people as stories and start seeing them as categories.
If someone’s story doesn’t match how they look, we assume something’s off.
Even now, as I’ve begun this Raised by Pride journey, sharing these stories with friends, family, even Stephie’s family, the surprise still catches me.
“I would’ve never guessed,” they say.
I know they mean it with love, and I’m grateful for that, truly.
But isn’t it wild that we’ve known each other for years and never had this conversation?
Isn’t it wild that people I love can know me so deeply and still not know this?
Maybe that’s what this whole project is about. About giving people a reason to ask, to listen, and to see beyond the surface.
An Apology Long Overdue
Before I close this chapter, I need to say something that’s been sitting in my chest for decades.
To my mom, to Debi, to Sue, to Tommy, and to every person who shaped me in those early years. And to the queer community that gave me love, safety, and a foundation to stand on.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry for the years I stayed silent when I should have spoken up.
I’m sorry for letting the world assume I was someone untouched by your courage.
I’m sorry that my fear, the fear the world taught me, ever made you smaller in my story.
You deserved better than my silence.
You deserved my voice.
And this, Raised by Pride, is my way of giving it back.
Every word I write now is an act of love, a thank you, and a promise.
I will not be quiet anymore.
Looking Back
When I look back on those early years now, the young husband, the new recruit, the man trying so hard to fit into adulthood, I see someone who thought he was protecting his past by hiding it.
What I didn’t understand was that by hiding it, I was helping erase it.
I was erasing the people who had given me my foundation.
The people who’d loved me when the world said they shouldn’t.
The people whose strength had built my own.
That’s the part that haunts me most.
Not what I said, but what I didn’t.
Not what I lost, but what I let others believe.
But reflection has a way of turning guilt into resolve.
The older I get, the more I realize that silence is no longer protection, it’s complicity.
And that’s not who I am.
Not anymore.
So, I’m learning to speak for the people who taught me love, and for the boy who once thought he had to hide it.
I’ve carried their courage quietly for too long.
Now it’s time to carry it out loud.
None of us who came before you including your great uncle, your grandfather and me expect you to carry any weight for our choices, decisions and genetics. Being us had it prices but we all wanted you to be happy and to live your best life. That includes freedom from guilt for that which you needed to be and do at earlier times in your life. Much Love, Mom.
So well written dad, we’re all human and constantly learning. Being able to reflect on those times and feel that deeply is something so rare and special. You’re amazing and I’m so proud of you!❤️