Living Into the Truth: A Daughter's Journey of Discovery
Living Into the Truth: A Daughter's Journey of Discovery
An excerpt, a launch, and a wrap
I’m very pleased to share with you all an excerpt from
’s memoir, Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery, which tells the story of family secrets held, and finally exposed, over the course of a lifetime.
Available November 1 - Order from Amazon - Kindle - Barnes & Noble - Bookshop
I read Annette’s memoir while she was serializing it here on Substack, told with such grace—and an eye to suspense—that I really felt as though I was reading my own family history, perhaps a cousin’s. Discovering how the choices we make affect others in ways known and unknown, Annette’s journey tells the story not only of her own life, but the unfolding of queer experience at the dawn of a new era of freedom.
We are honored to have her as a Founding subscriber to Qstack.
We invite you to participate in her Virtual Launch Celebration for the print and ebook publication of Living Into the Truth. Click on the banner to register.
Lamb Wrap Party
Another event we’d like to announce is the wrap party for
’s own serial novel, Lamb. All episodes are now available in AUDIO—just enough time to start from the beginning and join us for an hour of well-mannered frivolity.
Grab your free ticket on Eventbrite! All are welcome to hear an early preview reading of the final episode of Lamb, as well as an excerpt from the novelette-length story “The Fire Road” (ostensibly written by the character Lamb) which will appear exclusively in the printed and ebook versions scheduled for publication June 2025.
Two friends on different but parallel paths, from private school through college and their raging twenties, until the abrupt, mysterious end of their friendship.
Told through reminiscences, journal excerpts, letters, and short stories, Lamb is a snapshot in episodes of young men coming of age after the decimation of AIDS—a sometimes shiny, sometimes dark afterparty of gay awakening.
And now on to the main event…
Living Into the Truth:
A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery
An excerpt, by
Chapter 13: Smoke and Mirrors
When friends invited Chris and me to their wedding, I didn’t greet the invitation with enthusiasm. It was the summer of 1980, a year and a half after I had called Mom to tell her I was “homosexual.” I now used the term “lesbian” and was becoming more comfortable with “dyke” and “butch,” although only when used by and with other lesbians. I had settled into life in Boston with Chris, found a job, and started graduate school— just like we had planned—at least for the moment.
I didn’t like weddings. When my elementary school classmates played wedding instead of cleaning the church like we were supposed to do on Friday afternoons, I steered clear, and not just because I didn’t want to get caught—although that was a key motivator in those days. I hated the thought of wearing a wedding gown and being the focus of everyone’s attention. And even more than that, I hated the thought of belonging to a man.
In college, I developed political reasons for hating weddings. I viewed marriage as selling out to the patriarchy. It was bad enough when straight feminists did it. For two lesbians to adopt this misogynistic model to define their relationship made me cringe. I didn’t want to condone their collusion with heteronormativity by my complicity.
But Chris wanted to go.
“Come on,” she implored. “We haven’t had time to play in a while. This will be fun.”
I wasn’t convinced. I was, however, intrigued. To encourage people to come, Kathy invited guests to camp on her parents’ spacious Long Island farm property. Her parents were hosting their wedding? I couldn’t imagine parents who would host their lesbian daughter’s wedding. Given my experience, parents who supported their daughter and her girlfriend’s wedding were as unusual as lesbians with dogs (Something common today but an anathema then when it was cats all the way). If nothing else, I said yes out of curiosity. Little did I know the wedding would be a watershed event in my life.
Just as Chris and I finished packing our camping gear for the drive, the phone rang. On the other end was Sherry, a woman we’d met a few months earlier at a conference for gay and lesbian seminarians sponsored by Harvard Divinity School—the first of its kind anywhere in the country. Chris and I liked her immediately and wanted to reconnect with her, but we didn’t expect to hear from her so soon.
“Are you available for dinner tonight?” Sherry asked. She explained that she was in town visiting a “friend” and hoped to get together.
“Oh, I’m sorry, we’re not,” Chris replied. She looked at me and waved her hand as if she were trying to get me to agree to something, but I didn’t know and couldn’t imagine where she was heading. “We’re driving to Long Island to Kathy and Megan’s wedding this weekend. You remember them from the conference, right?” Then, without missing a beat and without looking my way, she added, “Do you and your friend want to come along?”
My eyes widened. That’s what she was trying to ask me with all her gesturing? I didn’t mind the drive, but the thought of four women with camping gear crammed into my Pontiac Sunbird for five hours to attend a lesbian wedding, of all things, didn’t strike me as the makings of a great weekend. However, as was often the case, Chris’s gregariousness surpassed my introversion, and this was one of those times. We couldn’t uninvite them just because I didn’t want them to come—just because I didn’t want to go.
Within an hour, Sherry and her “friend” Anne pulled up in front of the house, threw their gear into the trunk of my car, and jammed themselves into the back seat. Minutes later, we were on our way. I had to admire their spontaneity.
It didn’t take long before I relaxed into the trip and let myself enjoy their company. Both Sherry and Anne were educated professionals who knew how to have a good time. We shared coming out and how-we-got-together stories, laughed at various examples of our impulsivity, including this one, and talked about difficult subjects like discrimination against lesbians and gays in ministry and other professions. Anne disclosed how she had been fired from a job as a college administrator in West Virginia because they found out she was a lesbian. Sherry was fighting with the Methodist Church about her ordination for the same reason. Chris, who also dreamed of being ordained to ministry, struggled with the Catholic Church not only because she was a lesbian but because she was a woman. I drove and kept quiet. I hadn’t faced this kind of discrimination personally, and the conversation reminded me how important it was to keep my sexuality to myself in my professional life.
When we finally arrived at our friend’s house in Long Island, we piled out of the car, took deep stretches, and hugged each other. As much as I didn’t want to make this journey in the first place and certainly didn’t want to share it with anyone else, I knew we had become fast friends and was grateful Chris had pushed me into it.
As the wedding ceremony began a couple hours later, guests crowded into every corner of the rambling old Long Island farmhouse. In the living room, a man and a woman shared an old, worn leather pilot’s chair, while three young children hung on to its arms. A few people leaned against the built-in bookcases, while others, standing three deep behind the sofa, jockeyed for a good view. Some men, distinguished by gray hair and closely cropped beards, sported suits with ties. Younger men with longer, less-manicured hair and goatees, wore jeans and t-shirts.
A lesbian couple, outfitted in matching dress slacks, collared shirts, and Birkenstocks, held hands, as they squeezed themselves between the kitchen door and china cabinet. A few children spilled from the kitchen into the living room, and then scampered out the front door, oblivious to the crowd amassed in their play space. More guests peered down from the second-floor loft. Laughter, rising and falling from the many conversations, infused the atmosphere with a joyful sound.
I don’t remember what the two brides wore. I don’t remember what the minister said. What I do remember is one minute feeling lifted and held, and the next, naked and exposed. A strange mix of possibility and panic rose up inside me. This was the first time I’d enjoyed the company of people, gay and straight, assembled for the purpose of honoring a lesbian relationship. Moms, dads, siblings, cousins, even a former Sunday school teacher joined in the ceremony.
I’d never imagined a world where lesbians could lead lives out of the shadows. Although I’d read about lesbians who lived openly, I didn’t know any of them. Even the brides, Kathy and Megan, both students in a conservative seminary, lived in the closet back in Boston. I had no models to look to – no experience with which to trust what I saw. I tried to believe in the sincerity of the people in that room, but my mother’s voice saying, “Don’t stand out. Don’t be different,” drowned out the singing and obliterated the smiles. As an act of will, I purposefully tried to squash her words like an army of ants heading for the wedding feast. I yearned to savor every bite of this new world. And I was scared to death of it.
Somewhere in the middle of the ceremony, a thought wormed its way into my brain. It snuck up quietly. I didn’t see it coming. If I ever had a wedding, I’d want one like this. Even the awareness made me grab onto a nearby chair to steady myself. If I ever had a wedding? What a ridiculous notion. I hate weddings, remember?
For the first time, I wondered if I hated weddings because my imagination had never been big enough to encompass one where people would honor my relationship with another woman like they did Kathy and Megan’s, where family and friends would embrace my joy, rather than recoil from it. I shook my head to dislodge the idea from my consciousness. I’d held my distaste for weddings for too long to let it evaporate in a single afternoon.
As soon as the service ended, I fought my way to the door. I needed to breathe. When fresh air filled my lungs, the turmoil in my brain dissolved and I knew something had shifted. I had witnessed a new way to be in the world.
After the festivities ended, the overnight guests crowded around a campfire. As the effects of the alcohol and the darkness of the night sky relaxed me, the flames of the fire lit up the faces sitting around it. People exchanged stories; one woman strummed a guitar; a few passed around a joint; others sat quietly gazing into the fire. Couples huddled close to each other, women with women, women with men, and men with men – and no one minded. If only real life could be like this.
Up until this day, being a lesbian had felt like living in limbo, a place where my sexual identity kept me trapped in a world that was neither heaven nor hell. When I first identified as a lesbian, my life split into two uneven parts, a large public realm that held my school and professional life and anywhere it didn’t feel safe to be out, which was almost everywhere, and a much smaller private world of my lesbian and a few gay friends. My family was somewhere in between—my sexual identity pervaded our relationship, but no one wanted me to talk about it.
I’d been fortunate enough to never experience the hell that some of my lesbian and gay sisters and brothers lived and died in. Despite my mom’s painful response to my coming out, she hadn’t thrown me out of the house, I’d never been fired from a job, and my professional aspirations hadn’t been blocked.
At the same time, I didn’t feel free to be fully who I was, to let people know me, to speak out for what I believed in. Sitting around the fire with this group of mostly strangers, I finally had an image of what it would be like if the gates of limbo flew open. I imagined the two parts of me reuniting into one being who lived and loved openly, an integrated whole. This new being hovered over me for a minute and then evaporated drifted up and away with the smoke from the fire. The vision disappeared as fast as it had come. Still, I had a feeling I wouldn’t forget it. I didn’t know how to make it manifest again, but I couldn’t deny I had seen the possibility of a different reality.
As the night wore on, and the fire burned down, I surprised myself with the realization that I was having a good time. I noticed I was even glad Sherry and Anne had come with us – I enjoyed their company. I especially noticed the way the flames danced in Anne’s eyes when she laughed. And I noticed that for those brief hours, I wasn’t living inside a secret.
On the ride home from the wedding, I caught myself watching Anne through the rearview mirror. I didn’t let myself think about the fact that I was already in a relationship or that Anne was, too. Caught up in the freedom I experienced from the weekend, I just let myself feel. By the time we arrived home, I knew I was smitten. Apparently, Anne was too.
Over the next few months, Anne and I fell in love. Those few months deserve a book of their own—or at least a chapter in a book about relationships—but it’s not the story I’m telling here, so I’ll leave it with this: in what seemed like no time at all and, at the same time, forever, I ended my relationship with Chris, Anne ended hers with Sherry, and Anne and I decided to make a life together (not necessarily in that order). I quickly learned, however, that the impact of Anne’s experience of living in limbo would affect us in ways neither of us understood at the time.
If you’d like to read more of Annette’s story, Living Into the Truth: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery is available in paperback and eBook editions from WordsWomenPress.com.
 | A guest post by
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The rich and complex lives we have lived as "others" -- dyke, lezbo, queer -- are stories we must tell to keep alive our bravery by making note and sealing into history the contributions we made as we heeded the calls, both internal and external, to "Come Out, Come Out" wherever we were. Thank you, Annette, for sharing your story.