Given my background, it was something that was very easy for me to accept. To tell you the truth, she actually told me.... We were in a bookstore. We always used to go to bookstores and she had been looking around the adolescent and teen section. She came up to me and said, “You know, Mum, there are no books about gay adolescents and teens. There are no novels and no other books.”
I said, “Oh, that's interesting. That's a big gap. We should talk to them about that.” Right after that, when we went home, she told me that she was gay.
She was only in grade 8 at the time. My main concern was just about her age and about what she would be facing in her school and in her community, but that is exactly when we discovered OUTSaskatoon. We went online and we found this fabulous organization that was immediately welcoming to her. It provided the kind of support that we talked about, through the youth group called Rainbow Coffee, which meets every week for this age group.
She would look forward to going to Rainbow Coffee every week. That's what she would look forward to for the following week.
I will add that a lot of other parents, as we know, are not as supportive and helpful and open to their children coming out. We do see that at OUTSaskatoon all the time. That's part of the reason why we needed to develop Pride Home for those children who have literally been rejected by their families.