Pride Month Special: A Mother and Daughter's Journey of Love, Acceptance, and Faith in the LGBTQ Community

Hello everyone, i'm Rebecca Lauderdale and this is Belonging in the South a guide for Misfits, a podcast to help Southerners of all kinds find belonging and community without having to change who you truly are, and we are just in time to celebrate Pride Month. If you're like me or my guests today, your thoughts and beliefs about gender and sexual identity have gone through some pretty significant transitions from when you were younger until now. Growing up, i was taught that deviating from cisgender heterosexuality was not just uncommon or unusual, but it was sinful, that it was morally wrong. But over the years I've found a whole lot of holes in that argument and living examples of people who didn't fit the gender mold, who I love very much and have enriched my life. Tragically, the hardest places to be LGBTQ in the South or anywhere else are our faith communities. Studies have shown that LGBTQ kids are at significantly higher risk of suicide if their family has religious beliefs that aren't affirming. Even adult LGBTQ folks whose parents have non-affirming religious beliefs are twice as likely to attempt suicide. The rates of mental illness and suicide are much lower for LGBTQ folks who are in affirming families and churches. It's not being queer that causes the problem, it's the social environment. So what a tragedy in the midst of the places that are supposedly there to love us and support us and be safe. Today, i have such a gift of a conversation for you. Ashley Nelson is the executive director of the Evolving Faith Conference, which we will talk more about. She was raised in the evangelical church and realized she was gay when she was in her teens. When she went to her mom, debbie, who she shared everything with, both of their responses were to try to fix the problem. This led to years of difficulty and some abandoned dreams. In Ashley's faith tradition, like mine, you couldn't be gay and be in church ministry, but that's really what she wanted. She ended up marrying a man in her 20s and trying to ignore important parts of herself for years. It was her mom who helped give her the love and validation she needed to finally be treated herself, and that ultimately led to finding her now wife and also her current position as executive director of Evolving Faith, which is a progressive Christian conference and so much more. That was founded by the late Rachel Held Evans, that luminous theologian who was so good at making people not feel alone and who was a great and fierce advocate and teacher. So our conversation today is Ashley and her mother, debbie. Their story of changing both of them from thinking something was wrong with Ashley to understanding that something was very right and rich and beautiful about her that they hadn't been able to imagine in the beginning. The conversation speaks for itself. There was a lot to say, so I've divided it into two parts and I'll publish the second half next week. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. I'm so thrilled, ashley and Debbie, that you're willing to share your story with my listeners. I believe that hearing stories like yours can change lives. So, ashley, i would like to start with you. Where would you start the story of how you became who you are today?

That's a complicated right who I am today, but I think, for purposes of kind of what we're talking about here, of my own evolution of faith and understanding of who I am and feeling free to be that it would probably start in high school. I super involved in church, right like the youth group, like poster kid ran all of the clubs in high school that were very Christian forward, definitely believed that it was my job to save people around me, so I took that very seriously. I fell in love with a woman when I was 19 and it scared the living, the Jesus, out of me. I felt like on the scale of sin that that was at the very, very top. Even I prided myself in avoiding all of the typical teenager traps. I wasn't a drinker, i didn't sleep with boys, i didn't do all the things that purity culture told me was required, and so that felt like a very foundation shifting thing to happen to me. In the midst of that I went to my mom and told her about that And I'm the oldest kiddo. That was in the late 90s and definitely we didn't have any paradigm for that other than this is broken and we've got to figure out how to fix it. So I don't know if you want to jump in here, mom, because I think just hearing your story of me coming to you with that knowing me as this, i mean very like just good kid. I was just a good kid, like I'd just never gotten trouble, i was a straight A student, like again, just very deeply committed to my faith, and then bringing this to her at that point I think was also pretty foundation shifting for her.

Yeah, i actually was a poster child for I got the perfect daughter. Look at me, you know, look what look all she does and how great she is and how dedicated she is to the Lord and all those kind of things and just immense pride in her. That's never waned. But yeah, when she came to me and told me that you know she was I don't know if she ever used the words I'm in love with this person, but definitely that you know they were in a relationship and really I was stunned. Now, i knew she didn't date very much during high school, but some girls don't, i didn't either. So when she came and told me that she was involved, this woman, she was actually several, several years older than I actually and was in a leadership position at a youth group that I was involved in. So when I actually told me about that I was, i actually thought my first three action was that she had been for as manipulated or you know, she was six or seven years, i think she was seven years older and so I thought, well, this is, this, is not Ashley. She likes this woman because she's a great leader, she's a good friend for her. That's not really what this is, and so and talking to her a little bit more all I knew was to take her to counseling and so I took her to a Christian counselor before Ashley came out. I met with the Christian counselor and she basically said to me you need to hold the line on this she. You are her only hope. That's exactly what she said to me and so I did and I continued to take her to counseling and she would say you know, she was better and all that she was doing all the things she could to, i think, appease me and make me feel better about the situation. And I'm sure my reaction to her telling me about this woman and her was real hurtful for her and we've always had a really great relationship and I think she was afraid that I wouldn't love her or that I wouldn't approve her. And truthfully I guess I can say I did not approve because I grew up in Mississippi in the 1670s and the church I went to when I was younger was actually what they call a primitive Baptist church, not if you're familiar with that or not, but it's feet washing women on one side, men on the other. I'm familiar yeah, i mean the church that I went to actually had an outhouse. We didn't even have indoor toilet very far, and brimstone, mm-hmm, you better follow these rules or maybe you're gonna burn. And so that was my introduction to religion, or Christianity, or however you want to phrase that, and so it was very much a fear-based faith that I was reared in. Fast forward that when I got married and we found a church in our the town I'm still in, we went to an evangelical church and they just didn't talk about those kind of things. Nobody talked about anybody being gay or have anything off the spectrum other than straight. Most of them were white, truthfully, and so it wasn't really a subject of discussion in church. I don't remember ever having a sermon about that, but I knew how my younger that mirror, you know experiences with church were and how black and white everything was, and so that's kind of the mountain mindset I had. I also knew that my family who I just I love all my family and but I was I knew how all of them felt about all of it. That was ingrained in us. You know, homosexual is wrong and I took that and ran with it and so I don't know if I actually wants to pick up from you. Know, i feel like I've said a lot right there, but basically that's how, how I was raised and I just thought all of that is right, i didn't question anything, mm-hmm that was something I think I asked Ashley about that or mentioned that when we talked before that, yes, the obstacles so often is fear, you know, afraid of being wrong.

And that's where I've, in my experience with friends you know who have come out to their parents, a lot of times that barrier is not love, it's fear, and I can certainly identify with that feeling that you've been taught this very fear-based theology that says if you believe wrong, right, then all is lost, basically, and sometimes that even considering believing something different is just so scary, right, and I think just to speak to my mom, saying that I had my.

Probably it was play painful her reaction. I think, to be fair, we were both in that fear place. Right, i was afraid too, i think it was. Yeah, it was both of us kind of being like what do we do with this? Like there's no roadmap here.

Yeah, ashley, say more about that, about that feeling of fear and kind of just being in the middle of fear and not knowing what step to take next.

Right, i think for any other quote, unquote sin, i think there might have been a roadmap, right? This is kind of how you repent of this and this is how you work through it. I just knew that I had this relationship, that I that felt great when I was around her, and then, as soon as I was not, i was spinning out of control with fear and feeling like I had to choose between her and God, essentially, and not just her and God, but like her and my mom or her and my distance of normalcy and a path forward. I didn't know anyone that was gay not at least that was out to me gay. And so, yeah, i think, just knowing the path around me for every other thing, right, like I know how to be a good daughter, i know how to be a good student, i know how to sort of do this thing, but I don't know about this part of me what to do with it. And so did a lot of counseling, was told a lot of things about myself of where this could have come from, and spent years really in that place of seeking accountability and constantly having conversations, and it never, it never went away, right, It just felt like it was my thorn right, the thorn in my side that I had to deal with, and so coming into college with that basically feeling like I knew that that wasn't possibly ever gonna be completely healed but that I could sort of like act right, that I could go through the motions, and so I got married to a man when I was 22. I loved him. I knew I wasn't in love with him, but I felt like it was the best path forward again And we got along as friends really well And I felt like it was, you know, best case scenario for that. He knew about my relationship before, but came from very similar faith and understanding of that that God would kind of fix it right, like we're just gonna keep working through this and it will be as good as it can be as long as we're obedient. The blessing will come from that. And so, probably right around 19 or 20, i started getting migraines, but they were kind of, you know, here or there once or twice a month, and then throughout my 15 year marriage they progressed consistently to where they became daily, chronic and debilitating. I tried every single therapy under the sun, every medication, every diet change, acupuncture ended up getting a surgery where I had leads implanted like a TENS unit to control the pain And I was still at a place where I could barely function By that point. We had four kids to adopted to bio. I was a nurse at St Jude for a little while and I had to leave my job because my pain was so chronic. I had actually bought the book The Body Keeps the Score, but I refused to read it because I felt like I knew exactly what it was going to tell me. Oh really, and I felt like, even in the midst of my own faith evolving throughout that time, my own understanding of God and relationships and humans and people and rules, and I had come to a place where I was affirming of the LGBTQ community, but I felt like God wouldn't release me from my marriage. That felt like a step too far, like it's okay for everyone else but not for me, like this is the cross that I have to bear essentially for this. So in the midst okay, i'll say this, in the midst of this, my youngest brother came out. He was in his mid teens And, having some years under our belt, we still were in a place where we were afraid, right, and I thought, oh, if I just tell him like look look at me right. Like I also felt that way. But now I'm married to this man, i have this family and sort of like you can do it too. And he just was always so much more assured of himself and like, no, that's not, i'm not doing that game. And so I think from there I'd like to hear my mom's perspective on that moment and kind of what pushed her along in her own understanding.

So, yeah, he was like 17 when he came out to me. He came and talked to me and I basically said to him would you please just leave open the possibility for change? And I mean that was the worst thing I could have said to him. So basically, we were kind of I wouldn't say we were strange, but it was a very tense relationship for quite a while, probably six or eight months of that. But anyway, i mean, he just was, he was who he was And yeah, if he didn't like it I'm sorry. And so you know, i actually admired him for that, for standing up for himself. It's a really good thing. You have to children do that, but you don't want them to do it to you, right? So anyway, fast forward to. I had watched, you know, after I actually got married, i had watched her just have these awful my brains, and at one point she said to me I don't even care if I live anymore, i'm just been paying all the time. And I was so worried about her. She had all these kids, you know, she had these four little kids who strontech care of them And she was just absolutely miserable. And so I knew that she had still been struggling throughout her marriage, but she shared that with me. You know she and her husband had gone to counseling again because she was still struggling with same-sex attraction. And so Fast forward many years to the 2016 election.

I don't wanna talk politics. Okay, that was. I was about to ask you, kind of frame this for me at the time.

I don't wanna talk politics, but my son and his partner were living together at the time And when the 2016 election came around and a lot of the talking points that were used in the vizreel that was being spewed, they were fearful. They lived in an apartment at the time and they were scared. So I invited them to come live with me And they did. I had a big extra room in the back of my house and they moved in and kind of did their own thing, and I actually worked at night at the time And so we would cross paths occasionally on the weekends And I just started watching their relationship And honestly, i think people put so much emphasis on the sexual part of relationship And I watched them and I was like my son's partner would come out and talk to me for hours, just chatting. We would just sit around and talk. I just developed this really close relationship with them And I thought, well, i don't think anybody would understand my son as well as his partner does, and I don't know how this is a bad thing. He loves them, they love each other, and so it was just in observing their relationship Because basically, when you're brought up in the South a lot, people don't tend to see the actual people. It's a label that they stick on you and you're automatically you're a sinner, you are horrible, you are going to hell because you're not following all the rules. And in observing their relationship, i just thought they probably love each other than a lot of the heterosexual couples I've been around And they are very compatible And I love them both And I don't see them as sinners. I don't see them as bad people or that. They made a choice to do all of that or live that quote unquote lifestyle And I've told people about that before. I'm like the way they're treated. Who would choose that? I don't believe that's a choice Right. So, truthfully, after living with them for a while and then hearing Ashley talk about how miserable she was health-wise and I hadn't read the book that Ashley's talking about what was it? The body keeps the score, yeah, body keeps the score.

The body keeps the score.

I had not read that, but I do. I had always had a belief that physical ailments are a result of some kind of internal struggle or stress related kind of thing. So I just believed that for myself. And when she was telling me about all of her, all the pain she was in with these migraine and stuff, i just thought I just wonder. I just wonder if it's because she still attracted the woman.

I can pick up here because this is majorly transformative for me and I want to brag on you. But we were going to a little one night event together in Dallas And before that we went to dinner and I was kind of sharing. She knew all of this. I mean, there was nothing really. We've never had a lot of secret keeping. But in that conversation I really was brutally honest about where I was at pain level and just unhappiness and feeling like I've I checked all the boxes right Like I've done everything anyone's ever told me to do, and yet here I am still miserable. You can get in some dark places like that. Right, it's like I don't know what else to do here. And my mom in that conversation said do you think your migraines are connected to to this issue? for you, do you think that that's a possibility? And I just broke down crying because I knew that. I knew that somewhere deep down. But her saying that felt like permission to feel all the feels. And in that same conversation she apologized for the way that she handled the conversation when I was 19. And I don't know that I necessarily needed her to apologize for that because, like again, we were in that same, we were both in the same place. But again, it was a very healing moment for me of feeling, feeling not not crazy, right For being in a spiral for the last you know 15 plus years of trying to fix this thing and feeling like I'm literally butting my head against a wall and nothing's changing. And so, in the midst of that conversation, i mean I don't think I stopped crying for like a month, because it was, it was healing and it was scary right, because it was like now, what Am I about to blow up my life? But really and truly, i was a shell of a person. I was not as present for my kids as I wish that I could have been. I wasn't really able to work. I was surviving every day. That was it. And so it felt like, honestly, like this is, i don't see a way forward And in a lot of ways I really do believe and I wouldn't say this as a theological mandate for anyone else, but I believe in my own life that my migraines and chronic pain were God's mercy on me, because I can do a lot right, like I can plow through a lot, i can handle a lot, i can take a lot, and I may have still stayed in that situation, mostly miserable. But when it got to a place where I couldn't function, i had to throw the flag. It felt like I don't have a choice here, i'm barely able to live my life. So in a really bizarre way it felt like mercy. All of that felt like mercy.

So you cried for a month, Yeah yeah.

So that was yeah, that was 2017. You know, i was with my mom and Dallas and I actually texted my husband at the time and said, hey, we need to talk, and his response back was I'm nervous that you're going to leave me for? and I think at the time you said gay lifestyle, and I just want to take a pause here, please do, about that particular phrase, because it is incredibly comical to me, because if you saw our gay lifestyle, it's like take out Netflix and like chores and running kids around, right, it is just like what are we saying? We live very boring lives. This is our gay lifestyle. He knew we had been through a lot together and he was incredibly patient with that, but it was fearful of me leaving And so I stayed in that marriage for another year, sort of slowly untangling. We did a lot of counseling again. We kind of mapped out a course of what to do next before we told the kids I mean, i had to get my feet back underneath me, health wise, i had to figure out what I was going to do for work, i had to find a place to live And I wanted to honor that marriage Like I wanted to honor. I didn't want to just bolt right, it was. It didn't feel right to be like well, i figured this out, see ya, you know, i wanted to make sure Like I wanted to sit with that for a long time and honor that in him of the time that he invested in there too, and our kids and all that we had built. We sort of separated slowly in the house even, and then the divorce was final in 2018. I moved in to my new house in October of 2018 and I had tickets to this event called Evolving Face and I didn't know anything really about it. I knew some of the people that were going to be there, but I was literally in boxes and also had a sewage problem in my basement. Like literally was like cleaning up shit in the basement. You can edit that if you need to. Cause, like this is, and it was calm, right. It's like, oh my gosh, i just my life clean, I'm shit, it's fine, just sweeping it down into the drain, like the parallels. My new life is starting and it's already a shit show. I don't know I need to figure some things out here but decided to go. I have a friend who's an Enneagram seven and loves a last minute Hey, you want to get in the car and go? And she was like, yes, let's go. So we went and it was the first time in my faith, in personal life, that I felt whole, that I felt integrated, that all of who I was was not just okay but was welcome and cherished and prized and exactly who I was supposed to be. Being in a room with people who were all over the place, even theologically, obviously like diverse in all of the ways And but still sort of committed somehow to this Jesus story, even in the midst of wounding and trauma and being alienated from their faith communities, but still holding this just felt so right. It just felt like, oh, my people, like I can, i can breathe out And I don't have to choose, i don't have to be either Christian or gay. Like I can be all of me here, and so the timing of that was just unbelievable. Like, literally, the evolving faith started the chapter of this new life for me, and so it is a really still surreal place to be in this position now with him because it was so integral for me. It still doesn't always feel super real, but obviously I hold a very, very tender place for evolving faith in my own heart.

Tune in next week for part two of this conversation. You'll hear Debbie talk more about how she changed as a parent and also more about how Ashley came to a more open acceptance of herself And, through that, others, and how that's influenced her work with evolving faith. You folks are amazing. I absolutely love that you listen And I appreciate every little note or voice message or Instagram DM that you send me. It helps me know that these conversations resonate with you. I would love to have you on my email list. I don't spam people, but I do wanna be able to keep in touch with you. So go to belonginginthesouthcom and fill in the email form and I'll keep you updated on podcasts related things. Also, i'd love to hear from you about what topics you'd like me to cover or people you want me to talk to And that includes, potentially, you. So there's a guest nomination form on the website as well, so send me a message. As always. Don't forget that you do belong here in the South. Sometimes it takes an effort and breaking old patterns to find people you belong with. Belonging with yourself is a really good place to start. You don't have to be somebody different than you are to be worthy of love, or belonging or happiness, more than anyone else Believing that is the key. Until next week, much love.