Happy Holidays from all of us here at the Leffew home.
It has been one crazy holiday season and I for one am glad that Christmas is finally here so that I can just enjoy the day and forget any preparations that still may need to be done. Our gifts are purchased and wrapped, our dinner is ready to go...and Santa even made an appearance here the day before his big night. If you're on a budget this holiday season try this Overstock coupon. The store has a wide array of selection so hopefully you can pick something out for your whole family!
I know that Daniel knows the truth about Santa now...but I hope he never stops believing that magical things can happen. As he gets older, his wish list changes from video games and toys to video games and a leather jacket but I hope he and Selena always remain little kids inside. As a grown up, my Christmas wish list has changed somewhat too. I look around my life and realize that I have so much that I am grateful for, that it shrinks my list down quite a bit. But, a few things I have wished for under the evening stars are a world in which no gay person needs to fear to lose their job, their home, or their life because someone discovers their sexual orientation or gender identity. I saw a lot of violence done to friends this year and it reminds me just how far we have to go make that world more than just a wish. I'm keeping a handful of people in my prayers this year and their safety and happiness is my Christmas wish.
So I do believe in magic. It may not come with sparkles, colorful light shows, or the sound of harps, but I do believe that incredible....even impossible things happen when we hold them in our hearts and make room for them in our lives. That's just me though and I don't ever want to stop believing.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays from Jay, Daniel, Selena, and myself....and no matter where you may find yourself this holiday season, may you be safe and warm as well as surrounded by those you love.
Merry Christmas to all of you from Edwin and I. I love the "I'm too big for this" look on Daniel's face!
ReplyDeleteTomTallis aka Ken Clark
Merry Christmas. Glad you guys had such a great Christmas morning. I'm so sorry to hear about your former foster-child's injuries. Be strong.
ReplyDeletei for one remember when i was little that i used to want lots of action figures and books, now it's just down to books. but i do have a wish list that is not something that could be placed under a tree or in a box; equality and the end of bigotry and violence against anyone including the LGBT. Another is to find someone who loves me, like you have for Jay. :)
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas Bryan, Jay, Daniel & Selena,
ReplyDeleteHope you had a great one!
Just got back from a weeklong Christmas trip to see my father, who I hadn’t seen in 15 years, and his new wife and family in Washington state. I have gobs of new step relatives now, including two stepsisters, step nieces and nephews and step nephews-in-law and my head is spinning with all the new familial labels to call myself.
My new family is really cool when it comes to orientation issues and I couldn’t possibly have asked for a more comfortable setting to just be me. They’re all super accepting and my step mother even volunteered without me even asking that, if I ever got a partner or husband in the future, he would be as welcome at future Christmas gatherings as I am myself. I can tell my step mother things I wouldn’t have dared tell my own mother who is now deceased. I can even go so far—and did—as telling her which new relatives I hadn’t yet met I thought were hot. Many were told in advance of me ever arriving about my orientation by my father, which is fine but, if asked about my personal life, I was fully prepared to be honest and then be flippant and funny about it with all sorts of one liners like “we can always defect to Canada if things get too bleak for us here and we can all start an LGBT hippie commune in Vancouver, British Columbia afterwards” (which actually would be pretty cool) or “as I always say, whatever you do in private with a man, woman or consenting kangaroo is none of by business. We only ask that you respect him, her or it in the morning.” :-D
I even found that, for purposes of the hot tub, I was given a faded robe which still was unmistakably in rainbow colors! Aw…cool! You just can’t make up stuff like this…. So I just couldn’t resist making use of such priceless material and asked my step mother if the rainbow robe was just a happy coincidence or was she being extra specially thoughtful choosing that for me? :-D I really got her good with that one…. :-)
So while I share the concern for the safety and well-being of people whose orientation is discovered perhaps when they’re not quite ready to deal with it, I think things can and at times actually are getting better for us and the little excerpt from my life’s story illustrates that. Two pieces of advice on dealing with new people who “find you out”: (1) Educate them right away on the biology behind orientation, especially the part about the brain’s hypothalamus, which scientists believe largely controls what we find attractive, has to get adequately dosed in utero with testosterone—which it usually does (some 95% of the time for the population at large)—or else the resulting male child WILL be gay and nothing on Earth can change that, so they understand that no person on Earth, be he gay or straight, chooses whatever orientation he ends up being; and (2) Don’t be uptight about the subject because, if you do, you’re in effect giving them permission to be uptight in response and you really don’t want that.
For source material on gay biology, go to www.youtube.com/outlatebutgreat and use the search word “epigenetics” to get the correct video to use with that new individual who discovers your real orientation.
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