Self-liberation and the watershed moment of coming out | Sally Susman | Big Think

Probably the watershed moment in my life and the biggest decision I ever made was to come out. I came out in 1984, which is a long time ago now, and things weren’t as accepting as they are.

And when I told my family that I was gay, it was said to me that you would never have a spouse, a career, or children. And it wasn’t that they were trying to give me a hard time. It’s that they were worried about me, and those were their realistic fears at the time.

What happened in that moment all those years ago is the seeds of those things were planted deeply within me, and I felt it was my life plan to have a spouse, a career, and a child. Knowing that was what I needed to be secure and safe and happy and prospering was very clarifying.

And once you go through a truth-telling moment like that with yourself, you’ll never go back. And so coming out has been, I think, the greatest, most liberating thing I’ve done in my life.

I have a wonderful young adult daughter, a career that means the world to me, and today is my thirty-first anniversary. So I feel incredibly lucky that I had that challenge early on that gave me a personal North Star for what I needed to achieve in my life.