Sybil is one of the women that stood in front of me to protect me, and stood behind me to have my back. This is just a small part of her story. I love her.

Jill

I found out my dad was gay when I saw book on his bureau that was called Men Loving Men.I remember it had a black and white silhouette picture of two men embracing and a brown border.

It was 1973.

I was 8.

I didn’t tell anyone outside of my family until I was 16.

That is a long secret.

And something that i didn’t want to talk about.

When you keep a secret, it defines who you are.

It defines who you think you are.

And until you share the secret, you won’t know what you might discover about yourself.

I’m here to tell you, it’s time to share your secrets.

Because until you do, you won’t know who you are, who your friends are or who you might become.

We are all here to walk a path that is laid for us, this I believe.

Keeping secrets stops our steps on this path.

Until you share your secret, until you talk about the thing you didn’t want to talk about when you were a child…you won’t really know why you thought the keeping of the secret was so important.

Sharing a secret puts you on a new path, it gives you new shoes, and re-soles your soul.

Do it.

13 years after that book finding, I awoke from another dream.

Life, I have found, is a series of awakenings.

Some of us enter fully orbed, with a knowledge of why we are here (I consider those people very very lucky) more often, we human beings slowly awaken.

At 21, I awoke from yet another dream of denial and fear.

Because of my father’s secret sexuality, I had always relied on my mother to be my “healthy role model” for sexual and intimate relationships.

I was sleepwalking for 13 years.

I noticed my mother was spending a lot of time with another woman, who was, shall we say, rather dominating. The unkind word is “bull-dyke”–or whatever that means.

And it became apparent to me, that they weren’t just chewing bubble gum together, they were lovers, and they were living together.

Boom… as Tennessee Willams says: “

It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that’s how it struck the world for me.

And that is how it was…a blinding light.

Who was I? Who was she? Was she disgusting? Was something wrong with me as a result?

I carried the burden across thousands of miles, trekking around Europe, through turnstiles of men, seeking a home in foreign counties and looking for the answer.

I found none. It just was. It didn’t change her, or me, or how she loved me as my mother.

It only changed the way I saw it.

And vision, I have found, is an illusion. How we see things can always be altered by taking two steps to the right, or a step backward. Look up close at a Monet, it’s a blotted mess, take 10 steps backward, and it is a masterpiece.

So, in my search: What I did find out is this: Tell your secret. If you already know it’s a secret, you are that much down the road. If you don’t know it’s a secret, your soul will soon reveal it to you, and you will be nudged until you do open the door.

Open it.

___________________

You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that’s clear-
I will choose Free Will.

RUSH, “Free Will”

To write Raw please contact me at jill@rawcandor.