Yesterday was my birthday.

All I asked for was family time with our big dog, Roxy. We’d taken her for surgery two days before. So I got my birthday wish of cuddles with Roxy and my two children. Yay!

My husband, Matt, spent three resentful hours making a complicated black forest cake (thanks, hon!) and then we played Pandemic and lost AGAIN.

Now I want to say something.

I love Matt. We’ve been together since high school. He’s smart and funny and has given me two beautiful kids as well as much beloved dogs like Roxy, Olo, and Bell. That hasn’t changed.

At the same time, I like women.

In other words, I’m queer. Bisexual at least, and maybe pan.

I’m not a late in life lesbian. Some of my first crushes were on girls. But it was easier to date guys, and I liked them too, so … I took the road most travelled.

Since then, I’ve hesitated to come out. Is Pride month for me? Am I gay enough?

I don’t have to say anything. And I don’t want people to think Matt and my marriage is foundering. I haven’t met anyone new, and as far as I know, he hasn’t either.

But I wrote my most queer book, Pride & Provocateur, with a bisexual protagonist. It felt weird not to tell people that it’s me as the Lizzie Bennet character.

I live in a safe area of Canada. On my birthday, we literally picked apples from trees on our own land, and I made apple pie. Our dogs are lolling on the grass. Matt is playing bass with one of his bands, our son Max is playing pool with his girlfriend, and our daughter is chilling out upstairs.

Yet I know my BIPOC and queer siblings are being taken into custody south of the border. War and genocide explode across the world. Thank goodness for downtown Ottawa’s “needle hunters” picking up used syringes.

Me coming out doesn’t change the horror unfolding on the planet. Some would think I’m adding to it. I should shut up and be a ‘proper’ wife.

But I don’t want to stay silent.

Most of the time, I try to do the right thing. Not the easy thing. The right thing.

I stand shoulder to shoulder with the marginalized people of the world. The underdogs, the fighters, the outsiders who never got things handed to them but who worked really hard and helped each other along the way.

“I want to love more than death can harm. And I want to tell you this often: That despite being so human and so terrified, here, standing on this unfinished staircase to nowhere and everywhere, surrounded by the cold and starless night — we can live. And we will.” Ocean Vuong

(I quoted Ocean when Linda Caroll wrote this important column.)

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere …
We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world.— Jack Gilbert

I also think of

Thanks by W.S. Merwin

Naomi Shihab Nye‘s incredible poem, “Kindness“

and Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” (and most poems, really).

Today, in my tiny corner of the Internet, I have told the truth.

That makes this a second birthday for me.

Thanks for reading. I send you love.