Sophie Freeman is a queer woman who grew up in a very small, rural conservative town in the Missouri Bootheel who spoke about how she's found a supportive family of her own since coming out.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Sophie Freeman: My family – not the vibe.
So, I started with friends, like, “Hey, you know, I think I like doing this. How do you feel about that?”
“No biggie. Me too.”
“Okay, cool.”
I was just, I was just so scared, and then when I did – it wasn't met with a lot of negative backlash, but my family is a different story. That was met with pretty negative backlash.
So, my mom said, like, “Oh, so you've been lying to our family for who knows how long.” My grandparents were like, “We love you, but we hate this thing.” They were able to kind of put a little bit more space between me and my choices, me and my actions.
I don't say “choices” in like I'm choosing to this, but choices in like I take responsibility for what I'm doing.
![A hand-painted sign reading “Ms. Freeman” and Sophie Freeman’s lanyard featuring a “she/her” pronoun pin, which Freeman got during Kansas City Pride, sit on a group of tables in Freeman’s classroom on Monday, May 20, 2024, at Rock Bridge High School in Columbia. “I think my experience [of] feeling not accepted in different spaces throughout the world over the past couple of years led me to be so inclusive with my classroom decor. I really want everyone to walk in this classroom … as a human and be accepted as a human. We're all in this together. I literally love every single one of my students, and I wanted to make sure every single kid felt that,” Freeman said. “It's painful to exist in a place where you know you're not comfortable, where something so innate to you and something you know you can't change is a problem for people. And, I really wanted to avoid that moving forward. So, I made sure to decorate as affirming and inclusively as I could to let them know without having to say anything, like, ‘I see you. I support you, and, no matter what, I'm with you.’”](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/b877945/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1750x1164+0+0/resize/840x558!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fnpr.brightspotcdn.com%2Fd1%2F41%2F20a9c1784139b069b858f368fcca%2F20240520-bas-queer-joy-sophie-freeman-0017.jpg%3Forigin%3Dbody)
So, yeah, Mom – I haven't seen her since. She didn't come to my college graduation. We are done. We are whatever for now.
My grandparents did come to my college graduation. So, “Thanks, Nana and Papa,” but yeah, coming out in those worlds was pretty difficult for me.
So, chosen family to me, found family to me is people that love you. I had nowhere to go for multiple Christmases and Easters since I've come to Columbia. When I moved to Columbia, no one came to help me move.
Like I have found people who will do the family – quote, unquote, family things – for me.
And I guess I would love to reiterate the importance of finding your chosen family and your found family, especially in the queer world and the queer culture, because it is so important to have people that love you and support you.
There's a popular trope that's, like, “You can't love someone else until you love yourself,” and I disagree with that. I think that you have to be loved to be able to love.
So, how can you create a family if you do not have one giving to you and showing you, like, how worthy you are or how wonderful you are, like, how do you give that back out into the earth?
So, my friend's parents have had me over for Christmas dinners and Easter Sundays, and like my partner's family – they're lovely. They're such good people. They invite me to everything, and they make me feel so warm.
Her mom – my partner's mom – got me an Easter basket this year. I'm about to cry thinking about it, like, that's so sweet, like, you're treating me like a kid, like your kid.
I love it, but yeah, and, like, friendships that maybe you can lean on for different things, like advice, or “I need help moving,” or “I just need like someone to sit with me while I do my laundry,” you know, but making sure like I pour into them and they're pouring into me and creating a network of people that is a soft place to land when things get hard.
Because I don't, I don't have like, I literally do not have that otherwise. So, keep being a kind human. Do what you want to do because it's your life – no one's taking your place in the grave.
So, go for it, and I support you.
