Emma Rohan is a 20-something gender non-conforming lesbian.
They spoke about the difficulties of having family members that do not accept them, and about how they stay hopeful despite that hurt.
Alphabet Soup shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives.
Emma Rohan: The dissonance between having my dad and my whole dad's side of the family not being accepting, and my mom's side being very accepting, and even, like, a few of my family members being gay and being lesbian — was really interesting to grow up and kind of reckon with, especially after I came out.
Because my dad's side never came around, and still hasn't, but my mom's side has done everything in their power to accept me for everything that I am.
And, I don't know, it's hard to ever have a parent that doesn't accept you or disowns you and that, like, it makes you think things about yourself — you're like, “Why am I not good enough for the one person that's supposed to love me forever,” you know?
But then I got very lucky to have my mom, and have my mom just so openly accept me and to be there whenever my dad wasn't.
And I do feel very lucky in that way because every time she saw me slipping into that, like, internalized homophobia, she always picked me up out of it, and she made sure I, like, knew my worth and knew that it's okay to be gay and whatever you know?
And then, after I came out, more people started to come out at my school, too, and I was quickly not the only gay person from Union, Missouri, and a beautiful community just flourished ight in front of my eyes, somewhere where I didn't think was possible.
I think if there's one thing that people take from my story, I hope that it's about hope — not losing that — because I do think that that's what keeps us here, and that's what keeps us alive, like, in the queer community, like, as gay people.
I think I would be nowhere without hope. No matter what I've been through and, like, what I still go through, like, literally, just because I came out, just because I'm gay, like, I never lost hope that somehow it would get better.
And I still survive today hoping that it gets better, even with my dad, like, even with my dad's family, even knowing that it probably won't ever for the rest of my life.
I still have hope that, you know, I'll get to see my brothers again. I have hope that some members of my extended family will, like, come around and they have over the years, like, I meet up with my cousins. I get to talk to my brothers on like social media and stuff.
So much has happened that has proven that I deserve hope and that I am worth hoping for, and I think every gay person should feel that they are worth hoping for, and they deserve to have hope — no matter what it is. That things will get better even if it's not what they think it'll look like.
