Coming Out in My 30s Changed My Life—and How I Parent

“I can’t decide,” my daughter whined frustratedly, tears forming in her eyes and threatening to overflow. She was trying to pick two themes to write about for an assignment. I knew her anguish all too well. I’ve historically been a terrible decision-maker, always hemming and hawing through the options to painstaking degrees, even over seemingly small things—what to wear or which meal to order at a restaurant.

I wish I’d focused less on the small things and more on the big things in life, like my identity or sexuality or who I am. I didn’t start to learn that until my late 30s when I came out as queer—after marrying a man and having a child.

Growing up in a conservative and religious immigrant household and church, I was taught to be a particular person—a mother, straight, small—rather than encouraged to figure out who I actually was. And when my gut told me something opposed to the long list of prescriptives I was given, I was left feeling confused and stuck. It felt like being in quicksand. Now here I was, watching my daughter sink into her own.

“Why don’t you write down the themes on a little piece of paper and put them in a hat? Then draw one out and notice your first reaction to it. If you’re excited then you can do that one, but if you’re disappointed, then throw it out and pick again,” I told her.

This might seem overly simple, but a strategy like this would’ve saved me so much struggle growing up—because it’s not really about which little piece of paper you draw, but the practice of figuring out how you truly feel about something.

According to Robin Lacambra, a somatic and relational therapist and creator of Good Body Feel, modeling our own decision-making out loud can help children “get in tune with what their own preferences are, and the younger the child is, the more they’ll benefit from hearing their caregiver’s process out loud.”

Because I had to go so far down the unaligned life path before I knew it wasn’t right for me, I want to help my daughter get in touch with herself sooner. It’s even more important because she’s autistic, which is a diagnosis we got three years ago that resulted in me getting my own as an adult. It was yet another way I hadn’t known myself all these years.

I don’t hold it against my parents. They were doing the best they could with what they knew and were taught. Now as a parent, I can see how what they did for me also stemmed from trying to do something better than what they themselves had grown up with. Aren’t we always parenting in the best way we can, all things considered?

Maybe I’ve swung to the other extreme of awareness in some ways, but coming out forced a deep form of self-reflection that I might not have been faced with otherwise. Melisa Raney, who co-hosts the Lesbian Chronicles podcast and came out of an 11-year marriage with a man after having two children, also experienced this. “It happens with exploring your sexuality later in life. You basically play the tape back of your whole childhood, your teens, your 20s—and you think about all the ways your world was shaped and how it was impacted by the things that people said,” Raney says.

Coming out was possibly the first and most major time I’d authentically expressed myself—and I want my daughter to feel like she can do that now.

I grew up with “easy-listening” music playing on the radio; no one ever sang along or lost themselves in the music in front of me. I took Ukrainian dancing and learned classical piano, neither of which brought me any joy. My daughter takes hip-hop. We have dance parties in the kitchen. I sing at the top of my lungs when we’re in the car. I want her to find her joy sooner, so that she’ll know what it feels like and reach for that as she grows up. And I think it’s working.

As an autistic kid who leans toward introversion, she feels the need to follow the rules and be self-contained—but I love watching her spill over. “You know, I’m my silliest self around you,” I admitted to her recently in the car after talking in a series of funny voices. “I am too!” she replied, and it felt like she was accepting the gift of expression I’ve been trying to give her.

Raney sees the shifts she’s made in her parenting the same way. “There’s a little side of me that’s like, ‘This is my redemption,’” she says. “My daughter gets to do the things that I felt held back on, and I’m giving her the absolute freedom to be exactly who she is.”

Perhaps the most meaningful thing I’ve done for my daughter as a parent is to be vulnerable and show her that I’m figuring myself out too. I never really saw my parents as evolving people—they were static beings. Coming out “later in life” put me through a second adolescence; I was like a baby deer trying to find my footing all over again at the same time as she’s been trying to find hers too.

She’s watched me change and evolve, feel joy, start writing, learn new things about myself, explore and experiment with my identity. She’s seen how sometimes you have to get it wrong before you get it right. She’s seen that we’ll go through many iterations of ourselves, so we shouldn’t put so much pressure on this one. She’s seen that even if the first thing you pick isn’t the right one for you, there are always more options left in the hat.

How We Developed This Article

Coming out later in life can change a person’s experiences and perceptions. In this essay, the author explored how coming out in her 30s affected her parenting style. She interviewed a somatic and relational therapist and a mom of two who’s a writer and lesbian-oriented podcast cohost.

Learn more about how we ensure the accuracy of our content through our editorial and medical review process.

About the author: Alena Papayanis is a Toronto-based writer who dives into queerness, autism, identity and connection. She came out as queer in her late 30s—and while she wishes it had happened earlier, it taught her important life lessons.