Oh, those childhood moments of embarrassment and humiliation that stick with us like leaches. Decades later, those micro traumas flash back. Why did I say that? Why didn't I just keep my stupid mouth shut? Why did I put my ignorance, or my lack of cool, or my sentimentality get the best of me. Those mean leers and laughs that made us the outcast, the momentary stigma we can't seem to shed all these years later.

And, how do we raise our children to remain vulnerable and unashamed of their tenderness and still prepare them for survival in an unkind world? How do we impress upon them that they should be proud to be their unique selves, defiant even, when revealing their own individuality runs a very real risk of ridicule from their peers?

Miraculously, my three kids seem to have run the gauntlet and come out the other side as pretty stable adults (two are parents themselves and making their own mistakes, presumably damaging their own children in their own ways.) But, somebody must have done something right. The last person in my immediate family I came out to was my 40-year-old son. I was extremely nervous about it, especially because he's a jock and lives in Oklahoma. His response was curiosity... "Oh," he said, apparently non-plussed, "do you have a boyfriend now?"