Why I Came Out During Pride Month

I essentially came out because of Pride. It was about six years ago. I had been identifying as a woman outside of work hours, but I was still too scared to come out at work. At the time, I was working at a nonprofit organization that was technically a religious organization, although religion didn’t come up that often. It’s not like Jesus was the main character in our employee manual or anything like that, but we were technically considered a church.

I had never seen any trans people in the organization, and I wasn’t sure if coming out would go well. Besides that, my job involved working directly with senior citizens, and I wasn’t sure how much they were going to accept me, especially over the phone, as I wasn’t great at disguising my voice.

Still, while the prospect of coming out at work was difficult, living two lives was even harder. I was coming home from work and immediately changing out of the male clothes that made me feel bland, ugly, and uncomfortable, switching into women’s clothing with full makeup, even if I wasn’t going anywhere, just because I wanted to see my female self in the mirror again.

If I did have somewhere to go, I usually set aside time to stop home and change from guy mode to girl mode. Or I would pack the provisions needed to change modes in my parked car. I looked forward to three-day weekends when I could keep my nail polish on all the time without having to frantically try to wipe it off before work.

I tried going to Pride events while I was still only out part-time, but it wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Don’t get me wrong, Pride is absolutely a celebration for closeted people as well as people who are out, but it was hard to go and join in the festivities when I was scared of being seen by someone who might tell everyone at work.

While I had never seen anyone come out as trans at the organization, I knew a few older lesbians who worked upstairs, and, even though they were part of the LGBTQ+ community, I didn’t know them all that well. I didn’t know if I could trust them.

So I would spend Denver Pride looking over my shoulder the entire time, always afraid I was going to be discovered and outed in my office, which felt dangerous.

I would see my friends celebrating Pride openly, and it made me extremely jealous. I wanted to tell the whole world who I was. And, to be fair, I mostly had. I was writing articles under the name Julie River. My Facebook profile had the name Julie on it. I had even come out to my family, albeit rather clumsily.

But it still wasn’t enough. I was tired of living two lives and having to keep everything separate. I was tired of living in fear. I wanted to be Julie all the time, in every aspect of my life. I wanted to wake up in the morning, put on women’s clothing and makeup, and strike out into the world as me. I wanted to claim Pride Month as my own and celebrate it without being afraid.

So, it was in Pride Month that I vowed to make a change. I made an appointment with HR to talk to them about a private matter. My stomach was in my throat the whole day as the clock slowly wound its way towards my meeting. I had never been more terrified in my life. But I finally got up to the head of HR’s office and, after she and I had a conversation about the limits of confidentiality, I slowly recited what I had rehearsed, which was that I had been living my life as a trans woman outside of work for well over a year now, and I couldn’t live two lives anymore.

The head of HR seemed surprised, but still accepting, telling me that the organization was really trying to spearhead a diversity initiative. We made plans for me to slowly come out, little by little, first to my boss, then to the rest of my team, then to the rest of the organization. The gradual roll-out of my gender identity took long enough that I wasn’t fully out at work until the end of July, but it meant a lot to me that I had initiated the process during Pride Month. In a way, that was my Pride gift to myself.

I won’t pretend that everything was easy being an openly trans woman in an organization that was technically a church. But the initial reaction was mostly positive. It turned out my boss had already known, presumably because she found my Facebook profile. She accidentally called me Julie before I told her that was the name I was going to go by. My team had a hard time adjusting to the new name and pronouns, but they tried their best to respect the real me. One coworker who worked in another department even went out and bought me flowers to congratulate me. Nobody had ever bought me flowers before, and I had always wanted someone to. I cried.

The next four years of working in that organization were a series of ups and downs. Upon first coming out, some women in the office complained about the prospect of me using the women’s room before it even started happening. Thankfully, HR responded by sending out an email saying I had a right to use the restroom that aligned with my gender identity, and anyone who’s uncomfortable could go use the single-use restrooms on the third floor.

There were a number of other controversies over the years, and when they fired me four years after I came out for reasons that were clearly made up, I felt like it was really because they were partially upset at the fact that I was legally allowed to miss a lot of work for my anxiety disorder and also partially because they were tired of supporting a trans woman in their organization.

I realize that my eventually getting fired from the organization isn’t the happy ending that you were expecting from this story, but I’m still extremely proud of myself for deciding to come out. While the management of the organization was conservative and set in their ways, the staff was full of young people who were extremely supportive of the LGBTQ+ community. I met a lot of people with whom I remain friends to this day.

Getting fired also forced me to re-evaluate my career path, which ultimately led me to OFM and my career in journalism, so I’m grateful for my firing in a bizarre way. And I’m grateful that I found the courage to come out full-time. The following year, I started celebrating Pride with the same merry zeal that I had for Christmas. I was so grateful to do that openly that year and every year since.

Photo courtesy of Ivy Owens