Alum’s New Memoir Chronicles Her Experience Coming Out at 38
Perfectly Queer details Jillian Abby’s journey to radical self-acceptance and happiness
Alum’s New Memoir Chronicles Her Experience Coming Out at 38
Perfectly Queer details Jillian Abby’s journey to radical self-acceptance and happiness
Coming out isn’t this magical “ta-da” moment where you reveal your truth and suddenly everything in your life falls into place.
Instead, it often marks the start of a long, and sometimes grueling, journey of self-discovery and assertion of your place in this world.
Such is the theme of Perfectly Queer: Facing Big Fears, Living Hard Truths, and Loving Myself Fully Out of the Closet (Hay House Inc., 2023), a new memoir by Jillian Abby (Questrom’04). In it, Abby describes her path from a “middle-aged homeschooling mother of two” who co-owned a small business with her husband to a divorcée learning how to date women while still getting comfortable saying the word “lesbian.”
Of course, there’s a happy ending: Perfectly Queer also covers Abby’s experience falling head-over-heels in love and working to create a new, blended family with her ex-husband, their two kids, and her partner, Jen.
But there’s more to the memoir than just a queer love story, Abby stresses.
“What I’ve loved hearing from people who’ve read the book, particularly those who are not part of the queer community, is how they see themselves in the story,” Abby says. “A friend recently told me that I could have even crossed out the ‘out of the closet’ part of the tagline, because so many of us can relate to the journey of facing big fears, living hard truths, and loving ourselves fully.”
She says she hopes her story continues to resonate far and wide.
“I thought that the only people who would really be interested in even hearing my story were people in the queer community,” Abby says. “And now my hope is that it’s not just the queer community who reads it, but allies or people who are not yet allies, but want to learn more or want to understand that family member or friend who came out. I get really excited when they’re willing to give the book a try.”
Abby chatted with Bostonia about writing and about turning your life upside down.
Q&A
with Jillian Abby
Bostonia: Congrats on publishing your first book! From a writing perspective, memoirs are both fascinating and intimidating. How did you choose the moments you wanted to focus on and incorporate into a narrative?
Jillian Abby: I know a lot of people like to develop an outline first. And that’s probably the very sensible way to go. Clearly, sensible is not always the way that I operate, though. For me, I was at a point where I was going through a divorce, trying to figure out my financial future, and homeschooling my two kids, all while COVID was hitting. In making time for writing, I wanted to write about whatever lit me up. And so I would set my alarm for 6 am every morning and either pull out a notebook or my computer and I would write about whatever memory came to me. The entire book was written asynchronously; it was just whatever I felt compelled to write that day. It wasn’t until much later that I took everything I wrote and loaded it into Scrivener so I could reorder the chapters chronologically and go through and say, “Okay, what details of my life are missing to get from story A to story B; let’s make a chapter to fill in that gap.”
The other part of the process is that there were a lot of memories and stories that I wanted to get out—but they were for me to get out personally. They were these emotional things that I needed to say but that nobody else needed to hear. So there was a process of discerning what stories had universality to them. At one point, I did one exercise that really helped, where I sat down for 30 minutes and tried to write out as many memories as possible, rapid-fire, that could possibly be connected to the story. And then on some days where I was like, “What do I want to write about?” I would see a certain memory on the list and go, “Oh, yeah, that’s the story I want to tell today.”
Even still, there was no chronological order or any real connecting the dots at that point. But I knew I could get there eventually, because it was my story. I knew how all the pieces fit together. The very first chapter I started with was the one where I came out to my best friend. We were sitting around her kitchen island drinking Jack Daniel’s, and she asked me how my marriage was going. And that was the question that cracked the pot open, and my whole story came pouring out. It’s still my favorite chapter.
Bostonia: When you first came out as a lesbian, you didn’t have a relationship to immediately enter into, unlike Untamed author Glennon Doyle and Abby Wombach. What did that time, and that process, teach you about listening to yourself?
Jillian Abby: The benefit in coming out just to myself is that I didn’t have another person [to then be with], so I had the gift of time. And I could decide when I wanted to come out, who I wanted to come out to, and how I wanted to come out. That’s why I try to always let people know why it’s so important to not out another person: because you rob them of the gift of time and the ability to tell their own story when they’re ready.
I think the hardest thing was the questions I got: Are you sure? How do you know? Because those were the biggest questions I was asking myself: How do I know? What happens if I’m not really queer, I’m just broken, and that’s why my marriage never felt right to me? Like, what if I get into another relationship and I still feel the same way, and now I’ve turned my life upside down over a thought I had in a therapy session? But really, that was just a story I was telling myself. The power of things like journaling is being able to look back at different memories and say, “You’ve been feeling this way for so long. This is not a novel thing, and it’s not because you stumbled upon lesbian TikTok and you’re all of a sudden saying, “Oh, that’s me!”
For a lot of people, [realizing they’re queer] is a very clear, defined moment. For me, it was me against myself for a decade or more of trying to be any identity but queer. So it was hard when people questioned it. At the same time, I had to keep reminding myself that I could trust my truth. And as long as I kept leaning into that, slowly and surely I would get where I needed to be. I started trusting that if I did what felt truest, and was listening to that voice inside of me, I would always be caught with every leap that I had to take. And that keeps proving itself over and over again: choose the path of integrity, and it’ll work out. I mean, knock on wood—let’s hope it keeps going that way!
I just started trusting that if I did what felt truest, and was listening to that voice inside of me, I would always be caught with every leap that I had to take.
Bostonia: Now that you’re on the other side of things, what keeps coming up for you?
My fiancée, Jen, is the end of my story. She’s my chapter “Worth It.” I still look at our relationship and just marvel at how this person came into my life. I’m so grateful that I get to experience a love like the one I have with her in this lifetime.
The thing is, in some ways it makes me sad for some of the people in my life. I think what my story has brought up for some people is that they had convinced themselves that there was the “right” way to live—if you just do this, you’ll be happy. But when you’ve checked all the boxes and you still feel that emptiness, I think that’s hard. I had a lot of judgment put on me when I decided to come out and flipped my life on its head. Because I had such a good life, and I had a lot of people saying, “You’re being ungrateful. You have it all, and you’re giving it up for what?” And I didn’t know [what for], because I didn’t know what was ahead of me.
And so the fact that my life has moved into what it is now—I mean, I’ve never cried so many tears of joy. Oh my gosh, I’m so glad I did the thing that scared me most in life. I think that’s hard for some people to see because that means there is the possibility that they could get there, too, but it may also mean facing their biggest fears and going through their hardest times. Which is funny to me—it’s like, if you want really cut biceps, the only way you get them is by doing the hard push-ups over and over. You can’t just get muscles because you want them. And you can’t get a beautiful life just because you want it to be that way.
Bostonia: Finally, in the current political climate, it’s not exactly a warm and fuzzy time to exist as a queer person. What do you say to someone who’s scared right now to be themselves, and what can straight allies do to help?
To the person who is scared right now, your safety is paramount. Continue to exist in the way that is most safe for you. We can’t make good decisions and see all of our options when we’re trapped in a fear state, so do what you can to preserve your peace right now and celebrate yourself for knowing who you are. Also try to connect with community in whatever way you can, whether in person or virtually, to remember that you are not alone in this right now.
To those who feel called, both LGBTQ+ and allies, show up in the biggest and boldest ways you can through demonstrating support, donating money, becoming active in your local government and school boards to make your story known. And to allies, particularly, please signal as much and as often as you can that you are a safe and supportive person. Put your pronouns in your email, wear a rainbow pin or put a sticker on your name badge at work, post support for the LGBTQ+ community on social media, read queer stories, and educate yourself. Be willing to take on a few verbal dangers, knowing that it will not scar you to the same depth as a queer person who has to do the same. One person at a time, through small, thoughtful actions, we will make our society safer for all of its citizens so that we can all show up as the best version of ourselves.
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