A mother’s take on handling extended family’s reaction to her son’s coming out.

In these many years of marriage and family life, it has been a struggle
for me to create a sense of autonomy for this small family unit, keeping
extended family and relatives as important people, but not important
enough to influence and sway opinion. It has not been easy. May be as an
urban, upper-middle-class woman, it has been possible for me to do so,
but it has taken decades. So for me what has come to matter most is the
happiness of my husband and children and now, after several years of
self-negation, my own happiness. So I refuse to give much importance to
opinions of people. I have had enough of those. I am paring down the
things I can worry about to just a few. My children’s happiness comes
foremost among them.

I became a mother after six years of married life, after a
tension-filled delay; I had planned every second as to how to bring up
my children, and I have done my best and am successful. I am thankful to
my children for giving me the status of a ‘mother’. I am a proud mother
of two children and will remain always. Now, because of them, so many of
their friends call me ‘amma’ and this is their gift. I have given good
children to the society and I shall be always with them, whatever the
“four persons” say or do without thinking. I want only love from my
children and nothing else.

Janaki Vasudevan
28 Oct 2008