I have been with various versions of the Company for 17 years. I am just one lesbian among many LGBTQ employees at AVANGRID — a very diverse group in and of itself. I grew up in a mountainous small town in the Northwest. It’s common there to wave when you pass someone on the road and to help anyone who needs it. Yet with all that friendly kindness, somehow there was a harsh intolerance for anyone different. I learned to hide who I was and adopted a persona of someone else who would be accepted and included. I went to a religious college in the Northwest and continued to perfect my façade. I finally came out as a lesbian about the time I graduated.

My story may have a different setting than others’ coming out stories, but what I learned after I came out was that most of those I came to know and befriended in the LGBTQ community had something in common – self-loathing and all the baggage that comes with that. Many of us concealed our true identities for years because of the hatred and intolerance for who we were, and so upon coming out I entered a process of battling the demons of what had been a lifetime of living a lie.

I emerged from that dark period stronger and determined to be true to myself no matter the consequences. Thirty-three years ago, I fell in love with Mary, and I began to soar, letting go of the past and building a future. We moved to Denver and attended our respective graduate schools. After completing graduate school and beginning my career in Denver, I was contacted by a Fortune 500 company in the Midwest for a career-boosting job. The area where the job was located was not known for being liberal and the company was well known as being conservative. I interviewed, vowing I would not lapse into the old persona. At one point the EVP of HR asked if I was (long pause) married, or if I would be moving there with someone. I told him it was not legal for me to marry but that Mary, my significant other would be moving with me.

I was hired, and in the years I worked there I never hid who I was (although I was a closet Democrat 😊), and my career flourished. Mary and I started a family, chose an anonymous sperm donor and our two children were born there. The last name on the birth certificates is a combination of our last names, and I am listed as “Father.” The doctors and nurses fussed over me as the children were born and the doctor allowed me to cut the umbilical cords. Legally though, the children were Mary’s. After failed attempts to adopt , we moved near Portland, OR where the judge invited our family into her chambers and took pictures with us as she signed the adoption papers. Shortly thereafter the county where Portland is located made gay marriage legal and we bought our marriage certificate; had a ceremony with family and were married; until the court struck it down and the county annulled it. Years later Washington state made gay marriage legal, so we went to dinner in Washington with Mary’s parents and said “I do” over dessert as Mary’s father, a minister, married us again.

In all that time we were the “others” living, working and raising a family in the suburbs, coaching Lego Robotics and little kids’ soccer as if we had a right to be there among all the straight parents and families … because we did. We acted as if we didn’t notice the awkwardness when other parents realized we were a family, and it never took long before we were just another mom among the families. Sometimes there were even confessions later by our friends of previously held beliefs that “being gay” was wrong.

Quietly, but resolutely, we have our own style of activism that shows everyone we meet we have no shame in who we are. In fact, I’ve come a long way from hating who I was to my hard-fought pride for who I am and the LGBTQ community I belong to.