Bianca had to convince her Cuban mom that divorcing and celebrating her true identity is, ultimately, good parenting. Then, sexuality educator and social worker Aida Manduley shares strategies for helping our loved ones redefine what family and loving relationships look like.
Our expert this week is therapist, educator and activist Aida Manduley, learn more about their work here. Aida recommends a new Spanish-language publication for families about what to do when a loved one comes out, this LGBTQ positive children's book collection (with Spanish-languge editions), this biilingual resource list, this bilingual guide for addressing LGBTQ inclusion in Catholic and Protestant Latinx families and congretations, and this organization that celebrates and supports individuals with LGBTQ parents and caregivers. If you loved this episode, be sure to listen to Talking to Their Parents About Being Nonbinary and My Divorce, My Parents and Me.
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Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi, everybody. Today, I'm speaking with Bianca. A few years ago, Bianca decided to separate from her husband and come out to her family as a lesbian. She eventually got divorced and is now co-parenting her five-year-old daughter with her ex. While some of her family members adjusted well to this change, for her Cuban mom, Bianca's sexual orientation is still a touchy subject. Let's get into it.
Bianca: My name is Bianca. I'm 37. My family's Cuban. So I was born in Miami, but my parents are Cuban. I have a daughter, a five-year-old daughter. And in my family, we call our parents, Mom and Dad. I always knew that I was attracted to girls when I was young, now women. But I grew up very conservative. I went to an all-girls Catholic school from elementary, all the way to high school. So it was something where I knew it was there, but I always felt like I couldn't express it or like it was something that I had to keep a secret. But then there came a time, and it was after I had my daughter, where I would take my daughter on walks, and there was a neighbor and that neighbor, she's gay. She was going on walks because she walked her dogs. So she would join me. And as I was talking to her and I got to know her, I thought to myself, "You know what? It's okay to be myself. I don't have to pretend like I'm not who I am."
It wasn't necessarily difficult to tell my dad, just because my dad, he was in the music industry, where there are more gay people, I guess. My mom, with her, it was more difficult. When I first told her, she was like, "Well, but you should try and just forget about it and stay in your marriage because staying in your marriage is the best thing for your daughter." She didn't use these words, but this is what she meant, "You doing something that would make you happy, but wouldn't be good for her, is going to traumatize her or affect her. And when she's a teenager, the most important thing for you is going to be your daughter. And she's going to be affected, and then you're going to be sad because of that."
So I came out to my mom, it's going to be about a little more than four years. I separated from my ex-husband. So I told my mom then, and I moved in with my parents with my daughter. And my parents, at this point, both of them, even my dad were like, "No, you should go back. You should try and work your marriage." And so I did go back and I tried to work on my marriage, but there was just no way. I mean, I was so unhappy. I can't even express to you. It sounds dramatic, but the despair that I felt at that time.
I'm sorry. I'm getting emotional. A divorce is very hard, is very hard to go... Even if you're the one that... In my case, I was the one that wanted a divorce. It's still hard. She really just wanted for me to stay in my marriage for my daughter, but I think that having panic attacks every day did not make me a good mother. It didn't make me a good... I guess I broke my family in a way, although I don't think I did because my ex-husband and I are still friends. He's a very good father. I think being a happy mom makes me a better mom and I think it shows a better example to my daughter.
So my mom excepts me being gay. So we're very close. She always wants to help me with my daughter, she always wants me to go over and be with her, we talk every day on the phone, but the aspect of my love life and of being gay, it sucks for me that she keeps that at a distance because it's part of me. And there are things, for example, that my sister... Because my sister has twins that are five months older than my daughter. And there are things that my sister will do and she doesn't realize that I can't do the same thing.
Like my daughter, I want for her to go to a school where maybe there's a little more diversity because depending on the demographic... And I don't want to generalize, but unfortunately, it's the reality. I might not be able to be myself when I go to birthday parties. If I have a girlfriend or if I get married, will I be able to bring that person to a birthday party? Not because I'm embarrassed, but it's just, it's because of her. It's not because of me. I'm an adult, but it's because of her. There are more things that you need to consider. My daughter is five. I don't think she would understand being gay, but she does know that two women can be in a couple. She does realize that it's not just women and men. And then with her Barbies, even I see sometimes she'll marry two Barbies instead of just the Barbie and Ken.
I had a girlfriend. We were together for about three years. Unfortunately, we broke up. And my mom would invite her to... She came on Christmas day, she came for Easter, things like that. But I still saw a difference with the way that she was with her and the way that she was with my sister's husband. It's cultural. It's not them, but I don't know if they can necessarily believe that I will be able to have a marriage like a heterosexual couple can have a marriage. Up till now, it's sort of something that it's understood, that I do not talk about.
Lantigua: Ending a marriage can be painful and complicated, even if it is ultimately the right decision for you. Compounding that with coming out to your relatives, as Bianca did, can feel disorienting for some of our loved ones. How can first-gens, especially those who are also parents, talk about all this? To help us figure it out, I called in an expert.
Aida Manduley:
My name is Aida Manduley. I use they, them in English and elle in Spanish. And I am a clinician, sexuality educator and organizer.
Lantigua: Thank you so much for being here. You heard Bianca's story. What did you hear as you listened?
Manduley: Gosh. Honestly, I heard parts of my own life in it. That's honestly the first thing that came to mind. I was like, "Ah, yes, relatable." Gosh. I mean, one of the big dynamics that came up for me there is the need to hide. "I can't talk about this. I know that this is part of me from an early age, but I can't really act on it for whatever reason," and really thinking of family as the core thing in both of our lives. And as far as themes, aside from that secrecy and hiding, the self-sacrificing trope of mothers and parents where the mother says, "The most important thing is going to be your daughter. You have to do everything you can to make sure that her upbringing is good and safe, and anything that would make it even a little bit complicated is not going to fly," and seeing queerness as a complication instead of just another way that we can be people and be happy. So those were a couple of the big things.
Lantigua: So I love that phrase that you just used, which is seeing queerness as a complication. Go. Take me there.
Manduley: A lot of people who are cisgender and heterosexual especially, see queerness, whether it's in gender or sexuality or anything like that, they often see it as deviant, as outside of the norm. And one of the most important things I like to tell folks is, "Look, the idea that this is not natural or normal is really recent. People have been queer and people have been all the flavors of LGBT for longer than we have had these ideas that it is not normal or natural." And so it is a complication socially because we do live in a lot of homophobic and transphobic societies, but that's a problem that we can and should address. That's not something to just say, "Well, it's complicated. So don't do it."
Lantigua: I want to talk about divorce because in many ways, marriage is the end all be, all for Latinos and many immigrant cultures because it signifies you've reached a certain status. It is loaded with significance. So talk me through what you might suggest someone when they're approaching this, if they know that they're about to break with a normative heterosexual relationship and have to do something formal, like get a divorce. How do we begin these conversations with our families?
Manduley: Oh my gosh. The first thing is assess what your support system is. That's the first thing. Because it is true. In a lot of places in the United States and abroad, it can be very dangerous to come out, whether that's because you could get as far as murdered or you could face a lot of repercussions, you could still be fired from your job in a lot of places, family can suddenly kick you out or never want to talk to you again. Or even as a parent, coming out, if you have a child and your in-laws or your parents do childcare, if they suddenly say "Well, no childcare," and then you're unable to work. There's a lot of repercussions that can happen. So first thing I would say is check in what is your support system? Who are the people that have your back? And if you don't have any at all, let's try to find some first, whether that's through checking out local support groups, hotlines, all these kinds of things.
Manduley: The other immediate step that I would say is figure out what are your core values and what are your non-negotiables. Because when you're talking to your family, it is very possible and very likely that you will have a difference in some of those non-negotiables or core values or that the way that you express them is going to be different. So por ejemplo, there's a lot of folks that think of respect.
Manduley: I grew up with a lot of feelings and a lot of thoughts about being respectful, being polite, being good to your elders and things like that. And to me, that is not incompatible with being LGBTQ or being LGBTQ-inclusive. But for a lot of people where they don't understand LGBT people or they haven't been exposed to it or whatever, they may see that differently, they may see an incompatibility. And we see that the guest talked a little bit about that, that for her, one of her values was yes, absolutely being good to her family and her daughter, and that meant being true to herself instead of hiding. That was how she made that value real for herself. So those would be a couple of the first steps.
Lantigua: So one of the things that I found really interesting in talking to Bianca is that she is in a way sandwiched between two generations that are probably going to have diametrically opposed views on who she is, her mom and her daughter. The child, this will be completely normal to her because this is her mommy who she loves. And then one day, Grandma might slip and say something inappropriate, and then the two generations are going to have to deal with it and it's highly likely that mom won't be around for that. So she's sandwiched in here. Help her out.
Manduley: Yeah. So one of the things is that a lot of people start teaching their kids about love and relationships from when they're teeny-tiny children. Again, here's another example of us looking at gay relationships "differently" and thinking that they're inherently sexualized in a way that's inappropriate. And they're not, they're really not. Let's look at something as common as Disney. All Disney movies are for children and they pretty much predominantly all have heterosexual narratives. In all of them, you're seeing some kind of marriage, some kind of love interest. We see a lot of parents with their one and two-year-old being like, "Oh, my son is going to be such a heartbreaker when he grows up. He's going to love all the ladies." And suddenly, when we're talking about gay people, then it's suddenly, "Oh no, no." Then it's suddenly really inappropriate and sexual, and it's not.
Manduley: So the first thing I would say is let's be really honest and look at the fact that we treat these things differently, and we shouldn't. Let's also look at standards for sex education in the United States for a moment. And it's not that, that great. The U.S. still has a lot to do. But in the United States and even in other countries, we have mandates to teach children about relationships and about affection and orientation really early on. Those are conversations that we actually do have to have very early on, regardless of the sandwiching. When you add the sandwiching into it, you're going to maybe have your kid in a really awkward position of, "I want to respect Abuela, but she's being rude about Mom. What do I do?" And as a parent, I think clinically, it is our responsibility to be able to equip our children with the tools to talk to family and stand up for themselves and other members of the family.
Lantigua: The other really interesting dynamic that's happening in Bianca's family is that her sister who is more heteronormative, who has children, who is married, really poses a very traditional example for her mom and her family of what a family looks like, of what relationships look like, and now Bianca's starting to see that her mom treats them very differently. So I asked her, I said, "Well, how does your sister feel about you?" She was like, "Oh, she's perfectly fine with it. She's super cool. Super supportive." And so then I was thinking, "Well, recruit her."
Manduley: Yes.
Lantigua: "Bring her in. Make her an ally."
Manduley: Yes, I 100% agree. I 100% agree. Honestly, with families, again, when family is the most basic important thing, family is what's going to help you get shit done and get out of problems like this. So absolutely, I would say, enlist sister to help make this more normalized. When we're not in a room... If we're the queer person or the trans person and we're not in a room, we're going to need other people to step up for us and it sounds like the sister might be in a good place to do that. One thing that I've seen help some parents is reframing what their expectations about their children are and guiding them a little bit in that conversation. So, por ejemplo, con mi abuela. She was like, "Oh, but I want you to be happy. I want you to be healthy. Da-da-da-da-da."
Manduley: And at some point, when I heard her say that, I was like, "Okay, this is what...a esto me enganco. So this is what I'm going to do with that." And what I did was every time that she started mentioning things about my life or sexuality like a problem, I'd be like, "Hey, remember that you said you wanted me to be happy? This is how I am happy. Let me tell you about the ways that I find joy, and these ways of being, and this way of having my body, having my gender, having my family." And so expanding their definition of what they're expecting of you as a child, and also talking to them about how you are making family. It's like if their goal is family, tell them how you are planning to make family. And, you know, yo soy de Puerto Ricon, con familia Cubana también.
Manduley: And for us, family's not always about blood. We have that titi that's like, there's no connection blood-wise, but she and her family have been in your life forever. We have that tío. So if people are like, "Well, it's not blood family." I'm like, "Look at your own family tree. Half of that is not blood family either." So again, even pointing out the inconsistencies. And that can be really hard, but that's really part of the long-term project of talking to our families about this sort of thing.
Lantigua: All right. My last question is a question that comes up a lot, which is that a lot of folks in Bianca's situation feel the burden of responsibility for educating their families and bringing them along. And in some cases, just converting them to the idea that how they want to live should be celebrated and normalized. How much do you think people should take on this responsibility? And how much do you think that they should not?
Manduley: The main thing I would say is, like, "Look, it's not your job to fix up your entire family tree. It's really not." So what I tell people is assess what is and isn't your responsibility, and who told you. Because if we have one of those questions without the other, we may not get a good answer. So what do you feel is your responsibility, y ¿quién te lo dijo? Because sometimes we adopt a very whitewashed idea of what our responsibilities are, whether that's saying, "Bueno, I have no responsibility. I'm independent. Who doesn't like it, bah, ¡pa’fuera!" But that's not exactly helpful for a lot of people who want to stay in touch with their family and still want to be in connection with them.
Manduley: So what I would say to people is make... Honestly, I love drawings for this. I love family trees, genograms, all that juicy stuff. Make a drawing or make a list of who the low-hanging fruit are in your family, and I mean that in two ways. Low-hanging fruit, like the people who are going to advocate for you and can help you spread a message of tolerance. And honestly, one of the things that's also been helpful to me and my clients is taking a peek at who in your family's already gay, whether they did use that terminology or not. Because I remember growing up with multiple people in my family that were like, "Ah, yes, this person and her caregiver of 30 years that lives with her and they have a dog." I'm like, "That's not her caregiver. That's her wife." And you might feel alone. You might not have that information. That's also true. But knowing that that does happen in families and you're likely not the first one ever, can sometimes be really grounding.
Lantigua: Thank you so much, Aida. Thank you.
Manduley: No problem. What a pleasure. And honestly, this kind of project is exactly what I wish I'd had as a kid. So I'm like, "Yes, please, tell the people how to talk to their families."
Lantigua: All right. Let's recap what we learned from Aida. Beef up your support network. If yours isn't as strong as you'd like, reach out to local support groups, hotlines, or other community resources that can help you build a reliable support system that will have your back. Normalize all relationships. Using age-appropriate language, speak with children in the family early on about what healthy relationships, romantic or otherwise, look like between people of all orientations and identities. And remember, enlist your supportive relatives. Whether they're open and accepting simply because or whether they identify with your experience coming out, lean on your family members and let them be your advocate when you're not in the room. We've added a list of bilingual resources in the episode notes.
Lantigua: Thank you for listening and for sharing us. How to Talk to [Mami & Papi] About Anything is an original production of Lantigua Williams & Co. Virginia Lora is the show's producer. Kojin Tashiro is our mixer. Manuela Bedoya is our social media editor. Cedric Wilson is our lead producer. Jen Chien is our executive editor. Jimmy Gutierrez is our managing editor. I’m the creator, Juleyka Lantigua. On Twitter and Instagram, we're @talktomamipapi. Please follow us and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts. Bye, everybody. Same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua-Williams, Juleyka, host. “Getting Divorced, Coming Out, and Telling Mamí.” How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] About Anything, Lantigua Williams & Co., August 9, 2021. TalkToMamiPapi.com.