CHAPTER 18: Student, Educator, Mother, and Advocate

Deciding in my thirties to change careers and enter the educational field to teach French did not require much reflection after having lived in France for almost a year with my French life-partner. What did, however, cause me to pause was the uncertainty about how schools and parents would perceive me once they discovered I was a lesbian. However, being able to blend into a crowd of heterosexuals by not looking like the stereotypical lesbian comes with a set of pros and cons; compromising myself for the sake of others was a familiar and exhausting path that I could no longer take. Opting to wear the heterosexual veil in my previous career, as a flight attendant for a major airline company located in the south, at the onset of the six-week training period that entailed sharing a hotel room with a random person of the same sex caused me to take on a persona that jeopardized my own happiness. Requiring new trainees to shack up with a complete stranger was the ultimate test of their people skills, or so we were told, despite how demeaning it could be. Suddenly, I had transformed from being an out and proud Asheville lesbian to the closeted girl sharing a hotel room with a southern belle heterosexual stranger.