Being a Guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1989

It's late 1989 and I'm sitting in a large, comfy chair on a soundstage in Chicago. I had never been to Chicago before. And I had certainly never been in a limousine before which had carted me about from the airport, to a very nice hotel, and finally to this place. Next to me in a matching, large, comfy chair sits Oprah Winfrey. She is asking me questions about my gay husband. This was in an era before internet and when these kinds of topics were not mentioned in polite society - at least not in any kind of society that I had ever known.

I finally got back home late that same night; My friend had picked me up from the airport. She looked down at my cute, high heel shoes and exclaimed, "Just think, those are the same shoes that were on Oprah Winfrey!" I remember staring down at my feet and thinking, "Where have these shoes just taken me and what have I done?" And what was I about to repeat soon after as the guest on two other popular TV talk shows back in the day - Sally Jessy Raphael and Geraldo?

As a faithful Mormon woman, at the time, I had lived my life according to every dictate that had ever been given to me by church and family. And I didn't do it grudgingly. I wholeheartedly threw myself into everything I did and believed. My mother had instilled in me a belief that we suffer in this life to gain our reward in the next. And suffer, I did! My life as a Mormon was a numbing experience of suffocating conformity. I dutifully scrunched myself into the confinement of this ever shrinking box I was given to live in. I did everything that was expected of me with a constant frozen smile on my face and a vigilant eye on the price that someday, I would become worthy enough. I frenetically and consistently attended all church meetings, activities, and volunteer responsibilities (and trust me, they were endless). I volunteered as a Mormon missionary in Venezuela from 1983 to 1985. I only dated worthy Mormon men who had also been on a mission. After my mission was over, I quickly found a husband, as I was urged to do, and married that "worthy young man" in the Salt Lake Temple. My son was born in 1986. My husband was even a member of the bishopric (highest male position within the church congregation). I was doing all of the things that were expected of me. If I were being honest with myself (which I never was in those days), I would have confessed that except for my son, nothing felt right about my life. Three years later my husband left me for a man.

As I looked down at my pretty shoes that day, I had very little clarity about my life. However, I did have a deep, vague sense that it would never be the same. There was no turning back now and retaking the "path of pretending" which I had walked my entire life.

That step in those stiletto shoes was the beginning of a deep process that ultimately cracked open the whole sordid, abusive story of my life. One that started much earlier than the day I unknowingly married a homosexual. It was my own personal story that I had buried so deep, not even I remembered it. Not until my healing work began.

What I know after today: My stiletto step was the right one for me.

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