Coming Home to Myself: How Investing in My Hometown Taught Me to Live Authentically

As soon as I learned about our content theme this month at SimplyBe., Coming Home to Yourself, I felt, well, at home.?

It spoke to me. Because the act of coming home to my own self is a continuous journey, one I know well. And something that’s particularly relevant to me, both figuratively and literally, in recent years.

Back to Where it All Began.

At the top of the pandemic, much like everyone, my husband, Joey, and I were sitting at home in our small Chicago apartment assessing our lives within the vast and endless time and space we were all suddenly given.?

We watched a documentary called Hillbilly which explored and illustrated both the lifestyles and stereotypes of folks in Appalachia. Eastern Kentucky being my homestead, I am intimately familiar with the misrepresentation and the story that this part of our country has been assigned—the fact that it’s a rural, “backwoods” area filled with uneducated people.?

When images of my very own hometown graced the screen, something came over me.

A message that I, a young(ish) gay creative professional with means and time, can help play a role in helping to change the perception of the place I once called home.?

How One Person (Or Two Gay Men) Can Make an Impact.

Up until this point, Joey and I had been considering buying a condo in the city. But my, whatever you want to call it—turning point, aha moment, download from the universe—made me think:

Where and in what do we want to invest our money?

What can we do during this pandemic that is meaningful?

What is the next step, or even the next level, in our lives?

What better use of this time than to head south, show our faces, contribute to the economy of this small community, and put our money into something that will have a direct impact on others??

So, in November 2020, with no end to remote work in sight, we decided to buy a house in my hometown of Berea, Kentucky.?

But this was much bigger than a financial investment.

This was about us investing our fully expressed selves: two openly gay, successful men in rural America, living out loud and proud.?

Our goal was to be a positive addition to the local community and make ourselves seen.?

Our goal was to help shift the stereotype of this region. Specifically, the stereotype that we are not accepted nor welcome.?

They were in for a treat. (Or so we thought.)

Shift the Stereotype—Theirs and Yours

I didn’t come out until I was 24, well after I moved away from my hometown. Growing up I knew that there were a few gay people in the area, but it wasn’t something you talked about.

See, where I’m from is part of the Bible Belt. You can deduce what that means when it comes to belief systems, but essentially, people in this area tend to turn a blind eye to the idea of gay people. (And if you are gay, it’s understood that you won’t be accepted for who you are.)

Throughout my homecoming process, I’ve been confronted with some humbling shifts of my own.?

Having been away from this area and living and working in Chicago for so long, I realized that I, too, was feeding off of the external perception I was so deeply trying to change.?

When we moved back I was continually reminded it’s not just us carving a path.? There are, in fact, a lot of gay people here who are out and proud.?

Since I’ve been back and spending time in Berea (Joey and I now roughly split our time between IL and KY, renting our home on Airbnb when away), I’ve been shown so much evolution. Everywhere we look there are members of the LGBTQ+ community living openly as their authentic selves.?

Pretty much every time we leave the house, my false notions and perceptions—even judgements—of the place I used to call home are corrected. Not just because we see Pride flags and same-sex couples, but because when I meet someone I assumed to be homophobic, they end up embracing us with open arms.

I, like most of the world, had put up a picture in my head of what it was like in Kentucky. And I didn’t acknowledge that, like me, it had also evolved and grown.

People in Berea are living out loud and proud—something I personally felt I couldn’t do in that very same spot for so many years.?

Times have and are changing, and I am so proud to be contributing to this shift. Even on a tiny level. I bought a house on the same street, a few doors down from the house I grew up in. To buy a home is a big achievement, period. But to do it at a time when so many others are stepping up for what is right, for the changes they want to see in this world, has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

It brought me back to myself.?

I Am Not Original.

There are so many people like me—a kid from a small town that felt like an outsider.?

Us kids typically flee to some bigger city in search of a better life or success or simply something different. Within this group, there are so many who have adopted a ‘never look back’ mentality and many years later, still feel like their hometowns will never accept them.?

Now, I know other members of the LGBTQ+ community have had much harder experiences than I have had in terms of their identities and their coming out experiences. I know why some people flee and why they never want to look back. And I don’t discount those experiences.?

But if my community continues to flee the small, rural towns, and go to the big cities where they know there are many others like them, then the rest of the country will never truly embrace the LGBTQ+ space. We’re setting ourselves up to always look like the ‘others’ and self-fulfilling the prophecy that we simply don’t inhabit certain places.?

We (the LGBTQ+ community) have to interact with the people who don’t possess the welcoming arms that our big cities provide. Otherwise, it’s a vicious cycle—we’re perpetuating a narrative by ejecting ourselves from these places, when we should be embracing them. Because they’ll never embrace us if we continue to do what’s, frankly, expected.?

So how do we solve this? The more we walk around openly gay and active in our small communities, the more these communities are going to be open to all walks of life. Being out and proud and frequenting small businesses in small towns reverberates 100x louder than screaming “I’M GAY AND PROUD!” from the rooftops in cities like Chicago. Chicago knows that. Chicago embraces that. Places like rural Kentucky need a little assistance. We just have to be open enough to give it.??

As humans, we fear what we don’t know. So let’s fill those knowledge gaps and show these people who we are. And who we are is just like them—we’re from small towns like Berea, Kentucky.

Joey and I held our wedding in Kentucky—we made the conscious decision to celebrate our love here. Because we knew the acceptance that existed and the impact of the celebration was going to resonate louder than if we held it in Chicago. So loudly in fact, the celebration made the New York Times.

Be Authentic to Yourself

Stereotypes, when they have enough power, shift our culture.?

So to shift culture we must first shift the stereotypes—both the ones around us and the ones within us.

Coming home to myself and witnessing the love and beauty that exists where I’m from has changed my life. There’s so much of it I was closing out and chose not to see because of my fears and experiences as a closeted person growing up.

I wasn’t being authentic to myself.

And now that I have opened my eyes, gone back to the place I once called home, I’m seeing my world in a whole new way.?

I’m proudly calling it home once again.