The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement

‘A season of grief’: 
Profiles of the 
LGBTQ+ holiday 
experience

BY GRACE TUCKER, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

Wednesday, December 2, 2020 — 11 

H

ey my girl. Is there anyone you 
would like to bring home for 
Thanksgiving? Someone who 

isn’t travelling home or needs allies to have 
Thanksgiving with?”

In something like extending a hand or 

offering a warm hug, my mom sent me that 
text message on a frigid Ann Arbor after-
noon. 

When I read it, a few people came to 

mind: The friend who routinely removes 
his pride flag from his living room every 
time his parents visit. The classmate who 
mentally prepares herself to talk about 
her girlfriend like she is just a girl (space) 
friend during her family’s Thanksgiving 
dinner. The coworker who enthusiastically 
works extra shifts to dodge time at home 
and avoid being invalidated by her father, 
who, for years now, has refused to correctly 
use her pronouns. 

My parents have been self-proclaimed 

“allies” for as long as I can remember. Even 
before I started talking to them about my 
queer identity, they had a big, bright pride 
flag hanging over our garage for years — a 
bold act in an Indiana suburb. 

Like two blue sheep among a swarm of 

red ones, my parents have long been the 
sole liberal parents in my social circles. 
It was my mother who gifted me my first 
“I’m with her” T-shirt during the 2016 
election. And my father, who works as a 
middle school math teacher, who once sat 
me down to inquire how to ask for his stu-
dents’ pronouns. 

As I’ve grown up, my parents have im-

plemented this spirit of inclusion into ev-
erything they teach us, in every corner of 
our household. But seeing that text from 
my mother reminded me that too many 
people in my life — and too many other stu-
dents on campus — are not quite as lucky. 

After a handful of lovely and deeply 

compelling conversations with other stu-
dents within the LGBTQ+ community, I 
found the diversity of their backgrounds 
and identities to be reflected in the range 
of sentiment they expressed in response to 
one simple idea: “home for the holidays.” 

For some, being home meant being 

grounded, a “breath of fresh air” from the 
otherwise chaotic semester we’ve all en-
dured. And for others, being home meant 
something quite different: It meant stress, 
anxiety and having to act as a “representa-
tive” on behalf of their entire community 
when relatives became overly inquisitive. It 
meant awkward conversations in response 
to the dreaded ‘So, are you seeing anyone?’ 
question grandparents seem to pose every 
year. It meant an “experience of grief.”
T

heodore Poling, LSA Junior

“I do still use (she/her pro-

nouns) but for (my Dad), I don’t 

want him to because it’s this ... lingering 
connection to the concept of a person who 
has never existed. Like, I was never his 
daughter.”

When I realized that our interview 

had run over an hour long after talking all 
things coming out, the supposedly “con-
tradictory” nature of androgynous gender 
presentation and their father’s traditional-
ist interpretations of gender and family, I 
knew that LSA junior Theodore Poling was 
a special person with a lot to say regarding 
the intricacies of the LGBTQ+ experience. 

After transferring from the University of 

Southern California this semester, Poling 
has hit the ground running, grasping every 

opportunity they have to be involved on 
campus even while studying remotely from 
their parents’ home in Ann Arbor. Founder 
and president of the Trans and Gender-
Non-Conforming Arts Review, and mem-
ber of both BiLateral and the Ace Space 
within the Spectrum Center, they offered 
me a proud smile when they said, “I’m 
pretty well-connected in the whole queer 
world on campus.”

Though, with the holiday season ap-

proaching, Poling acknowledged that home 
is often where they encounter more points 
of conflict, one being the way their parents 
have approached their enduring health 
problems. Throughout this year, Poling has 
struggled with chronic pain in their lower 
abdominal and pelvic region, which has 
aggravated the already less-than-healthy 
relationship their dad has with their trans-
gender identity. 

“My dad is so intentionally ignorant 

about gender stuff,” they said. “He can 
grasp … trans man and trans woman, but 
anything beyond that he thinks is kind of 
fake. And so, if I bring up anything that has 
to do with like, (the fact that) I have, you 
know, a uterus, then he kind of sees it as 
like, ‘haha, checkmate ... you are not trans.’ 
So having to deal with this medical issue 
that is ... very biological in nature has been 
stressful.”

In the beginning stages of their journey 

toward embracing their nonbinary identi-
ty, Poling wanted to avoid having to “come 
out” over and over again while seeing rela-
tives over the holidays. So, they did what 
any Gen Z-er within the LGBTQ+ commu-
nity would do: They turned to Facebook. In 
the weeks leading up to the holidays, they 
made a Facebook post stating their name 
‘Theo’ and their pronouns. And with that, 
they had set the “framework” for coming 
out before grandma and grandpa came into 
town. 

In terms of coming into their gender 

identity, Poling said they have an “opposite 
story” in that, when they first came out, 
they thought, “This is going to be easier on 
people if I just say like, ‘I’m a guy now. I’m 
a trans man,’ (so as to) not have (my family) 
have to deal with ‘nonbinary’ and all that.”

Poling remembered one holiday where 

they clung on to a particularly masculine 
gender presentation.

“I let my facial hair grow out a little bit 

and I cut my hair shorter,” they said. “And 
I wore a sweater and slacks that I found in 
the men’s section of a store and (I) tried to 
like, I don’t know, downshift my voice a lit-
tle bit. I just didn’t want (relatives) to, like 
my Dad, ask questions that have such big 
answers, you know?”

Now, after having come into their non-

binary identity, Poling has been able to re-
flect on what’s at stake when a cisgender 
person fails to fully embrace a transgender 
person’s identity.

“... If someone hasn’t come out as trans, 

and you say something transphobic, they’re 
gonna stay in the closet around you ... and 
(what if ) you found out 30 years later that 
you never got to meet that part of their life 
... wouldn’t you feel some sort of grief?”
N

ikolas Zazula, LSA Senior

“I feel like most queer peo-

ple kind of experience the same 

thing, (where you’re) spending so much time 
overthinking the way you present mostly be-
cause you’re ... worried about ... the way oth-
er people are going to interpret that. That 

anxiety ... for queer people is always there.”

Through our brief phone conversation, 

I quickly gathered that LSA senior Nikolas 
Zazula carries a cool and confident perso-
na. In between spurts of Zazula’s laughter, 
we spent the interview talking about the 
“weirdness” of sexuality, the struggles of 
being a Gemini and the joys of having an 
open, supportive family. 

Zazula said he’s fortunate to never have 

had to come out to his family. “They all 
kind of just let me do my thing,” he told me.

And because his family has always been 

very accepting of his identity, he knows 
how he chooses to present himself in front 
of them is “not a big deal.” He further elab-
orated, explaining, “... It’s less that I’m un-
comfortable and more that I don’t care too 
much, and I kind of just make them deal 
with it.”

As a drag performer in the Ann Arbor 

and Metro Detroit areas, Zazula has had 
lots of practice “doing his thing,” and be-
ing his true self regardless of other peo-
ple’s perceptions of him. When asked how 
his presentation might shift while with 
extended family during the holidays, Za-
zula breezily responded, “I wouldn’t really 
be too concerned about navigating other 
people’s conceptions of what I should look 
like.”
P

arker Kehrig, LSA Junior

“I really wish that the culture 

of my family, my various families, 

wasn’t the way that it is because ... there’s 
so many of us ... there’s no way I’m the only 
(queer person). There’s absolutely no way ... 
just based on how statistics works.” 

Even while expressing the heavy and 

sometimes exhausting reality he’s lived be-
ing the sole openly genderqueer and gay 
person in his entire extended family, LSA 
junior Parker Kehrig spent our interview 
flexing his warm conversation skills and 
flare for comedic timing.

When asked if he could be quoted using 

his name, Kehrig burst with enthusiasm. 

“You can absolutely put me using my 

name. There’s already enough on the inter-
net about what a raging queer I am.”

When asked about his coming out ex-

perience, Kehrig says he came out as a gay 
person when he was 16, then as gender-
queer when he was 18. And, ever-playful in 
the ways he candidly talks about his queer 
experience, he considers his queer presen-
tation now to be “kind of an open secret” 
to his family. 

Though, Kehrig remembers when he 

first presented as genderqueer in front of 
his family for the holidays and exclaimed 
to me, “It was terrifying. It was so scary.” 
He laughed again and continued, “I was 
really trying to dress in a way that made 
me feel more comfortable. And I started 
layering sweaters over button-downs, and 
(thought), ‘I’m just a little bit preppy,’ but 
it was never preppy — it was very queer-
looking.”

Kehrig comes from a large family; his 

parents are divorced, and his step-dad’s 
parents are divorced as well, so he can visit 
up to five houses on one holiday. And with 
seeing all of these family members, Keh-
rig has had many conversations about is-
sues surrounding the LGBTQ+ community. 
But, in his experience, they never resem-
ble topics like one of his family members 
“not knowing how to explain lesbianism” 
to their kid. To that, Kehrig said he would 
love to engage in those sorts of community 

education-oriented conversations. 

Instead, he said conversations with rela-

tives often run along the lines of being told, 
“‘Defend your own humanity — go!” or 
“Defend your existence — go!’”

Kehrig reflects on the amount of “igno-

rant shit” he’s had to hear during political 
conversations over the holidays. Specifi-
cally, Kehrig offered the example of at-
tempting to explain systemic racism to a 
group of particularly hard-headed fam-
ily members. And with this, Kehrig said to 
have struggled most with teaching his rela-
tives that “just because (something) is out 
of your realm of the way you perceive the 
world, doesn’t mean it is nonexistent.”

“And a world outside of you exists. And 

it is beautiful. And if anyone is ever try-
ing to take your hand and pull you into it 
and show you what it is, you better fuck-
ing thank them. Because that is labor. Like, 
that is so much emotional labor.”
A

nna Pasek, Engineering Senior

“... it’s just kind of a situation 

where I’m still dependent on my 

family, you know, like, financially and a lot 
of other forms of support. And so ... I have to, 
like, kind of think twice before I express my 
queerness in a certain way. Because, other-
wise my livelihood could be compromised.”

Careful in the ways she disclosed in-

formation about the unsteady nature of 
her home, Engineering senior Anna Pasek 
showed a brave vulnerability when talking 
about her experiences as a queer woman. 
With her Zoom profile dimly lit by the win-
dows of her partner’s home, she opened up 
about her coming out experience, present-
ing queer in her childhood home, and navi-
gating holidays with family versus with 
friends, among other things. 

Pasek started our conversation by say-

ing that, pre-pandemic, she chose to spend 
breaks with people you could call her “cho-
sen family.” 

During this time, she would run Thanks-

giving 5K marathons and spend time with 
friends she has known for years — she even 
made a habit out of eating Thanksgiving 
breakfast at her friend’s house. But, she 
still feels unsure about making these kinds 
of traditions. 

“I just feel weird about (how) that’s oth-

er people’s space to be with their families,” 
Pasek said. “And, like, I don’t want to di-
minish that or take from that even though I 
know I’ve been offered a place at the table.”

In regards to her coming out experience, 

Pasek said she “got kind of pushed out of 
the closet by (her) parents” her senior year 
of high school, after they stole her phone 
and found she had a partner at the time. 
Since then, she believes her parents are 
slowly “getting better” about accepting her 
queer identity; however, she knows main 
events during the holidays remain manda-
tory for her family.

“It’s just a case of bringing up livelihood 

and financial security. If I were to not show 
up at home for Thanksgiving (dinner), that 
would make really big problems for me.”

Pasek said that if she had one word to 

describe the queer holiday experience, it 
would be grief.

“(Queer people) don’t have uncondi-

tional love to take for granted, really,” Pas-
ek said. “And our families are often in love 
with an idea of who we could be and not 
who we are. And that is something that is 
painful, and (something) that you have to 
confront every time you go home.”

