Community Conversation

My town is sponsoring a month-long series of conversations on diversity. Tonight I attended a conversation about LGBTQ Youth issues. There was a small, but committed group at this conversation and some great thoughts and ideas were shared.

A month ago, I wrote something to share at this conversation. At the time, I was hoping and expecting that a much larger segment of our community would participate in the conversation. For what it's worth, this is what I wrote and shared tonight:

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About a month ago a post by a young woman who is a Facebook friend came across my newsfeed. This is an excerpt of what it said:

I went to middle school with a girl who a lot of people didn't like. They thought she was weird. I called her a friend, but only to her face. Behind her back I went along with my peers saying that she was strange and calling her names, some of which she probably overheard. We went to different high schools. After 8th grade graduation the next time I saw her was at my house for Junior prom. Her prom date was a guy who I went to high school with. We chatted and complimented each other’s dresses.

A few weeks later I found out she committed suicide. People thought she was strange for being a lesbian. They called her names like faggot, queer, butch, dyke, they made fun of her lifestyle. They were the reason she took her life. At one point or another I contributed to that. It's a regret I live with every day.

I’m Nancy von Euler, and that was written about my daughter, Emma. It’s hard for me to express how I felt when I read those words. I suppose it should have been bone-crushing, but in some ways it was a relief. You see, it was the first time that someone had publicly acknowledged and taken responsibility for the hateful things that were said to my daughter, apparently over a period of many, many years. Except for an isolated incident here and there we didn’t know that this was happening to Emma. Emma didn’t tell us, and nobody else did either. It was an awful secret.

For the most part, this community has continued to keep that secret. We know people knew about it, because the gossip got back to us after she died.  But except in isolated circles and ways, Fairfield didn’t use Emma’s death to spark conversation about LGBTQ youth issues, bullying or suicide; and I have often wondered why. Was it to protect Emma? To protect our family? Or was it self-protection? It takes guts to say what that young woman said in that post. It’s hard to share a secret you’ve hidden for so long.

But I, too, have resisted making Emma a symbol of this cause, for reasons I haven’t always had an easy time articulating.

For one thing, I resist having Emma become a symbol of LGBTQ issues because Emma was and always will be much more than the labels that have been placed upon her. “Gay,” “bullied,” “suicide;” they are all accurate labels, but none of them describe the depth and beauty of the person I knew. Labels have a way of reducing people to one dimension, but Emma was a unique and complex soul. She had amazing strengths and talents and, like all of us, she had her weaknesses, too. She could exhilarate you with her music and exasperate you with her stubbornness. She could make you laugh with her silly impersonations, and make you cry with her beautiful poetry. She cannot be summed up in a word.

The hate that was thrown at Emma was meant to isolate, ostracize, and dehumanize her, so I don’t ever want to talk about Emma without talking about her deep connections.  She is an adored sister, a cherished granddaughter, a favorite cousin, a special niece, a loyal friend. She is Peter’s precious child, and my precious child, and she is God’s precious child. What was done to Emma was done to us, too, because she is part of us.  And the pain that Emma felt didn’t die with her. I carry that pain now. It’s like a sharp stone in my shoe and I feel it with every step I take.

But maybe the most important reason that I have conflicting feelings about Emma becoming a symbol of the need to embrace and support LGBTQ youth is because I question whether that limits the conversation. This story, this issue, is about more than Emma von Euler, or Tyler Clementi, or Jamey Rodemeyer. This is about all of us.

 This is about the other gay or questioning kids at Tomlinson and Ludlowe who got splashed with the hate that was thrown at Emma. This is about the kids who will be targeted tomorrow, and it’s about the kids who will target them. This is about adults who saw and overheard things 3, 4, or 5 years ago and didn’t intervene and didn’t tell us; and it’s about the adults who will see and overhear things tomorrow and will need to make a choice about what to do. This is about the adults and kids who gossip and judge and isolate people who just want what we all want: to be accepted and embraced for who we are. Emma is gone, but this story continues. And It’s up to us to decide how it continues.