Painful Coming Out to Parents Grows Into Miraculous Love

What is the coming out process like when you are raised in a Catholic family? For Theresa Haney, her journey of coming out to her parents was filled with difficulty, loss, love, and miracles. The pain of rejection led to some dark places, but eventually she found acceptance of herself and felt an unusual reconciliation with her parents. 

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Haney hid her identity as a queer woman from her family for six years. She often practiced how she would tell her parents, but she never went through with it. Both of her parents were Charismatic Catholic with her Dad being an ordained deacon. 

When she was 25, she flew home for a visit to finally tell them. They picked her up at the airport and took her out to a nearby restaurant. At the dinner table, Haney announced that she was gay. She describes their reactions:

“My parents looked at each other, then averted their gazes. I tried to stuff another bite of my dessert out of anxiety, but the taste of shame soured the cheese. I had committed a carnal sin…unforgivable. Dad pushed away his rice pudding, gesturing for the check. Mom looked down at her Jello and said, ‘How can you do this to us? We’ve been through so much.’”

At that moment, Haney was certain that she “lost their love forever.” She explained what happened next:

“We spent the rest of the weekend in silence. Avoiding all topics related to relationships. A visit to my sister was redeeming when she let me know she was aware of it and was okay with it. So, I left . . .  figuring that my relationship with the most important people in my life, especially my dad, was now over.”

The rejection was devastating to her, and when she returned to her home in New York City, she began a cycle of self-harm:

“My drug use escalated. I’d ride my motorcycle across 9th Street in Manhattan doing 60 MPH, high on coke, catching all the lights—a lethal gamble. Whether I lived or died was of no concern. I was already dead to my parents.”

A year later, Haney’s parents came to visit her in New York. At the airport, when she mentioned having some wrist pain from an old dance injury, they asked whether they could “pray over it.” Haney reluctantly agreed:

“We found a quiet corner near the gate. I felt embarrassed—I was too cool in my leather jacket, but it was my parents. I couldn’t refuse; I never could. Maybe this was their way of saying they still loved me, or perhaps they were really praying for me to be straight.”

“Speaking in a language I had never heard [praying in tongues], they held their hands over my wristband. While they said it, I repeated it in silence; I believe, I believe, I think as I scanned the airport for anyone I might know.” 

Haney checked on her pain three days later:

“I grabbed my bag off the floor, lifted it to my shoulder, and realized the pain was gone. I froze in awe. I didn’t tell anyone about the airport scene except my roommate, who said, ‘Huh, that’s wild.’ It stirred something inside that made me question the world, life, spirits, and God.”

Their relationship remained distant and formal, but Haney eventually ended her self-abusive lifestyle, joined the recovery movement, and started seeing a therapist–all which helped heal the damage of rejection she had felt. Years later, Haney had another spiritual experience when one night she had a premonition of her father’s death:

“The next day, my oldest sister called sobbing. She said Dad had died while taking a nap on the couch that afternoon. I tried to tell her about my apparition from the day before, but she couldn’t take it in. We just cried together. I flew to Wisconsin the next day.”

“Two hundred deacons attended his funeral from the Milwaukee archdiocese. I felt a mix of awe and doubt about this religion as I watched the ceremonial flow of robes entering the church. A little Irish priest came up to me after the funeral and said, ‘I know you’re sad and it’s hard to say goodbye, but I think he can do more for you now than he could when he was alive.’”

That prediction became true for Haney. As she went through life without her Dad, she felt his presence even more so, and in one very particular way:

“I returned to New York, to grad school, to my life without my dad. That spring, we had a substitute professor for a few of our classes. The relief instructor who walked through the doors of my classroom is the woman I married and have been with for thirty-two years. I’d like to think that Dad was behind our meeting. That he posthumously accepted me for who I was.”

While being LGBTQ+ in religious spaces can be difficult, Haney’s story shows that it can also bring growth and miracles. 

—Sarah Cassidy, New Ways Ministry, July 17, 2025