Originally published in Lincoln, Maine, the Lincoln News on June 11, 2026, in the Save a Life Recovery Center column.
Kids who aren’t loved and accepted at home will go somewhere else to look for support or relief. They would prefer to get their acceptance from their families, but queer kids struggle to find their tribe when there is painful exclusion around the supper table.
Young people, in search of acceptance, become more vulnerable to the false hope of temporary relief and the allure of escaping to a pain-free life.
Many of us know the pain of not feeling loved at home. Where did we go to find it? We were looking for love in all the wrong places, as the song goes. Some of us turned to friends who were just as lost as we were. We got in trouble for petty theft or other mischief. We couldn’t go home, so we stayed away as much as possible.
Queer youth face intense pressure to fit in. Sometimes they are forced to make impossible choices for survival. Other times, they don’t survive at all.
There was a hate crime in my hometown of Bangor when I was 13. I didn’t have to guess how my community would have reacted if I had come out. I heard it in the snickers about the chuck-a-homo bridge. I understood it from the remarks from family and friends that Charlie Howard got what he deserved for being too gay. How dare he? The temptation to turn to substance use after that kind of painful messaging is a predictable pattern that we have the power to interrupt.
I left Maine because I couldn’t find my place here. I was away for 30 years before I finally came back, having accepted myself. I had to face the reality that those snickers would now be about me. Maine is my home. Maine is our children’s home. Let’s not chase them away to live in other parts of the world where they might find more acceptance. Let’s not back them into corners where they feel like the only option is to numb their unbearable pain.
Sometimes our children teach us how brave the world needs us to be. My catalyst for leaving the church was watching my teen learn how to hate himself for being trans. No parent wants to see that. I would rather let my kid change their name a hundred times than have to write their obituary. We use nicknames all the time. Who cares? What’s the bigger picture here?
A human cannot choose to be straight. I can testify with confidence that if it were possible, I would have been able to do it. I was married to a man for 25 years in the Mormon church and I raised two children as a stay-at-home mother.
My pain was private, because being gay meant eternal exile. Like so many, I struggled to choose life over the relief that death surely would have brought me. I saw others punished into submission and compliance. I watched queer folks try desperately to align with what their communities wanted. Their families tried to love them despite their queerness. This is not the kind of unconditional love that I was taught to show. This is not inclusion. This will not help a young person feel safe.
Be the parent your kid needs you to be. Be the parent your neighbor’s kid needs you to be. Your niece, your nephew, your grandchild. Be the human in a queer person’s life that celebrates who they are, not despite who they are, but precisely because of who they are.
You have the power to make a difference in the life of a young person. Don’t look the other way.
Save a Life Recovery Resource Center provides a safe environment where all community members can gather in deliberate sobriety. You don’t have to be in recovery to attend the programs we offer. Find a workout buddy. Pick a tomato. Write your story. Learn an instrument. Sculpt a piece for a traveling art show. Share a meal with likeminded people.
The whole message is that you belong here. We want you here and we want everything you have to offer this world. Please stay. Please show up as your true self. We care.
Chris Davis
Board of Directors member at Save a Life
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