Before I could become the therapist I was meant to be—or the partner I would become with Lynn—I had to unlearn a great deal of what I thought I knew. Not about others. About myself.
By the mid-90s, I had built something beautiful with Lynn: a home, a deep bond, a shared life. But to understand how I got there, we need to rewind several years. Back to a version of myself that still wasn’t sure I was even allowed to choose my own path. And indeed, I had not even imagined a career in a helping profession when I first started college 1984 with no social skills. The person I was when I started college at 18 would have never imagined the career path I would later pursue.
I had learned so much in college about myself and how to overcome problems that I had when I entered college at 18. The problems at the time seemed to be limited to social anxiety or shyness.
I graduated from Georgia Tech in December 1989 with a degree in engineering—an achievement, on paper. But I’d known for at least two years that I was in the wrong field. I didn’t need a career in formulas and machines. I needed a life that made sense emotionally, spiritually, interpersonally. I needed to be with people, not things.
I had broached the idea of changing majors with my parents. The answer was clear: finish what you started. There was no room for nuance. No consideration of what it might mean to shift directions after investing years in the wrong path. So, I stayed the course. I got the degree. And quietly, I made other plans.
Even then, I knew I wasn’t going to be an engineer. I had already started taking psychology courses, minoring in the subject. I had spent five years in weekly therapy, learning more about myself than I ever did in any lecture hall. I had asked myself the hard questions: Who am I really? What matters to me? What do I want my life to be about?
And I had my answer: I wanted to be a therapist.
When I moved home after graduation, it wasn’t to rest. It was a strategic step. I needed experience in the mental health field—volunteer hours, recommendation letters, something to prove that this new path wasn’t a whim but a calling. I started volunteering at Georgia Regional Hospital, learning from the social work team and quietly confirming that this was the right place for me.
My parents never asked what I was doing. They didn’t ask what I wanted. I wasn’t expecting applause, but I had hoped for something—curiosity, encouragement, a glimmer of pride. What I received instead was silence. Or worse, judgment.
Decades later, my sister would say that I “didn’t do things the right way”—that I owed it to my parents to work as an engineer first before switching fields. As if my life were some kind of debt to be repaid. As if they had invested in me only for the return, not for the person I had become. She said I should’ve worked while getting my graduate degree at night, as though I could simply moonlight my way through a career change that required daytime internships, full-time training, and a complete reorientation of my skills and identity.
The ideas my sister shared just a few years ago were already implied way back in the early ’90s. I just hadn’t let it sink in. I hadn’t yet grasped the full depth of what it meant to be raised in a household where your inner world—your interests, your desires, your truths—didn’t matter.
It was my mother’s voice I heard the most, reminding me that what I wanted was irrelevant. That my dreams were a burden. That my worth was in what I produced or how it made them look, not who I was or what mattered to me. I felt like I was something they wanted to show off - something that they created and not a human being with my own preferences, desires, likes and dislikes, interests and values.
I wasn’t their child so much as their project—something to sculpt, to display, to prove they’d done something right. But I wasn’t a trophy. I was a person. And I wanted to be seen as one
And what made it all the more surreal was that my father—years earlier—had admitted to me that he knew engineering wasn’t the right field for me. He had seen it. He had known. And he said nothing. He had never said anything that could be interpreted as disagreement with my mother. It’s one of the many mysteries of our household: Did he agree with her? Did he simply defer? Did he believe his silence was love?
All I know is that in our home, disagreement didn’t happen. Not openly. Not safely. And now, looking back, I can see just how much that silence cost me.
This reminds me of the many disagreements Lynn and I navigated—openly, honestly—without it ever threatening our love for one another. The contrast is staggering.
Looking back now, I realize that what I needed from my family wasn’t financial support. I found my own way to pay for graduate school through Stafford Loans, as many students do. What I needed was interest. Respect. A sense that my future, and my happiness, mattered.
But it didn’t. Not to them.
And that’s what toxic shame does. It teaches you that your needs are unreasonable. That your dreams are indulgent. That wanting something different, something better, something more you, is wrong. Even when your body tells you otherwise. Even when every cell in your being knows you’re meant for something else.
I didn’t ask them to finance my new path. I didn’t eat much. I didn’t take up space. All I needed was room to grow. But even that was too much.
And yet, I grew anyway.
I got the experience I needed. I volunteered. I made connections. I applied to MSW programs with clarity, confidence, and conviction. And when I stepped into my first graduate-level class, I didn’t feel out of place.
I felt like I had finally arrived.
Every client I’ve ever helped owes something to that younger version of me—the one who didn’t give up. The one who refused to live someone else’s life. The one who found the courage to begin again.
And Lynn—she saw all of that. She believed in it. She walked alongside me not just as a partner, but as a witness to my becoming.
That, too, is part of this love story.