It has been two weeks since I announced that I’ve penned a book inspired by my blog and that it will be released on September 3. And, the responses, comments and emails of support have been overwhelming and much-needed. I’m really good at brainstorming for worst-case scenarios. I don’t even want to tell you the various things I imagined would happen after I came out as the author Lori Duron – mostly I don’t want to tell you because I’m afraid that the scenarios could still come true.
I certainly wasn’t expecting to feel so much love. Sure I felt some hate, but I’ve gotten really good at ignoring it. I also heard from the people who continue to believe that my blog and family are a work of fiction. That, to me, is laughable. I wish I had time to dream up fiction! I could do that instead of making three square-ish meals a day, doing laundry, working full-time or shuttling kids to-and-fro and back again. Fiction must be fun! If this were all a game, it would be a very tedious one to play – and I don’t have time for games other than Candyland, Sight Word Bingo and “Mom, can you find my sock/shoe/homework/iPad/manners”. Wish I did; but I don’t.
So, thanks to all of you who wrote to me and to those of you who found a way on your own to pre-order my book. I want you, my readers, to be the first to know about two other important supporters of mine, because you are in very cool company.
I have received support from David Burtka and Neil Patrick Harris – who have done me the enormous honor of writing the foreword for my book. I still can’t believe it’s true.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
I think that David and Neil, as parents and members of the LGBTQ community, are the perfect people to introduce my book and our family to readers and the world. When you read their foreword, you’ll get a sense of them as the awesome parents I’ve seen them to be and you’ll learn a thing or two about the always captivating Harper and Gideon. It’s a rare opportunity for readers to get a glimpse into the lives of this new nuclear family.
I’m beyond honored that David and Neil see the importance of this book for kids, parents, educators and the LGBTQ community.
C.J. doesn’t know David and Neil as celebrities; he knows them only as Harper and Gideon’s dads — the ones who don’t care how gender creative he chooses to be in their presence. He sees the four of them and sees a family; a fun, normal family that has two dads who cook their own pizzas and sometimes randomly break out in song and dance. He can be perfectly pink in their rainbow presence. That’s all that matters to him.
I see David and Neil as a gracious couple that I will forever be indebted to. When two guys have everything how do you thank them for doing a favor as massive as introducing you and your book to the world? If you have any ideas, let me know.
* * *
Although my book’s pre-order pages are not totally complete aesthetically, they work functionally and you can now pre-order Raising My Rainbow: Adventures in Raising A Fabulous, Gender Creative Son (Foreword by Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka).
How do you prefer it?
yaoming
Wow, now the celebrity gays are in on it.
Homophile
Lovely family and I wish them nothing but happiness…
However, can we all just please stop with the ‘barefoot with matching outfits” portraits? kkthxbai
balehead
That is until the press opportunities dry up…what about David’s previous children?….
Dixie Rect
The charade continues….
I guess David and Neil get a cut of this ridiculous farce too?
I’m am outraged and nauseated at the same time. Pass the barf bag!
Homophile
@ balehead and Dixie Rect
lol wut?
DOFEK
How nice and sweet! I know what is it like to be a real dad trust me I got six. AdamHomo
bledoutcolor
Lol. She stopped just short of mentioning Dixie Recto by name. I don’t understand the hate on he has for this woman. She seems smart, sensitive, and erudite. I think her and her families are great allies to have and quite frankly I feel sorry for Dixie. It takes a bitter unhaopy person to stalk an author online and post negative comments about her and her family every post she writes. Pathetic. Keep on keeping on Lori!
RomanHans
And the difference between this and turning your child into a circus attraction is?
[Edited so it won’t be doomed to moderation hell.]
I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t write a tell-all book about your spouse, including his/her real name, so why is it okay with a six-year-old kid?
There are standards for outing someone against their will in the gay community. It’s generally seen as acceptable only if the person being outed has done harm to the community, and their hypocrisy can be made evident and their hateful work stopped by divulging details of their personal life. C. J., however, is an innocent child. Unlike us, he can’t choose if or when he wants to become an activist for an LGBT community: he automatically is.
It’s nice to think C.J. has an accepting family and the world just needs education. I wish I could be in that camp. However, any gay person knows the crap C.J. is going to face, and I for one don’t think this is fair. I hope everything works out well for him, but he’s been turned into a child star now — and an outed one at that — so I don’t think the odds are good.
yaoming
@RomanHans:
Right. I thought this child had a secret identity as a cross-dresser. Now all the kids at school are going to know. Then what? Witness relocation?
Bad idea.
Poor kid.
bledoutcolor
@yaoming: Cant tell if sarcasm, or……
Dixie Rect
@yaoming: I wouldn’t be too concerned, since CJ is fictitious character.
@bledoutcolor…you don’t know me at all – not sure why you like to make these types of judgements? I guess I can too. I feel sorry for bledoutcolor, a whiney, most likely obese tragic queen that continues to get ignored by the community and gets pissy when others don’t agree with his opinion. Sit down, girl. How sad!
Kathy
“All the kids at school,” only includes kids who read the book themselves, or have parents who read it. That cuts the potential all kids at school down drastically. Most people don’t read much, and those that do are more inclined to be educated and accepting of diversity.
I’ve taken memoir classes, and we’ve often speculated that if we wrote tell all, scandalous memoirs, how long it might be before anyone we knew ever saw it, even if our pictures were on the front cover.
CJ is six now; and in the past dozen years or so, the world has changed at breakneck speed in attitudes towards sexuality and gender. There’s still a long way to go, but I’m hoping that by the time it might be a problem (by our standards of 2013), his story will be interesting, but not shocking.
Twenty years ago, I was flying blind in deciding how to handle my son’s decided preference for girls’ toys, clothing, jewelry and shoes. Especially shoes. His favorite way of handling this was to try to get me to buy something for myself, which he would then appropriate. My size limited my clothing choices (fortunately), and the jewelry wasn’t so bad; no one ever has too many dollar store tiaras. But I drew the line at buying myself high heeled glass slippers. I’d still be picking the shards out of my eyeballs.
I had no idea whether what I was doing was going to make him well adjusted, or set him up for a lifetime of therapy. I would have welcomed hearing from someone else in the same situation. It turns out there were plenty of us; we just didn’t know it.
And Homophile, I echo everything you said. Especially the pictures. What looks good in a magazine would evoke caustic comments, if I saw any friends taking pictures attired in that way. Ten or twelve years down the road, the boys will probably find the pictures far more disturbing than the fact that they have two dads.