Shelley Clarke, 43, is a teacher. Her mother, a housewife, left her father, a civil servant, 26 years ago after 23 years of marriage. She now lives with her partner, Mary, a policewoman. Shelley has two older brothers and is married to Dan, also a teacher, with whom she has two daughters, aged seven and 10
I don’t recall many arguments between my parents but they weren’t a particularly loving couple. They had separate interests – Dad, golf, and mum, her friends. So when they told me they were splitting up, it wasn’t really a surprise. I was 17 and they sat me down and were very matter-of-fact. I’d stay with Mum, Dad would move out. My brothers had left home.
The following year, Mum and I were watching EastEnders and she suddenly said, “By the way, I’ve found somebody.” And then she said it was a woman. I didn’t hear anything else after that. My world was all about boys. They were all my friends talked about. At school we’d say, “That’s girl’s a lezzer because she’s got no friends.” I thought, “I can’t tell anybody. No one will speak to me again.” This was the late 1980s, the time of the Don’t Die of Ignorance adverts. So to me, Mum saying, “I’m gay,” meant dying.
Suddenly I felt she wasn’t my mum and I couldn’t trust her. I went off the rails. I stayed out all night, anything not to go home. I guess I wanted to punish her.
Things changed when a teacher noticed something was awry and asked if I was OK. Eventually I told him and he was amazing. He let me be angry, then said, “This is OK. There are other lesbians in the world. Your mum has found someone she loves and is happy.”
I got into university but by this time I was estranged from Mum. I knew she would have been so proud to see me there, but I was like, no, you’re not having any part of this. At uni, I met someone who is gay and he introduced me to all kinds of people. Every time I told someone and they accepted it, it helped me come to terms with it a bit more.
It wasn’t until I was 33, married and pregnant, that the turning point came. That’s when you really need your mum, and I didn’t want my kids to grow up not knowing her. I called her and asked her to come around. I said, “Bring Mary with you.” She did and we talked and cried and I apologised.
Now the girls are closer to Mum and Mary than to my dad and his new wife. I worried about what to tell the girls, but my husband was amazing. He said, “You got lucky. You’ve got Nana and her special nana.”
I don’t think you can predict how you will behave until it happens to you. I would describe myself as a very non-judgemental person, except, it seems, when it came to my own mum – when I became the most judgemental person in the world. I often wonder if I would have handled it differently if it was my dad who was gay. Obviously the stigma is still there, but I think I might have been a bit more OK with it.
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