Overcoming Homophobia to Sing My Truth
Jeremy Dion’s upcoming album Bend in the Middle comes out tomorrow. Dion describes the album as “folk therapy for late bloomers.” In this essay, Dion tells us about coming out late in life and struggling to overcome decades of internalized homophobia to perform his music at Folk Alliance International. You can read the full essay on our Patreon. It will be published in the spring 2025 issue of Rainbow Rodeo.
For the first time ever, I played the Rainbow Room at the Folk Alliance International this year.
Performing as an openly gay man might not seem like a big deal for a professional musician and therapist, but it is to me. After years of self work and acceptance, being out as queer in public still makes me really uncomfortable. So I avoided it. Until now.
For context, I’m gay, but I didn’t come out of the closet until my late 30’s. And it wasn’t like I spent those prior decades knowing I was gay but choosing to hide it. At least consciously. I truly, deeply believed that I was straight, or at least “straight enough” to make it all work. I really, desperately wanted to make it all work. So I married Lisa, fathered a child, and had many reasons to think my path was sustainable, mostly because it needed to be. I grew up knowing that being gay, especially for a boy, was the very worst possible thing a boy could be. The very worst. Even lower than drug addicts (they can’t help it) and murderers (same reasoning). I couldn’t be that.
What I’m trying to get to is this: I turned 50 last year, and I started coming out of the closet around age 38. It trips me out to realize both how far I have come in those 12 years, and also how much residual homophobia still lingers within me. Even as I read this back I want to laugh and say – great, Jeremy, you came out of the closet! Like every other out queer person before you. Big freaking deal. And on the one hand, exactly right. I’m not a trailblazer here. But on the other, it’s been the struggle of my life, and the single biggest deal about who I know myself to be.
This internal struggle made playing a few songs in the Rainbow Room at once the most comfortable and safe I have ever felt, while also the most uncomfortable and awkward. During my set, I actually shared the true story behind the same-sex heartbreak that led to my song “Evangeline.” I sang to a crowd who understood my journey before I even opened my mouth to sing. That was liberating in ways that I’m still coming to understand and appreciate.
But it also made me beyond uncomfortable to see my name on that Rainbow Room poster. Look, everybody! It’s Jeremy Dion, in vibrant rainbow colors, playing the queer room with all the other gays. Writing that now brings tears to my eyes and conjures old memories of all the times I heard “fag” or “faggot” or “homo” or “Nancy” or similar terms used towards me, by me, or near me. It all lands the same. And now everyone is going to know. They can see my name on that poster. And here I am writing about it. And sharing it. Gulp.
Here’s the thing, people: gay, bi, straight, whatever, we all share many things in common. One important one is that we all got messages that there are parts about us and our personalities that “don’t fit” the mold. We are too this, too that, too much, whatever. And many of us come to believe that garbage about ourselves, at least temporarily. I see it in my therapy practice all the time. Yet somehow it took me decades to face my own turmoil.
It’s this eventual realization and acceptance of my own unloved parts that prompted me to write my latest release, “Bend in the Middle,” and the album as a whole, by the same name.
So let’s do it. Let’s all learn to Bend in the Middle, to feel all our feelings, and embrace who we truly are. For me, I’ve come to learn that means letting my glorious rainbow shine, even when it’s difficult.
For you, the time is now. Whatever you were told is unloveable, feel your feelings. Love who you truly are. You’re so much more beautiful than you’ve been taught.
Bend in the Middle will be out tomorrow. You can read the full essay here.
