The OG Lift+Lover.
My dear mom passed away, surrounded by her family. We were so lucky she was able to tell each of us how much she loves us, even @_Lukedayton on his mission. It was so hard, but it was also time. She lived an amazing life.
The way Sally Grant (Sarah Jane Moyle Creer Grant) momm’d is the impetus for all things Lift+Love. People always ask me if I am like her?
Not at all.
My mom is private and would not share her ideas and opinions with the world like I have done. She is thoughtful and private, intellectual, resilient, eloquent and elegant.
She is like so many of you, not comfortable sharing her life with everyone. She was quiet about struggles they had raising a gay son in the 70’s and 80’s. She was quiet about his struggles and about the conflict that remaining in the church, caused between she and her first born son. She talked to very few people about having a gay son, and spoke openly and defiantly only in her old age.
But, she loved my brother absolutely. She did the best she could in a time of terrible information, stereotypes and doctrinal misunderstandings.
She had total faith, to the very end, that our family was sealed and would be together FOREVER. All of us, not most of us, not a few of us, ALL OF US!!!
No one could ever give her any good reason or doctrinally sound perspective, that would make her worry about the eternal future of her gay son. He was her child and the child of Heavenly Parents. She trusted the sealing power of her temple marriage and the peace she had from the Savior. Her work was to keep our family together and to love her son, even when everything was very hard.
She was the OG Latter-Day Saint LGBTQ Mama, amazing in her own quiet and incredibly stubborn way. And today, she is holding my dad and my brother. I feel a little left out.
BTW-I told her to get back to me, somehow, about the all the mysteries around our LGBTQ kids. She said she would. I’ll let you all know what she reports.