A 20-year-old is revisiting her delightfully funny coming out tale in hopes of encouraging others.
Poppy Dadd, a model in London, England, began to realize she was gay in her teens when she first laid eyes on a female character in “Glee.”
“I started to figure it out when I was around 16, which is quite late on really,” she told The Huffington Post. “And Santana on ‘Glee’ definitely helped out. I 100% loved her so much.”
Dadd told HuffPost that she kept her secret for two years and then one night when she was 18, she let the truth about her sexuality slip to a few friends.
“Then I found out a week later that one of them had spread it around,” she said. “I was so mad at him because I just did not feel ready. I hated the thought of people discussing my secret that was private.”
But instead of letting her anger fester, Dadd decided to take matters into her own hands.
“I thought, ‘It’s fine.’ I’m a strong person and I’m not embarrassed of who I am,” she said.
While on Skype with some supportive friends, Dadd thought up a clever coming out post and published it on Facebook:
“I thought it was funny and not too serious and that’s how I wanted it to be,” she told HuffPost. “I didn’t want it to be emotional or dramatic — just light-hearted because it’s not a big deal.”
Dadd was thankfully met with tons of support from her family and friends.
Fast-forward two years, and a now 20-year-old Dadd is “incredibly open” about her sexuality and has developed a LGBTQ following on Twitter. So, when her old coming out post recently popped up on her Facebook timeline as a memory, she thought it would be fun to make a screengrab of it and share it on Twitter.
“I reposted it because I know some of my followers would remember that day, especially the ones I was Skyping with when I did it. So I thought it’d be funny for them to see it,” she said.
Since Dadd posted it on February 24, it has gone viral once again, receiving over 283,000 likes and 62,000 retweets.
For those who are thinking about coming out, Dadd has some advice.
“I would say that you shouldn’t do it until you’re ready because it can be scary and you might get nasty comments so you need to prepare for that,” she said. She also stressed that you should be in a safe space when you do it and it’s OK to be scared.
“There are so many people going through the same thing. Don’t be afraid to reach out for help. It’s good to have someone to talk and relate to,” she said.
But if you do take the plunge, Dadd says it’s totally worth it, saying:
“Being part of the LGBTQ community is a wonderful thing.”
