This book is a lesson on Self-love for Valentine's Day
Brooke Dozier is an amazing young woman based in Houston, Texas. This author has released her new book on Valentine's Day called "I'm the Same Person - Being Gay and Loving God". This is a unique and controversial story that will help young people as well as their parents to be more sensitive and supportive when confronted with having to come to terms with issues around sexual orientation.
In this book, Brooke describes her experience and shock at the reactions she got from family and friends when she revealed her sexual orientation at the age of thirty two. She talks about the disappointment she felt when close friends and family could not support her sexual identity and seemed to forget that she was the same person underneath despite the new label of being gay. This is what inspired the title of her book.
All her life Brooke struggled with her sexual identity and in the book she even goes back to her mother's journals when she was three and how they would fight about what to wear or what toys to play with when she was little. The book has a lot of photographs which show the times when she fought with her mother and reveals her gradual transformation into the confident woman she is now.
Coming from the deep south of the United States did not help either. She struggled with how she felt about herself as a person and whether she should reveal her true identity. She explained that once she entered into a relationship with God, she realized that it actually did not matter either way; however the rest of the world made her feel abnormal and wrong.
The community and society around her told her that she could not be both. She could not be gay and love God at the same time. In her quest for understanding; Brooke went into the ministry and obtained a master's degree in Theology and went into a seminary knowing that she was called into the ministry to help kids and parents understand each other better. Brooke describes how in the back of my mind she would pray that God would take away the gay; however the struggle would go away. She would date men but it just did not feel right and it just did not fit.
For 10 years Brooke was very active in the ministry and at this particular church they suspected that she was gay because she wasn't dating and she was asked her to leave. There was a secret petition going around in all of the parishes in this small town in West Texas and fortunately some kind people in the community heard about it and made her aware that the church was attempting to ask the seminary to revoke college degree. Brooke left in the middle of the night and nobody even knew what was going on.
This is a beautiful story about self love and acceptance. Brooke eventually found love and is now happily settled with her new partner in Austin, Texas.
A perfect story for Valentine's Day - LOVE begins within.
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