Last night, I attended a football gathering with about a dozen Black lesbians. At one point, I made a brief announcement about my brand-new practice, Dr. Lulu’s Pride Corner, and shared that it was created exclusively to serve the LGBTQ+ community as a safe space for emotional support and affirming life coaching.
I invited anyone who had questions, or who simply wanted to chat, to meet me in the back afterward. Three people took me up on that offer.
They all shared stories that felt deeply familiar.
They expressed gratitude for the existence of the practice and, at the same time, lamented, wishing they could turn back the hands of time, so they could have known someone like me, or more importantly, that their parents could have known someone like me, when they were younger and still “figuring it out.”
This short blog post is an attempt to speak to that gap.
It is meant to encourage families to look in a different direction, to look a little deeper, and to lean in a little more, when their child is a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
This piece is not intended to shame or guilt anyone. Its purpose is to create awareness and to offer alternative, affirming ways to approach the moment when a child comes out, when a parent suspects their child may be gay, or when a family is navigating questions around identity.
This reflection was shaped not only by those three conversations, but also by hearing the same phrases repeated again and again in my work with Black families and LGBTQIA+ youth.
“Stop acting that way.” (words I used on my own child)*
“This is just a phase.” (words my own father used for me)**
“You’re choosing this lifestyle.” (a very common misconception)***
These statements are often rooted in fear, love, faith, and a desire to protect. But when they become the end of the conversation instead of the beginning, they quietly cause harm.
Too often, families stop at what the child is doing and never move toward what the child is surviving.
When we focus only on correcting behavior, we miss the systems shaping that behavior: home environments, cultural expectations, religious messaging, generational trauma, and silence. Children are then asked to carry the weight of discomfort that does not belong to them.
This is where blame-based parenting shows up.
Blame sounds like:
“Stop acting like that.”
“Why can’t you just be normal?”
“You’re embarrassing the family.”
“That’s not how you/we were raised.”
Consequently, the message a child receives is clear: love is conditional, and safety is fragile.
Affirmation-based parenting, on the other hand, shifts the focus.
Instead of asking what is wrong with the child, it asks what might be unsafe for them. It invites families to examine the systems they inherited but never had the chance to question.
Affirmation sounds like:
“What helps you feel safe being yourself at home?”
“What fears and expectations are we placing on your body?”
“What falsehoods did we inherit about gender and sexuality?”
“What needs to change in this family for you to thrive?”
The message your child receives changes too: I am not the problem. The environment can change.
This shift does not mean abandoning culture, faith, or values. It means refusing to use them as weapons against children who are already navigating a world that punishes difference.
Many Black families are not trying to harm their children. They are responding from survival strategies passed down through generations. But survival strategies that once protected us can become sources of harm when left unexamined.
The problem is rarely the child.
The problem is the environment the child is being asked to survive.
Affirmation does not change who a child is. It changes what they no longer have to endure.
When families shift from blame to safety, healing becomes possible, not just for the child, but for everyone involved.