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Stefanie Kaupa shares her experiences of coming out.

Hi there! My name is Stefanie and I am a PhD Candidate at the Department of Geography at King鈥檚 College (and UCL via the London NERC DTP). My coming out must have been in 2012 or 2013. I鈥檇 known I was gay for about three聽years or so but I hadn鈥檛 actually come out to my family.

I remember watching TV between the power cuts in Kathmandu, where I worked at the time, and it happened to be National Coming Out Day in the US. I hadn鈥檛 heard of anything like it and kept watching, and I guess I got inspired enough.

Inspired enough to write an email.

I probably could have waited a few months and told my family face-to-face, but already by that time I preferred the socially distant solution.

So I sat down myself to write this email, which I wouldn鈥檛 send until a couple of days later because, well, actually there was no real reason. When I finally hit send I went out to buy myself a coffee grinder. The first one I ever owned! Yes, it鈥檚 absolutely silly (maybe?) but I like coffee and that was my reward.

As it turned out no one in my family was being a terrible human about this, so that was good - and anticlimactic for you, I鈥檓 afraid. Most of them were probably just a bit surprised I shared something about my emotional life.

I don鈥檛 know what I would have done or felt if there had been rejection or worse. At the time I just thought, this is me and you鈥檙e going to accept that - or not - but I certainly won鈥檛 change. (This attitude was certainly helped by coming out at 24, having moved out already, with some financial independence). Having said that, I grew up in the conservative-conservative part of Germany; there simply weren鈥檛 any other out people around my hometown, and the topic wasn鈥檛 much discussed on TV or anywhere so I really did have no idea what their reactions would be.

I do think that I have a closer relationship with some of my family members now and that wouldn鈥檛 have been possible otherwise. At some point, I guess I just wanted to 鈥渓et them in鈥� as I felt they deserved that. They did deserve it.

Also, I still have the coffee grinder and it still works.