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Gay conversion therapy was ‘painful’ — but it didn’t break me


By Rachelle Bergstein

Growing up in Manhattan in the 1970s, Andrew Solomon always felt different from his conservative, straight-laced family. But it wasn’t until he was 23 — and told his parents he was gay and moving in with his boyfriend — that the tension simmering between them reached a full boil.

“My mother said it was enormously stressful and upsetting to her, and she couldn’t understand why I would give up the possibility of having a family to indulge some sexual preoccupation.”

Solomon was devastated. And although she came around before her death from ovarian cancer in 1991, he never forgot the sting of her rejection. Now an award-winning writer, he spun that pain into his fourth book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity. The 2012 best seller, which took him 11 years to report for and write, is now a documentary, in theaters Friday. Like the book it’s based on, the film focuses on parents from across the country who are struggling to overcome the differences they have with their children.

(To read the rest of the interview, please visit the New York Post.)