For Writer Jessi Hempel, Coming Out is a Family Affair

Jessi Hempel is a successful journalist writing about the impact of tech issues on contemporary life. She also is a senior editor-at-large at LinkedIn and hosts the popular podcast, "Hello Mondays," that explores workplace issues. She has appeared on CNN, PBS, MSNBC, Fox, and CNBC, addressing the culture and business of technology. 

She recalls growing up in a seemingly picture-perfect middle class American family. It turns out, though, there was much hidden beneath the surface; so much so, that she nearly severed her relationship with family members while in her 20s. During her child and teen years, her dad was always away from home with work; her mom had emotional issues; and both she and her two siblings were dealing with their own identity issues that would impact the family when they reached adulthood.

By that time, everyone in her family had come out: Jessi as gay, her sister as bisexual, her father as gay, her brother as transgender, and her mother as a survivor of a traumatic experience with an alleged serial killer. "Yet coming out was just the beginning, starting a chain reaction of other personal revelations and reckonings that caused each of them to question their place in the world in new and ultimately liberating ways," reads the book's website. Consulting each of family member, she gives them the opportunity to reveal their authentic experiences, while addressing her own, as well as the the underlying dysfunction while growing up.

EDGE spoke to Hempel about her unique growing up experience, how the pandemic helped her write the book, and how she defines coming out.

EDGE: Tell us a little about yourself?

Jessi Hempel: Until very recently, I thought of myself as a tech and financial writer. Now I am a memoirist, living in New York City. I have long covered technology as a journalist and really loved it. I should tell you the most important thing about myself, which is that I'm queer. It is to me truly the central pillar of my identity, and the thing that I feel most grateful for about my life. I also come from a very gay family.

The truth is that when you write a book like this and you start talking to people, you realize that there are just so many families like mine – families who have many members that are queer. You also realize just how different they are, and how many ways there are to come out as queer. In my family, I have my cisgender gay dad, my transgender brother, my bisexual sister, and then there is me.

EDGE: What prompted you to write your family's story?

Jessi Hempel: The pandemic started and, like so many people, I went home when quarantine began. I started Zooming with everybody I knew: i.e., Zoom trivia nights, Zoom get togethers, and wine Zooms with girlfriends. A month into a quarantine, I was over Zoom. I never wanted to open that screen again. Like so many people, I was just depressed, and in those dark, very quiet moments of 2020 I realized that it was my family that I talked to every day. We were quarantining in five different houses in three different states, and yet these were the people that I kept seeking. I thought, "Well, that's weird." The reason that's weird is because we had a really difficult time of it. If you had asked me in my early 20s, "You think you'll be in touch with these people?", I would have given it, like, it a 50/50 chance. I just wanted distance myself from them because our childhood was so difficult.

This book began as my opportunity to go back and work with all of them to ask the questions that we never talked about, which is, how do things get better? What was so wrong in the first place? The thing that was wrong was that we were all living in the closet in various ways. The hardest thing that happened is that we all came out of the closet, or rather, in my father's case, got kicked out of the closet hard, and that ended up bringing us to a greater sense of who we each were individually. It brought us back to each other in some really interesting ways.

EDGE:  Was everyone on board with the idea?

Jessi Hempel: Well, I've got to tell you, if you say to your family, "I know we've never talked about these really hard things, but I want to write a book and share them with anyone I can get to read it," sometimes it takes them a little bit to get on board. It's a credit to my family that they did. I had had the experience several years earlier where I had written the story for the Times about my brother, who is transgender and had a baby. The most amazing thing about the story was that I thought I knew my brother and I thought we were close, but then I interviewed him. I put my journalist cap on and asked him these open-ended questions without assuming I already knew the answers. I learned so much about who he really was. All of us in my family thought that was really cool, and so I said, "Let me just do this for everyone." I think we all understood that there was an opportunity here. My brother was a yes, and my dad was an absolutely. My mother, with whom I'd have the toughest time, was absolutely on board. My sister signed on last, and, to her credit, she really just took the time to think it through. She didn't hesitate because she would be sharing information about her life with me, but she'd have to rely on me to tell everyone. That's a lot of responsibility on my part, and a lot of trust on their part. 

EDGE:  Was writing this book therapeutic for you and your family?

Jessi Hempel: I would have to let them answer that. It was for me. The reason I wrote this is because I thought there would be some healing for me. As I thought through the all the stuff and allowed myself and family to chew on it, I think everybody found something in it, something really meaningful.

EDGE:  The entire book seems like a surprise, but was there anything more surprising that you learned during your research?

Jessi Hempel: There was this one moment with my mother. My mom had had a tough time when we were younger. She had a lot of depression challenges and a lot of challenges with PTSD when we were young adults. When she was finally got back on her feet and reinvented herself, we were happy to have her back and to have her healthy. She became our loving and awesome mom again. None of us really wanted to talk with her about the past, but when we started to talk about it, some of it was so hard. So, the biggest surprise to me was how many things in our family went unsaid. I think this might be broaching the universal common thread about how families work. How many things we don't talk about, simply because life moves on. It's easier not to, but we still live with the residue of those unsaid things and how they grow within us.

EDGE: What is your definition of coming out?

Jessi Hempel: I think about it this way: We are all born into identities that are not in alignment with who we really are. You're born and your parents have these ideas for who you're going to be, and your community has ideas about who you're going to be, and then you grow into who you actually are. If you're really lucky, it's fairly in alignment with your community and your family. Maybe it's just a little bit off, like you're a baseball player born into a family of dramatists. For many of us, in many different ways, the true authentic expression of ourselves is very different than who the world wants us to be when we're born, and any work that you do in bridging that gap to me is coming out. We in the queer community, we've taken this language for our own. In the book, my mother has her coming out story, but it has to do with owning her identity as a person who had PTSD and had been a party to violence, and that is its own significant coming out journey.

EDGE: What advice would you give some still struggling to come out of the closet?

Jessi Hempel: First, I don't want this book to be read as a treatise to come out at all costs, because I don't think we all can come out of the closet. I don't think it's safe for everyone to come out of the closet. You know your circumstances of your own closet and the community into which you walk. We are always terrified of the unknown, but there is great freedom in the unknown. If it is safe for you, if it is physically safe for you, even if it's scary, it is worth finding your way out and whatever that means for you.

EDGE: What are you hoping the reader will take away from reading your story?

Jessi Hempel: Early on, a straight cisgender man, who I did not know, read it – he was one of the first people who received a review copy. After he read it, he called me and said, "I feel so seen when I read this book. I feel like I understand my father better." I don't know anything about this man or his father, but I hope this book does the same thing for others, whether gay or straight.

EDGE: I feel like your story could be turned into a Netflix movie. Which actors would you choose to play you and your family?

Jessi Hempel: I love this question. There is a fabulous non-binary actor named Chloe Freeman, who is currently in a TV show named "New Amsterdam," I would say that I would want them to play my brother, but I think that that person is so fabulous I'd cast them as myself. I promised my mom that I would definitely call Meryl Streep to see if she were available. I do not know beyond that. I do love Claire Danes. I could imagine her playing me, too. For my dad, Jack Coleman, the second Steven Carrington on "Dynasty." He is a straight man playing a gay character. It's perfect.

EDGE: How does it feel to be a published author?

Jessi Hempel: It feels great! For me, this story feels so mission driven. It feels like the privilege of a lifetime. I feel like I was born and spent all of these decades practicing on technology journalism so that I can actually know the craft of writing well enough to finally get to this story. This story feels like it's bigger than me, and it's simultaneously about me getting to explore this stuff that is deeply personal and brings healing for me. I think putting the story out to the world gives others the confidence to speak their truth. I love the idea that people that I don't know will read this and take something for themselves, and that feels really substantial to me.

"The Family Outing: A Memoir" is now available to order on HarperCollins at this link.