Meetings for me to come out at work are scheduled. HR at my university has a whole process for this and I have followed it. The letters are written and sent to HR. The first meeting is this coming Monday. Three more individual or small group meetings, with the chair of the department and other advisors/collaborators, are scheduled over the next week. Next Tuesday is my whole lab. All of these will be with HR and the GLBT center director (she is particularly good), and in all but the lab meeting, I’ll come in at the end (in the lab meeting I won’t be there at all).
I’m not at the office today, which means the next time I come home from work, I will be on my way out of what’s left of this closet. I’ll have spoken to an advisor who has worked with me closely for over 5 years, and was a mentor for me in graduate school. She’s known me since I sought her out for advice in grad school, on how to actually finish in our field, how to be a scientist and a parent. She was an absolute rock for me after Ira was born when it took a while to get my sea legs back in the lab. I’m trying hard to believe that this will be no different.
I’ve set the ball rolling. There’s no getting out of this now.
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**Revision — This meeting is now on Tuesday. One more day.
