As a child, Chris says she wrote love letters to other girls and had crushes on her friends. She even dated a woman briefly when she was 19, but she says she didn't realize she was a lesbian until she was pregnant with her third child, a daughter.
"I got pregnant with a little girl and something in me just wanted to be completely woman identified," she says. "I could not suppress that anymore...my whole world changed. It was like a little lightbulb clicked on, and as much as I tried to click off the lightbulb, I couldn't get it to go off."
Tragically, Chris's baby girl was stillborn. "It was the worst thing to ever happen," she says. "I thought perhaps I'm being punished because I'm internally betraying my husband and my family. That was the moment when I really knew I have to be an authentic person, and I have to tell the truth, as painful as it's going to be."
For years, Chris says she chose to "shut off" her feelings toward women because she wanted the traditional American family, complete with a loving husband and children. Once Chris admitted her true feelings to herself, she couldn't hide her secret any longer.
