I offer therapy for gay and queer men in Chicago, drawing on 30+ years of experience serving the LGBTQ+ community.
This article accompanied a continuing education presentation at The
Chicago School of Professional where I serve as Executive Director of Interwoven
Community Counseling Center and The Forensic Center.
For many older gay men, the AIDS crisis isn’t just history—it’s memory,
etched into the body and soul. We lived through a time when funerals
outnumbered birthdays, when love and death became inseparable, and when
silence, fear, and stigma were constant companions. Decades later, the weight
of that era still lingers.
I came out in the early- and mid-80s, newly arrived in Chicago, seeking
community, connection, and love. I wanted to build a life surrounded by others
like me. But instead of celebration, I was met with sudden loss, confusion, and
a sense of disorientation I couldn’t name at the time.
During my first year in the city, I was asked to be the best man for a
couple at a church I had just started attending. I barely knew them and was
puzzled by the invitation. A friend gently explained: both men were dying. They
had lost so many friends, there was no one else left to stand beside them.
Gay men just a few years younger than me lived through the first year or two of the crisis—when no one
knew why their partners, friends, or they themselves were becoming ill and
dying, when no one knew the cause or how to stay safe. Until protease
inhibitors, AIDS was experienced as a terminal illness.
The AIDS crisis was, and remains, a collective trauma. A generation of
gay men watched as lovers, best friends, and entire communities vanished. On
top of the grief came stigma: we were ignored, blamed, and rendered invisible.
The world wasn’t mourning with us. Some of us turned to activism—joining ACT
UP, demanding congressional funding, begging a silent president to speak the
word AIDS out loud. The march on Washington in 1993, in the face of
evangelical zealots who taunted us along the route, remains one of the most
important shaping experiences of my life.
Despite it all, many of us endured. We built careers. We found love where
we could. Some of us became caretakers, advocates—or both. And yet the
emotional toll of surviving so much loss often went unnamed. Trauma isn’t
always a flashing red light. Sometimes it’s a whisper that reshapes how we see
ourselves, what we believe we deserve, and how we choose to live.
If this story resonates with you, know that therapy can help. Sometimes
simply telling one’s story allows an acknowledgement, an honoring, that can be
healing, and a therapist can help you make that happen.
