HUFFINGTON
07.14.13
STRAIGHT TALK
and his mother. “I’ve been to hell
and back with him,” Jane Shurka
told me over lunch at a diner in
Great Neck. She’d begun seeing
a therapist of her own, she said.
“Everyone has some crap,” she
said. “How you deal with it, how
you cope with it, is the point.”
About a year ago, Mathew took a
course at Landmark, a global selfhelp enterprise that purports to
offer clients a system for “producing breakthroughs — achievements
that are extraordinary, outside the
limits of what’s already predictable,
attainable, or known.” Landmark
has its critics, but also claims many
successful graduates, from the
eight-time Oscar-winning composer Alan Menken to Paul Fireman,
the former Reebok chief executive.
Mathew described the sessions as
life-changing. In May 2012, he flew
to Israel, where his father had been
living since splitting up with his
mom, and began the process of repairing that relationship.
He has seen his father only briefly since then, and until recently
their relationship was shaded
by Mathew’s participation in his
mother’s divorce suit. But one day
this spring, after traveling to L.A.
to reconcile with John, he wrote his
father a compassionate email.
“I am sorry for not meeting the
expectations you’ve had for me,”
he wrote. “One being that I am gay.
This is who I am and who I always
have been. I am a man that enjoys
men and I am no less of a man. I
am a powerful, self-expressed, free
man. I have my whole life ahead of
me, and it is a beautiful life I am
living into. You created that for me.
You created warmth and comfort
for me to come home to, you created security, and a big family to
surround myself with.
“Aba,” he continued, using the
Hebrew word for father, “I am going
to become a world leader, an architect, a father, grandfather, someone’s love, and be in love. I am going
to create wealth for myself and for
those around me. I am inspired and
will inspire. You’ve given me everything a son can ask for. I am sorry
I wasn’t there for you when you
needed me most, I am sorry I never
stood my ground for who I was,
and what I wanted... I miss you every day that you are not in my life.
There is nothing more that I want
than to be close to you. I love you
Aba. Thank you for giving
me life.”
Lila Shapiro is a reporter for The
Huffington Post covering gay issues.