Skip to main content

Meet Peter Leahy

My Life Through Pictures

My Childhood

Growing up, I don’t remember that we were any different from our community – we had what we needed: food, clothes and toys and stuff. We weren’t rich, but we didn’t struggle as far as I could tell, we had little-to-no debt outside of the mortgage.

My parents provided for their children, but they were not a happy couple. I believe that both my father and mother were unhappy with their life and partner but had no desire to change or were afraid of leaving what was familiar to them. The also had five kids (definitely Catholic 😊) and the last three came at the same time – yes triplets. I’m the youngest of the three and my parents were both over 40 when we were born!

My Siblings

Our neighborhood was littered with kids of all ages and we lived in a safe town – I could ride my bike anywhere. We were always outside – sports ruled our daily lives, always playing basketball, street hockey, soccer and stickball. The triplets were quite a spectacle back in the day – we were paraded around, often in matching outfits. We were a group – I did not have a unique identity. My parents sent me away to boarding school and I grew up quite a bit, but I also lived apart from the family.

School Life

I lived away from home as a hyper and bright pre-pubescent thirteen-year-old. I made lifelong friends and definitely matured, but I was not a disciplined student and was quite homesick. My grades improved dramatically while I was an undergraduate in college as well as graduate school.

My college experience was pretty fantastic in many ways: I was an excellent student with beautiful sandy blonde hair, had a pretty and smart girlfriend; my future looked bright. At the time I wanted to become a psychologist, I had a passion for helping others.

You’ll notice that I’m a ‘late bloomer.’ For many of my significant milestones-events, the first takes didn’t work out and I would usually find success on the rebound. I’m not saying that succeeding on the second go-round as a bad thing – far from it. So what if your first relationship, job, or career didn’t work out? The whole point of my autobiographical digest is to keep trying, to keep striving for the things that make you happy.

Married life

When I was married to my ex-wife, we had a plan – it was education first then start having kids, hopefully one boy and one girl. I wanted to have children with this woman and I was truly in love with her. Yes, I knew I was hiding a secret, but I didn’t want to miss out on becoming a parent. Being outed was easily my number one fear at the time. It wasn’t safe for me to come out of the closet. Practically, it would not be good to be gay in a professional setting and internally I wasn’t ready.

Now I’ve been married for over three years and my ‘Marriage Equality moment’ is how powerful the word HUSBAND is when I describe my spouse. I talk about my marriage just like everyone else and the most beautiful part is that I don’t have to code-switch and change his name and/or gender in my conversations, it’s a natural addition to any work discussion.

Happy life

I try to live authentically every day and by truly loving myself and being comfortable with who I am, my world reflects that. I’m such a cliché – once I was finally free from what held me back, my world and the people that I encountered and accepted into my life, they were mostly good to me, good for me. I finally accepted the real me and the universe presented me with people who have become real friends, part of my extended family.

The majority of my story does not revolve around the power of my dynamic personality and an inspirational journey of self-actualization. Thankfully my development has a happy ending and an optimistic future, but for many years of my life, I have seen myself as a coward. I do acknowledge that it’s brave to come out of the closet at any age and especially after you’ve created a multi-decade persona, but I see most of my young life as one without taking personal risks and wasting emotional energy to deny who I was and spending most of my time pretending to be one person while the real person was effectively dying inside.

When I think about how I’ve changed over the past 10+ years since embracing my true identity, it’s easy to see that I’m feeding my soul, I’m NOT starving any part of me that brings me joy. I’m now a full, happy and complete person.

Peter Leahy - Author and Speaker - Glowing Up Gay - A Curious Journey of Discovery