Chris Tompkins knew he was gay at age 6, but things weren’t talked about openly in his home so he internalized the idea that it should remain a secret and he grew up ashamed, and hypervigilant. 

At 24, he came out and jumped into an LGBTQ community that used drugs and alcohol to deal with the internalized shame they’d felt in their own childhoods. Chris eventually moved to LA and he spent the next 11 years working at a gay bar in West Hollywood where the alcohol and drugs played an even bigger part of his life.

In LA he began a search for a god that didn’t hate him. Chris was deep into his spiritual journey when he found out he was HIV positive and was forced to come out once again into a world full of stigma and old ways of thinking. 

It was in a decisive moment, staring at himself in the mirror that he couldn’t keep his spiritual self and his drug using self afloat any longer and made the choice to end his relationship with drugs and alcohol. 

Today, Chris is a Registered Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, life coach, TEDx speaker, and author of the best-selling book, Raising LGBTQ Allies: A Parent’s Guide to Changing the Messages from the Playground, which aims to create a world where closets don’t exist.

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