This is pretty cool. Newly out country star Chely Wright teamed up with Nate Berkus to redo the youth lounge at the YES community center in New York, and then talked to the kids about her experiences. Here’s some of what she said:
“I am from a small town in Kansas,” Wright said. “I scoured my little town looking for anyone else like me and I couldn’t find anyone. I continued to hide because I had a dream of being a country music singer.”
“I hit my rock bottom and I found myself in 2006 ready to kill myself because I had painted myself into a corner. I had created an entire life where nobody knew me. I got on my knees and prayed to God, ‘Help me out of this,’ and the answer I got was stand up, tell the world who you are. And I came out for me, most of all because I wanted to live.”
“But my second most compelling reason for coming out was I didn’t want to think about another kid sitting on the edge of his bed, or another young person like Seth Walsh, I couldn’t stand the thought of somebody else feeling like there wasn’t somebody else like him or like her,” she said, referring to the 13-year-old California boy who hanged himself after suffering years of torment at the hands of his classmates.
“I came out in May of 2010 and it’s the best thing I ever did for my life,” Wright added to a warm applause.
Watch it:
