In 1979, psychologist Vivienne Cass mapped a journey that millions have traveled without a name for it — the long, often lonely process of forming a gay identity under the weight of stigma and silence. Drawing on memoir, scholarship, and lived experience, Walter will trace that journey from a child’s first quiet sense of being different to the hard-won wholeness that waits on the other side — for those who make it. With stories as our guide, we’ll explore what this journey asks of the people living it, and what it asks of the rest of us who love them.