{"id":1311179,"date":"2019-06-08T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-09T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/loving-and-accepting-all\/"},"modified":"2019-06-09T10:27:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-09T16:27:00","slug":"loving-and-accepting-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/loving-and-accepting-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Loving and accepting all"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Cathy Heyliger enjoys an afternoon with her sons Ben, left, and Web, right. Heyliger recently published a book about love and acceptance inspired by her sons.<\/strong>
Kyle Mills \/ Post Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

It was about 14 years ago when Cathy Heyliger first had an indication.<\/p>\n

Heyliger and her children were at a kids\u2019 library in Boulder, surrounded by books, she noticed her oldest son, Ben, try to hide a book in the teen section. Despite the 13-year-old\u2019s effort, she was able to see the title on the spine of the book \u2014 \u201cBoy meets Boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

She told him that he could take that book if he wanted.<\/p>\n

Later that night, Ben felt comfortable enough to tell Cathy and her husband Dave that he was gay.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s incredible, our situation growing up, I couldn\u2019t imagine any other way,\u201d Ben said. \u201cI know for a lot of people it\u2019s unheard of the kind of acceptance that mom gave for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, 18 months later, Cathy\u2019s reaction was different when their youngest son, Web, came out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe handled it horribly,\u201d Cathy said. \u201cI don\u2019t know what we were thinking. We tried to talk him out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just said ridiculous things, I was just so upset with myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, they apologized, told Web they loved him, and they just want him to be who he is.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t really want your child to be different, because you know there is a possibility they are going to get hurt,\u201d Cathy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo parent wants their child to get hurt, but you also want them to live as their true self.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a real hard thing to grapple with.\u201d<\/p>\n

BECOMING AN AUTHOR<\/p>\n

That struggle of loving your children but wanting them to not get hurt led Cathy to an epiphany from an unexpected source.<\/p>\n

Cathy, who grew up in Denver but fell in love with the Roaring Fork Valley, thanks to trips with her grandfather. While working on a presentation for a conference, she was poring over a power point and syncing it to music, when she finally got to the end, she thought this might make a good children\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no intention of ever writing a book,\u201d Cathy said. \u201cIt just kind of came to me that it would be a good idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inspiration came from her sons\u2019 struggles to find self-acceptance and confidence in being gay.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor mom to write this book really shows us what she really meant to us growing up.\u201d Ben said, \u201cAnd what she still means to us and how proud of her we are for taking the initiative to try and show the world its okay to love who you want to love, and that we\u2019re okay. Its just awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cathy\u2019s husband Dave happened to be reading the paper when he heard about Light of the Moon Inc., Publishing in Carbondale, and told her that she should make an appointment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI showed them my power point, and they said, \u201cLets make a book out of it, so we did,\u201d Cathy said.<\/p>\n

She said a book like this would have helped her kids when they were little.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s from a heterosexual family, didn\u2019t know it was going to be OK, and he didn\u2019t know that I would be OK with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cathy\u2019s sons are two of her biggest supporters, and are both proud of her publishing a book.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has been totally supportive my whole life,\u201d Web said. \u201cI\u2019ve been very lucky. Being on the dating scene now, a lot of men have not had that, and it\u2019s a very different result.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving love and acceptance from your parents is huge.\u201d<\/p>\n

LOVE IS<\/p>\n

In the interest of education for peace, Cathy has a curriculum based on kids visualizing a light inside.<\/p>\n

When you feel happy, your heart is really bright, and when you are sad, it is not.<\/p>\n

With her book, she hopes parents and children will learn acceptance and love themselves and others.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is really important to love yourself,\u201d she said, \u201cso you can love others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both of her sons told Cathy they knew at a young age they were different than other boys.<\/p>\n

She said it made her feel terrible, that they spent a lot of time feeling bad about themselves, thinking something was wrong with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t have a very bright heart light if your not living as your true self,\u201d Cathy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt (the book) talks about all the things love is, love is caring, love is sharing, love is peaceful and more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cathy said if we are ever going to be peaceful with each other, we have to start embracing these kinds of feelings and thoughts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to reach out to families that not only know their children are gay, but families that might not.\u201d<\/p>\n

kmills@postindependent.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cathy Heyliger enjoys an afternoon with her sons Ben, left, and Web, right. Heyliger recently published a book about love and acceptance inspired by her sons.Kyle Mills \/ Post Independent It was about 14 years ago when Cathy Heyliger first had an indication. Heyliger and her children were at a kids\u2019 library in Boulder, surrounded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1311179","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 19:37:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1311179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1311182,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1311179\/revisions\/1311182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1311179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1311179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1311179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}