Country music star Chely Wright talked
to gay teens about coming out on Wednesday's The Nate Berkus Show.
Berkus gave the youth lounge at YES, an
LGBT community center in New York, a makeover and sent Wright to tour
the new space.
After the space's new look was
unveiled, Wright
sat down with the teens.
“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.