StoryCorps' OutLoud initiative records stories from the LGBTQ community.
Deidra Robinson and her father, William Watford III, were extremely close — until she told him she was gay.
They came to StoryCorps in Homewood, a suburb of Birmingham, Ala., to talk about that moment.
Their story may sound familiar to many families.
"I looked at you and I said, 'Do you want to hear it?' " Robinson tells her father. "Do you remember what you told me?"
"No," Watford answers.
"You were like, 'No, I don't want to hear it,' " she recalls.
The two didn't speak for two and a half years.
"I'm a daddy's girl, and I missed just talking to you," Robinson says.
"Yeah, well, the kind of relationship me and you we used to have?" Watford answers. "You know I missed that. That's what tore my heart out."
He says he realized that if he wanted that relationship back, he had to accept Robinson for who she was. And he did.
"So we're back to where we used to be, I think," she says.
"Yep. It's better than it was. It's like a weight been lifted off of me," he says.
Audio produced forWeekend Edition Sundayby Allison Davis.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.