Ben Annen is a Contact Center Teamleader for Consumers Energy. He came out as gay to his family and friends at the age of 38. Listen as he talks about his journey to being his authentic self.
Ben Annen is a Contact Center Teamleader for Consumers Energy. He came out as gay to his family and friends at the age of 38. Listen as he talks about his journey to being his authentic self.
Description
Me You Us, sponsored by Consumers Energy, dives deeper into the physical, financial, emotional, social, and professional pillars that make up our overall well-being and contribute to our mental health. Through the sharing of personal experiences and conversations with industry experts, we can collaboratively support one another and increase our consideration for the personal well-being of those around us.
Ben Annen is a Contact Center Team leader for Consumers Energy. He came out as gay to his family and friends at the age of 38. Listen as he talks about his journey to being his authentic self.
William Krieger
The views and opinions of the guests of the Me You Us podcast do not represent the views and opinions of Consumers Energy. Hello, everyone and welcome to Me You Us, a wellbeing podcast. It's another wellbeing Wednesday here at Consumers Energy. And I'm your host Bill Krieger. Today, my guest is Ben Annen. He is a team leader in the Contact Center here at Consumers Energy. So Ben, if you'd introduce yourself, we'll get the conversation started.
Ben
Hi, everyone. My name is Ben Annen, like Bill had said, I am a team leader out of the Grand Rapids Contact Center. I've been with Consumers Energy for about four and a half years at this point. Worked in the Contact Center the entire time. I have four kids who are awesome. And teaching my second oldest how to drive this summer. And finally got my oldest a car. So I don't have to be the buggy that gets people everywhere anymore, which is kind of nice. But yeah, that's a little bit about me.
William Krieger
Scary times because I remember teaching my kids to drive. Sounds like you've already kind of got one under your belt. So this next one, it should be easier.
Ben
Yeah, I hope.
William Krieger
So Ben, if you could tell the audience just a little bit about what you do as a team lead in the Contact Center?
Ben
Yeah, I have anywhere between 12 to 15. customer service reps on my team, typically, who are taking customer calls, day in day out to place orders deal with gas or electric emergencies, set up new construction, pay bills, all those types of things. And I helped coach them and guide them through those calls. Also take any kind of escalated situation and try to work through that. As a team leader, we get those calls daily. So we're interacting with customers as well. And then just a bunch of different meetings like everyone else here who we have different projects and different goals that we're working towards. So I'm attending those, you know, on and off throughout the day as well.
William Krieger
We definitely have to have our meetings and all that's important. Well, thanks for sharing all of that. And then also, can you tell me a little bit about what it was like growing up Ben.
Ben
Um, so I grew up. I'm the son of a dairy farmer. So my dad managed a huge dairy farm. About an hour south of Grand Rapids, we milked 1800 cows a day. So I know a lot about farm life and just more than you probably ever want to know. But that was me growing up. We had some of our own farm animals at the house. And then we went to the farm and by the time I was 15, I was helping out on the farm doing work there. And my older brother doing the same thing. So we grow up with a really strong work ethic, whether it be working in the barn or working in the fields, throwing hay and straw, and picking rocks doing whatever went to church every Sunday, I grew up in a Methodist Church in a little town called Delton Michigan. And that was my life growing up, you know, is pretty typical country life. My parents still live on a dirt road and same place that I grew up at. Yeah, that was that was my life as a kid from there. I you know, I went to high school, went to college, moved up to Grand Rapids went to Calvin College. Dropped out about halfway through because I realized that I didn't like school. And then went back later on in life when I grew up a little bit because I realized having that degree is definitely an important piece.
William Krieger
So I'm just curious. Growing up on a dairy farm, I had to think you probably got a pretty early in the morning.
Ben
So if we were milking, yes, they milked on three different shifts throughout the day. So there was one shift that would start at like 4:30 in the morning. So you'd definitely be up early if you're doing that. I did milk overnights for a while. So I was milking from like 11 or no like nine to three. But yeah, it just depends on the shift that they're working, and they milk three times a day. So around the clock business at that point.
William Krieger
I didn't I didn't realize that so today are you an early riser or not early? Are you a morning person?
Ben
I am not a morning person; I could stay up all hours of the night. I honestly despised sleeping. I feel like it's such a waste of time. So yeah, I don't get much sleep either way.
William Krieger
Okay. Well, I was I was just kind of curious. I know a lot of the folks I talked to that, you know, grew up on farms, it was get up at four o'clock in the morning and do your thing and all of that. So this is an interesting take on that. And I did not realize that they milked like around the clock. But I guess with that, that many cattle, you would have to do it some way that made sense.
Ben
Yep, three, eight-hour shifts, they would milk and then they would have you know, 16 hours in between each cow well, and then they'd go back in again. So that was their job to.
William Krieger
There you go. So you went to college, and much like myself, you were like, Oh, this is just not for me. But went off, did some other things. And then and then went back to college. What happened after all of that.
Ben
So when I was at Calvin, I had stepped away, just started working. During that time. I you know, I was I moved back home with my parents, I was still in a fairly small town. And I was really involved with my church doing a lot of the music through my church. So I would lead all the music on Sundays and Wednesdays with the youth kids got involved in a summer camp and moved to a bigger church because I got hired there to do music for that church and eventually met my wife through that program, and we got married. Pretty early. I was like when 22 and she was 20. We had a kid probably about a year and a half later. So we had kids really quickly and then ended up moving to San Diego where her parents were at. And spent a majority of probably my early adult life in San Diego about 10 years, from probably like 25 to 35. Did a little stint in Denver for a while because the company I was working with transferred us there. But I definitely still consider San Diego to be my second home. I love that place.
William Krieger
Yes, I actually when I was in the Navy, I went to basic training in San Diego. And yeah, I took my I took my daughter to California for spring break, probably four years ago, five years ago now. And we stayed up at Port Hueneme in California and then we rented a car and drove down Pacific Coast Highway. And it was a convertible. So it was amazing. But I got there and I'm like, Oh, I'm going to show you where I went to boot camp. Right? It doesn't exist anymore. He's a big subdivision now.
Ben
Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's totally different.
William Krieger
Yeah, I got that. I'm like, where's the Navy base that the people were like, that's been gone for a long time. What did you live under a rock? So you say do change. But I do love that area. I fell in love with it when I was there for. I think it was only here for about eight months. But fond memories of San Diego. Definitely.
Ben
It's hard not to it's perfect weather all the time.
William Krieger
It really is. And that's not even that's not even a poster or a lie. That's just the truth. Like there were never, even though even the cruddy days were kind of nice. So it sounds like things are just kind of chugging along, you have kids and you're married in and then what happened.
Ben
So then 2015 We started talking about moving back home to Michigan. My marriage wasn't great. We had four kids. And all of our family was gone. At that point, her parents had moved back to Grand Rapids where they were originally from. And all my family is from here. So we decided to move back. And it continued to be rocky throughout that move. I mean, it's not easy to move across country multiple times, let alone with four children. But we did it and we had done it before. But at some point, our marriage just wasn't continuing on. We decided to get divorced. And after that I did a lot of soul searching, trying to figure out like, what was I going to do now? Like whom was I going to be? And it kept coming back to me to be like, who I really was right, like for the first time in a very, very long time I felt like I had freedom to live to just be my true self. So that summer of 2016 I think it was I came out as a gay man. And it was very difficult. My family was really not happy about it. My like parents and my brother, my brother said he works with high schoolers, so he understands how wishy-washy people can be. So he didn't get it right away. Right. My dad was actually really supportive, which was surprising to me. And my mom pretty much wrote me off. My then ex-wife was I mean, I don't know, I can't put the words in her mouth of what she was going through, right. But there was definitely a lot of shock. And just the feeling of being betrayed and lied to for our entire marriage, essentially, right? Like, how do you proclaim one thing, and then all of a sudden, you're you say you're gay, and that you always have been. But that was a that was a really interesting year in my life. And that was the same year I got hired into consumers, a lot of changes happened that year.
William Krieger
No, absolutely. So you know, I want to talk about this a little bit, too, because, you know, I think that some people might look at this and go, Oh, well, you somehow Ben, you turned gay, like, you just turned gay. Like, it's you woke up one day and decided that I'm going to be gay. But if I hear kind of, in your voice, this is something that maybe was in the back of your mind earlier in life. But you're a Midwestern kid, you're a church going guy. You kind of doing what you're expected to do. So like, at what age did you really kind of know that you were that you were not all of these things that you thought you were?
Ben
I knew I would. This is a hard thing. I knew I was different when I was young, right? Probably fifth grade to seventh grade that was starting to solidify. Like, I knew that there was an attraction to men at that point. But everything in my life was like, that's not how you are supposed to be. Right? Like, my church said that that was not okay. My community at school, my friends, like there was not, I don't know, a gay person in Delton and let alone when I was in school. So growing up in a small Midwestern church going white town, like, I had no example of what that looks like, in my life. So I, being the youngest, followed in the footsteps of my family, right. Like I wanted to do what I thought was I was supposed to do, I didn't want to be ostracized, I didn't want to be kicked out of the life that I thought I had built at that point, which, you know, you're young, but what else do you have? At that point? You have nothing. So yeah, I knew I knew early on. By especially my Christian upbringing, I think had a big part in me not coming out earlier. I wanted kids, I thought that I wanted to be married to a woman I, you know, I almost you almost brainwash yourself right into this. This is what I'm supposed to do. This is what I'm supposed to be. So I'm going to do it and be happy, right? Like, that's just that's the norm that you saw. So I did, and I wasn't happy. You know, you can, you could ask my ex-wife today, like, I was not a happy person for the majority of our marriage. And it wasn't because I didn't love her that let's be honest about it. Like, I grew to love her as a person. Right? We were best friends. We still are good friends, surprisingly. But the attraction was not there.
William Krieger
And so how did that? How did it impact you? You know, kind of that whole time? Really, before you were married, and I hear you, I hear you saying hey, I really couldn't be my authentic self. I had to be this thing that I was being this mold that I was supposed to fit into. How did how did that kind of impact you in different stages in your life? Because I know you know, I think about when I was 9 or 10 in my relationships with my friendships and then you know, through junior high in high school and, and how who I am as a person shaped a lot of those relationships. And so how did you see that?
Ben
I think I learned early on to fake my way through whatever situation I needed to. Because I knew if I said something's off or I acted in a specific way that I would look different. And you know, you didn't want to do that as a kid. But they still knew like somehow kids still, I didn't remember in seventh grade being made fun of in the boy’s locker room, right? I remember, as a high schooler there being, like derogatory slurs about homosexuality and me on the chalkboard wall in the locker room, I was an athlete, I tried to fit in any way I could. But those pieces still crept through no matter what I would do. So I think I learned really early on, or through those developmental years to really hide that part so deep that nobody would know. Right? Because I did not want to be different. I didn't want to be estranged from everyone.
William Krieger
So I want to kind of go fast forward a little bit. And so when you when you finally came out, did anyone like surprise you by saying something along the lines of like, “we kind of knew this”? Yeah, we knew it. Why didn't you?
Ben
Well, my ex said, I kind of knew that. So that was, you know, even though she had felt like she was being lied to, like, all of the signs were there. Like, let's not stereotype, but I love musicals, I'm pretty flamboyant in life. I am not your typical, like, Midwestern corn fed man that we expect, like the hypermasculinity that we see out there. That's just not how I see myself and not how I act. So she wasn't necessarily surprised, even though she was shocked. I did have other friends from high school, reach out and say, finally, like, so excited for you. And I've actually connected with some of those people again now that I've come out. And they were like, we knew we just, you know, we didn't want to put you a sticker on you. Right? put a label on you as to who you are, we want to get in and just be yourself.
William Krieger
Well, and that's interesting, because I think the people around us sometimes know us better than we know ourselves. And so you know, you finally, were able to have this moment, you're able to come out and you're able to really be yourself. How does that feel? So personally, I think it would be like there's this part where it would be terrifying. And then there's this other part where it would be so liberating. And so how did you feel
Ben
about that? Yeah, it is both, right? It's 100% both. Because you feel the freest that you've ever been, because you actually are so true to who you are in now, in that moment, right? And in those times, but it's also so terrifying that all of the persona or masks or whatever that we've put on through our whole life are gone. And we're exposed to be ridiculed to be looked at differently to be different again. But I think once you grow up a bit different, you realize different isn't always a bad. That takes time.
William Krieger
So Ben kind of along those lines, though, you know, I know that some people, as you were saying, so we were kind of shocked. Some people were like, hey, you know, we're so excited for you. What would you say overall has been the response.
Ben
So it depends on what side of my life you live. So in regard to my family, they have come around, I will say, for the most part, my immediate family. My dad's been supportive since day one, my brother is now supportive. My mom talks to me, and we still have we openly communicate, but it's not even close to what it was previously, which is unfortunate. Outside of my family I have no friends that I had previously because they were like, my ex and my friends. And they are all on her side. You know because they have to pick sides and I get that on some level. They were lied too as well. And I can't be overly upset about it. But nobody's mean right let it just, we don't communicate anymore. But I have new friends, I have new life, I'm open at work and accepted at work, which I never thought would be possible. I have an amazing group of peers in the call center who are super supportive. I’m part of the PACE team. And they're amazing. So yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's different, but it's good.
William Krieger
Well, in for our listeners who may not know, PACE is the pride alliance of Consumers Energy. And they are they're kind of representing the LGBTQ community, as well as allies and supporters. So you know, as with any employee resource group, you don't necessarily have to be a person who identifies as that group in order to be a part of that. So I just want to make sure our audience knew that. You know, Ben, I've heard you say it a couple of times. And I really want to talk a little bit if you're comfortable with this concept of people feeling as though they were lied to. And I really want to kind of get your thoughts on that. Because I think I think there's a difference between like actively lying to people, and also just trying to find your way in thinking that this is the right path and then discovering that it's not, so I've heard you say it a few times. And how do you feel about that? When people think or feel that you've lied to them, when in reality, I think you've been as honest as you can be?
Ben
Yeah, it's a hard one. For me. I think there are a lot of values that I hold from my upbringing. And because of the life that I lived, there's a feeling of deception and deception equals a lie in my mind, whether that's true or not, that's just kind of how it feels. So I think when I say lie, they felt deceived in some way about who I was. Maybe it wasn't actively like telling a lie or lying to their face, but I was. The feeling is that I was deceptive to them by not being who I actually am if that makes sense.
William Krieger
Yes. And I think the irony in all of that is that you're really kind of being deceptive to yourself.
Ben
Oh, yeah. Totally. Like, the happiness that I have. Now. The, the fulfillment of being true to me. Is, is unbelievable, right? Like, I can't imagine my life anymore being in that place of deception even towards me. Because I'm, I'm free, right? I don't have to feel like I'm wearing a mask or hiding behind something. I'm just, I'm just Ben now. And people like it, and they're happy about it.
William Krieger
Well, that's a good place to be. So then we you know, we've talked about your friends and your family. And you know, we know that you have children, because you're teaching your second one how to drive right now. How did your children kind of take this?
Ben
It's been, it's been rough at times, though, when I came out to them. It was a little bit after I came out to their mother. My oldest at that time was 11. And my youngest was 4. So I had an 11-year-old, a nine-year-old, a seven-year-old and a four-year-old at that time. My seven- and four-year-old they it's my daughter, and then my son is my youngest, they don't really understand the difference because they were young enough where it was just that mommy and daddy weren't together anymore. The concept of being gay didn't come into play until later until I met my partner, Dirk. And then they started to grow up with him around so that came became pretty normal for them pretty easily. My two older boys, my 11-year-old and my nine-year-old who are now 17 and 15. Um, it was probably more of a struggle for them. I've had some conversations with my 15-year-old, and he really isn't happy about it. He still isn’t. He's nice to me. He's nice to my partner. We've had a lot of fights. I mean, it's part of it's the age, but it's part of it is he thinks I'm wrong for who I am. And that's tough, right? It's definitely created a rift in our relationship. But it's getting better. I think the older that he gets, the more he starts to realize that my dad is a human also, and we have some better conversation. So, you know, it's a work in progress. My oldest is, he's an interesting boy, he is probably the most loving person I've ever met and accepting of people. He talks to me all the time about his friends at school who are LGBTQ plus, he is super comfortable with it. And it's been great. So no issues with him whatsoever. So it's, I don't know, time will tell, I feel like we've done the right things and had the right conversations we’re really open. Which I think we've always been open in our family about different issues. And I think that has helped bridge some of that gap. But you know, it'll continue to be something that we talk about for the rest of our lives.
William Krieger
Well, you know, I want to kind of toss this out there. So I, I've kind of talked about this concept a few times now with folks on the podcast, but, you know, if I woke up tomorrow and called my parents and said, Mom, Dad, I'm heterosexual I, you know, I, I'm attracted to women. No one, no one's going to bat an eye. But like, it's yeah, they're like, Oh, well, okay, thanks for telling us have a nice day. But the opposite would be true if I called and said, Mom, Dad, I'm I, you know, I'm gay. I'm attracted to men. And so do you, like foresee a time were coming out isn't even a thing?
Ben
That's a really good question. I don't. And if I did, it would be many, many, many, many years from now, because I think our society is still so based around the heteronormative cultures that we've built. We haven't created the space yet for that to actually happen. So if it does, it'll be a long time from now. I hope it would, I wish it would be that way. But it's still not the place where people are safe or comfortable, to be who they are to be gay to be out.
William Krieger
Which again, I find interesting because being gay is not new. It's been around for a while. So I will be interested to see if someday we get there. Well, Ben, we are getting close to the end of the podcast, and I appreciate you answering all of my tough questions. And, you know, being fully transparent with the audience, it's been great getting to know you. But before we go, I'd like to give you this opportunity to kind of leave a message with the audience. So what would you like the audience to take away from our conversation today?
Ben
Oh, I'm going to get emotional.
William Krieger
That's okay. I've cried more than once on this podcast.
Ben
I think the thing that I would leave people with is, don't hide who you are. I think I lived so long in the shadow of who I was hiding myself that I didn't realize the potential that I had, until way later in life. Sorry, if there if I couldn't have lived that life, I don't know what would have been different. But I know that there could have been a big difference. So don't hide who you are, be who you are. Look for groups that will accept you because they're there. There are so many people out there who will love you for who you are.
William Krieger
Alright, well thank you for that. And I love the message you just be who you are be your authentic self. So then once again, thanks for coming on and talking with me in the audience. And I look forward to talking with you again.
Ben
No problem. Bill. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it so much.
William Krieger
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