My Story
I was born in Spokane, Washington, and grew up in Idaho with six siblings, an overbearing father, and a Jehovah’s Witness mother. What could possibly go wrong?

When I was a teenager, our family moved to Alaska where my father opened his own grocery stores where I worked as I finished high school. I spent one full semester at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, but my collegiate experiment ended when my newfound religion encouraged me to become a minister instead. I got married early in life, and we had a beautiful daughter.

When I was 22, I joined a small employee recruiting firm in Boise. I was just looking for a decent paycheck so I had no idea I would spend the next fifty years in that industry, eventually launch my own company Dan Bolen and Associates, and carve out a reputation as a renowned national expert in the field. There was, however, a dark side to the shiny veneer of my outer success, which was that I used addictions, to work and religion, to bury who I was. To the outside world I was the millionaire founder of the number-one executive search firm in the country; on the inside I was isolated and walled off from myself.

Finally, as I retired in my early seventies and paused to face myself for the first time, I found the courage to come out as gay. That was no easy task as I had to confront and process all my emotions without any of my trusty old hiding places in work and religion. Being my authentic self was fully liberating and also cost me everything: my marriage to my second wife ended, my church cast me out, and my family and all the people who I thought were friends, who were all Jehovah’s Witnesses, cut off all contact with me. I had lost everyone to gain myself.

Yes, I was alone, but oddly for the first time in my life I no longer felt alone. I’d finally come home. I have found true peace for the first time in my life by leaning into myself instead of always running away from myself.

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EMAIL: danbolen@cox.net

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