Sara Cunningham: From Rejection to Free Mom Hugs

Sara Cunningham built her life inside the church. A devout Southern Baptist in Oklahoma City, she and her husband, Rex, spent two decades raising their family in an evangelical faith that shaped everything they did. So when their younger son, Parker, came out to her at 21, Sara did not respond with acceptance. She responded with shame.

"When he came out of his closet," she says, "I went into mine." She went into a depression, stayed in her room, and feared her son would be condemned. "I thought my son was going to burn in hell," she has said, and she wrestled with her faith "as if I had to choose between my faith and my son."

That is where Sara's story begins, and it is exactly why it matters. The woman who reacted with fear and rejection is the same woman who, a few years later, pinned a homemade button to her dress and began offering hugs to strangers at Pride. Today she is the founder of Free Mom Hugs, a national nonprofit standing in for absent parents in all 50 states. Her first reaction was not her last.

Snapshot of This True Story:

• Sara Cunningham is an Oklahoma City mother and devout Christian who, when her son Parker came out at 21, responded with shame, fear, and rejection.

• She felt she had to choose between her faith and her son, and believed he would be condemned to hell.

• Her turning point came as she met LGBTQ people who had been thrown out of their homes and alienated from their churches, one young man carrying both self-harm marks and that rejection.

• She came to believe the scriptures used against her son had been misused, and she learned that conversion therapy was still legal and practiced in Oklahoma.

• In 2015, she pinned a handmade "Free Mom Hugs" button to her sundress at Oklahoma City Pride and started offering hugs to anyone who needed one.

• That act grew into a 501(c)(3) with chapters in all 50 states, connecting rejected LGBTQ people with stand-in moms and dads and showing up where families would not.

• Her message to parents is the heart of her story: the way you first react does not have to be the way the story ends.

"When He Came Out of His Closet, I Went Into Mine"

For most of Parker's life, Sara did not let the conversation happen. "His whole life he came out to me," she has said, "but I thought it was a phase." At 21, he made it unavoidable. "Mom, I met someone, and I need you to be okay about it," she remembers him saying.

She was not okay with it. Sara describes retreating into shame and silence, convinced that affirming her son would betray her faith and that his life would end in judgment. Later she would name what that rejection cost. "I missed the entire adolescence of my son's life," she has said, describing a home where Parker "had to pretend to be someone else."

This is the part so many parents recognize, and it is also the warning at the center of this site. A rejecting response is not neutral. Family rejection is one of the strongest predictors of depression and suicide risk in LGBTQ young people, and it is the very impulse that conversion therapy takes and formalizes into a program. Sara's shame was sincere. It was also dangerous.

The Encounter That Cracked Her Open

What changed Sara was not an argument. It was a person. As she began, hesitantly, to enter her son's world, she met young people who had been cast out by the people who were supposed to love them.

She describes one young man who had been alienated from his family and his church, with self-harm marks on his arm. Sitting with him, she felt something her theology had not prepared her for. "I just felt such unconditional love for that person I hardly knew," she says. The encounter did what lectures could not: it let her see her own son in a stranger's pain.

From there, her certainty started to come apart in the right direction. "I learned that the scriptures used to condemn my son were misinterpreted, misunderstood, and misused," she says. And she noticed something about Parker himself. Before he came out he had been depressed and anxious; afterward, in her words, "when my son began living authentically, he was happy." The change in her child was its own kind of evidence.

What She Learned About the Harm

The more Sara listened, the more she understood the scale of what LGBTQ people in her state were facing. She heard story after story of young people kicked out of their homes and shut out of their church families. "I learned that my straight son has more rights than my gay son," she says.

She also learned something that connects her story directly to this site. "Conversion therapy," she says, naming any practice or prayer meant to make a gay person straight, "is still legal, sought out, and paid for in Oklahoma." That is the practice every major medical body has rejected as ineffective and harmful, with documented harms that include a markedly elevated suicide risk. Sara had come to the same conclusion the research had, just by paying attention to the people in front of her.

Free Mom Hugs

In June 2015, Sara made a homemade button that read "Free Mom Hugs," pinned it to her sundress, and went to the Oklahoma City Pride Festival. She offered hugs, a kind word, a well wish, to anyone who wanted one. "The very first hug went to a beautiful girl," she recalls, and with each embrace came a similar story of a parent who had turned away.

What started as one mother on a sidewalk became a movement. Free Mom Hugs is now a 501(c)(3) with chapters in all 50 states, where volunteers show up at Pride events, weddings, schools, and hospitals to offer the love a parent was supposed to give. Sara herself has stood in as "mom" at weddings for couples whose own families refused to come.

Her faith did not disappear in the process; it deepened and changed. A pastor from an affirming church near her home reached out after hearing her story, and in 2016 Sara was ordained. She had found what conversion therapy insists does not exist: a way to hold her faith and her son at the same time.

A Message for Parents Who Reacted the Way She Did

If you read Sara's early reaction and felt a flush of recognition, this page is written for you, and so is she. Sara does not hide her beginning. She rejected her son, shamed him, and lost years she cannot get back. She tells that part on purpose.

She tells it because the ending is different, and reachable. Today she and Parker are close, and she has turned her regret into a lifeline for other families. "There's a mom out there like me then," she says, "who needs a mom like me now." That is the whole thesis of her life after Pride: the parent who gets it wrong at first can still become the parent their child needs.

For a mother or father sitting in the shame Sara once sat in, her story is permission to begin again. The first reaction is not the verdict. The relationship can be repaired. And there is a community of people, many of them former skeptics themselves, ready to help you find your way there.

Key Lessons from Sara's Story for Parents

Your first reaction is not your final one. Sara rejected Parker and became his fiercest advocate. If she could travel that distance, so can a parent who is only at the beginning of it.

Rejection is the danger, not your child. The shame and silence are what harm kids, and conversion therapy is that rejection turned into a paid program. Acceptance is the protective factor.

Faith and your child are not a forced choice. Sara kept her faith and found a church that affirmed them both. The choice she feared turned out to be false.

Your child is lighter when they can be honest. Parker went from anxious and depressed to happy once he could live authentically. Watch for that change; it tells the truth.

You do not have to do this alone. Free Mom Hugs exists because a mom like Sara once needed a mom like Sara. Support is out there for your whole family.

Share Your Own Story

If this account resonated with you and you'd like to share your story, please feel free to share your own experiences surrounding conversion therapy in any capacity. We look forward to hearing your story.