Distance isn’t a barrier to supporting LGBTQ youth in Battle Creek, Vermontville, and beyond

Editor’s note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave’s On the Ground Battle Creek series.

The separation between Calhoun and Eaton counties exists only on paper for an organization with a goal of supporting LGBTQ youth in rural areas throughout the state of Michigan.

In 2022, Christine Terpening founded “I’ll Be Your Rock” (IBYR) in her hometown of Vermontville. With her support and encouragement, IBYR chapters are in the planning stages for six communities in Michigan and one in Livingston, TX. They will join already-existing chapters in Vermontville and Eastern Ingham County.

“When I started it, I thought I’d only be helping kids in the Maple Valley School District. We’ve got chapters up and running and have a waiting list for new chapters,” Terpening says.

Battle Creek Pride (BC Pride)has its own youth group called Constellations, and there has been discussion about getting the two youth organizations together, says Kim Leigh Langridge, former Co-President of BC Pride. 

“Christine has been a source of inspiration for me since we first met,” Langridge says. “When I visited the Vermontville Youth Pride Festival back in 2022, I was amazed at the energy and effort she put into that event.  The care and concern she has for all her kids and families shines through in everything she does.”

Since then, Terpening has spoken at several BC Pride events, including their 2025 Candlelight Vigil. On March 10, she attended a Battle Creek City Commission meeting to discuss the importance of having the Pride flag flying over City Hall.

On Tuesday (March 17), a discussion about this will again be on the City Commission’s agenda, and commissioners are expected to formally vote on whether or not to have that flag fly.

“I am definitely a fangirl of Christine Terpening,” says Langridge.

Some communities have wanted for years to start their own organizations for youth who identify as LGBTQ, similar to Battle Creek and Vermontville. Terpening says they have not moved forward because of fear and the current political climate.

Phoenix Jano is one of those expressing concerns about the challenges to establishing a chapter in Livingston, TX.

“I have had difficulty getting anyone interested in being involved in the group,” Jano says. “I think fear is a major component, as the Texas legislature and government have put out direct attacks on the community, and there is a lot of conservative Christian belief in the immediate area that tends to be at minimum unsupportive to the community.”

This has not been Terpening’s experience in Vermontville, which is considered a rural community with a population of 790. The growth she has seen since founding that chapter speaks to a need and a commitment Terpening made to herself after coming out when she was in her mid-40’s.

“I thought if I could help one kid, it’s all worth it. That one kid showed up for a meeting in January, and we had a ball playing ball. By March, we were pushing tables together, and I had kids coming from cities like Detroit and Kalamazoo. I knew we couldn’t have kids driving so far to get here, and new chapters started to open.”

These days, she may have 12 kids attend monthly meetings where they set the agenda, which often involve activities like card games, art projects, or the planning of the first-ever Vermontville Youth PRIDE organization which will hold its fifth annual celebration in August.

“You don’t automatically become gay when you’re 18,” Terpening says. “Wouldn’t it be a great idea to help kids become healthy and non-traumatized early on in their lives?”

The volunteers working with these youth are called “Rocks”.

Prior to accepting and embracing the person she had kept closeted, Terpening saw a news report that said 60 percent of youth who identify as gay commit suicide. This was followed by a more encouraging statistic that is supported by the Trevor Project, which said that “LGBTQ youth who report having at least one accepting adult were 40% less likely to report a suicide attempt.”

“I was a volleyball coach at the time, and one of my players accidentally came out to me. I saw the fear in their eyes and knew how that felt. I thought about that young person and could not bear the thought of not having this child in the world.”

Her decision to come out publicly was a small price to pay, she says, if it would allow her to be there to support LGBTQ youth like that volleyball player.

“To help kids, I had to come out myself, and I heard these words in my head, ‘I’ll be that rock,” Terpening says. “That was on a Thursday, and by Saturday, an FFA (Future Farmers of America) instructor told me that a young person had committed suicide. That was like God kicking me in the pants and saying, ‘I got you through this, now you have to help others.’”

Making peace with herself and moving on

The calm, collected persona she was portraying outwardly prior to coming out masked internal struggles that left her feeling “cracked.”

Brought up on a farm two miles away from the farm where she and her ex-husband raised three children and where she continues to live, she says she had a “fantastic” upbringing. But she wondered why she wasn’t attracted to boys and didn’t have access to information that would have helped her understand.

“I was growing up on a farm on a dirt road in the 70s and 80s, and there was no positive referencing to the LGBTQ community, and it scared me. The messaging was that being gay was wrong, and I was terrified because I was very worried that might be me.”

In her earlier years, Terpening was a Rodeo Queen and travelled throughout the United States and to Canada for the Calgary Rodeo Stampede.

“I was worried that people would find out and I wouldn’t be celebrated,” she says.

When she reached adulthood, she did what was expected during that time and married Eric in 1994. Together, they had three children, all adults now.

“We’d been friends all through school, and I loved him dearly, and it was the thing to do in the 70s and 80s. I loved him like you’re supposed to love a man. I thought I was better when I met him. He’s a war veteran, and when he went into the Navy, I waited for him for six years. He’s an amazing human being. He and I raised an incredible family, and our kids are all successful.”

It was during this time that she began to see more widespread positive representations of the gay community.

This, she says, “led to a lot of sadness and a ‘missed the boat’ feeling until I completely fell apart. When I started IBYR was when I started to rebuild me.”

Terpening and her husband remain technically married, although she has a partner, a woman she met in New York City.

“I had filed for divorce in 2020 during the pandemic. The hardest thing to do is to divorce someone you still love immensely. By the time the papers came, I had just been diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. Eric asked me not to go through with the divorce because I would need his health insurance.”

In 2021, she officially came out, satisfying the community rumor mill, which had been churning with supposition.

“I was inundated by people writing me with their support — former students and people I had known raising my own kids — that took the weight off of my shoulders,” Terpening says, while acknowledging that there are some in the tight-knit Vermontville community who want nothing to do with her.

Terpening says she, her new partner, Eric, and their children are a family, getting together frequently. She says he is “quite a catch” and whoever he ends up with will be a very lucky woman.

“The world saw me as a confident person who had her stuff together, but nobody knew what I felt like on the inside,” she says. “If I make people feel uncomfortable, that’s their problem. We’re helping kids who don’t have the words to come out to someone they love and trust. Until they can come out, we want them to know that we are here and we see them.”