Orman first found mainstream success in 1997, just when Ellen DeGeneres came out to the world on the cover of Time magazine. Her first book, Nine Steps to Financial Freedom, was released just two weeks before that issue hit newsstands, and the year was a watershed moment in the cultural acceptance of lesbians.
But like many other gay people, Orman has experienced painful prejudice. It was her sexuality, she says, that nearly destroyed her relationship with her mother, who died last year at the age of 97. “The truth of the matter,” she says, “is she never accepted that I was gay. She loved KT dearly, but she wouldn’t tell me that she loved me. She wouldn’t go there with me. And after her death, my aunt sat me down and said, ‘Suze, I just want you to know: It wasn’t that your mother didn’t love you. She never could accept that you were gay. And she felt like it was her fault.’ How sad is that? The greatest thing that ever happened to me in my whole life—being gay, and knowing I was gay from day one—and she was sad about it, and that’s what prevented her from loving me. Amazing, huh?” (Orman’s father killed himself decades ago, before Orman achieved any fame. She calls it her biggest regret that he didn’t see her succeed.)
The story, like so much of Suze Orman’s story, answers a question while raising a contradiction. The gay pioneer scarred by her own mother’s intolerance. The savvy businesswoman hamming it up as a stark raving mad TV host. And most glaringly, the fabulously wealthy woman professing to shoulder the burdens of the poor.
