Community Rainbow Waves

Proud Lesbian

My journey started at quite a young age, maybe around 10 years ago, I was only 13 years old. At that time the LGBTQ2IA+ was poorly represented in movies or TV shows. As the years went by these platforms as well as social media, were slowly starting to represent more of this community. The growth of these platform started to make me realize that maybe there was an explanation as to why I was « different » to others.

By the time I was 15, I had had 2 very small and insignificant relationships with boys. All my friends had serious relationship with their boyfriends and had even taken it a step further than just kissing. I felt like I was being left behind as I always felt scared and uncomfortable to take that next step. I couldn’t understand why I was so scared.

Watching many tv shows I would see more and more lesbian couples and felt like I was being more interested in their representations. I started thinking that there must have been a reason as to why I would be more interested in them and started to seriously question myself on my sexuality.

When I was 16, I knew I liked girls. I was sure of myself. Boys just did not interest me anymore. I was scared though, I had no friends that could understand what I was going through. I felt very alone in this judgy world, no one to share my secret with. Seeing all my friends obsess over who the « cute boy » of class or the school. I felt like I was just in the background just nodding from time to time to not expose myself.
One day I just decided to slowly start talking to my mom about me questioning my sexuality. I was still not confident enough to tell her the whole truth. I was so scared, not knowing how she would react, I was crying. She told me she would support and love me unconditionally no matter who I decided to be. I felt a bit relieved but still scared at how other people would react. I then left it at that and did not speak of it again for years, to her or anyone else.

2 year later, I was going to leave the nest, to go live in a different country. A few days before leaving, that’s when the question I was most dreading came out of my moms lips: « have you figured out who you want to be? ». With tears running down my face I admitted to her that I am a lesbian. She was proud of me and I really felt loved and supported. The hardest thing I ever had to do was finally out there but only my mom knew my secret.

When I moved to London I thought to myself, I’m in a new city, with new people and no one who knows me. So I decided I will be who I want to be and not tailor myself to be fake around people that I know would have judged me for who I am.
I felt such a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.
I felt like I was living again.
I was HAPPY again.

A year later I came back home to France. And it was at that moment that my new world came crumbling around me. I found out that my mom had outed me to my entire family right after I had told her. For a whole year my family knew I am a lesbian but kept me in the dark. I felt ashamed and hurt to have my voice taken away from me in what was the hardest thing of my life. She did not do it to hurt me though, she just thought she was helping me.

I have never told this to anyone nor to her but I was extremely hurt by what she had decided to do with my big secret. 5 years later and it stills bugs me a lot. I did not have the chance to come out to my family when I felt like I was ready to. I felt exposed and vulnerable to what people would think about me. However I can not be mad at my mother as family has been very supportive of who I am. But I will always have that thought and feeling in the back of my mind of having been robbed of my freedom.

During so many years I was in a very bad place of my life. Feeling alone in this giant, toxic and hurtful world, not knowing who to turn to in the hardest moments, I was scared. Now that I am proudly out I see the world in such a different way. There are people out there who will hate you for being who you want because their mind has been tailored to think in a certain way. But the way I see the world now, is that in between these haters there are beautiful and amazing people who will love you for who YOU decide to be. There will always be someone out there to love you and support you in your hard times. I am so proud to be part of the LGBTQ2IA+ community, the love and support is incredible.
Love is love and no one should judge you for who you want to be.

Be Proud.
Be Kind.
Be Loving.

HUMAN (Human Experience)

At the age of 12, (I’ll start with something that marked my life) in school I was beginning to notice discrimination from children my age. It was the age when everything around me began to affect me emotionally, shyness consumed me, I was silent for a long time, in the face of what I saw and what I heard (This was also because I grew up in a family with economic problems, communication problems, problems of home stability, (problems that exist in many families) this did not allow me to have friends, not for long).
In school, I began to experience this nervousness when someone who was attracted to you (boys and girls) would come up to you and point their finger at me (mostly because of the girls), talk behind my back. Children can be very cruel sometimes and I let that get to me.
I grew up having a different view of human beings, I grew up knowing my older brother’s sexual orientation (to label him would be gay). In my small family of my maternal grandparents, my mother, my younger sister, my older brother and I, his orientation was only a topic for my grandmother, something she found difficult to accept. This was the second thing that marked my life. My mother always saw it as something natural, it was never a subject for her. What I remember most is that she told us that we had to be who we wanted to be, and she would support us. Going back to my grandmother, what terrified me the most were her comments and her look I can’t forget, her look of disgust and rejection, I didn’t want them to look at me like that, and that’s why I decided to keep silent. And just go with the flow that was driving society. To be “normal”. But I always wondered what that meant.
Since I can remember, 4 years, I always felt different, I was very attentive to what was happening around me, but I did not remember that people were so cruel until I was 12 years old. I just felt like a little human being, living in a place that didn’t fit but I was trying hard to understand and learn.
At the age of 16 I confessed to my mother about my taste in both men and women, she looked at me, smiled at me, kissed me on the forehead and hugged me. And she told me that everything was fine. I remember walking with my sister on the way to a supermarket and we were talking about the freedom of tastes by different genders, and we are both very open-minded, we never confess or label ourselves personally.
But 3 or 4 months ago I don’t know exactly, my sister confesses to us that it is part of the non-binary genre, I already intuited it, but I never asked her because I think that it shouldn’t be a subject, I think that in all of us we should be free.

In my last years I have learned to observe and analyze more the behavior of the human being. And I don’t justify anyone’s bad behavior, but I think there are many people who live in fear and that’s their behavior.
In short, in order not to do this so long, today at 26 years of age, since this pandemic began I have rethought many things about my life and the society in which we live. And I have decided to RECONSTRUCTION myself emotionally, mentally and in many other things. RECONSTRUCTION and ACCEPTANCE. Some time ago I started with meditation and yoga and I discovered many things about myself, I realized that everything that happened in my past had to be like that, it took me to make the person I am today. I constantly have conversations with myself that give me the answers I need. I have never been emotionally dependent on anyone and I have moved away from the attachment of those emotional things that don’t allow you to evolve.
I have a core of friends who are wonderful in many ways, they are few, but, they are the kind of people that you need to have in your life, that show you how different we are in many things but you can learn from it and it would be a bit boring if we were all the same and with them I can express myself freely without getting a strange look back.
With them (my friends) and my family, I can express myself freely regardless of a person’s gender or sexuality. And so it should be. Hopefully, at some point mankind will realize that, we would all be better off as a society.
I would like to share much more, but I think that’s enough, the message is understood.
Tomorrow, September 4th, I’m having a birthday party and I decided it was already a good time to free myself. I mean, I’ve been here for a long time, but I wanted to share it.

Yesterday an acquaintance told me that Love does not exist, and I answered him with a “how can it not exist” and there you realize how damaged we are as a society. My life was also somewhat stormy but I never let myself fall, I always understood that this was only a human experience and that I had to accept it or fix it, personally.
I’m not going to label myself with respect to my tastes, I just leave it as a human experience. I didn’t know how pleasant it was to write, I wouldn’t give it up. But I have to keep going, right now I am sitting looking at my beautiful Andean mountain range while drinking an herbal tea.
It was a pleasure to share a little bit of myself. Most likely you have forgotten something.
(Sorry for the length of my story)

-Katherine, Chile.

Pansexual

I was 17 when I realized that I was into more than just guys I guess it was always in my mind but I never truly accepted it until my junior year of high. It was easy coming out to my friends since they had been suspecting for a while but it was difficult to tell my family my dad accepted me as I was but my mother never acknowledged or spoke to me about but I’ve never been happier since the day I came out

14, Louisiana, United States

I’m fourteen and not fully out to my family. I’m gay and I live in a small town in southern Louisiana where church is everything. There’s not much I can do physically in my community, so I help out through the internet. I use the internet to educate myself and learn strategies to fight against prejudice and cruelty against the community. I love to write so I write stories of inclusion and happy endings for LGBTQ+ people especially when I enter writing contests. I use my artistic abilities to depict non stereotypical people of the community. I try hard to unify and support others when I come across them on the internet. I support and reach out to other, especially younger, people in the lgbtq+ community. I’ve had several people come out to me because I was the only gay person they knew. I tried my absolute best to reassure and to give hope to them and point them in the right direction. Being that person, the person who others feel comfortable to come to with such an important part of themselves, is one of the highlights of my life. A lot of the time I feel alone, but helping others makes me realize that I don’t want others to feel that way, I want to be the person that changes that for them. I’m proud of the person I am and the people I’m helping others become. The internet can be a scary and cruel place, but I hope to make it a little bit better one step at a time.

Nat

I started to realize and accept my feelings toward girls in middle school. I had just come out of a very stressful living situation and, since my brain didn’t have anything else to ruminate on, it turned to the girl that welcomed me into my new community. I spent the next several weeks v e r y confused and ended up texting my best friend to ask for help. I explained what I was feeling and she said that it was okay. She said I didn’t need a label to be worthy.

That was maybe five years ago. Now I’m a gay woman who is out to her family and is in a serious relationship. But that doesn’t mean it’s easier. I still get looks in the hallways for kissing my girlfriend. We still get scolded by administrators for laying our heads on each other’s shoulders. My family is tentatively accepting, but I know they’re uncomfortable. But I don’t let that stop me. I still hold my girlfriend and kiss her in the hallway. I still tell her that I love her. Because I do. And this is a part of who I am. And no one will ever take that away from me.

One More Drop In This Gorgeous Sea

Firstly pardon my english, I’m actually brasilian.
We all want answers. When we are kids almost EVERYTHING amazes us, and when we grow up, our questions gets more and more complex and complicated…

But Well… I KNOW Love is not one of them. I felt it before.

When It gets complicated, then it’s not love, cause Love transforms a messy knot into a beautifull colorfull line (like a rainbow haha)

Love is understandingfull. Love is kind. And love is not just a feeling itself… It is a way to see the world, and the lackness of it, in some moments, disconect us from the BEST within us.
If you don’t believe me just remember that everything we make with loving, end up beautifull, colorfull, organized (just look at the sky at night), sweet… like a gentle breeze sliding through every strand of hair…

Love is not only about ourselves, but about others too, cause we can donate from us this beautiful energy. By admiring someone, by giving importance to that person,
by touching and being touched by everything that ever happened to that person.
But also love is NOT the absence of pain! Love is a way of living that allow us to be STRONG when pain comes, and not being complainfull about it…
there is actually a spoiled side of us to think that EVERYTHING is ALWAYS destined to end up well… (and by “well” I meant the way we WANT it to end up) Cause It won’t. Which is good, cause pain help us grow. If pain make you feel more scared, then you’re not loving.
I KNOW everything has a purpose. Nature shows us EVERYTHING has a purpose. Sometimes we just don’t know what for.
I do care about LGBT comunity, cause it is important to talk about LOVE diversity. There is many many ways to get to this sea.

As I discovered those paths I realized few important things… You don’t NEED to change everything you are because you realized something new about yourself, but if you WANT TO, then so be it: Change!
But Change for better! Use comprehension, not hate. Otherwise isn’t it hipocrisy to fight hate and exclusion with hating and exclusion?
Does EVERYTHING has to evolve through pain? Does peace has to arrive through battle wounds? Can’t we just KNOW it by heart?
It doesn’t mean we should trust everyone, It is DUMB. It means we should always hope for the better of someone, as much as we hope for ourselves.
But remember… you are still you! With new improves haha. Don’t you EVER forget who you are. What you truly believe. What you really want. And most importantly don’t you ever forget about love. And if there is no love, then you shouldn’t content yourself with less!

And I guess that’s my flag. I don’t know, but ONE DAY, I’ll be strong enough to make people around me feel like this: powerfull, bold, strong, important, seen and happy.
I am nobody. But a nobody with a lot in my mind, I guess…

Aaaaand that’s how I came out.

In the sea of my life there are still no real waves but the sea is no longer calm.

I would like to start with a line from a song I love:

Siamo destini
We are destinies

Siamo sempre noi
we are always us

Ma più vicini
but closer

the singer is “Zucchero” the song is “blu”

At the age of 30 I understood that destiny exists, but I also understood that I have to help destiny to come true.
At the age of 30 I realized that I still have to understand what happiness can really give me.
I grew up in a good Italian family, I never lacked love … but they always told me I was a certain way because I had to be perfect in society.
They never asked me what I wanted …. and my fault was never saying what I really wanted.
5 years ago I left my city, moving to Milan for work and this gave me the opportunity to understand
something more about myself.
I was supposed to marry a guy my family loved … but I couldn’t suppress the voice inside me that leads me to love women … and I had the courage to cancel the marriage … I started asking myself what I wanted.
But I do not deny that I am afraid of people’s judgment, fear stops me, fear makes me wear a mask every day, fear confuses me.
For society I am still the girl from a good family, with a good job and a good mental stability but they don’t know that inside I have a volcano of feelings that fight each other.
Last Sunday at a fair in the city, there was a fortune teller in a booth, I was walking and she came to meet me, she looked me in the eyes and told me that inside I suffer but I also have a lot of light to give … it’s was the first stranger to understand this.
In the sea of my life there are still no real waves but the sea is no longer calm.
I just need to have more courage.

A Penguin.

Ok, firstly I have to say that my English is not very good. So I’m sorry if I make some grammar mistakes. How should I start? I would identify myself as a penguin, well, a half one. I like them because of their loyalty. They choose a partner and they will be with them forever. They also have another quality that it is constancy and I’m not a very constant person but I will work on it. I know all these things because of Atypical. It’s a series tv and you guys(can I call you guys?) should give it a go. I’m not gonna tell you anything because I don’t wanna spoiler but I’m gonna tell you one thing: it’s worth it to spend some hours to watch it. It’s really educational and also catchy.
So…you are now wondering how I figured out me being part of the LGBTQ2IA+ community. When I was attending middle school(maybe the first year or the second one, I don’t remember) I had this huge crush on my friend, who was and is a girl. Like, I thought I was really in love with her because she wouldn’t leave my mind alone. My brain was filled with her and that made me realize, not right away but with the time, that I like girls. I never told her my true feelings but things went weird with her because I couldn’t stop staring at her and maybe it made her feel uneasy. I was afraid of this side of me so I tried to hide it. I was frightened of my parent’s reaction if they had discovered my sexuality because they are not very open-minded. But with the years I understood that I shouldn’t feel ashamed of my sexuality so I started coming out with my friends. Slowly but I think it’s a step toward success. I’m really grateful for their understanding and to have them by my side.
I don’t know if I’m able to tell my parents about my sexuality and that I don’t feel comfortable with my biological sex because talking about LGBT stuff is kinda a taboo. I hope that someday they will understand my feelings and still love me if I’m being…me.
Yeah, that was pretty everything I wanted to say. Sorry if it is a bit confusing to follow. I tend to write everything that passes through my mind.
Thank you for reading my little outlet and I hope that everything is ok with your family and friends. I really hope that everything is ok. It’s a difficult situation for everyone but I believe that we’ll get through it.
Also, I wanna thank Dominique Provost-Chalkley because of her I discovered this special place. She’s such an amazing person. She really inspires me and I will never stop loving her.
I don’t know how to finish because I’m very bad at this ah ah. I hope you can be happy and healthy every day of your life and…that’s all. Bye!

E

I have been struggling with my sexuality a lot recently. Dominique’s story really touched me in that I understand the struggle and confusion that often goes with coming to terms with who we are and how we want to identify ourselves. I did not really think about my sexuality until college and then it hit me one day that my feelings were probably not those of a person who would identify as straight. I am still not out and the only person I have told about my confusing thoughts and feelings is my therapist. I want to be brave and live my truth but that is so scary to do. I am still so confused about everything but I am hoping that with time my feelings will become more clear. I am so happy that I have found this community through being a relatively new fan of Wynonna Earp and I am blown away by the support and happiness that comes from the cast and the fans. Thank you for creating a platform where everyone feels welcome!

The Sovereignty

Trigger warnings: physical and emotional abuse, suicidal thoughts.

The sovereignty I inadvertently created for myself that held me back for so long.
If you’ll catch this tumultuous wave with me, we’ll ride this journey of love, growth, and happiness together.
Note: All humans are extraordinarily amazing and your sexuality is valid. This is simply my story, my experiences/preferences, and my growth.
Growing up in a Roman Catholic household had me seeing church twice a week due to the private school I attended. Button up shirts, plaid skirts, and rosaries in hand. I knew nothing of the LGBTQ+ community nor did I think it was possible to love someone of the same gender.
It wasn’t until I went to a public high school where everything changed for me. I remember this so vividly: I was sitting in the quad with friends and across the way, I saw two beautiful women being intimate with each other. I asked my friends what they were doing and they looked at me so sympathetically. “They’re together,” my friends said.

And that sparked a fire within me; I felt like I might be…different. Back then, there was hardly any positive representation of queer relationships in the media. So I grabbed at anything I could find. I couldn’t turn to my parents because they wanted a “happy life” for me which meant a husband, a career, and kids birthed from me and my future male spouse.
I struggled for the next 4 years. And though I made friends in the LGBTQ+ community, I still felt I couldn’t have the same love they had because ingrained within me (through religion and my parents) was that a happy life was with a man.

I had a boyfriend. It was the worst.
I had a girlfriend. It was the best.
That was when I knew. I was lesbian. I couldn’t fight it, as much as I tried to for the next 8 years.
Then I was outted.
The part of me I was still figuring out was unwillingly thrust into the hands of my parents. They were heartbroken. They didn’t know how to handle the news because they were like me: they didn’t know anything either. They didn’t understand that I was still their daughter, a human being capable of so many things in life. Except, maybe love. At least, that’s what it felt like. My mom would come to my room every night since the news and ask me if I was going to marry a man, if this was a phase. My dad stopped talking to me altogether.
So I ran away at 18. Still a baby. Still figuring out who she is.
It was hard to leave everything that I had ever known — a family who loved and cared for me despite their own struggles. I was grateful but I couldn’t watch the pain flash across my mom’s heart and the disappointment surface on my dad’s face. So I left.
I moved in with my girlfriend at the time. It was a struggle. I was fresh out of high school and still going to college. We couch-surfed for awhile. We were completely homeless for a couple weeks until we had enough money to get a place of our own.
Just when I started to feel comfortable, things actually turned for the worst.

After moving out, my uncle met with me and proceeded to tell me I was the “devil’s spawn and I would never be granted access into heaven” in front of a Coffee Bean. I haven’t been to a Coffee Bean since then. And then, all my close friends moved away from my hometown.
I lost my family, lost direct contact with my friends, gave up on the faith I had grown up with my whole life, and was still figuring out if being a lesbian was even okay.

Then she hit me.
In her drunken stupor her mind would cloud. Her hands would meet my face in fists instead of the gentle, soft palms I once knew. Her nails scratched at my cheeks and the back of my throat instead of down my spine in ecstasy. Her legs met my stomach instead of intertwining them with my own. Her fingers pulled at my hair instead of softly running them through tangles. Her body propelled into mine to push me onto the pavement, into the bathtub, onto the floor instead of embracing me with warmth. Her eyes, wild with rage instead of the love I once saw.
I thought about just giving up. I felt as if I had no one to turn to, no one to help me out. I tried twice, she caught me every time and wouldn’t let me escape. Unknowingly, I’m grateful she didn’t let me because I wouldn’t be who I am today.
But I didn’t know any better when I was with her. I didn’t know that this wasn’t the love I deserved. She was the only love I knew at the time. She accepted me when no one else did. So I stayed but I can still feel the remnants of her every action.
It took me two years to finally have the courage to leave; to finally realize that this wasn’t right. Luckily, my parents came around and they accepted me back into their home with open arms. It was still a struggle with them but it was also two years too late. The damage was done.

I was 21 when I met my next girlfriend. And she was amazing, completely opposite of HER. Because she was there for me when my wonderful grandfather passed away. She was there for me, period.
Or so I thought.
See, abuse can take many forms and all I had ever known was the physical manifestation of it. I didn’t see that it could take a mental and emotional form as well.
Within the 3 years that I was in this relationship, I continued to lose my way. I was limited in how I acted, in what I could take interest in and in my hobbies.
Book-binding was a “waste of time.”

Hanging out with family and friends couldn’t be done “without me.”

Following and shipping new queer relationships in the media was “weird and you should stop.”
And I stopped. I wanted to keep this love because it wasn’t physically negative.
So I changed myself once again.
Unaware, I built my own sovereignty. A force within myself to govern my actions, words, my own identity. It grew and grew until I couldn’t control it anymore.

When I was accepted into nursing school at 24, she raged at me. Jealous of my successes and treated me like a verbal punching bag instead of a human being. We broke up. I was torn. Less than a month later, I found out she was cheating on me. She was too scared to break my heart to tell me there was someone else and instead used my own success against me, making me feel like getting into nursing school wasn’t a feat of its own.
I was 25 when I realized: I deserve a wholesome and pure love. When I knew that the sovereignty I built needed to be dismantled. But it had to start somewhere.

So I started with myself.
I began to finally accept that being lesbian was just as valid as being straight.
It helped when more positive LGBTQ+ relationships surfaced in the media. It helped when my mom told me that she wanted to come to Pride with me wearing a “I’m proud of my gay daughter” shirt and when she said I could “always visit them with my wife.” It helped when I got my family back. It helped when I got my best friends back. It helped when I opened up about my journey to my clinical group and finally admitted to my mom the abuse I went through.
It helped when I discovered a community capable of unconditional love and acceptance.
I’m 26 now and I’m still growing. I’ve come to realize every feeling is valid, every human is valid. Everyone is capable and deserving of an entirely pure and healthy love. I chose to fight against everything I experienced.
I choose myself. I choose love.
Ea: a Hawaiian phrase meaning a sovereignty where no one, absolutely no one can hold you back.
(inhale, exhale)
I am a lesbian.
I am a human being.
I am here and I stay;