Community Rainbow Waves

Pansexual

I had some of my first thoughts about being with girls when I was about 9 or so years old. Prior to that I had never really been interested in anyone or being with any one in a romantic way. At this point in my life I didn’t even know being queer was an option. Although I do live in an accepting home, There were never any situations where I was exposed to this kind of love. At the time, I had just thought I was being weird, and I kind of just lost interest in even thinking about anyone in a special way, whether that’s because I was trying to hide my true self, or that’s just who I was I still don’t know. Fast forward 3 years or so, I had met two friends in school and gradually we grew closer together. Over the summer us 3 would face time nearly every day, and they knew a secret that I didn’t because they were friends before they knew me. One of them was gay. That declaration got me thinking, and opened up a door in some ways. I thought about whether that could be me, but I always just though, “No, you just want to be like her.” Because I admired her in a way, and still do. And then I stumbled across a wonderfully written show, Wynonna Earp. The character of Waverly, portrayed by the lovely Dominique Provost-Chalkley, sort of made me realize something. It’s hard to explain, but the idea that you can be swept off your feet by someone you never even thought you would ever be with really spoke to me. I myself identify as female, and I thought about it. I could be with a man, sure. But I also thought that I would be okay with dating a woman as well. I couldn’t care less what they identified as, as long as I love the person. And not long after through the openness and support of my friends I was able to tell them, all of them, and no one ever saw me any different. In fact, me and another friend of mine (who is bisexual) helped someone else be open about who they were to our friend group, which was beautiful. And that night we decided on a funny way to tell my parents. I am so thankful that my family was so accepting, and simply didn’t care. My whole life my parents never referred to my future lover as a husband, they always said “whoever I marry” which helped a lot. So, the way that I decided to come out was through the use of a pumpkin. My friend painted a pan sexual flag on a little pumpkin, and I labeled it ‘Panpkin’. I put it on the mantle one fireplace, and my sister figured it out almost immediately, and when my mom finally got it, she spoke to me about it. Since then I’ve been living an amazing life with incredibly supportive friends and family, and because Waverly was such an important figure during my journey, I decided to name my beloved Portuguese Water Dog after her. She’s 5 months old and a racket, but I love her none the less.

Living QUEER without FEAR. I’m Jes.

They say your childhood years should be the best years of your life–little to no responsibilities, innocent friendships and frequent laughter. My story, however, veered into less blissful territory.

I moved in with my father at age 6, which is where the memory of my childhood began. I was happy there. My father, then on his second marriage, seemed to finally be stable. My step mother seemed to be a wonderful woman who really stepped up to raise a growing little girl she had only just met.

A year later, my brother moved in, and my father and step mother tried to establish as much normalcy as possible. We spent time together, going to the beach and playing games. What we didn’t see was the complete unraveling of their marriage happening right before us. My parents efficiently and completely sheltered us from their inevitable demise.

After the divorce, we moved many times. Which of course resulted in different school systems, and different homes, the worst of which were without electricity. Eventually, my father made the decision to move us closer to his family halfway across the country, to the panhandle of Oklahoma. It was there, a year later, where he found the woman who would become his third wife. And as a result, our life settled.

At age 11, my whole world changed into daily physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, by people who were supposed to be safe. Let me be clear that my father has never, aside from punishment, abused or hurt me. But he also profoundly failed to protect me.

At 13, I realized what attraction meant, and recognized I wasn’t like the other girls in my small town. Each of them had boyfriends and crushes, while I secretly daydreamed about the girls I liked. Like many young gays, I tried to date boys to distract or convince my brain I was “normal.” I hid the pain of my abuse and my homosexuality from everyone. I wrestled and struggled with the abuse and my complicated differences for another year, until finally, I was removed from my father’s care, and placed with my grandparents.

It truly felt like a crushing weight was lifted off my chest. It felt like my life had just started. But also, I was broken. I was on a train of tragedy, headed straight for derailment with no idea how to slow myself down. So, in an attempt to have any excuse to run away or escape, I came out to my grandparents. Having already endured what I believed was the worst life could have dealt, I shared my secret with them. To my surprise, I didn’t need to run. They hugged me, loved me, and accepted every part of me. I was finally free. Free from abuse, and free from my prison of secrecy.

I am a queer woman.
I identify as a lesbian.
I have a beautiful family.
I am stronger now than my 13 year old self would ever believe I could be–and I am strong because of what I survived in my childhood.

-Jes.

#OutIsTheNewIn

I am a survivor

If you had me write this several years ago this would have been a very different story. Come to think of it I did write that one.
But today is today and today I’m more myself then I have ever been.

You see in some ways I’ve been “tailoring” myself for years and not even just towards my sexuality. I have high functioning autism. As result I have a hard time connecting with others or come off more abrasive than others or not understanding social cues. For years I wore a mask pretending that wasn’t me. Pretending I wasn’t hurt by things and most of all pretending I fit in.

With that said. I was in college when I was first introduced to the idea that woman could like woman. And I say that because I was a super naive kid, never had boyfriend, never had the sex talk, never new what liking someone was. If I looked back today, like everyone I’d see the signs.

There was this woman, till this day she’s makes my head spin. She was gorgeous but didn’t exactly treat me right. But she was first one who told me what I was or might be a lesbian or bisexual. And that was first times I heard those words. And I knew I thought she was all that but also wasnt sure I didn’t like men.

It was around this time that two things happened that. I won’t go into great detail but I was sexual assualted and my mother told me that bisexuality didn’t exist. Needless to say I was probably at my lowest. And it would take me along time to finally accept two things. a. my mother was wrong and b. being assualted didn’t turn me gay.

I went thru living struggling and being a shadow of my true self for years. I had boyfriend. I didn’t feel comfortable. I liked another woman who again didn’t treat me right (you see the other pattern developing). Anyways, I graduated and came back home. Home to a life where I had to live with someone who didn’t believe in what I thought was my true self.

During this I really struggled keeping friendships, fitting in and not being hurt. I found a character on the tv and her actresses real life husbands band that started to turn things around for me. The day Alex Danvers came out was day I finally got myself. At least I thought I did. But in world where things are constantly changing that would change too. At that time, things like I never felt comfortable with being intimate (toward guys) and others as well.

The actress husband has a song about unmasking yourself. Written about their son with autism. And between these two things I was becoming ok with my reality. I had autism and I liked woman.

They were what held me together for a couple years there. Then there was the TimesUp movement which challenged my reality. I broke for first time since that challenging first year after. I had never delt with it. Deep down I still thought it was why I like woman (and why I forced myself to go dates with guys).

I found people and this actress who helped me realize the truth. And today if I think about I know it too. Man might make me uncomfortable but I liked that woman before this happened and it doesn’t mean I won’t like a man who understands.

It was around this time I found Wynonna Earp, At Clexacon. And I found a group of people willing to accept me for me. And tho it took couple more years to make into the Earper famdom I’m here and I stay (despite not always feeling like I fit in). Regardless thru Alex Danvers (and Maggie Sawyer and her actress who helps me be ok with my parents not accepting me) I met the wayhaught story and eventually the wynonna story.

And here we come to last year. The year where I really started to be my authentic queer self.
It was year of finding people who were ok without using a label. For awhile I thought had to fit in a box had to have label. Considering my hidden disability, being different was always how I was. We also live in a world where we are constantly told to be one way or the other. And I sill had a mother who didn’t quite understand.

However, when the actress who talked about not using a label at Clexacon on ComingOutPodcast was the moment I decided I could come out as pansexual, at the time I still wanted to fit in to box for my mother sake. And I came home from that I told my mother this was it was. Love is love. I’m going to like who I like.

It was until Kat came out and I had small conversation with her about it, that I really truly felt not using pansexual was the way to go for me. In her words, “let’s just love who we love cuz the world has bigger problems. “

And now with Dom coming out, being in love with “All humans” I’m even more sure of myself. Despite my mother telling me im only into girls to fit in. – see Maggie Sawyer’s line “I’m Already Good. “

Its been a rocky road. It’s been a long time coming, remember I said looking back I saw things. I always almost drawn to the woman I’m TV shows. Watching shows for woman. Yeah sure there was few man thrown in there. I remember a girl from high school, I’d always give her the jobro posters and looking back I had crush I wasn’t able comprehend. And that’s ok, I wasn’t ready. It would take abundance of factors and I wouldn’t change a part of it (I wish somethings didn’t happen but I wouldn’t be who I am today).

Just remember, as someone once told me, it’s ok not to know who you are.

Here goes one more time
Fuck Labels.
I love who I love.
Woman, Man.
White Black or Purple.
Gay, Straight.
Trans or Non Binary.
Be every color of the rainbow.
I too love ALL humans.

Simply me, Giulia

So, here I am. It took a while to write because english is not my mother language, i’m italian. My name is Giulia and I came out many years ago when was not so easy. I mean, is not easy at all, but in a small city of a Catholic country, believe me, it’s hard, most of all if your father is a public officer known in the city.
At that time I was living my dream with the only girl, till now, I really loved with all my heart and my senses. I was young, 24, thinking that I was living was really special; I never thought that something was wrong till the first and dramatic fight I had with my relatives.
That reaction scared me a lot because my thought was : if my father and my mother react in this way, what can I expect from strangers ? So I totally close in my self. I was still sure that what was going on was not wrong, but I was not able to talk with anyone and when the story ended I was totally alone. I could not show my pain because I did not know how to justify it.
I spend many years alone but during these years I started to open my self with friend. At the beginning was a total state of anxiety talking about being gay, but as soon as I talked with my dear friends, I noticed that for them it was normal, no problems at all. I was shocked about that!
Many years later I took again the argument with my relatives, they love me, they always have, but they were unprepared at that time, they were scared for me and was hard for them to manage it.
I told my father only one thing, when he apologized (btw he didn’t need to do it) : I was happy and you didn’t notice that.
Ya, that’s the point, being happy , being happy of what you are and who you love. I truly think that if we all together show our happiness, our consciousness, our strenght, that day in which you do not need to say Yep, I’m gay, is near. I’m a human being, a precious one, like all of us, I’m a lover and I don’t need to be identify in a scheme.
That’s me, Giulia, from Italy!

Anaïs

I am 27 and I’ve liked girls for as long as I can remember. When I was 5, I wrote a love letter to a girl in my class, but never gave it to her ’cause I was too shy. Years later I found the letter and felt so embarrassed that I threw it away. At that time, I was already brainwashed into thinking that being queer was wrong and dirty. From that day on I decided that I’d never think of girls again, and that’s what I did… Until high school, at least!
I remember watching the tv show Skins when I was a teen just because it portrayed a lesbian couple and it was everything that I could find in terms of representation. I feel so happy for the kids today that have access to amazing content such as Wynnona Earp. Positive queer representation can change people’s lives <3
During high school I ended up kissing some girls thanks to Spin the Bottle, which gave me the courage to kiss a friend at a party at my senior year and I reeeeeally fell for her! I spent months with a major crush on her! At that moment I thought: ok, I’m definitely not straight! Maybe Bissexual?
I had some boyfriends here and there and managed to get my first girlfriend at college. And when we first got together, I remember thinking: so that’s how being attracted to someone is supposed to feel like!!
I never planned on coming out because I was still figuring out my own feelings. I was dating this girl, it was Dia dos Namorados (something like Valentine’s Day) and I was nervous enough having this secret relationship and stuff, but my mom could tell that something was off (moms, am I right?). She spent the entire day asking me what was wrong and why I couldn’t talk to her, until I burst out that I was in love with a girl.
My mom cried for weeks and went through all those grief stages, but my dad was my rock. We’ve never been close, me and my dad, but he really stood up for me when my mom was freaking out, and I believe we got closer because of that.
My first year out of the closet wasn’t easy, me and my mom argued a lot. Every week I would find a new video or research about sexuality and gender and try to explain to her that it was all normal and it wasn’t a choice. And so, a year went by, my first relationship ended, and we spent another year without talking about my sexuality at home. During this year I got to focus on my feelings and found out that I identified as a lesbian. Since that, I started living out and proud and my family followed along at their own pace.
Today we couldn’t be better. I’m engaged to the most amazing woman, who my family absolutely loves (yay!). We’ve been together for 6 years and we have 2 cats (living the dream! Hahaha). My fiancé is funny, smart, beautiful and always has my back. We’ve grown so much together, as a couple and as individuals, and I am really proud of this whole journey.
So, I just wanna tell you guys what other strangers on the internet told me before: The journey might be hard, but it does get better!
We all deserve to shine, to love and to live. Be proud and celebrate yourselves.

Take time to love yourself. Remember that. Always.

Well, time that i’ve felt that I am “different” for some, is pretty much equal to my age. And I am 27 years old. Growing up as a girl in small village where all my playmates were boys mostly my age and a bit older – it was hard. I used to look like a little boy for some time before I went to school, but a lot of kids gets their gender mixed up, right?
My parents, who actually are homophobic, used to “joke” around and asked me if I am going to marry a girl or a boy. I remember that I really-really hated that “joke”. Because I was really confused. Mostly because the equality. Boys always got awesome toys, they were allowed to go play whereever they want whenever they want, they were allowed to choose which girl they like, are they going to marry “love of their life” and who they are going to be when they grow up. I wanted those thing. Not to be boy, but to be equal. To choose my own path.
Today, I am single, I have no children. By my own choice. And I live in a place where people around me find that “my choice” is wierd and wrong. Because “standard” is marriage, kids and lower salary for same jobs that men have. “No boyfriend and with short hair -must be a lesbian” I hear people say…
But am I bi/gay/queer? Today I am human. I like other humans. I have felt and still feel love and attraction towards both men and women. If others find that it means that I have a label attached somewhere that says “bi”, then it is okay.
I have made my peace with it now. But it took me solid 25 years to make peace with .. myself. But to we really need to label eachother anything else but “human”?
I am open to love whatever shape or size it will arrive in my life. Maybe “it” is already here with me.
So, I came out to myself. I am human. No coming-out-party or post in social media, just me, on my own in my happy place. Accepting me.
Have I told my family and friends that I like /love both men and women?
Not to my family, because they figured it out before I did, right? (You know, “who you’re going to marry and stuff…) But I have never really had “the talk” or talked about my partners. Big family events – I have always attended alone. And since they are mostly homophobic, I do not feel the need to feed their hate. They are dear to me, but they don’t understand that love and attraction is between humans, not between genders. And that there is no “right” and “wrong” in love – we love our friends, families, pets, followers, fans… our partners in life. So I’m a “little rebel” in my family.
My closest friends know that I am open to love in any shape and size. I chose to tell them because they matter. Today they are my chosen family.
“Be who you are and say what you mean, because those who mind, do not matter and those who matter, do not mind” – I had that quote on my wall for years. (But I don’t know by who it is originally). It really helped me to accept myself.
I hope that there will be a time when girls and boys at all ages can say to their friends and families that they have found love of their life – same sex or not – and not be judged, or hated, or bullied, or even physically hurt, because believe it or not, making peace with yourself is challenging enough in todays society. And by hurting a human being, who is already struggling – it breaks and kills beautiful souls. Be kind. Start The Wave.

Anonymous

i was standing in line at an Amanda Palmer concert, and a female presenting person in front of me made me go: oh. girl-types are pretty too. i havent looked back except to realize how much this reveals about my adolescent interactions with certain girls that i didn’t recognize because they were different than my crushes on boys.

Homosexual, Panromantic

I come from a religious family, practically raised in a church. I had gay family and in my head with my teachings that was fine for them to live that way but I could never choose that because it was wrong. I had thought it was a choice. Until the 8th grade when my best friend came out, and slowly through conversations she had made me realize that I too was possibly part of the LGBTQA+ community. Even then some part of my brain desperately wanted to be straight, knowing that my family likely wouldnt accept me. I’d pray and I’d pretend that if I just didnt act on that side of me then it would go away. In high school I became friends with somebody who was pansexual, lots of people actually but this one happened to be a senior while I was a freshman. She asked me very outright while we were alone if I was attracted to females. This came as a shock but I found myself answering yes. Still believing myself to be bisexual. By the end of the year I had wrote a poem about my sexuality, and posted it over Facebook. Surprisingly most people were incredibly supportive. However, my aunt had called to tell me how proud she was of me and ended up outting me to my mother. Who was less than understanding, I was grounded and forbidden from hanging out with friends the night of prom. (She wouldnt allow girls to really sleep over anymore either.) It took until senior year for me to come to terms with and realize that I was just simply not physically attracted to men. Which is when an uncle I had only met as a toddler came up. He came out to my father, and then proceeded to out me. My father is very religious and often used gay, queer, and fag as insults. He never talked to me about it, but I noticed he changed his language around me. When we accidentally ended up in the middle of a pride event he kept bringing up how love is love. I guess subtle support is better than none. My mom still doesnt fully accept it. Over the years I found myself having emotions for guys, but never being able to express them, cause the physical attraction just wasnt there, and I believed it wasnt fair for either me or them to be in that type of relationship. The ones I attempted always tried to get me to be physical with them anyways. It took a lot of time researching the different types of attraction for me to understand who I truly am, and I still dont really discose it unless I am totally comfortable with somebody. Or just dont care how they feel about it.

Megan

I truly believe that stories are the way we connect and reflect the bravery, challenges, love, and fear that is this human experience.

I knew I was attracted to girls at the age of seven/eight. Because I had feeling for my friend – I couldn’t name the feeling and it didn’t feel wrong in any way. My friend would sit on my lap and I’d feel so much love for her. As time went on, I released this was not ‘normal’ and no other girls were talking about girls but only boys, so I ignored my feeling for girls for years and years.

I lived in a small town in South Africa and I literally felt like the only gay in the village. If there was any mention of LGBTQI people, it was always in disgust and a negative light. So I was terrified about my feelings. I felt so alone, scared and confused. And then at university (in this small town), I started falling in love with my best friend and it was unbearable. I slipped into a deep depression and started taking antidepressants.

And then something magical happened, I found Youtube but more specifically a LGBTQ channel on Youtube called ‘The Beaver Bunch’ and for the first time I saw real life bisexual, queer, lesbian, trans people living their lives open and proud. I think I watched every single video and keep finding more and more channels. And just like that I didn’t feel so alone and decided to come out. First I came out to the Youtube community in a video and they welcomed me with open arms, love and support. I felt so overwhelming by the support that it gave me the courage to come out to my family.

Coming out to my immediate family didn’t go as well as I had hoped, my dad and sister could care less I was gay but my mum took it hard. She was and is my rock and when I felt her pull away, it broke my heart. I can say now a decade later, she is my biggest ally and supporter.

Besides my mum, all others I came out to were supportive. I feel very blessed and haven’t experience any negative ramifications regarding my sexuality.

I’ve been out for a decades this year and in the same year I came out I met my future wife. I’ve never known a love like I love her. She’s been my best friend, soul mate, and lover for 10 years. But this year just as covid went into full swing, she at the age of 36 was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. To say it’s been a tough time is an understatement, it’s been a living nightmare. All I can do is watch the woman I love and adore fight every day to be here. We exist on the edge of hope and despair every day, and live every day for the small moments of joy that we can find.

So to end, I just want to let everyone know that at the end of the day all we have is love. And love has nothing to do with our physicality, race, gender, or sexuality – but our souls. I hope one day this world will wake up to this and embrace love as the compass the guides us. Light and love to all.

Lesbian

I don’t even know where exactly to begin as coming out happened over a long period of time for me. From the time I first admitted to myself that I wasn’t straight to the time I knew I was a lesbian, about a year and a half had passed.

The first time I questioned my sexuality, I was about 15 years old. I was in 10th grade, had a mediocre standing in the class hierarchy and had realized long before that I was in some way different compared to the other girls but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was that made me feel different. Until I did. One day a friend of mine came over, at that time Magic Mike was THE movie in our class, and this friend happened to be a big fan of the main actor. For some reason she couldn’t stop talking about the actor and, I guess, wanted to convince me that he was the hottest person on this planet so she pulled out her phone and started showing me pictures of him, abs pictures included haha. Anyways, what I realized in that moment was that I had no emotional reactions to any of the pictures she showed me. I didn’t feel even the slightest bit of attraction while my friend could barely look at a photo without blushing and fangirling over it. That night I had a lot of questions to myself. I didn’t understand why I had no reactions to the pictures – maybe he just wasn’t my type? Maybe I was just a late bloomer and attraction is something that still has to develop in my body? But then again almost every girl in my class had been in a relationship or at least talking about boys during break for years, and me not doing any of that stood out like a sore thumb to me. What is my problem?? So in a quest to convince myself that I was in fact capable of being attracted to boys I started googling actors, musicians etc. just any boy or man I found attractive. Long story short, I didn’t find a single one. I was so frustrated that the next morning I went to my mom and said: „How come, I can’t find a single dude that I find attractive but I could tell you about so many women I find incredible in a heartbeat!?”. You may think that I already knew in that moment that I liked girls, but no. Homosexuality was never discussed in our home. Not because my parents didn’t want me to hear about it but because they never thought about telling me about it. So the only „information” I got on it were prejudices and slurs against, not even queer in general, but only homosexuals, at school. So I knew the word homosexual but I couldn’t define it, all I knew was that it was used as a joke or an insult. But it was nothing I had a personal connection to back then. Because I knew I was straight. „I mean, I’m a girl so I’ll fall in love with a boy eventually because that’s what everyone’s saying”. I just accepted that but now with the whole googling my non-existent crushes that vision didn’t really work out. It was just for a short moment in that confusion that I thought to myself: „What if I don’t like any boys that way but that will never change? What if I just don’t like boys?”. I didn’t know what exactly that would mean but I knew that it didn’t feel like a far stretch. I never had a boy crush, I was never interested in boys and the only thing I really ever wanted to be with boys was best friends. That’s the moment my questioning phase began. I mean at first I went to my mum and told her, tears running down my phase, that „I think I’m a lesbian”. She reacted good. It definitely took her some time to switch from „your future boyfriend” to „your future girlfriend” when talking about my first relationship but once she realized I was being serious, she became super supportive. Still, even though I came out as a lesbian I didn’t know what that meant. And the realization of being different from the other girls in my class hit me like a rock. After coming out I had to take a step back to truly understand who I was. I couldn’t just say I was a lesbian when I had no proof for it. That’s where my questioning phase began and boy, it was a shitshow. I was watching every coming out video on YouTube after school. At that point I was in 11th grade and I was faced with a huge problem: I couldn’t tell any of my friends about this, because the second that information got to school, I feared, I would get bullied because the leading bully in my grade was a homophobe. So at school I acted the straightest I could and the moment I came home I was on YouTube, watching every second of content that would bring me closer to the question who I was attracted to. And I learned a lot. I learned about the LGBT+-community, I saw that queer people aren’t „weird” people (which was what I thought due to the intolerance at school) but just normal people like you and me. At night my brain would feel heavy from all of the new information but in the morning and at school I had no one to talk to about the journey I was going through because I couldn’t talk about it and my mom didn’t really understand what I was saying and feeling. That was very emotionally draining. The more I tried to suppress my feelings the more difficult it became. Plus I wasn’t getting the answer I was looking for: Every YouTuber kept telling me that only I could know my sexuality and that time would tell but I wanted an answer now, I wanted to know who I am and I didn’t understand why no one could tell me. The best I can describe it is that I’d think of myself as an astronaut who just kept floating around in space without a planet in sight. Just infinite nothingness. But I needed something to hold onto because that nothingness was scary and it meant that I didn’t know who I was – I couldn’t accept being „nothing”. It was the moment I stopped stressing myself out about figuring out who I was that things got better, even though it was out of exhaustion. Before, I couldn’t read my emotions clearly because I kept overanalyzing every little emotion I was feeling for people. In my head it would for example be: „is that attraction? That is definitely attraction, oh, you like that person! Yeah, you must be gay!” about feelings such as simply finding a person nice. But it was just my want to have a person I find attractive to be able to answer the question of what my sexuality is. But forcing feelings on myself was very unhealthy. So I stopped. And after some time these feelings came to me naturally and even caught me off guard sometimes which made me finally able to understand them. It took a long time for me to differentiate between finding someone nice, finding someone attractive and loving someone. But once I understood what each feels like, I was able to see that I had been attracted to girls and women from as early as 6th grade. Which is why, after almost one and a half years of trying to find out who I was attracted to I was finally able to say that I’m a lesbian.

Now there’s way more to say about my journey but that’s how it all began. During those one and a half years I also stumbled upon Carmilla and Wynonna Earp which to this day remain my two favorite series and it’s also the reason I even ended up on this page. Seeing positive representation as portrayed in both of these series helped me so much with being ok with my sexuality. Starting my journey I felt so much guilt and being different that I was not comfortable, but I have come a long way now and leaving school and afterwards coming out to everyone in my life that’s important to me and everyone being supportive is the best thing that could’ve happened to me. So today I read about this page and about Dom’s coming out and – oh, how beautiful it is! Everyone has a different journey but there is something so powerful about coming together to share our journeys. And what better person to lead the way on here than Dom. You have helped so many people Dom, including me, to come out and be our true selves and I love that it is partly us that have helped you to come out now, it has come full-circle 🙂 To everyone on here that needs to hear this: you are not alone, you are valid, and I wish you all the love and kindness on your journey that you deserve! – Laura