Community Rainbow Waves

Lesbian

I have two different coming out stories. My public coming out was a lot sooner than coming out to family. My public coming out happened in college. At the time I wanted to identify as bisexual. I didn’t want to classify myself fully a lesbian and stuck to the safe choice (in my mind) of labeling myself as bisexual. My thought process was that as long as I also like men then I can find some way to relate to my peers.

That all changed Fall semester 2006 of my freshmen year in college. See the thing about me is that I’m afraid to step out of my comfort zone. I don’t like to put myself out there for fear of being awkward or saying something wrong. So with that in mind. My normal M.O. being to hide, I signed up for a religious retreat. Oh, I forgot to mention I was going to a Catholic university in good ole New Orleans, La.

Anyhoo, I signed up for the retreat and ended up going for a full weekend in October. I didn’t know what to expect. Well, I had my assumptions of being told that my feelings are wrong and that I couldn’t be who I was and that God thinks I’m a sinner. All these negative things.

I’m so glad I was way off. That weekend I went on a journey of love and acceptance of myself. It was so profound to meet strangers and see their love and acceptance of me shining in their eyes.

I remember there was a moment in the retreat where the newbies like myself had to close our eyes and trust fellow peers to guide us and shower us with hugs and dancing. It sounds so wacky but it’s probably the most profound feeling of love from complete strangers. The fact that we had to put trust in strangers and in return got shown unconditional love? That to me was unheard of. But the message was received. I may not be able to see my creator, but know that the person you are and the person that is seen is soooooo loved. It blew me away a but it was in that moment I could let go of my past labels and truly embrace me as who I am.

There were so many other parts in that weekend that solidified how loved I am for just being me. After that weekend I came out. To all my friends. People knew I was a lesbian and they accepted me. Ironically, I became heavily involved in the ministry at my university because I wanted others to feel that love I felt and that they could find someone they could relate to. I met my best friends there and I wouldn’t trade it. It helped me live my truth at least outside my home life.

My coming out to my family was rough. I’m Hispanic and my mom is a single mother that raised three awesome kids. She’s an immigrant and was raised with very strict ideals of marriage and life. Since I was the baby I could do no wrong.

That changed when I came out at 22. I was in graduate school in another state. I had just had my first real heart break and called my mom crying. She thought I was pregnant. Nope. Mama, I’m a lesbian. She was hurt. Hurt because she couldn’t understand why I turned out the way I did. Hurt because that’s not the life she wanted for me. She didn’t talk to me for a week.

But after that she slowly started talking to me. She wouldn’t bring it up and for a long time she couldn’t deal. But I got help from someone. My sister helped her see so many things I couldn’t express.

See my mom is a stubborn woman and set in her ways. But she actually opened her mind for me. She had a very strict mindset and no one could really change her mind about things. But she did for me. She opened her mind. She accepted me. My siblings didn’t care.

But my extended family is a different story. I have aunts that know and aunts and uncles that don’t know that would probably not approve. Most of my cousins know. I’m still navigating coming out to my extended family. I’m not out to everyone and I’m 31.

It’s not easy. It’s not easy to see how people’s faces change when you’re out.

But I won’t hide who I am. In public it’s a bit easier because the people that matter most have my back. I know family will come around if they don’t agree. I’m blessed. I got lucky. It could have been worse.

My faith didn’t suffer because of my sexual orientation. My family loves me (the ones that know). And my friendships and professional relationships are great. My truth is not a weakness. It’s my strength that I’ve learned not to apologize for.

I would love to identify myself as questioning for now while I’m learning more and more about the LGBTQ+ community.

I’ve always wanted someone to talk to and I would say that this is my therapist right now. I haven’t exactly fully come out yet but I came out to some of my friends and my mom. I feel really weird in this place right now because no one really quite understands me and I never REALLY talked with someone about this. I first started to identify myself starting middle school. I saw this beautiful girl hanging out with me and my friends. The more she stuck around the deeper I fell in love but unfortunately she has a boyfriend. I respected her and her boyfriend so I just still became the same. I’ve never felt like this before so I wanted someone to help me but there was really never no one at the time. I have always been hiding every single detail out and been left as mysterious and quiet. No one REALLY knows me until they get me. I hope that one person I need right comes into my life. I honestly wish I had an epic coming out story but I don’t! It’s ok I guess and so I wouldn’t really call it a coming out story. The way I came out to my mom was wrong. I was talking to some friends on Instagram which I was not suppose to have but I was a wee rebel then so I did it. I told them that I love girls the way that I’m supposed to feel about boys and they were supportive but couldn’t tell them the story quite right. I clicked on one of my friend’s live and left my room with the live on to check on my dogs outside. My mom grabbed it and asked me why I have it and I said because I wanted to and not the way you think I said it but yeah. She was reading my dms which I should’ve deleted but didn’t and she kept hinting me that she’ll always love me no matter who I am and I was like ok? And I kinda got the clue but it was too awkward at the time to talk about it. And the most iconic coming out stories happen in the car ride, … no I’m just kidding but this is where she asked me who I identify myself as and at the time I said bisexual but as I grew older I keep questioning it so now I identify myself as that. She asked me when did I know and I told her when I got jealous of a boyfriend from the girl I really liked and I left it at that which was just utter awkwardness and I felt uncomfortable when I should have felt comfortable. I don’t want to feel shamed for I who I am and I don’t want to feel guilty of something so “wrong” and so I hid it. The worst part of that is that when someone uses “gay” as an insult to me I say “no I’m not!” But like in a defensive way which made me feel ashamed of who I truly am on the inside. I never want to feel that way. I want to feel free and expressive. You know, everytime my friends mention the word “boyfriend” I get uncomfortable and fade away into my own world which is something really good. I always feel left out of conversations like that because they think I really have no relationship advice. They go to other people instead of the person in front of them, me. I am an introvert, shy person and I can’t even stand up for myself so I think of myself as weak. I just really want to be sure of who I am you know like to be proud of my identity to what makes me, me. I truly know that this community will make me strong and bold enough to know who I am. I give myself to this beautiful community and truly trust myself that I will know who I am, even if it takes thousands of years.

I’m a bleeding heart snowflake, a sinning homosexual, and beautifully in love with another woman.

I don’t think there was ever a specific moment that made me realize I was gay. I’ve always known, whether it came to my childhood crush on Mulan, my adolescent obsession with Kristen Stewart, or my teenage love for my best friend. I came out to my friends my freshman year of high school, my mother about one year later, and am yet to come out to my father several more years later. He’s in his mid sixties and dead set in his ways, though I suspect he knows. Being gay is something that hides in the shadows if it isn’t directly addressed when you’re growing up. You can have your parents never speak out against the LGBT+ community, and still feel as if you’re living a lie. I’ve been called snowflake, baby, sweetheart, sinner, and many more by people who know no more about me other than the way I held the hand of the girl I loved. The world is changing, and we can hope it changes for the better, but hope means nothing without action. I live my life fighting in public for the rights of people like me, marching the streets, signing petitions, and I in fear at family dinners, too scared to introduce my own father into the world I’m a part of. The world is changing, and we’d better hope that we can keep up with it.

The real Juls

I’m currently 28 years old and my journey started in the form of a great internal storm when I was 16 years old, I was studying in a religious school and to be honest Colombia in those years was not a progressive and comfortable environment to talk about issues such as diversity and sexual orientation.
I grew up in a catholic family, my school was catholic, and my training was guided by the principles of a catholic family, so anything that came out of that pattern was labeled taboo or people just made offensive jokes about it. During high school my friends always talked about boys, all my close friends had a boyfriend in the same classroom or in the same school and in the meantime I saw the boys only as friends, the idea of ​​having a boyfriend never crossed my mind, in fact it always seemed irrelevant to me. With the girls it was very different, I felt that “something” that was absent when I saw a boy, but I always kept silent because, due to my ignorance, I thought it was something irrelevant and temporary, perhaps simple admiration.
At university nothing changed, I saw a girl and I still felt the same but this time with a little more freedom to obtain information I was able to find too many articles and LGBT content that helped me to know that something real was happening to me. When I finished university, 6 years had already passed and what started as a storm inside me became an authentic apocalypse, it was many years where the silence had wreaked havoc. What was stopping me? My family. I imagined a situation where I would tell my family and terror would take over because I could hear their voices saying “What have we failed at?”, So to release some of that destructive anxiety I started by telling my closest friends and they gave me that warmth and understanding I needed to keep myself sane at least until I told my family. It took me another year to gather all the strength to tell my family that it only consists of my mother and godmother that I’m a lesbian. The terror I felt when I told them is indescribable, my lips and throat were dry, I could not formulate a coherent phrase and my body was blocked but I could do it and I could feel free, that was…like 4 or 5 years ago I don’t remember well and I still feel that my mother has not assimilated it 100% because she is also the connection with my father’s family and I know that no one in that circle knows it, only my godmother’s family knows it.
I am an only child, perhaps that is why my mother still doesn’t fully assimilate it because she expected from me what almost all parents expect from their children: husband/wife and children but it doesn’t matter because my mother already knows and she will not see me with masks and lying to her, she will understand it 100% someday. Right now I’m calm, there are not storms inside me anymore.

Honest liar to bisexual fire

It’s hard to say when I knew I was a part of the LGBTQ community. Coming out to myself and to everyone else, including family, was a slow process that took years. This was probably due to one, growing up in the 90’s/early 2000’s and two, growing up in the South (as in conservative Southern American States). I knew I was different from a young age, maybe around five or six years of age. I loved sports and loved playing with the boys at school, whether it be soccer, rugby or street hockey; even though female activities like playing with barbies and the color pink were encouraged. I remember being the only girl in fourth grade playing hockey with the boys. The guidance counselor, Mr. B, pulled me in his office one day and said that I could not play anymore. When I asked why, he said it was because I was a girl and it’s a boy’s activity. The boys did not want me to play with them (maybe because I was just as good, if not better).

Fast forward to middle and high school, we had moved to a very small town with around 90 people in my graduating class. I had mostly male friends, and a few good female friends. I struggled with my sexuality and tried to suppress thoughts and feelings. I was an anxious wreck (like most of us) at this age. I remember flipping through the few channels we had and stopping on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Seeing Red”. I think this was probably my first sort of “awakening” to the LGBTQ community. I had never seen this show before, but I had heard of it. There were two females on TV and they were in bed together, kissing! My mind was blown 🙂 This was the late 90’s/early 00’s and we didn’t have smart phones or the queer representation you see in TV shows, tumblr, etc. that we have today. This kind of thing was sacreligious where I grew up (and still is for a lot of people). Needless to say I binge watched the show and fell in love. Willow and Tara’s relationship, and the acceptance among peers on the show, was the first of its kind on television and it was influential for so many people. Their relationship showed me that it’s okay to love someone of the same sex, and it’s hard to imagine this today, but that kind of acceptance just wasn’t part of the culture in which I was raised. I found the wonderful world of fanfiction and began to explore the LGBTQ community.

My parents raised me to be honest. I am a horrible liar and anyone who really knows me will know I am lying immediately. It’s something I value very much in myself and the people I surround myself with. The internal struggle to be honest with myself while also hiding an important piece of who I was from others was so exhausting. And I didn’t even realize what I was doing for years. I slowly began to accept myself in high school, after watching things like Buffy, Gia, etc. But there were setbacks. I was taunted and made fun of by my peers in school after slipping up and making a gay joke with one of my friends. The rumor I was a lesbian spread like wildfire and I vehemently denied it, hoping my parents would not find out. My mother found a few notes between my friends and I that were filled with immature/lewd jokes. One of those friends happened to be my best friend; a girl I had a bit of a crush on. We occasionally flirted and I could tell she liked me too, but nothing ever happened. When my mother read the notes between us, she sat me down and asked me if I was “gay or bi”. She was so upset that I was scared to be honest and denied it. My parents threatened to send me to a catholic school if I didn’t straighten up (pun intended haha). So, I withdrew that part of myself again, and it took several years to come to terms with who I truly was. Shame is a powerful thing. Especially when it is used to mold young, impressionable minds.

College was definitely a different experience. I could not wait to move on from the small-minded town/high school of my teenage years into a more open minded, accepting atmosphere. I moved out of my parent’s house as soon as I could (18 or 19) and started college. As I distanced myself from the judgmental, shameful environment in which I was raised I, again, slowly began to realize/accept who I was. I finished my Associates degree and decided to join the military in my early 20’s. This changed my life. I had preconceived about the military from things I had seen on television, but it was nothing like Hollywood portrayed (surprise). You trained hard and played hard as a family. The military was in front of a lot of the civilian population in social movements (and that was a legitimate surprise!). Acceptance of all races, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, etc. is drilled into you from day one. And it is a problem for some, but for most the struggle of military life brings you together, regardless of background and culture. The same year I joined was the same year the military repealed the “Don’t ask don’t tell” (DADT) act which was a policy implemented by the Clinton administration that barred discrimination/bullying to closeted homosexuals while banning openly gay people from serving. After the repeal of DADT, and several equal opportunity lawsuits, same-sex marriage and spouse benefits were eventually incorporated. Some states were definitely ahead of this act, however, the South struggled with these Obama administration policies.

At this point in my life, I had dated and been in a few long-term relationships with men (well more like boy-men :). But they all ended the same. The beginning was fun and exciting, then we would end up being more like good friends and I would end it. I was never interested in marriage and definitely could not see myself marrying a man. I was more comfortable in my own skin in my mid-20’s and began to identify as bi. I didn’t openly come out and tell people, but I didn’t deny my attraction to females either. As I progressed in my military career and traveled the world, I met so many people from different cultures. I don’t know any official statistics for the LGBTQ community in the military, but I have met SO many since I joined. This acceptance enabled me to explore my true self in a safe environment, and I will be forever grateful to the military for this. I don’t go home often, but when I do, I still feel uneasy and somewhat ashamed to be myself (something I am working on).

At 29 years old, I met the love of my life. Something I didn’t think existed. We met in a training program in the military and immediately hit it off. We became fast friends and shortly after realized it was way more than friendship. It felt like a tiny flame had burst into a raging fire inside me, and I had never been happier in my life. I had a few flings in college and after joining the military, but I had never been in a relationship with a woman. A lot of things were very new for me, but everything just felt right for the first time in my life. I knew this was it and I came out to my family, very slowly. I told my siblings, closest aunts and uncles, and my father and grandparents and they were all very supportive, to my surprise. I had great anxiety about coming out to the family, but it was all worth it for her. The last person I told was my mother, because I knew this would be the most difficult. But it turned out to be more difficult than I could imagine. She did not take the news well and does not accept our relationship, mostly due to religious reasons. It has taken a toll on our already strained relationship.

We were engaged on May 2019 and married at the beginning of this year. After training, we both went to our separate duty stations and have been separated for the better part of three years. One of the unfortunate things about a military career is the time sacrificed from loved ones. Due to COVID-19 and the restriction of military movement, we have remained separated. It has been the hardest three years of my life, but every second was worth our eventual reunion. One of the things we do to pass the time is binge watch television shows. We started watching Wynonna Earp last year after she came back from a six-month deployment. Waverly and Nicole’s relationship is such a beautiful relationship and we have loved watching the character developments. Growing up with almost zero LGBTQ representation in the media makes me appreciate a amazing shows like WE. Thank you Dom, Mel, Kat, Emily, Tim and the rest of the cast and crew for helping my wife and I get through these tough times!

Hannah

When I was 12 years old, I had realized that I had been an oddball for the entirety of my schooling. I was different, almost like an outcast and I didn’t like it. I had realized that I like girls. My parents along with the rest of my family are incredibly homophobic, so I decided to internalize everything. I had done so for 6 years until I got to my senior year of high school. I wanted to start being myself, but I knew I couldn’t as long as I was under the same roof as my parents. Summer 2019, I moved in to college and within 3 days of being there, I had already met a girl. I could finally be myself. My parents didn’t have to know about it, everything was okay. People at college really accepted me for who I was and it was so different compared to high school. However, both my parents ended up finding out along with the rest of my family the day before my 19th birthday. A lot of my family are now hesitant to talk to me. In this period of time, lack of acceptance from them made my motivation decline. I had stopped going to my classes, I stopped eating, and I stopped taking care of myself all around. I ended up having to drop most of my classes as a music therapy major due to failing grades. I lost scholarships and money, but worst of all I had lost myself. When 2nd semester came around, I was excited for a fresh start. However, my mental health hadn’t gotten any better. I ended up having to drop out of college on a full ride in which I had been studying for my dream job as a music therapist. I live at home now with my parents and never stop getting to hear the homophobia. I’m doing my best to try and support myself as well as my girlfriend. I’m trying to get a stable job so that I can move out before the end of 2020 and plan to apply to a 2 year paralegal program so I can have a somewhat stable career. Currently, I’m a full time musician trying to record music and get my name out there for people to hear. All I have ever wanted to do was make people feel good with the music that I make, whether they relate to it or not. I want to make music for people like me, but also for people who aren’t like me. Anything to bring more positivity and awareness to the world.
I usually label myself as a lesbian, but I just want to love who I love and have it not be an issue to others that I just so happen to be attracted to women. I know that good things are to come for me, all I can do is be patient. But I’m proud to say that I like women. I had never had this much pride for something since I started playing music and it’s such a beautifully bizarre feeling. I’m happy to say that I am a 19 year old raging homosexual female.

Queer

I think I’ve always known I was part different, but growing up in a very small town I did not grow up with anyone in the queer community around me, or at least they were not open.

When I was in grade 8, my mom moved us to the next town over which was slightly bigger. There I fell in with a bunch of misfits, some of which were exploring their sexualities.
At the time, I was still dating guys, although I was tossing them aside before anything could become real.

In grade nine, I finally worked up the courage to tell one of my then bisexual friends that I thought I might also be bisexual. She then went on to dismiss me and said, and I quote “you’re our straight friend”. As you might have guessed this pushed me even further back into the closet, when I stayed until after I graduated.

It wasn’t until I moved across the province to the big city of Vancouver for school, that I actually allowed myself to start to come out to my new school mates. There I met this older Brazilian girl, who was my first relationship with a girl….and wow, eye opener.

Since then I have been dating women, identifying as queer as gay/lesbian/bi/pan feel too restrictive for me. I am pretty open with my friends that I have made since college and new people I have met, I am still not out to my family and a lot of my childhood friends back home.

I’m pretty sure my parents know, I mean I basically dressed and acted like a boy from the ages of 5-11. But I became rather famine during high school. One moment I feel ready to tell them and think they will be fine, and the next I remember and old comment they made or something they said recently that makes me hold back.

I’m 26, and I’m still a bit of a hot mess when it comes to relationships. But working on it.

Caitlin

I was always very feminist and had a lot of female role models. I would be very into specific actresses and just chalk it up to wanting to be their friend, or look like them, or love their personality, etc. It never really fell into that “I want to be /with/ them” category. I never thought anything of it. I was on Tumblr and everyone was that way, and no one was gay (at the time, now we’re all LGBTQ+ but that’s neither here nor there) that was doing it so it just seemed pretty “regular”!

I’ve always been pretty introverted and had anxiety, so add those things together you don’t really venture outside of comfort zones too often! I dated a few guys in high school but that was high school and who really knows what they’re doing anyway, right? After some less than ideal “boyfriends” I went into college single and definitely not looking for anything except an education. I made a good group of friends and we went out fairly regularly. My friends were always asking “are you gay? I never see you flirt with anyone.” I’d always said no, not because I was ashamed but because I really didn’t know. It’s a scary thing to dig into yourself and really question things about who you fundamentally are. It’s even scarier to go in and admit that you’re any type of “other”.

I started to really wonder about my sexually my senior year of college. I was nearing the end of my studies and being a psychology major all you really do is introspective work. I was taking a lot of gender/sexuality classes and in writing all these papers and researching all these things I started to really wonder, what if I’m not into men because I’m /not into/ men. Huh, who would have thought! I started watching more tv shows and movies that gay characters (Orphan Black, South of Nowhere, The L Word, etc) and I felt connected to them. I could feel that tingling in the pit of your stomach when 2 women would kiss on screen. I never felt that when I watched straight couples, or when I kissed men. So when I went out to bars with my friends I would be more open to just realizing that women are great and sometimes they flirt with you and you flirt back! And it’s not so scary.

After realizing I was definitely not straight I had been asked out on a date with a woman but I was worried because I hadn’t actually told anyone I was gay. I just, wanted to be. Why do I have to “come out”? Why can’t I just be like “this is my girlfriend” and we all move on. These are the annoyances I still feel. Because even though I’m 29 I come out every time I meet someone new. It’s always different but it’s always coming out. It’s always that moment of fear from when the word “girlfriend” leaves your lips to the moment the person you’re speaking to actually says something that you fear what they will say. No matter how comfortable YOU are with your sexuality you have to make sure those around you are okay with it to. And that blows. Anywho – I could talk about that for years so I’ll move on – I decided to come out to my family on my 22nd birthday because who could be mad at someone on their birthday? I was sitting at the table with my mom and dad and waiting for my sibling to arrive and I was nervous AF. My parents have always supported me in everything I had done and I knew this would probably be the same but that fear is real and it doesn’t matter how nonsensical it is, it’s SCARY. So I blurted out “I think I want to date women”. And then I had to backtrack and tell them that I’ve been thinking about a lot of things and I’m pretty sure I’m gay. They were supportive and by the time my brother showed up for dinner they were already joking about things with me. My dad was encouraging me to ask out a cute bartender and my mom was embarrassed to be at the table with us. Business as usual! I still struggle to really find the “box” that fits me, I like the term Gay because it’s all encompassing. For me Queer has always felt… Not me, and I don’t want to be called Queer, but I know others feel that way about Gay! I don’t quite feel like a lesbian because I do sometimes find men attractive, but bisexual doesn’t really fit either. I’m somewhere on the Kinsey scale and “gay” hits the nail on the head for me. Anywho, that’s me.

I know that my story is definitely on the more rare side of being accepted by family with such ease and I hope that as time goes on the stories like mine get more regular and the ones where parents react badly become the odd ones. I know that’s where we’re headed as a society and I can’t wait to get to that place.

Just remember the most important thing, if your given family doesn’t support you, turn to your chosen family because they will. You always have support whether it’s virtually through places like this or real life framily (thanks, Sophia Bush for the best term, friends/family = Framily!), lean on your people when you need to that’s what we’re meant to do. You are not now, nor will you ever be alone.

Cat

I can’t wait until we’re living in a world where it is safe for everyone to be who they truly are without fear of judgment or persecution. I was raised by two loving but homophobic parents; so while they’ve made me feel like I could be myself in most regards, there’s one place they’ve made me feel like I have to continue living a lie. But even if I have to stay closeted in my everyday life for the time being, I don’t wish to stay fully closeted anymore.

I am a bisexual woman; and honestly, I’m proud of that.

When I was in high school, I started questioning my sexuality. I found myself starting to feel attracted to girls at my school and not just guys. But because of the home I was raised in, I did everything in my power to push such feelings aside, telling myself they didn’t mean anything. I refused to acknowledge them. And eventually, I was able to convince myself they never existed in the first place… Fastforward to college; and the feelings came back again, this time stronger. I found myself attracted to other women; and I knew it was something I couldn’t fully deny. I think deep down I admitted to myself that I wasn’t entirely straight; but I wasn’t ready to admit what that meant.

Over the past year or so, I started discovering myself more and more. It actually started when a friend suggested I check out this show called Wynonna Earp. This friend knew I preferred supernatural sorts of shows with powerful female leads (like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost Girl, etc.); so of course I was fully on board with checking out this show. Little did I know, it would change my life for the better. Becoming an Earper, I now found myself part of one of the most accepting and supportive fandoms I’ve ever been a part of. Between that and being introduced to one of the most kickass casts ever, I started feeling more comfortable in my own skin with everything from my anxiety to my sexuality. Even though I still never admitted anything aloud, I started to feel more and more comfortable admitting to myself that I was, in fact, bisexual.

I hope to one day be able to share this fact with those closest to me, to one day feel as if I am safe enough and truly ready to do so. But for now, having a platform like this to announce who I truly am, it’s a blessing. Thank you to Dominique and everyone at Start the Wave for all the constant love and positivity. It means so much; and I am proud to be part of this community.

And one day, I will be proud to come back on here to say I am 100% out…

QueerGay

So for the longest time I thought there was something wrong with me because I was attracted to women and my step dad didn’t support the LGBTQ community. I started having really bad anxiety and started feeling very depressed, I stop being myself. After almost a year, I started to learn more about the community and started to ignore other people’s opinions on the community. I started taking time and thinking about what really made me happy and what didn’t make me happy. I just wanted to be happy and be able to love who I wanted without being judged or even having to come out. After I discovered Wynonna Earp and saw Wayhaught is made me feel more comfortable with my sexuality. After reading Dom’s story it has helped me accept myself and now I am finally proud of who I am.