Community Rainbow Waves

GAY / LESBIAN

I realised that I was different when I was 14 years old. I grew up in a pretty strict christian family, so I was scared. I believe in god myself and that’s why I prayed every day for two years for my “problem” to go away, to “turn” straight. But at one point something was telling me that nothing was wrong with me. That I was born this way and that I should be proud of myself for what I am and what I’ve been through.
I started to tell some friends that I’m into girls and for most of them it wasn’t even a big surprise. After that I told my family. First my mother, after that my brother. The last one was my father. He was homophobic in the past so I was really afraid of telling him. But he told me that he loved me anyway und our father-daughter-relationship has never been better. He is really proud of me and of who I am today. Together, we even talk about how “complicated” women are, haha.
One day, not long after telling him that I was gay, I called him on the phone. He was driving home from work and it was the first time I told him about a girl. He said to me “I wish you could see me right now. I have tears in my eyes. I’m so happy for you and so proud.”

People can change. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes people won’t understand. But, YOU are precious and worthy, remember that! Be good to yourself. You’re not alone. We’re all in this together. It will get better!

Shows like Wynonna Earp that have LGBTQ+ characters in it really helped me getting through the rough times.
So thank you for that!

Now I’m 22 years old and still waiting for the love of my life. But I’m optimistic that I’ll find her one day.
Greetings from Germany,
Livia

First Clue… Crush on the Flying Nun

CONTENT WARNING: THIS COMING OUT STORY CONTAINS DESCRIPTION AND/OR DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ABUSE AND RAPE.

Before I share my ripples and waves that have crashed on and around my coming out, I want to thank those who wrote before me. I am older than many of you, but your journeys inspire me to share a few from my own journey. I had set aside things I struggled with on shelves hoping one day to take them out and shine a light of a different day on them.

First Ripple…Start of my Wave…
My father and I had sat down on the couch to watch TV. The news had been on and there were images from the war raging in a foreign land. I asked him why we were fighting in Vietnam. His expression changed to one of sadness and he looked off into the distance. After a moment he said, “There are some bad people doing bad things to good people over there. We are there to stop the bad people.” He got up and change the channel came back and sat down. He smiled at me and he was my Dad again. A commercial came on the TV for a movie called 1 Million BC staring Raquel Welch. In this ad, she stepped up in a fur bikini and I was stunned, Wow. She was so beautiful! Something clicked in my five-year-old brain and I turned my head to look at my father. He had the same expression as me. Oh, I thought. I’m just like my dad. That was followed up by but ‘I don’t think girls are supposed to be like their dads.’ No, but I was like my dad. I reviewed the evidence. I loved watching Sally Fields in the Flying Nun, Bat Girl, Cat Woman and other women on TV. Okay… I’m like my father and I shelved it to investigate another time.

Dark Tsunami… Cut adrift in a Sea of Darkness
My parents split when I was seven and my mother and I relocated to northern California. Something should be said about this since it had a huge impact on my life. Between my two parents, I saw nine marriages twice to each other. I am my mother’s oldest child and my father’s baby girl; he had three girls in a row then three boys in a row. My mother’s youngest, my baby sister, rounded out the ensemble. (It’s okay; I have trouble with it, too) My childhood to this point was filed with family. When we left, I was in a foreign land… new place, new school and no family. My mother was pregnant with my youngest sister and would be strong at not tell her. I was molested by my stepfather and raped at different times by two men from the age of seven to twelve. I nearly suffocated during two of those incidents; I blacked out. This left me with sporadic claustrophobia. Those were parts of my normal childhood… yes normal. This little tomboy ran around with her friends, played soccer, football and baseball but also had few things on her shelves that she kept tucked away. She was strong, smart, empathetic and could keep a secret. Her friends and family adored her, but her secrets stayed on the shelves; she didn’t trust anyone.

Ripple… Oh, That’s What it’s Called
My early teen years had me staring straight in the face of being attracted to girls and a boy. A family friend who is a year younger than me told me she had a crush on me and kissed me. It felt like something that had been dead inside me was finally awake and I kissed her back. She and her family moved away the next week (better job not because of us). I thought about the items sitting on my hidden shelves. I took the memory of the five-year-old off the shelf. There was a TV show called “Family” that had an episode about the son’s best friend being gay. And as I watched it, I thought, oh, that’s what it’s called. I was Gay. I had a name for it, but it was still too afraid to talk about it. What if I should have been born a boy? Did God make a mistake? What about the boy I like? Those go on the shelves; the five-year-old is good.

Rainbow Wave Crashes Lovingly on My Shore…
In my sophomore year at high school during volleyball tryouts, I met the most stuck up, annoying but pretty girl ever. She had a click of friends and was trying out for the cheerleader squad. She thought I was a stuck up, elite athlete who was really funny at times, but she hadn’t forgiven me for hitting a home run off of her when we were freshmen. One day at volleyball practice, she surprised me. She asked me if I wanted to go with her to a party at one of her friend’s house. Curious, I accepted and from that point on we were inseparable. We did homework, read books, listened to music and somewhere in there, I realized I had fallen in love with her. There was no way I was going to do anything about it. She was Catholic and straight. So, we had sleepovers at each other’s houses and always slept next to each other. It made me crazy. We were staying over at my house in sleeping bags under the pool table. everyone else in the house was asleep and we were talking quietly. We were both on our tummies and elbows. We turned our heads towards each other as we were talking; our eyes locked, and we leaned in and kissed. Wow, what a kiss! She abruptly pulled away mumbling, “I can’t, I can’t do this, I can’t…” and got up and went into the bathroom. Shit, I thought, my life is f—-ing over. She’s going to tell people at school… crap… that line of thinking went on for what felt like six years but was actually about a minute. She came back in, crawled into the sleeping bag and while she was saying, “I don’t know, I don’t know…” she kissed me. And for me, game over. I was home. This was who I was. I was head over heels in love with and she with me. Wait. No one can know. My parents would be okay about but her parents, her mother would not. Fine. The love of my life goes on the shelf.

Ripple… You could’ve told me
We were together all through high school and off and on during college. She was an avid note, letter and poem writer; I had notes and letters squirreled away in my backpack till I could safely deposit them in a box down in our basement. My best friend from sixth grade and I were walking home from work one night. We were seniors and it was towards the end of the school year. She punched me hard in the arm and handed me a note with my name on it. I am pretty sure I turned pale. She had snagged it out of someone’s hand before they could read it; they had pulled it from my catcher’s mitt. Bam, another smack on the arm, “You could’ve told me.”
“Ow!” Sheepishly, I asked, “did you read it?”
“No. Didn’t have to. I have eyes and know you… I’ve always known… you’re my best friend and I love ya.” I felt lucky for her friendship but scared for being careless. My girlfriend and I were both certain that her parents found out about the two of us that would be the end of it. On top of that, they had put money away for her college and she was born to be a nurse. I didn’t want her to lose that because of me. No matter how much I loved her. Squirrel it away on the shelves.

Ripple… My heart was breaking, and I couldn’t tell her…
Being in love was beautiful and magical. Discovering sex with her was amazing except for those moments when unwanted memories would slide off the shelf and into our lovemaking. I would wake with a start or worse, shove her off of me not knowing where I was. I fought it to the point I could no longer feel her. My heart was breaking, and I couldn’t tell her. Get that shit back on the shelves!

Ripple… Wait, you outed me? Dude. Not cool.
My softball team was celebrating after a big win. I was enjoying an adult for fuzzy beverage with our shortstop out in the backyard. The discussion inside the house was a heated discussion about Sports, lesbians and who was gay on the team. Apparently, my name was added to the list. The shortstop and I came back in and heard our coach say, “She can’t be gay, she’s too pretty.”
Hell, one of our pitchers was drop-dead, model gorgeous and gay. I commented then asked, “That’s ridiculous. Whose too pretty to be gay?”
The room went silent and everyone was staring. The assistant coach said, “Uh, that would be you.”
“What—I’m pretty?” That can’t be right. I’m a tomboy, I’m like my dad. I have a Scarlet L on my forehead. How could I possibly be pretty? “Wait, you outed me? Dude. Not cool.” Great. Is there room to put that one on the shelves? Of course…

Rainbow Wave Ripples to My Shore…. WTF! Outed by my grandmother.
While in college and living with my brothers and dad, I thought it was time to share with my brothers and come out to them. I sat them down and shared that I dated women and I was gay. They stopped me and said, “Oh, we already know; Mimi (code for our dad’s mother) had already told us. She said you were different from most other girls because you liked girls. This was okay because we love you and you are our family and there is nothing wrong with it.”
What?! How did she know? Wow, though, I was moved by the words. Very progressive for someone from her era and the south. I asked her once and she just smiled at me. She said I wasn’t the only gay person in the family and left it at that. Something needs to come off the bloody shelves, but I don’t know what.

Ripple… Finally, I come out to my mother…
Summer break after my first senior year in college, my girlfriend and I were visiting my mother and her new family. We were going to watch a movie together. A few days later I was back over visiting. My mother asked me, “So, are you ever going to tell me?”
“Tell you what?” Me the clueless one asked.
“You and Mary?”
Oh. “I thought you knew.”
“I have suspected but the other night you took a hold of Mary’s hand and watched the movie holding it.”
Slightly embarrassed, I said, “Oh. I didn’t realize.” paused, “Mom, I’m Gay.”
“Thanks Honey. It’s nice to hear you say it.”

Ripple… Doodling Nancy Wilson of Heart
A year or so after college my girlfriend and I went to visit my parents. They had moved back in together and were engaged to get married; remarried. My mother and I were talking in the kitchen and the conversation went like this:
My mother said shaking her head, “Your dad wants to know when you’re going to get married. I told him the closest thing he’s going to get to a son-in-law from you is Mary.”
“And?”
She answered imitating him, “Aw, not my little girl. She spends a lot of time with Tony…”
Mom as herself, “Honey, they are just friends. Do you know your mother told the boys?”
“What?”
“Our daughter is a lesbian… just like your favorite cousin.”
“She told you?”
“Yes… Honey, she’s happy. Go talk to her.”
“Okay.”
———-
“Hey Dad.” I was doodling Nancy Wilson of Heart in a sketch book.
“Hey, Baby girl, uh, I was wondering if we could talk.”
I closed the sketchbook and waited. Only God knew what this would be about. “Sure.”
“Um, I don’t know how to… what I mean is…”
“Dad, is this about me being Gay?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Okay, I am.”
He sat quietly. I could see something was troubling him.
“Dad?”
He swallowed then asked, “Is it because… because you were… hurt when you were small?”
A bunch of things started slide off the shelves, but I put them back; the five-year-old was sitting next to me. “No, Dad. I’ve known since I was five. That all happened later.”
“How could you know at five?”
“I knew I liked girls like my Dad and that was different than other girls.”

There are so many other things to share but I will stop here and say coming out, dealing with gender identity versus what’s expected culturally, and everything else that life tosses our way is an on-going process, so be in it for the long haul.

I have come to understand a few things in my travels. It is important to have a sense of humor around things and not take ourselves too seriously. Our brains are wonderful things, but their job is to keep us safe; to ensure our survival. It can’t differentiate between real (encountering a bear in the woods) life threatening fear and emotional fear. It treats them the same. There can be so many things thrown at us when we are young and trying to figure who we are and how we fit in. I kept many things tightly bottled-up inside; I was strong and could take it. I wouldn’t burden anyone. I kept up my happy-go-lucky exterior until something happened and it crushed me and cracked my psyche. I was diagnosed with PTSD and the things I tried to suppress seeped into my everyday life. Flashbacks at work; at home in the bedroom. The pain was too much. I couldn’t live with it and it took the intervention of some friends for me to seek help. I got help that made my PTSD manageable. I am happy and comfortable with who I am. If you are struggling at all, check the resources listed at this site. Have faith in yourself… I don’t say this lightly; I say it with a tremendous amount of love and gratitude.

I’m not much of a writer, but due to the inspiration I am feeling to share my story, I will do my best!

I didn’t come out until I was 21. Before then, I could barely say the words “lesbian, “gay,” or “queer.” I think because deep down, I know that was who I was-well one small part of me. In undergrad, I fell in love with another woman, whom I believe also had feelings for me, but due to being a member of a evangelical and fundamentalist religious group, I was told that those feelings are not valid and I would be an “abomination” if I acted on them. Interestingly enough, I come from an extremely supportive family and my siblings also identify within the LGBTQ+ community. Yet, at the time I was trying to find my own identity and the friends I found through this religious group were the only ones I was surrounding myself with. As I started to realize my attraction towards my own identified gender, these two identities between religion/faith and sexuality became a conflict. Anxiety came, depression came, and I knew I needed to do something about it. I was in an introduction to counseling class in my undergraduate studies, and one of our projects was to go to counseling-specifically at an on-campus clinic where counselors in training (graduate students) were practicing their skills with undergrads. This was better than writing a paper so of course I’ll do the counseling! What came of this was the realization of how much I disliked and even hated myself, without even understanding quite yet that the reason for this was my same-sex, same-gender attraction. After my counseling stopped with this clinic, I sought out counseling at the university’s counseling/psychological services. The therapist I met there-whom I saw for four years-saved my life. And helped me save mine. Therapy was tough. It pushed me and made me uncomfortable at times, but these were the important moments. My therapist helped me to bring my own self-awareness to the self-hatred I was using to sabotage myself, but also where this came from. It took about three years (by my senior year) for me to leave that religious group, begin to accept and validate my own feelings for what they were, and started dating my first girlfriend. It was scary, it was a big unknown, and ultimately, I was scared of Rejection. I was rejected by my “friends” from the religious group for having the resilience to go through what I did and to tell them my truth. I began going to a religious group that DID accept who I am, and began surrounding myself with supportive people. I am now 28 years old, have my graduate degree in counseling-the same program from which I first received those counseling services for the class I took-and am working in the mental health field to help others, like the individuals who helped me. I’ve assisted others through my career by listening and validating their thoughts and feelings and most importantly, Accepting them. I’m only able to truly do this now as I have accepted myself and love myself for who I am. It’s important to continue growing and learning, not just about ourselves but about others and their cultures, and fight back injustices we see. It’s the actions, not the words that true show advocacy. I’ll end it there but thank you so much, Ms. Provost-Chalkley for being you and for instilling this inspiration to share my own story.

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.

Bisexual

This isn’t really the most interesting coming out story in the world but I thought I’d contribute my story anyway.
I figured out that I was attracted to girls in the seventh grade. It wasn’t so much a “Oh shit! I like girls! I’m not straight!” as it was a “Oh, so the magnitude of my fixation on *insert any female actress* is NOT experienced by everyone”. However, I didn’t really process what that information meant until one of my classmates had offhandedly mentioned that she had a girlfriend and that she identified as a lesbian. Now don’t get me wrong, I knew that people could like someone of the same gender identity, but the meaning behind being queer held no weight to me until someone put a label onto it. It sort of clicked in a way that made me realize that maybe I was bisexual. Because of that realization, I did the obvious thing and took hundreds of “What is my sexuality?” quizzes and found solidarity and comfort among the dozens of famous or slightly relevant LGBTQ+ Youtube videos and Youtube series’ that were available in 2014.
Before my descent down the rabbit hole that is the numerous quality LGBTQ+ media available to the public, I decided to come out to one of my former best friends. She did not realize that was trying to come out to her, and I had to come out to her again 4 years later.
It took me 2 years after I had realized that I wasn’t straight to actually come out to someone, 1 year to feel comfortable with a label, and like 1 month to decide that- if someone asked me what my sexuality was- I would tell them the truth. So basically, it took 2 years for one of my other best friends to outright ask me if I was asexual before I could say that I was pan/bi. It took me a year after that to come out to my best friend since elementary school. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to hide my sexuality from her as it was that it wasn’t something I wanted to be defined by, nor was it the most important detail about me. Despite my resolve to just come out to her if I ended up liking someone who happened to have the same gender identity as me, I panic texted her. This was after a friend of ours asked me if I was straight while my best friend was sitting there with us. I ended up giving that friend a roundabout answer and then came out officially to my best friend at midnight over text.
Now, I am luck enough to not experience extreme homophobia directed at myself and I am extremely lucky to be, and have been, friends with open-minded and accepting people, so I didn’t really consciously feel internalized homophobia/biphobia until years after I realized that I was indeed NOT straight. I didn’t feel that way until I was asked by my mom to warn her if I happened to be attracted to a girl or, better yet, just not like girls at all. Because of that, I grew conscious of the underlying yet ever-present homophobia found in my relative’s uninformed opinions about the LBGTQ+ community. I wasn’t afraid that my family would disown me or stop loving me, but I became afraid that I would have to compromise who I am in order not be seen as an outlier by my aunts and uncles. Honestly, I was more afraid because I wasn’t sure how my parents would react. I ended up hiding who I am from both my parents and my older sister, who I knew didn’t care and didn’t hold the same “traditionalist” values that my extended family and my parents did. I was too afraid that, if I told her, my parents and extended family would somehow find out. I made the same resolve that I had made before with my elementary school best friend: I would just casually introduce my girlfriend to her when I eventually started to actually date girls (or people in general). That, however, did not happen. Instead, I came out to her when she asked me how I identified while we were watching Bon Appetit Youtube videos.
These aren’t the only coming out stories that I have, and I definitely didn’t elaborate on every detail, but these were the moments that actually held some importance to me. Each time I came out to someone that held/holds an extreme amount of importance to my life, none of it went as planned. I had to take a leap of faith and trust that I was loved enough that, a detail about who I was, wasn’t going to change how my friends and family viewed me. I’m still not out to the rest of my family, but knowing that I didn’t have anything to hide from my sister lifted a weight I didn’t even know I had on me. Even without me coming out, my parents have started to become more welcome to the idea that girls like girls and that’s okay.
Just having even one person to talk to, who knew I liked girls, helped me to become even more comfortable with my sexuality. Without the positive LGBTQ+ representation in the media, I would have felt alone before I even knew what I identified as. I was okay with my sexuality until I wasn’t, but, even then, I had enough support to continue to take leaps of faith.
I don’t think there’s really a right way to come out, nor do I know when the right time to come out is. However, I do think that having even one person (whether it’s someone online or someone you know in real life) know and support you for who you are is by far the most freeing thing in the world.
I’m out and proud to the people that I get to choose to include in my life, and I am so excited to see the world continually progress and become a more accepting place (with better LGBTQ+ and PoC representation in mainstream media)

Bisexual

Accepting me was a very tough process. Living in a closed-minded country, with homophobic parents and in a school that I knew did not support the community made me question myself many times, it made me live in an environment where I believed that my feelings were not valid. It was thanks to the performances on tv shows and being part of the lgbtq + community on twitter that made me realize that my feelings are valid and normal. I have not yet had the courage to come out with my family because I know it will be difficult, I have tried to see their reactions but we have always ended in discussions and at this moment I depend economically on them for my studies so I have not been able to do it. I met amazing people on twitter who are from my country (Peru) and who have helped and inspired me a lot in my journey and I hope that later I can come out into the world to say how proud I am to be who I am.

Bisexual

I knew I was different when I was about 11. Didn’t realize it until I was in my twenties.
I was reading fan-fiction one day and started talking to the author of the story and she told me that she was gay and how she came out and was proud of it. I told her what I had been feeling and came out to her as bisexual.
Then I had to buck the courage to tell My best friend of 20 years at that point. But she had pointed it out to me one day after my conversation with the author friend.
She told me she always knew because I looked at girls differently than I do guys. She wasn’t put off because she has a gay family member.
I told my husband and he smiled and said I still love you.
The hardest one to tell was my other friend. She wasn’t too keen on gay people as In she just didn’t get it. However now we play “couple” together when we do go out to the bar for a girls night. She’s fine with me now. Just blindsided her.
In a manner of speaking I haven’t totally come out. I’m terrified of telling my family. My dad I’m sure knows I’ve hinted at it and he goes with it. But it’s my mother. She’s called bisexual people greedy. And it’s stuck with me. She’s called me a butch since I cut my hair differently. Or how I wear my clothes. She says you dress like a dyke. I get annoyed and ignore her as best as I can.
It hurts. It will always hurt. But Dominique you inspire me. So here is my truth. I am a bisexual married woman. I love the heart not the parts type.

The boy I’ve always been

Since I was Young I’ve always felt like the term female never suited me and that is was weird that people would reffer to me that way. I remember that when I first learned from my teacher about the genders she would point to me and call me a girl, I looked at her with a face painted with hurt and said “I’m a boy” She laughed and said no you’re not sweetheart. Through the years that little moment always has been there in my mind, it was the moment I already knew that the body I was born with wasn’t the body that was actually meant for me, just looking in mirrors just made me wanna puke, seeing a too feminine body just didn’t fit with the gender and person in my head.

Around 7/10 years old I kept saying to other people that is as a boy just born in the wrong body, they would laugh at me and say that something like that just doesn’t exist, but yet I stayed strong and kept living with the idea that I knew who I was and that something about my body was wrong. It stayed like that until high school, people started to bully me way more than before, saying I looked weird and that if I didn’t change into a normal ‘girl’ my life would get worse and worse, I didn’t want that I was done with all the bullying and pushing around, so I changed into the person I wasn’t, a girl, wearing skirts and dresses cause others expected me to wear those. While pushing the thoughts of me being a boy aside I found myself having anxiety and depression.

The depression lasted for years and my friends kept telling me it will be alright and everything will change when I just find out who I rlly was,
So I did just that I went online and began my research with transitioning and being a transgender once again but this time I didn’t let anyone hold me back(I was 14/15 here).

Even though my hair was still long and my body pretty feminine I went back to the all boy-ish clothes and found my self getting happier but not happy enough, my 16th birthday came around and I wanted to have one thing, a binder, my parents were confused but still bought one for me, when I got it I Immediately put is on and I cried, I cried for at least an hour or so, not because something was wrong but because I was so happy. A week after my birthday I came out as transgender to my parents and sister, my mom hugged me and said she already had a feeling that I’ve always been a boy, and she was happy I finally found the person I was (I’m currently crying as well).

After I came out as transgender‍ I cut my hair and bought more boy clothes and threw the girly ones away my friends at school helped me change my name and gender in the school system, and that was a year ago, I’m currently 17 years old a happy trans boy (as far as my happiness now can get) and I can’t wait to begin my next chapter in life, which is going to be testosterone shot.

It helped that a lot a people around me also just accept and support me.(btw my whole family accepts me)

So here is me a trans guy who’s still pre everything but happy and excited to see what else is about to happen In life

-JaeJae-

Lesbian

when i was 12 i had a crush on a girl. after a year she tells me she liked a boy. it devastate me, so for the next 6 years i lived a lie. i even married a man, had two kids, then after years & years of trying i told him about it. he said that i can find someone to try if i like it. i did find a girl & so we got a divorce. after 12 years, my girl & i broke up, but alls good. after 24 years of being in relationships i finally am having fun dating women, i have had girlfriends but nothing lasting. my sister knew about me so that was great but telling my mom was hard, i did. she is still trying to accept it but all is good. most all my family is ok with it &the ones that are not can suck it. my daughters were 9 & 10 when i told them, it was a struggle but after 6 months they loved my girlfriend. 5 grandkids later i’m living my best life, my oldest grandkids are ok with it also. so that’s my story. love is love so be your true self. thanks for reading.

I identify as a lesbian

My story started when I was in the 6th grade and I’d notice that I was always looking harder and lingering when I looked at women and never paid attention to boys. I could never relate or join into convo when my friends would all talk about their boy crushes and that did put me on the outside of their world in a way but it also made he have a sense that I wasn’t suppose to be in that world. Anyway, this was a Christian private school with closed minded hearts and minds so I wasn’t eager to expose myself until my last year there in 9th grade when I just about did not care anymore because it came down to loving myself for who I was or faking it till I made it and being depressed. I just about had it and wasn’t gonna be ashamed of it. Thankfully 10th grade came around and I switched to the largest public school in Louisiana because I was snot a closed minded private school person and any sense and loved meeting new and crazy people. This decision changed my life for the better, it made me realize that no one at the school really cared because they had bigger things in their lives to think about. I met an amazing group of friends who accepted be fully which I never really truly thought could happen. But , years later and I’m now 22 and I’ve met so many wonderful lgbt people, dating lots , and am happen to be who I am today and I’m grateful for my experiences. Hope this story helps some of you in the aspect that it does get better and you are worthy of love and acceptance. Love you!

I’m a women who is in love with all women

I guess I’ve always known but at the age of 15 I gave in to the idea that I was really into a girl that had been my online friend for about 3 years. I met her when she pretended to be boy on twitter, which really hurt me when I found out because I thought I fall for a pretty boy and in the end he turned out to be a pretty girl. That’s really fucked up but It took me some weeks to get into the idea that I actually had feelings for a girl, and it was okay. It was not until 2018 that I came out with my friends, which was really hard because we went to a very religious high school and they were pretty conservative; but it turned out just fine. For sure the most difficult thing was to come out to my family, which took me another year and on November 2019 I told my father that I was into girls, it turned out okay too. Though it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be coming out, I’m still finding out how to have a conversation with my mother about it, she has heard it from my sisters and my father, and she really struggled to accept me, but still I can’t bring up the courage I need to just speak to her.
For me, sex or love the same sex wasn’t as hard to accept as the idea of a mother not loving her child for choosing what really makes her happy. To all the parents out there, it’s not you business who your child fucks or love as long as it make them happy.