By Lauren Means • Photos Courtesy Anne-Marie Zanzal
“My mission is to let everyone know that it is never too late to claim our authentic LGBTQIA+ selves,” Anne-Marie Zanzal, M.Div says of her work within the community. With her professional background as an ordained minister and chaplain, she has a natural talent to listen. With her personal experiences of coming out later in life, getting divorced, and searching for support during her journey, she has knowledge to share with others starting their voyage.
As founder and owner of Anne-Marie Zanzal Coming Out & Beyond LGBTQIA+ Coaching, Anne-Marie works with cis-gender and transgender women coming out to the LGBTQIA+ community. In her program, she utilizes both individual and group coaching models.
She says the individual coaching is for the person just tentatively questioning their sexuality and/or gender. “Together we work through the questioning and I normalize this process because there’s a typical process when someone is exploring their sexuality,” she explains.
In the group coaching program, participants do all the same work with the added bonus of working with a group of people taking a similar journey. Zanzal noted, “Finding community is vital in the coming out process and it can make everything less isolating.” She currently has 15 individuals in the group coaching program and says the love and care they provide one another is amazing.
Making memories through memories
Anne-Marie recently published her memoir, “Authentic Peace.” She’s wanted to write a memoir for a long time and the pandemic provided her the time needed to complete the yearlong venture.
“In my memoir, I cover my chaotic childhood, wrestling with faith and my search for the missing piece in my life. I had everything that a woman was supposed to want in this world. Marriage, children, money and a successful career but I was still restless and looking for something,” recalls Zanzal.
It was only when she acknowledged and embraced her lesbian identity did the restlessness disappear. “I am at peace with myself, hence the title ‘Authentic Peace.’” Anne-Marie wanted to give women who were going through this process the opportunity to see their story in her story.
When she’s not writing about her experiences, others are writing about her. Anne-Marie was featured by Oprah Daily (yes, that Oprah!) in September 2021 where she shared her story as part of their feature “Five Women Who Will Inspire You to Discover Your Second Act.”
“It was so much fun and I had a professional photoshoot with Nashville photographer Nathan Morgan. Plus I got to meet some editors and writers from Oprah Magazine,” recalls Zanzal.
Anne-Marie truly appreciates the value of sharing personal stories. She knows it’s therapeutic for not only listeners but also the storytellers themselves. So it’s no surprise she also has a podcast where she interviews cisgender and transgender women who have come out.
She started the podcast, “Coming Out & Beyond: LGBTQIA+ Stories,” because she believes in the power of storytelling. “I am a professional chaplain so I was trained to listen. People tell me that they like my podcast because I let the guests just talk with little interruption,” states Zanzal.
Season three, which debuted in March, has been expanded to include some practical advice including navigating a divorce, not staying too long in a marriage, children of women who came out later in life, and more. The focus of the podcast is to get queer stories out into the world. Anne-Marie says two notable stories from prior seasons were with Olivia Hill who came out as a transwoman later in life and Judy Wilson who came out in 1970s Nashville. For the first episode of the third season, Zanzal and her wife, Nashville architectural photographer Tonda Mckay, share their coming-out stories.
A vital part of health
Coming out and being able to bring your whole self to all aspects of your life is important to our overall health. “Coming out is vital to our health,” Zanzal says. “I have anecdotal evidence with the women I work with of diseases like MS and alopecia disappearing [after coming out]. Hiding or not owning our true identity [can] cause anxiety and depression.”
Many queer people also self-medicate with alcohol or drugs and Zanzal says 30-40% of the women she works with acknowledged their sexuality while they were in recovery. “It is also very difficult to be half-in/half-out of the closet. It causes so much stress to hide a piece of ourselves from people,” she explains.
If someone is in a relationship, not being out can also cause enormous pressure on both parties in the partnership. Zanzal says, “Many queer relationships fail because of one of the partners not being fully out. Acknowledging and working with our internalized homophobia is vital to the queer community.” She’s working to normalize the process of questioning sexuality and/or gender at any stage of life. “Remember there is no timetable other than your own. We all deserve to be happy and to be who we were created to be.”
In addition to her coaching programs, she’s also an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and helps queer people deconstruct their faith to fully embrace their sexuality. She spoke at the Religious Trauma Conference on March 27, 2022. For more details on this conference, visit https://www.religioustraumaconference.org/about.
You can learn more about Anne-Marie, Anne-Marie Zanzal Coming Out & Beyond LGBTQIA+ Coaching, her podcast, and recently published memoir, “Authentic Peace,” by visiting https://annemariezanzal.com/.
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