A soft place to land.
Authentically Us an Online Community
You were never meant to carry this alone.
Authentically Us is a private, ongoing community for women discovering who they are and who they love in midlife and beyond. Whether you come out, and when, is always yours to decide. Here you will find real conversations and women who understand without needing it explained.
A community for women questioning their sexuality and what may come next.
Maybe you have been circling this for months. You read articles late at night, listen to podcasts on the drive home, close the tab and open it again a week later. Some part of you already knows what you are looking for, even if you have not said it out loud to anyone yet.
I know that circling well. When I was trying to understand myself, I typed “late in life lesbian” into a search bar and found exactly one blog post. Eventually I found a Facebook group, and it gave me words for what I was feeling, which mattered more than I can say. But a feed is not a friendship. Scrolling past other women’s stories at midnight is not the same as sitting with them and being known.
My years as a hospice chaplain taught me something I have never forgotten. We heal in the company of other people, and we rarely heal in a comment thread.
Authentically Us is the community I needed and could not find. It is a private online membership with at least three live gatherings on Zoom every week, where you can keep your camera on or off, speak or simply listen. You might drop into our Mutual Support group, where the conversation follows whatever members need to talk about that day.
You might join Sacred Unfolding, our monthly circle for women untangling faith alongside coming out, open to every faith and no faith at all. There is a queer book club for the readers, and Speed Friending nights where women who arrived as strangers leave with each other’s numbers. And when you want guidance from someone who has walked this road professionally as well as personally, you can bring your questions to office hours with me and my fellow coach, Barbara Rowlandson.
You do not need to have anything figured out to belong here. The questions you are holding are heavy enough on their own, and you were never meant to carry them by yourself.
It is not too late, and you are not too late. Come as you are, and let us walk this part of the road together.
No labels required
You may be tired in a way that is hard to explain to anyone, a tiredness sleep never quite reaches because it comes from holding something in day after day with nowhere to set it down. You may also feel caught between two worlds, no longer fully at home in the life you have always known and not yet sure what the next one will look like. That in-between place is real, and you are allowed to stand in it for as long as you need.
We arrive from every kind of life and at every point in this question. Many of us married, raised families, and built the lives we were expected to build until something in us quietly refused to stay buried, and today some of us are still married while others are newly divorced or widowed. Others never married at all and are only now giving ourselves room to wonder. A few of us have said the words out loud, and many have not yet told a single soul. One woman may be asking the question for the first time, sitting beside another who asked it years ago and is now building a whole new life on the other side of it.
There is also a grief in this that even the people who love us may not understand. For many of us, the life we built was a good one, and loving it while knowing we cannot remain unchanged inside it is a loss with no clean story and no easy permission to mourn. Grief is the work I have done my whole life, and making room for it is at the heart of what we do here.
Many of us arrived believing we were the only one. We were not, and neither are you.
Most rooms were not built for us.
Maybe you have already gone looking. Many of us did too. We tried the apps, found a local group, or worked up the courage to walk into a bar, and we still felt like strangers. The spaces meant for sapphic women can seem made for someone younger, or further along, or already partnered, and it is hard to find your footing there when you are still in the middle of your own story.
What we were looking for was never a crowd. We were looking for women who came to this the way we did, later in life and carrying a whole history, who would never ask us to explain any of it.
That is what we found in each other, and it is what you will find here. We are thoughtful and gentle with one another, and none of us will expect you to be further along than you are. You can arrive unsure and be met with steadiness.
What Women are Saying About Authentically Us
“I am deeply grateful for the Authentically Us experience, and I joined because of the 3-day Clarity Event. I felt very accepted and encouraged and was able to connect with other women who are struggling like I am. The Speed Friending event was a special highlight, I showed up nervous and left feeling so much lighter after laughing and connecting so easily. ”
“The group was really wonderful, and I feel a sense of calm with my brain quieter. I am a perfectionist, very self-critical, and question myself about most things in life, so it is a relief to quiet the brain and feel calm. It’s great to be able to relate to more late bloomers.”
“I feel less alone hearing about the spirituality group that meets once a month. My faith has been very rocked by all this, and I don’t know now what I believe.”
Who is Authentically Us For
This space is for you if:
You have questions about your sexuality or identity that you have not said out loud yet, or have shared with only one or two people.
You look settled and capable on the outside while something underneath is quietly coming undone.
Faith shaped your life, and you need a place where your spiritual questions are as welcome as everything else you bring.
You want real friendships with women who understand this chapter, not another online group to scroll past.
You do not have to see yourself in every line. If you saw yourself in even one, you are in the right place.
About Anne-Marie
I came out at 52 after a long marriage. From the outside, my life looked settled, built around family, faith, and responsibility, but inside something no longer fit. I spent ten years trying to think my way through it before I understood that what I needed was not more information. I needed a safe place to finally be honest.
I am a graduate of Yale Divinity School, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, and a trained chaplain and grief counselor. I spent nearly two decades sitting with people in the hardest hours of their lives, and that work is the foundation of everything I build.
I began this work before it had a name, coining the term Coming Out Coaching in 2018. For close to a decade I have walked alongside women coming out later in life through identity questions, grief, faith, and the long, complicated middle of becoming. This space is wide enough for all of it. The woman who still prays and the woman who traded the church for the oracle deck are equally at home here.
I am so glad you found it.
Me & The Mrs. I am on the left.
What’s Included in Authentically Us
At the center are our live support groups. These are gatherings where you are witnessed by women who understand this from the inside, and they are where the real shifts happen. They are the heart of everything else.
Around them, a gentler rhythm. An hour to ground and steady yourself in the weeks your nervous system needs that more than anything. Conversations you can step into whenever you are ready. Gatherings that are simply about being together, from Speed Friending to a book club that reads its way through the year. A monthly circle for the questions of faith and the Divine, open to women of every belief and none. And teachings and courses that meet you wherever you stand, the first questions, the harder middle, the steps forward.
You will not be handed all of it at once. We will show you where you are, and the one next step from there.
A gift the moment you arrive: Maybe I Am Not Straight
My recorded course for women in exactly this chapter. Four short modules you can move through whenever you are ready, or not at all. No homework. No timeline. Only the next honest step, there when you want it. On its own, it is a $77 course. As a member, it is simply yours the day you join.
One Membership. Everything you need in one place.
Here is what is yours the day you join:
- At least three live Zoom gatherings every week, including our Mutual Support group
- Sacred Unfolding, a monthly circle for faith, meaning, and the questions no one else knows how to hold
- A queer book club and Speed Friending nights
- Office hours with me and Barbara Rowlandson
- Courses and teachings for every stage of this journey
- Maybe I Am Not Straight, a $77 course, yours free the moment you join
Monthly: $39 a month
Cancel anytime, simply and without explanation. Everything above, month to month.
Yearly: $390 for the year
That is $32.50 a month, which works out to two months free. You receive everything in the monthly membership plus Catalyst, my $77 course for women stepping into a first relationship with another woman.
A year also gives you a steady place to land through the long, complicated middle, when having your people around you matters most.
Your privacy is held here. This space lives on Mighty Networks, never on Facebook, and it is not searchable. You can use only your first name, and read and listen for as long as you need before you say a single word. You are in good and careful company.
One check before publishing: make sure Catalyst is actually set to unlock automatically for annual members in Mighty Networks, since it’s sold separately inside the community.
You do not have to be ready. You only have to be willing to stop doing this alone.
Before You Talk Yourself Out of It
What if my husband finds out?
This space is private in a way that matters. It lives on Mighty Networks, never on Facebook, and it is not visible to search engines, so no one stumbles in. You can use only your first name and read and listen quietly for as long as you need before you ever say a word. Many of the women here are still married and still deciding what any of this means. You are in careful company.
I am not sure I am ready, or far enough along.
There is no far enough, and you do not have to be ready. You do not need a label, a plan, or a single word said out loud to belong here. Quietly questioning is a good place to begin, and reading from the edge of the room is a perfectly good way to start. Many of us began exactly there.
I cannot justify spending money on myself for this.
I understand this one deeply. So much of your life has been spent tending to everyone else. At $39 a month, this costs less than a single hour with most counselors, and it gives you a place to finally set down what you have been carrying alone. Spending a little on your own becoming is not indulgent. It may be the most honest thing you do in this chapter.
What if it is not for me?
Then you leave, simply and without explanation. The monthly membership is never a commitment, so there is no conversation to have and no reason to give. You can step away the moment it stops serving you.
I am worried it will be like other online groups.
It is not a feed, and it is not a place to perform. The heart of it is live gatherings where women are actually witnessed, not comment threads that go quiet. And the room is steady. Settled women, many still married, many carrying faith, not one of them asking you to be further along than you are.
I am not ready.
You do not have to be ready. You are welcome to sit somewhere safe while you decide whether you are. Reading quietly from the edge of the room is not less than. For most of us, it is exactly how we started.
Clicking does not mean you are gay. It means you are done carrying the question alone.
Questions before you join? Email me at support@annemariezanzal.com
For the woman who needs one human exchange before she says yes.