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...
Anne-Marie Zanzal: Living Authentically
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Find Articles & Resources Focused on Topics Specifically for Women Coming Out Later in Life
We talk about everything related to women coming out later in life—from grief to divorce, to coming out, to sexuality to LGBTQ+ movie reviews, to sex to lesbian stereotypes, to labels, to lesbian relationships, to first love, to heartbreak. Scroll through articles below or pick any category to get started.
Latest Blog Posts & Articles
Coming Out & Beyond LGBTQIA+ Stories | Season 3 Episode 4 | Shannon’s Story
https://youtu.be/A87tqS0UuK8 Shannon Oury (she/her) – practiced law for 20 years before changing careers to follow her passion to provide affordable housing to low income families. She was appointed...
Religious Trauma and the Later in Life LGBTQIA+ Community – Anne Marie Zanzal
https://youtu.be/psQN11tpUz0 The Global Center for Religious Research (GCRR) hosted the 2nd Annual International econference on Religious Trauma, which gathered together specialists, psychiatrists,...
Coming Out & Beyond LGBTQIA+ Stories | Season 3 Episode 3 | Carla’s Story
https://youtu.be/nzcWq2TbOGc Carla Mullins is an adjunct instructor, mental health therapist, mother, wife, extreme introvert, friend of cats, lifelong pacific northwesterner, and increasingly...
Coming Out & Beyond: LGBTQIA+ Stories | Season 3 Episode 2 | Barbara’s Story
https://youtu.be/1hnwOnp5lr8 Mother of two kids, a 21 year old transgender daughter, cisgender daughter. Writer, online content strategist and creator. From Barbara: If folks would like to follow my...
Coming Out & Beyond: LGBTQIA+ Stories | Season 3 Episode 1 | Anne-Marie + Tonda’s Story
https://youtu.be/QdxSGDl1kCg Anne-Marie and Tonda share more about their love story, and how they created their wonderful life together as a lesbian couple after Anne-Marie came out later in...
5 Ways to Find Community After Coming Out
Everything seems overwhelming when we are first coming out. We are discovering so much about ourselves and how we fit into the world. At times it’s a very lonely journey. We don’t know if people...
My Hot Vax Summer: 7 Dates in 14 Days – Lesbian Dating a New Chance
By Elizabeth M., age 47 Elizabeth and I are good friends and she regaled me late summer with her tales of the lesbian dating scene. I asked her to write this piece for my blog. Dating is a...
Why Lesbians U-Haul?
We’ve all heard the joke. What does a lesbian bring with her on the second date? A U-Haul truck. The picture accompanying this article is a play on this joke. My wife and I were only...
Internalized Homophobia: What is it
Internalized Homophobia is when LGBTQIA+ people listen to negative messages about being gay – and believe them. While society has come a long way in accepting some members of the...
When This Long Time Out Lesbian Dated a Newbie
By Tonda Mckay I have been out forever and five years ago I began dating a newly out woman. We were both in our early fifties. We all know there are a million ways to come out and all...
Learning to Love Ourselves
All faith traditions have some version of this belief/value: We should love God, our neighbor, and ourselves. Many people who describe themselves as spiritual also believe some version of this...
Tips for Having a Healthy First Lesbian Relationship
When we have our first lesbian relationship or not, navigating a queer relationship is very similar to any relationship. We can’t expect it to be always magical because we have partnered with the...
Tips for Setting Healthy Boundaries and Expectations in Your Lesbian Relationship
Setting healthy boundaries and expectations is difficult for most people. Especially for those of us coming out later in life, it can be tricky to learn and more difficult to maintain. Many of us...
Guide to Supporting Your Friend When They Get Divorced
Divorce is always a difficult topic and often so taboo we don’t know how to act when the topic is brought up, let alone when someone close to us is going through it. We don’t know what to say or how...
Children & Divorce – Some Thoughts
One of the biggest fears we have when considering divorce is the effect it will have on our kids. It is a valid concern. But so often we get stuck in all the negative that we’ve heard about kids...
8 Things No One Told You About Divorcing Your Spouse
Divorce is often an off limit topic, yet it’s also very common, so let’s get real and actually talk about it. When we do talk about it, it’s often vague or unemotional, not wanting to burden others...
The Emotional Pain of Getting Divorced
Divorce is rarely if ever, an easy experience, or conversation. Just mentioning it can bring up a lot of discomfort, pain, memories, and opinions from those around us or even in ourselves. So it’s...
What Does it Mean to Change Your Life Midlife?
We all expect to have a lot of changes in our lives when we identify as teenagers and young adults. For some reason we expect the rest of our lives to have much more stability, but in actuality the...
Embracing the Word Lesbian
When my therapist asked me how I identified (after coming out to her a second time) I tentatively said “bisexual” as previously I was only in relationships with men. Two weeks later I had changed my...
Are you Ever Done Coming Out?
Coming out is such a big deal for most of us that once we decide we want to live authentically and open that part of ourselves to others, we look most forward to having it over and done with so we...
Cognitive Dissonance & Its Role in Coming Out Later in Life
What is Cognitive Dissonance? In psychology, “The term cognitive dissonance is used to describe the mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes....
Coming Out & Beyond LGBTQIA+ Stories | Season 2 Episode 8 | Andrea’s Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjfxbU54qHU Andrea Hewitt who came out at the age of 44 after having two children and being married to two different men. Finding very few resources for people coming...
Nashville Pride Conference September 16th- 18th 2021
Five years ago I was in the middle of the coming out process to the LGBTQIA+ community. I was fifty-two years old and drowning in doubt, fear and grief. I had joined an online FB support group...
Coming Out & Beyond LGBTQIA+ Stories | Season 2 Episode 7 | Anna’s Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD_5QNn5IM8 Anna Empey grew up on a 2,000-acre apple and fruit orchard in Eastern Washington. She graduated with her degree from Brigham Young University in...