Exploring Your Sexuality – Curious & Questioning

Maybe it’s compulsory heteronormativity, maybe we’re late bloomers, it could be a number of things, but realizing  need something different to feel fulfilled later in life can be scary. The important thing to remember is that it’s okay. It’s okay to question and it’s okay to accept that what we need requires understanding a part of you didn’t know was there. 

The following is from my book, Authentic Peace, and describes a bit about my own realization and journey to accepting what I actually needed. 

From the Oprah Chapter

“It started with a magazine.

I kid you not…I was reading an article in Oprah magazine that talked about the fluidity of women’s sexuality and how there are women, who after a relationship with a man, end up romantically involved with a woman. In an instant, I had an example of something I wanted: a romantic relationship with a woman. Although I started down this straight road (pun intended), I didn’t have to stay on it forever. The road suddenly took a curve, and a tiny notion was planted in my heart.

I told my then 16-year-old daughter: “If anything ever happens to Dad and me, don’t be surprised if I end up with a woman.”  “Ok, Mom,” she said, as the good little liberal that I had raised her to be. She teased me gently over the next couple of weeks about my excitement about this article. I found clarity and a role model to follow; I found a small life raft to place my hope into.

The timeliness of the article was so appropriate. I was 42 and planted firmly in mid-life. Mid-life is the developmental time in which we begin to question our direction. It is the time when we have the opportunity to become what we want to be, not what we were told to be. 

As women, with all our predestined roles and expectations, that is some hard shit to do. We are taught to listen to everyone’s opinion around us and to people-please. We are often encouraged to put our needs last, after everyone else’s. It is touted as the greatest virtue, the notion of the self-sacrificing mother, the “good” woman.” If we come from conservative religions, it is taught as an absolute and any deviation from this road is an offense to God.

If we come from chaotic childhoods, we are often told that our voices do not matter and what we see going on around us is “just fine” or “ok” when it clearly is not. When this happens, it teaches us how not to listen to that still calm voice within. Children must be affirmed of what they see and live through.

In many ways, the cards are so stacked against us as females. But what if this was a lie? What if it is a narrative that we are told to keep women “in our place”? What if we choose ourselves and our needs? 

We would be teaching our children that it is healthy not to stay in relationships or places where we are unhappy. We would teach them to listen to their voices. We would quell our restlessness, as we would embrace authenticity. Authentically diverse people make the world a better and more interesting place.

I live in my head a lot. It is a nice and safe space…well, sometimes. The seed was planted about my sexuality, but I turned and focused on other things like getting through seminary and ordination. I am a late bloomer; I always have been. My sexuality had to germinate another 10 years before it finally came to fruition. Yet, ironically, the hardest self-work I did in those 10 years was exactly what I needed to acknowledge my truth, so I could be with other people during their own difficult paths.”

All this is to say that it is OK to question sexuality.  It is OK to be curious about what it might be like to be in a relationship with a woman.  It is never too late to make changes to life.