by Fiona likes to blog | Sep 11, 2023 | LESBIAN LIFE, WRITING
Since January 2022, I’ve been using spirituality as an antidote to the pathologizing of the female queer experience.
In a moment of reflection during Christmas break, while sitting in my parents’ house, I allowed myself to confront the truth about my sexual identity. It was a realisation that would ultimately explain the depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and sexual issues that had plagued me for years.
Coming Out & Navigating the Initial Pain
The path to self-discovery was not without its challenges, especially when it came to the initial pain of coming out as a lesbian.
While the full story is too raw for me to share at this moment, I found myself like a kid in a sandbox of possibilities, free to explore life without the constraints of a partner.
This newfound sense of wholeness sparked my curiosity and desire for self-experimentation.
Stepping into Change
As I contemplated the possibilities, my mind raced with both big and small changes I could make.
From moving to the seaside and starting a new career to getting a nose piercing and wearing waistcoats proudly (oh the joy of being a lesbian stereotype!) my journey of self-acceptance was filled with excitement and courage I didn’t know I had.
But there is no discomfort more dangerous than the one that comes from denying your own evolution.
It was a time of both joy and grief for what had come before. Grief for the marriage, for my wasted youth, and for the stability I had in the false life I had chosen to live.
I knew that navigating the post-coming-out bubble would require proactive mental health management. Triggers were everywhere, from wedding photographs to social media posts, and even TV shows we used to watch together.
To cope, I delved deep into self-help practices such as meditation, journaling, yoga, and tarot readings. Astrology, birth charts, and oracle cards became integral parts of my daily routine.
Integrating Authenticity into My Writing
Not everyone understood my choices, and I could see it in the faces of friends and relatives.
But there is no discomfort more dangerous than the one that comes from denying your own evolution.
I will no longer stunt my growth to please others. It it their own denial that comes to the surface when they judge me asserting my freedom to choose. They see in me what they are incapable of giving to themselves.
It limited my authentic expression to a small circle, reinforcing the belief that my whole self was not worthy of acceptance.
This isn’t a dig. Don’t get me wrong, I am angry; but not necessarily at the people who dismiss my choices. I’m angry at myself for tweaking my personality to fit in for so many years.
Integrating my newfound self into my work as a writer and course facilitator was a challenge. I realised that not everyone needed access to every facet of my life, but it felt wrong to compartmentalise my life into things that could and couldn’t be shared online.
I wanted desperately to protect my mental health, but it seemed like hiding parts of myself toed the line between safe and dangerous.
My personal brand, closely linked to my identity, has always played a significant role in my writing career and while it was tempting to keep certain aspects hidden, I believe that sharing the most genuine parts of myself is where my magic as a creative resides.
My Patreon Journey: Pros and Cons
To create a safe space for sharing my spiritual experiences, I started a Patreon.
This allowed me to write candidly about mystical experiences, tarot readings, and all that jazz. It provided regular writing practice and boosted my confidence in tarot. However, it came with guilt for withholding content from some subscribers and the pressure to cater to a small audience.
Why I Closed My Patreon
Running my Patreon was a safe but confining experience. It limited my authentic expression to a small circle, reinforcing the belief that my whole self was not worthy of acceptance.
Ultimately, I closed it to avoid perpetuating the divide between the sellable and the real me.
And while I know that there are people on the internet and in my real life will not accept me, will not see my choices as wise, my beliefs as appropriate …. I refuse to silence myself in order to maintain an outdated self-image for people who aren’t willing to witness my evolution.
It’s time to combine the two and be true to myself in every aspect of life.
Embracing my Full Self
In the end, Patreon brought financial gains, but for my personal circumstances, it raised questions about the cost of authenticity.
While Patreon can provide a private writing space, it demands significant time and effort for profitability. For me, the love of writing lies in self-expression shared with as many people as possible.
Good news: I’m in the process of copying all my Patreon blogs over to this website. Sign up for my newsletter to receive updates.
by Fiona likes to blog | Sep 3, 2023 | LESBIAN LIFE
I’ve always been terrified of getting into debt.
Since my teenage years, my parents instilled in me the importance of seeking their support before resorting to credit cards or loans. On one hand, it demonstrated their generosity and love. However, now in my mid-thirties, I’ve come to realise that this well-intentioned protection inadvertently gave me a complex relationship with money.
Let me go back a bit, to the pivotal moment that shook my sense of self over the past two years. In January 2022, I came to terms with my true identity as a lesbian and made the decision to come out and end my marriage to my then-husband.
The emphasis here is on one word: “realised.”
I didn’t proclaim my sexuality to the world after a lifetime of concealing this truth. There were no sleepless nights rehearsing coming out speeches, no anxiety about how people around me would react. I had been – I thought – a contented, married heterosexual woman for my entire life.
And then, in a matter of minutes, I uncovered a facet of myself that had always been there, but concealed from my own awareness.
Like the finest plot twists in our favourite stories, my perception of reality was forever altered once the revelation occurred. I saw through the looking glass.
via GIPHY
But, much like the most memorable plot twists I’ve enjoyed, I spent considerable time retracing the steps that led to that pivotal moment. I revisited every aspect of my journey, searching for foreshadowing, hints, and evidence of the impending twist, feeling somewhat foolish for not having noticed it sooner.
As someone who absorbs stories like a sponge, I relish the opportunity to predict a plot twist. Therefore, failing to recognise my own hidden truths over the years has left me doubting my own judgment.
I thought I knew myself quite well. But clearly, I was wrong.
So, returning to the notion of my fear of money, what has recently come to the surface is my reluctance to seek financial support as I embark on this phase of life where I aim to become self-reliant.
Asking for financial assistance feels like an admission that I cannot be trusted to provide for myself.
Hence, I’ve been avoiding, postponing, and even rejecting the idea of seeking support from my parents. The question that keeps resurfacing is: why?
Why am I so determined to prove to myself that I can fend for myself when all signs (overdraft, empty bank account, self-imposed Klarna ban) point to the fact that I can’t?
Here’s what I think.
I’m not fighting against my parents; I’m fighting against the patriarchy.
via GIPHY
It’s the system that ingrained in me the notion that being a woman equates to weakness, that being a woman implies dependence on the stability of a man, and that being a woman inherently means needing help.
And that infuriates me.
The problem (?) is that I’m so furious that I’d rather dwell miserably in my overdraft than seek support from the people I love.
And the fact is I don’t actually know if I’ll be able to prove that I am, indeed, capable of supporting myself.
I don’t know if I’ll affirm the narrative that a woman on her own is helpless. Or perhaps, I’ll sail off into the sunset on a life raft fashioned from my own two capable hands.
Who knows.
But what I’m currently focused on, what holds the utmost importance for me right now, is learning to trust in my ability to make it work, either way.
What does it look like to rebuild that self-trust after concealing your true self for so many years? For me, it entails:
1. Believing in my own experiences.
2. Allowing my perception of those experiences to evolve over time.
3. Forgiving myself for keeping certain aspects of my identity hidden.
This journey is about embracing financial independence while simultaneously embracing trust in oneself, which means sometimes withstanding the uncomfortable truth: it is hard to do both.
by Fiona likes to blog | Aug 3, 2023 | LESBIAN LIFE
If I had to sum up the hardest part of my coming out experience, it could be encapsulated in one word: guilt.
First off, I feel guilty that I’ve portrayed my coming out experience as a purely joyful event. Scroll through my Instagram feed from the last year and a half and you’ll see me visiting family in Australia, spending Christmas in Paris, getting fresh haircuts and staring face-first into the sunshine.
What I haven’t documented publicly is the unravelling of years and years of repressed sexuality, the shame, the pain, and the guilt of shattering the illusion of my identity to every person I know.
Secondly, the guilt is mostly centred around the upset my coming out has caused other people.
Namely, my ex and of course my family, who have had to reconcile who they thought I was with who I am today. The guilt for getting married. For accepting wedding gifts and allowing our families to pay for our big day.
And there’s another layer of guilt. The guilt I have about abandoning myself for so many years. Guilt, upon guilt, upon guilt.
The myth of external success
I wasn’t consciously hiding my sexuality from the world. It just lived under my skin and I refused to peel back the layers to see what was going on. I distracted myself with ambition, building a business and writing books.
Part of me believed that if I could just create this successful version of myself, everything would be OK.
But it didn’t work out like that. When I had done all I could think of, written two books and finished my first attempt at a novel, I closed my laptop and heard silence.
Without the noise of recognition, praise and sales statistics, the great unsaid inside of me screamed and I had no choice but to listen.
Logic doesn’t work
I don’t know if I will ever write about the day I came out to my husband. Some friends have asked me about it, but I’ve refused to talk about it because it’s just too painful to recall.
In the aftermath of that, inflicting pain on someone by merely discovering who I am, the guilt kicked in hard and I’ve been trying to shake it off ever since. But it just. keeps. coming.
“You have no reason to feel guilty, you did the right thing,” is the phrase my friends repeated to me over and over again.
And although I know I did the right thing for me, for us, it doesn’t make it sting any less.
We should never be taught to abandon ourselves in order to feel safe
Why don’t we, as women, have the ability to let go of our responsibility to make other people feel OK?
It’s so ingrained in us from birth, from being forced to hug a relative so that they don’t feel left out, to smiling at boys to avoid making them angry, to wearing ‘appropriate’ clothing at work so as not to distract anyone else, we’ve been indoctrinated into this narrative that the buck stops with us. We are somehow the gatekeepers of the world’s happiness.
We only have to look at the famous monologue in the recent Barbie movie to witness the pressure placed on us as women today, and the anger, self-hatred and frustration that ripples through our cells as a result.
At the end of the speech, delivered by America Ferrera at the climax of the movie, she says:
“You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.”
It’s too hard and it’s too contradictory.
There is no medal for coming out and owning my sexuality. I’m paying the price in many ways, of not performing in the way that society wants me to.
School, family, and the media, all trained me to be a good girl, to prioritise those around me first, and to care for others at all costs. But the cost I paid was too high and I know now that as women, we should never be taught to abandon ourselves in order to feel safe. In order to simply live.
I willingly gave up my home and a sense of security for the unknown because it was killing me to keep up the performance of being a typical woman.
It gets to a point where it’s impossible to keep up the charade.
I don’t want to be the creator of worry, the supplier of sadness, or the deliverer of yet more bad news.
People say it’s the best time in history to be openly gay. That to come out now is to taste real freedom and true acceptance. So here I am feeling guilty, yet again, for not feeling that way.
Straight people, look around you.
Queer rights are being stripped away left right and centre, and we are terrified.
Some truths
- I am scared to wear a rainbow or trans ally badge in case I get abuse from a stranger.
- I am scared to write about sexuality on my own blog because I don’t want to lose clients.
- I am scared that one day, the relative freedoms that queer people enjoy will be reversed.
And the guilt of all of that weighs heavily on me as I write this blog because I don’t want to put more fear out into the world. I don’t want to be the creator of worry, the supplier of sadness, or the deliverer of yet more bad news.
But isn’t that the problem?
That I am still censoring myself because I don’t want to upset anyone? I don’t want to upset you?
What I’m working on now is trust. I want to – I have to – trust that you will receive my words in the way I intended when I started writing this blog post: as a permission slip to express who you are, in all its anger and glory, to talk about guilt as a way to relieve the guilt, to write or speak your words with conviction, without feeling the need to apologise, without ever worrying that you are responsible for how other people feel when you expand into your truest self.
I trust you.
Resources:
If you’re curious about my use of the word queer, watch this video.
A list of the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation advancing in the US here.
