The Coral Reef of Your Lesbian Life

Walking the ocean’s edge today, I picked up a piece of coral, two species, finger and star, fused together, something I hadn’t seen before. I thought about how they had broken off from something, at some point, in some storm, and then intertwined into something neither could have created alone.

Holding it in my hands, I thought about the hundreds of stories I’ve heard from women right at the edge of a breakup they knew was coming and wished desperately wasn’t, or who were right off the shore of one, newly broken off and trying to breathe again.

In my work as a coach, I’ve sat with many women as tears pour out of their eyes, listening to the tremor in a voice as it describes the landscape they are losing, the home & future they built inside another person. I’ve watched bodies shake and rock in the chair, because the pain feels unbearable. Yet there they are, facing reality and shaking out the fears.

I’ve also been those women. I remembered the times I felt the uncertainty of being swept out to sea alone, nothing familiar in sight, nothing solid to hold onto. I especially remember the depths of that pain, when I was early in my coming out days, when I didn’t think any other love was possible. Believing that I’d lost my one chance at love and couldn’t face the world alone. I remembered all the times I cried my way into, through, and post inevitable breakups—the inexhaustible tears, the ways my brain turned trying to think of any way to make it work.

Life storms shape us in ways we never ask for and rarely expect. They can crack us open, break us off from places we clung to, and send us drifting toward completely new ecosystems. And yet what I remembered this morning, holding this coral in my hands, is that the ocean teaches how being broken off is sometimes how we find where we truly belong.

The lesbian sea is deep and wide. We often think we’re the only ones floating out there, hurt, scared, separated from what felt like home, until that moment when we finally let go of what’s ending. Only then can we start to heal those broken pieces, and eventually notice others nearby, other coral fragments carrying their own history, their own storms, their own brilliance.

If you’re in that tender place, I’m here. Coaching can be the gentle inlet where you catch your breath, sort the wreckage from the treasure, and choose your next waters with care. The coral reef of your lesbian life is infinite. We get to rebuild it—piece by piece, heart by heart—finding new places where you’re held, protected, and connected again.