Been thinking about late bloomers.
Actually, I’ve been thinking about the term ‘late bloomer lesbian.’ And how there’s a part of me that doesn’t like it.
Sometimes the way I’ve heard it makes it sound like something was off with the lesbian crop (I used to farm) and it didn’t blossom when it should have.
I also heard somebody say they were ‘baby gay’ for the first time this year. At first, I thought that was kind of cute, but when I reflected on it, I realized it felt like it was diminishing a grown woman, so that didn’t resonate either.
Then the term ‘coming out later in life lesbian’ sometimes just sounds too technical and text book to me.
I know labels like these can help, too. I also know that some people who feel they are in that coming out later category resonate and like them a lot. They can help us find people and groups with similar life experiences and identify in ways that are supportive. So it is also beautiful, too. There’s an identity and shared experiences that are important to acknowledge and honor as different.
But I was thinking about how much more than a label, I prefer hearing people’s stories about how they get to loving women.
And how we are all lesbians / queer people with these amazing journeys we’ve been on to courageously get to the place where we are able to express our true self.
I’ve heard some long time out-lesbians say people with these labels are red flags. And I know how hurtful that can feel for somebody who is what they would consider in this category. Some women I know who say this have been hurt by women who went back in the closet after falling in love. I get it. We all have our wounds.
I’ve also heard long time out-lesbians say they don’t see any flag, or if they did, it would be yellow; they are looking for the heart of the person, not a timestamp on the chronological life timeline when the person declared they could be out and fully integrated into loving women in our homophobic world. Some of their best relationships were with women who came out later in life.
And that just makes sense, we all have different preferences, based on our history or what we think works for us or both.
Each person’s coming out experience is a world of its own.
When I look back at my own experience of dating women, I really understand the forces that would have many of us not feel safe and ready to be out in the world.
My first girlfriend who went back in the closet after a six month love affair with me after she came out to a friend. She was told she would lose her job, family, friends, and at the time, could have been put in jail for 4-8 years in her country, if found out.
Another girlfriend whose anti-gay Baptist family ridiculed and ostracized her to the point of mental breakdown. She lost her job in the crisis and was forced to move back in with her family, and tone down her gay-ness for years.
Another girlfriend suppressed her gay-ness with alcohol and drugs, married an abusive man, and was only able to come out fully when she was in her mid 40s, living in another country.
Anybody who has had to wait or hide for years to be who they fully are, or who has gone through what some of my former girlfriends went through, has on a whole other level, put in their time as a lesbian, just in another way, different from mine.
And even though I’ve been out loving women or at least trying my best for 30+ years, I don’t think of myself as more lesbian in any way.
I was able to be out due to all kinds of privilege and life circumstances that made my entry into the lesbian world at a younger age easier, way easier.
I grew up in a white middle class family in the United States of America. Since the early 1900s members of my family had been doing all kinds of outside the box things – having children out of wedlock, intermarrying across religions that weren’t supposed to, divorcing. My parents were hippies. I went to University in a city jam-packed with lesbians in the early 90s and I was an athlete on sports teams with out lesbians.
It was a set of circumstances and privileges that made it easy for me to come out at an earlier age. Not so much the fact that I was incredibly courageous, though I did and do have some of that. These privileges were inherited and paid for by my birth into this body in this country, by the gay and lesbian activists before me, and by my somewhat iconoclastic ancestors.
I think it is important that we spend more time going deeper than labels in our lesbian community, less focus on the degrees of separation among us, less focus on wearing badges to show time out and time in the closet, and more focus on the stories that got us here and make us who we are.
And for me, it’s time as a community to open the doors wider, and give a bigger welcome to those who feel like they are a later in life, late bloomer, baby gay, whatever language you would like to use to embrace and celebrate you now.
We’ve been waiting for you and acknowledge you for everything you had to do to get here. And the how and when you bloomed or are still blooming on your timeline, in your lesbianism or queerness, is perfect and beautiful.
If you’re in the middle of your coming out journey, whether you’re quietly questioning or newly embracing who you are, working with a coach can be an incredibly supportive way to sort through feelings, fears, and desires. And a good coach won’t just help you understand yourself more clearly, they can also help you build the kind of community around you that truly honors and celebrates the you that’s unfolding.
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