Content note: this episode includes discussion of conversion therapy and religious trauma.
Two hundred episodes. We still can't quite believe it either. To celebrate this milestone, and National Coming Out Day, Anne-Marie Zanzal gathers three of her all-time favorite guests around the mic: her wife Tonda McKay, coach and therapist Barb Rowlandson, and coach and business consultant Anna Empey.
Anne-Marie shares how the show began, with Anna nudging her for three years to start a podcast until a pandemic finally changed her mind. Then each woman tells her own coming out story, from oldest to youngest by coming out date. Tonda was a good Southern Baptist college student in 1981 when a kiss with her prayer partner sent her walking back to her dorm convinced there was no going back. Anna grew up Mormon, went through conversion therapy at BYU, and then fell in love with her friend Katelyn by accident. Barb came out at 45 after 21 years of marriage, in a small town where the news traveled faster than she did. And Anne-Marie, who took ten years to come out, remembers the Facebook group that finally gave her language for who she was, and the Nashville woman with the Southern accent who was willing to wait.
Along the way, the four talk honestly about what community looked like before the internet, why "go find an old lesbian" can be hit or miss, the quiet power of the casual coming out, and why none of them care anymore who has an opinion about their queerness. If you are in the messy middle right now, take heart from one of our longtime community members, who reminded a room full of newcomers this week that it gets better.
So many of the stories in this episode come back to one thing: how much harder coming out is when you are doing it alone. Authentically Us is the community Anne-Marie built so you don't have to. It's a private online space for women questioning their sexuality and coming out later in life, with live group gatherings every week, a monthly spiritual circle, and a room full of women who understand exactly where you are because they've been there too. Membership is $39 a month or $390 a year. Come find your people at https://bit.ly/Authentically-Us
n.b. In the show, we mention National Coming Out Day as being founded in in the late 1970s, but it was established in 1988, marking the anniversary of the 1987 March on Washington.
