🏳️‍🌈Allyship That Truly Matters

🏳️‍🌈Allyship That Truly Matters

When you come out to someone, you learn very quickly to tell the difference between the half embrace and the full embrace. The half embrace turns the conversation back to your husband, your children, your family system within the first thirty seconds. The full embrace simply asks, how are you doing. In this episode, Anne-Marie sits down with frequent guest Anna Empey for a tender and honest conversation about what we wish straight allies actually knew. Together they unpack why coming out is never about sex, but about identity, love, community, future, and wholeness. They name the responses that wound, the ones we have all heard, like this is just a phase, you are so brave, and I will pray for you. And they move toward something more hopeful, the real allyship that defends us when we are not in the room, that learns our partners by name, that follows up two years and five years and ten years later, because coming out is not a single moment. It is a lifelong unfolding. Whether you are walking your own coming out path or you love someone who is, this conversation offers language for the difference between the ally sitting safely in the chair and the ally who steps into the room beside you. If this conversation stirred something in you, and you are sensing there is more clarity waiting for you in this chapter of your life, we would love to welcome you into the Three Day Clarity Experience. It is a gentle, guided space to listen to yourself and begin to understand what is true for you, in community with women who understand. There is no pressure here, only an invitation. You can learn more and join us at https://annemariezanzal.com/3-day-clarity-experience/

Finding a Self I Couldn't Name: Part 2 - Dahron Johnson's Story of Coming Out as Trans & Learning to Trust Her Inner Voice

In Part 2 of this conversation, Anne-Marie Zanzal continues her talk with Dahron Johnson, a trans woman, advocate, lifelong cyclist, and chair of the Metro Human Relations Commission in Nashville, who came out in her late forties after decades of quietly knowing. Dahron shares the rush of the days right after she realized a change had to be made, from calling care providers within 48 hours to playing the "wait list shell game" that shortened a six month wait down to six weeks. She remembers her first public moment out in the world, changing into a brand new outfit in the back of her car and walking across legislative plaza into a Glennon Doyle book reading just days before the world shut down for COVID. The conversation moves into the tender territory of telling her wife, "I need to let you know that I'm trans," after almost 25 years together, and the grief work both of them have navigated in the six years since. Anne-Marie and Dahron, both former hospice chaplains, talk about ambiguous grief, the courage it takes to trust your own inner voice, privilege and representation, and what it means to be married to several different people over the life of one marriage. It is an honest, hope filled conversation about becoming the self you could never have imagined. Connect with Dahron Johnson on social media. Her name is spelled D A H R O N Johnson, and you can also find her as DJ Contraption on most platforms. Feeling that quiet inner voice nudging you toward your own truth? Join Anne-Marie for the 3 Day Clarity Experience, July 21 to 23 at Authentically Us, three evenings of guided support for women navigating identity discovery in midlife and beyond. Save your spot here: https://annemariezanzal.com/3-day-clarity-experience/ [https://annemariezanzal.com/3-day-clarity-experience/]

Finding a Self I Couldn't Name, Part I: Dahron Johnson on Faith, Advocacy, and Making Room for More of Us.

Dahron Johnson grew up surrounded by voices. Thousands of books in her parents' home, two people who met in divinity school, and a faith that taught her every person is fearfully and wonderfully made. And still, for decades, she could not find the words for who she was. In this episode, Anne-Marie sits down with her dear friend Dahron, a clinically trained chaplain, a tireless advocate, and the first openly trans person to speak from the floor of the Tennessee House. The two of them share roots in the North, in the church, and in the long work of coming home to themselves. They move through faith and the work of welcome, the cost of advocacy in Tennessee right now, and what it means to hold the whole person rather than the narrow slice the world finds convenient. Then the conversation turns inward. Dahron walks us through the years of living with no language and no container to put herself in, the ballet class and the leotard, the three days she spent tucked into the corner of a closet, and the hope bargain she made with herself to survive. She tells us about the lung collapses and the tumor that kept whispering there was a self she had never let herself know. And she brings us to the end of a therapist's driveway, the left turn and the right turn, the moment fifty years finally crystallized into one decision. It is time to get this done. This is a conversation about faith, courage, and the long road to naming ourselves. We are honored to share it with you. If you hear yourself somewhere in Dahron's story, you do not have to sit with it alone. Authentically Us is our community for women finding their way toward a more honest life. It is a soft place to land, a space for your queerness to bloom, and a room full of people who understand the questions you have not said out loud yet. We would love to welcome you. Come find us at https://community.annemariezanzal.com/ [https://community.annemariezanzal.com/] This is Part One of our conversation with Dahron. The rest of her story is coming in Part Two. Follow Coming Out and Beyond wherever you listen, and share this episode with someone who needs to hear it.

Your Sapphic Dating Dilemmas, Answered with Love (and Zero Filter)

This month we return to our lesbian dating and relationship conversation, the one we share on the second Friday of every month, and by popular request Tonda is back at the table! Anne-Marie is joined by her wife, Tonda McKay, our longtime out lesbian and resident truth teller, and by Barbara Rowlandson, fellow coach and the woman who helps lead our Authentically Us community. Together we work through four real questions pulled from the Lesbian Dating Advice subreddit, and the conversation moves from laughing out loud to genuinely tender. We start with the question so many of us know by heart, is my barista flirting with me, and we talk about strategic ambiguity, the cognitive itch that turns a maybe into a crush, and why two women who like each other can sit in a room and say nothing at all. From there we look at a girlfriend whose closest bond is with her straight married best friend, and we ask the harder question underneath the jealousy, are your needs being met in this relationship. We sit with a heartbreaking note from someone whose partner ended things out of religious guilt, and Anne-Marie and Tonda speak plainly about internalized shame, the cost of loving someone who is still in the closet, and the truth that you can be both gay and beloved by the Divine. We close with the "break" at seven months that is really a breakup, the anxious and avoidant dance, and Barbara's reminder that if someone tells you that you are too much, you are free to go find less. A few invitations from this episode. If you are wrestling with the clobber passages and the old messages about faith and sexuality, we point you toward the resources at Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, a UCC congregation that does this work with real care: https://www.cathedralofhope.com/ [https://www.cathedralofhope.com/] If this season of your life has a catalyst of its own, Barbara and Anne-Marie created The Catalyst Chapter, a course to help you understand why this work can feel so hard and so holy, and you can find it inside Authentically Us and on the Anne-Marie Zanzal Coaching website, https://annemariezanzal.com/ [https://annemariezanzal.com/] We taped this on the first of June, so wherever you are, we hope you find your way to some community and some queer joy this Pride month, and if it is safe and right for you, we hope you let yourself be seen. We are so glad you are here!

Grieving the Living: The Estrangement No One Prepares You For

TW: This episode includes honest discussion about grief, estrangement and suicidal ideation. Listener discretion is advised. There is a kind of loss that arrives without a funeral. No casserole on the doorstep, no card in the mail, no ritual to mark it. It is the loss of people who are still alive, of communities that keep meeting without us, of the versions of ourselves we performed for decades. It is called estrangement, and for those of us who came out later in life or left the faith traditions that raised us, it may be one of the most present and least spoken parts of the whole story. In this episode, Anne-Marie and her cohost Anna Empey sit with the word estrangement and everything it holds. Anne-Marie shares her experience of becoming estranged from her child, the devastation of it, and the slow, tender work of repair she is in now. Anna brings her own story of leaving the LDS faith she was raised in and learning to navigate family through boundaries, distance, and a love that refused to disappear. Together they name the things the culture rarely makes room for. That we can grieve someone who is still breathing. That healing does not require reconciliation. That rupture is not failure, and leaving is not always abandonment. Sometimes it is the most faithful thing we can do for ourselves. This is a conversation we offer without tying it up neatly, because some of it is meant to stay open. If estrangement is part of your story, we hope you find some company here. This episode mentions a previous episode about grief and coming out. You can find that episode here: https://youtu.be/DnrRcKN8oT4 [https://youtu.be/DnrRcKN8oT4] Find the episode where Anna shares her coming out story here: https://youtu.be/XD_5QNn5IM8 [https://youtu.be/XD_5QNn5IM8] Learn more about "The Grief Handbook" by Bridget McNulty here: https://bridgetmcnulty.com/the-grief-handbook/ [https://bridgetmcnulty.com/the-grief-handbook/] You were never meant to do this alone. Authentically Us is a community of women who came out later in life and who understand the grief, the boundaries, and the becoming. We would love to walk alongside you. Join us at community.annemariezanzal.com.