I Am a Woman Seeking…
I am a woman seeking. A woman on a heroine’s journey of curious exploration and self-discovery.
A journey of expanding into and reclaiming my golden sphere of potential.
A journey in which I’ve explored labels and identity and shed many that were ill-fitting.
A journey of letting go of all that no longer serves.
A journey of becoming.
Until a few years ago, I was a woman seeking men. I wore a straight identity not because it fit or because I explicitly owned or identified with it. It was how I presented — to myself and the world.
It was unquestioned.
It was unexplored.
It just was.
I wore it because I was a pleaser, desperately seeking approval and acceptance from the heteronormative dominant paradigm I was born into and conditioned for. That I was born into a voluptuous container that was every man’s fantasy of what a desirable, straight woman should look like only served to reinforce my unquestioned sexual orientation.
When asked, I had always said that I was open to intimate relationships with women but had never experienced one nor had I actively sought them out. I’ve always believed and do to this day that love and desire are not about the container but the soul that inhabits and animates it. Yet until recently, mine was more of an intellectual, conceptual openness than a lived or felt experience or actual intention.
Then #metoo happened and I started to read women’s stories about the oceans of harm suffered at the hands of men. Stories of toxic masculinity in its myriad forms from the mundane to the extreme. I started to reflect on my own engagements and encounters with the opposite sex. Noticing how unbalanced and, in many cases, how toxic they were.
How I’d normalized and even craved the attention despite its toxicity.
How dishonoring and disrespectful much of that attention really was.
How I desperately continued to seek it like a drug despite feeling hollow and unfulfilled.
I was a world-class performer striving for approval. I kept repeating the same patterns — playing out the same heteronormative roleplay — over and over again expecting different results.
I was so good at pleasing and caring for men, so focused on meeting and exceeding their needs and making their wildest dreams come true that I failed to notice that my own needs weren’t being met.
That I wasn’t being met.
That I was always left wanting.
Feeling that there had to be more.
I was so good at this dance of intimacy that I must have been a courtesan or a madam in a past life. I spent the first 53 and a half years of my life obsessively chasing Moby’s Dick, a mythical penis that would satisfy me yet always seemed elusive.
It’s such a relief to no longer be chasing that particular phallusy.
That summer, the #metoo summer of 2018, I stopped being gender-specific in my prayers to the Universe for romantic and ecstatic partnership. I consciously opened to the possibility of relationships with women.
A year later, at the end of last summer, I walked into a party and met a woman who opened me up to a whole new world of possibilities. A woman who made everything I’d experienced up until then seem pale by comparison.
At this point in my journey, I honestly can’t tell you if I was ever really straight and/or if I’m truly bisexual or actually a lesbian emerging like a lotus from the mud of her past experiences.
I don’t know enough nor have I had sufficient time or experience to thoughtfully answer these questions yet. And I don’t want to disrespect or dishonor those who have spent lifetimes exploring, embracing, owning, and defending their courageous identities by assuming one prematurely or without proper reflection and consideration.
For now, I have chosen queer because it feels right and leaves room for continued curious exploration and discovery. Because I am still becoming.
I feel fortunate that this journey for me has been relatively pain and shame-free as I know that this is not the case for so many of the beautiful and precious souls on the LGBTQIA spectrum.
My authentic experience exploring my sexual orientation has been less about welcoming back outcast parts or liberating repressed desires than it is about exploring uncharted territory. Mine is a journey about discovering a previously unexplored realm of my inner landscape. That of my true sexual identity.
I feel called to share this because it’s #PrideMonth and also because I feel ready. I’ve been proudly and openly queer to those who know me since last Fall but have been resisting what Francis Weller calls “premature revelation” when it came to public sharing.
I wanted to be with these feelings. To hold them in a space of reverence and awe.
To feel into the truth of what was unfolding and awakening within me.
To allow their fuller emergence before attempting to put into words what I’m experiencing.
To allow for ripening and make space for the alchemy of me.
It’s time for me to shed the straight identity that never really fit and claim a new one that feels authentic.
I am a woman seeking women.
I am a queer woman.
I’m not sure whether another letter in the beautiful rainbow alphabet also fits me. Time will tell.
What I do know is that I am a divinely feminine feminist who is fully femme. My type if I have one seems to be beautiful hybrids of butch and femme who blend swagger with sweetness. And as I look back on my childhood experiences, I realize that I wasn’t drawn to the tomboy characters in my favorite books and TV shows because I wanted to be one — I’ve always felt at home in my bodacious, divinely femme being — it was because I was attracted to them.
So here I am. This is me coming into my own and giving voice to my authentic experience around my sexual orientation.
I am a woman seeking women.
I am queer.
I am out.
I am proud.
And I am more alive, more wild and free and more fully me than I’ve ever been but not nearly as wild and free and fully me as I’ll ultimately be.
Because life is a journey, not a destination. And if we’re fortunate, we’re always becoming.
I am approaching this aspect of my journey with the same reverence and loving curiosity with which I approach all aspects of self-discovery.
I’m swimming and dancing in the liminal space between knowing and unknowing.
Experiencing and expressing the vulnerability that characterizes such threshold moments.
I am open.
I am curious.
I am here.
I am queer.
Happy Pride! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
I hope that by sharing this I inspire in you the curiosity and courage to explore your own inner landscape. To reclaim your golden sphere of potential to become fully, authentically, and unapologetically you. If I can be of service to you on your journey of self-discovery — your own journey of becoming — please book a curious conversation so we can explore what the Vulnerability Doula can do for you.