Battling and Overcoming Internalized Homophobia, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Cognitive Dissonance Oh My! (with Anne-Marie Zanzal)

Sarah St. John
00:00:33

I am your host, Sarah St. John, and my guest today is a coming out coach and has been featured in the New York Times and O magazine.

And I had the privilege of meeting her in person last month at podcast movement. Welcome to the show, Anne-Marie Zanzal.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:00:48

Hi, Sarah. Thank you so much for having me.

Sarah St. John
00:00:51

It's so good to have you on the show. I was actually on your show. It came out last week, so I will link to that in the show notes so we can link each other's shows.

But, yeah, I met you at podcast movement, and I was like, we gotta get on each other's shows, so I'd love for you to share your story with the audience.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:01:09

Okay. So I'm somebody who came out later in life.

I fall under the category of somebody who always sort of knew, as, you know, having been in the community for a couple years now, people find their or tune into their sexuality all different kinds of ways. And I was somebody that noticed my attraction to girls when I was quite young.

In fact, my first sort of sexual play was with a girl when that got immediately filed in the shame bucket, and I just sort of forgot about, you know, not forgot about it, but felt shame a lot for it until I came out, because then I realized, oh, that was perfectly normal for a little lesbian to want to experiment that way. When I was, like, in college age and in my early twenties, I did notice my attraction to women, especially when I'd been drinking in bars and stuff.

Nothing ever happened. So the next morning, I'd wake up and chalk it up to being, you know, every straight girl is three drinks away from a lesbian encounter.

And so I was like, yeah, that's just what it is. I've been drinking, and that's why I'm finding these women attractive.

But in retrospect, it was probably more like my defenses were down when I was drinking. And so I could admit something that I couldn't admit to myself when I was sober.

So the first time I really though, that's all retrospective, but the first time I really consciously wondered out loud maybe I'm gay was when I was about 24, and I was engaged at that time to my now ex husband. And I remember being with a friend of mine who was really immersed in the queer community where she lived.

And as I left that lunch we had together, I was just fascinated, asking her a million questions. She was straight, but she was in she getting her PhD and, you know, very educational, intellectual, gays kind of thing.

And I remember thinking, maybe I'm gay. And I was like, okay, so I'm in Connecticut, it's 1988, and I'm like, well, where do you go to meet people? Like, how do you do this?

And I remember at the time, there was a gay bar that was in the next town, overdose. And I remember saying to, like, my friends, would you go with me? And nobody would. And so I was too nervous to go by myself.

I would have been, you know, it was a gay bar, so it probably been all guys. And so I never did go, and I just sort of put it away. And then I got married.

I married a man who would keep me warm and safe and dry, and he did exactly that. We had a love built around the love we had for our children and our friendship and our parenting developed out of that.

We really do both still deeply love our children. And like a lot of women, I lost myself in child rearing.

I had three kids in five years, and then seven years later, I had my bonus baby, and so never expecting to have a fourth. And he came along and really literally changed my life, because when I had him, I had pretty severe postpartum depression. And it got so bad.

Like, I had always had it with all the kids, but it got so bad this time that I couldn't stop crying, and I was just a mess. And it was really the first time I ever entered therapy through that process. I took, actually, a real big, huge fork in the road.

I didn't choose the gay fork. I went the other way. But in 2006, I read an article in Oprah Winfrey magazine, which talked about the fluidity of women's sexuality.

And all of a sudden, I had language to something that I. That I knew was true because it was talking about women who'd been previously married to men, and now we're with women at the time.

I told my then 16 year old daughter, who's now 33, hey, if dad and I don't end up together for a long, forever, just don't be surprised if I end up with a woman. And that was the first person that I ever really like.

This is all, in retrospect, that I ever came out to, and she has absolutely no memory of this conversation. That's how much it. But I had raised my children to be very progressive, so they were like, okay, whatever, mom.

They really weren't thinking about it too hard. So after that, I ended up going to Yale divinity school and going into ministry.

A lot of things were going on at the same time, and it took me about another ten years to come out. So I was 42 when I went to Yale, and then at 50, after I was ordained, pretty much like three weeks after.

And it really, my coming out had nothing to do with, I wasn't hiding anything from the ministry or anything like that, because I was, I belong to denomination that was very, very progressive, and my being gay was, like, no big deal. And also, too, I was a chaplain, so I wasn't a pastor of a church. So it was even less of a big deal if you're a pastor of a church.

It's a much more big deal if you come out. But if you're, like a chaplain or you serve in some sort of capacity outside the pastor role, a lot of times it's not as big a deal.

You'll find a lot of queer chaplains, by the way. And so when God ordains us, I want to talk about that a little bit. So when ordination happens, the belief is God ordains your whole self.

So my intellectual side says, okay, I had just been working on this thing for ten years, and now I'm finally coming out. I had achieved a goal. My brain had space to think about it, and so then all of a sudden, it comes roaring back, right?

So that's my very logical, intellectual side. My spiritual side says, well, God our danger, whole self in a piece of me square. And so that part was ordained as well.

So I spent six months in the fetal position trying to figure out how to come out. I was married to my husband at the time.

I was one of those people that came out without a catalyst, without ever having sex with a woman, without ever having any type of romantic relationship with a woman. But it was something I knew I needed to explore. The previous seven years, I had been a hospice chaplain.

And so what my patients told me is, people don't regret the things they do if something doesn't work out right, they make meaning of it that they regret the things they didn't do. So I knew that if I was going to not have any regrets on my deathbed, I needed to go and explore this part of myself.

And my ex husband, like a lot of guys, was very okay with it in the beginning, and that's very patriarchal, because if you told your husband that you wanted to go explore relationships with men, he would go, no. A lot of times, husbands go, oh, that's okay. I can handle it if it's with a woman. But we did that.

We had the typical conversations that people coming out have with their husbands. We talked about polyamory. We talked about ethical non monogamy. We talked about sleeping with somebody together.

And I remember saying to him, if I sleep with a woman, you're not going to be there. I didn't want to do it. Threesome. That wasn't my point in coming out.

My point in coming out was to find somebody that can meet my intellectual, emotional, physical, and spiritual being. And so what I did differently this time, it took me ten years to come out, and I dipped my toe out of the closet a lot of times.

But what I did differently this time is I googled late in life lesbian, and I found a mutual support group on Facebook, and I joined that group. And all of a sudden, I was with a bunch of women who were talking about the things that I had only thought in my head.

And I realized that I had this experience of shared common humanity with all these women. They get it. They got it. And I'm still friends with a lot of those women today.

I mean, Internet friends, but people that I have watched go from being married to their husband to now being married to their wife for four years. And so I have been on that journey with other people.

And so after coming out about a couple years after, I just saw so much grief around me, especially from our community, because there is a lot of loss that we often have to navigate. And I was a hospice chaplain and a grace counselor. So I started my first support groups for women coming out later in life.

And also, too, like, Facebook was great, and it served me well for the first month. But after about a month or two, I'm like, I got to talk to people. I have to meet people in persons. And I did.

I mean, there were local people that I met in person and stuff, but I knew other people would need that. And so when I first started my groups, they were based on grief, and I had been doing grief work for years, but then I realized it was so much more.

It was internalized homophobia. It was conditioning. It was brain stuff. I mean, we do have to think our way into being gay. You know, it's called cognitive dissonance.

There was a compulsory heterosexuality, all these things that I had to learn about. And so I turned what happened into me to helping other people, because can I swear on this show, oh, yeah, it's fine. It's fucking hard.

It's fucking hard. It really is. And so people needed. I felt like people needed a place. And so that's what I created.

Sarah St. John
00:10:43

You mentioned a lot of terms there.

And for people who might not be familiar with the terms and what exactly they mean, what the difference is, there's four terms in particular that I wanted you to maybe, like, go over some of what you mentioned, like the cognitive dissonance, heteronormativity, heterosexism, and comp. Pet.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:11:03

Compet. Okay, so compat is the first one. Let's talk about that. Compulsory heterosexuality is that everyone is him straight unless proven otherwise.

So if you think about it, when you watch tv, are they some compet things like the little girls talking to a boy and like, oh, is he your boyfriend? When people are in dating in high school, they, you know, are always looking at the opposite sex.

I mean, things have changed, but compulsory heterosexuality means that Sarah and I were going to get married. We were going to marry a mandev, in my case.

I had kids, and I was going to do everything that I was told to do that was supposed to bring me happiness, and it didn't. I did everything they told me to do. I married a successful man. I had a big house, I had four exceptional children. I was a minister.

I did everything that they told me was going to bring me happiness and meaning. They. I mean, greater society. And I just wasn't happy.

And it took me a long time to realize that this nebulous thing about my sexuality was actually the key to my happiness. But I didn't. It was very, very compartmentalized. I didn't realize my sexuality had anything to do with that missing peaceness I felt. Yeah.

So then there's internalized homophobia, and you used a different term, you used heterosexism, and they're basically the same.

Internalized homophobia is basically absorbing all the messages around you that are about gay people and believing them to be true and having a fear of being gay. That's what internalized homophobia is. There's a joke right now that homophobia is about fear of gay people.

And people say, no, you're just an asshole. But internalized homophobia is about being afraid to be gay. I find our later in life community is noble allies. They have been, yes. You know, there's.

Everything's a belkar. So we do have people that are very conservative christians and all that stuff like that.

But most people are incredible allies to the queer community, and they often have queer kids, too. But the only person that can't be gay or queer is me. And that's how I turn in. Generalized homophobia. The next thing is cognitive dissonance.

So cognitive dissonance is when, like, Sarah kept getting fed these messages, she may not be straight, you know, you get fed these messages, you're noticing you're attracted to a girl, you're noticing you love the queer community, you're always looking for gay people and all that stuff like that. But your brain keeps saying, no, Sarah, you're straight.

So cognitive dissonance is when you get fed the same message over and over that you may not be straight, you keep thinking, oh, no, no, no, I'm straight, I'm straight. I'm going to ignore those messages. It's very easy to think of it in the terms of smoking.

When you see somebody continue to smoke, even when they've gotten all kinds of messages, how bad it is for them, they're going to keep smoking anyway. We also have to create neural pathways in our brain because we have thought of ourselves as straight people for 30, 40, 50, 60 years.

So it takes a while for our brain to catch up with our thoughts. So we have to start making new neuropathways.

So if you're somebody who's just coming out, you know, and you have this one, 1 minute you're gay, 1 minute you're not. 1 minute you're gay, 1 minute you're not like that back and forth and back and forth, and you're like, what the heck's wrong with me?

It's just that your brain is taking a while to catch up to what you're thinking of. And then the last thing is social conditioning. All of us, especially women in particular, are conditioned to be a certain way.

And our conditioning sometimes doesn't line up to who we are authentically. Almost every human in the world has been conditioned. Men have been conditioned to. We get conditioned by our experiences.

When you have, like, for example, perhaps you have a husband that is abusive, well, your children will be conditioned by that experience because your son may believe it be okay to treat their partner or their spouse that way. And if you have a girl, she may be conditioned to believe it's okay to accept that behavior from a man. So.

And conditioning, I'm just using that as an example. We're all conditioned. And very few of us are nurtured as children. We're not nurtured to be who we are created to be.

We are told to be based on what our parents believe and their assumptions. And I am a big supporter of parents. Parents are doing the best they could, and they think they're doing a good. They think they're doing what's right.

And so it takes parents. I feel like we have to give our parents a break because sometimes they think they know they're trying to do the best they can by you.

And it's what they know. And sometimes they have to have one of their kids to come out to realize, oh, maybe I didn't. Maybe I didn't do the best for my child.

Sarah St. John
00:16:36

You brought up the word nurture, and I think the nature versus nurture debate is probably relatively over. But because you mentioned that word, I was like, oh, that might be a good topic.

But for people who might still think that it's that being gay is a nurture issue versus a nature issue, like, what would you say to that?

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:16:56

As somebody who came out later in life and pushed it away forever? I know that my nature is queer. And once I accepted that about myself, life became more peaceful.

There are lots of queer couples that raise children that are straight. I just think that why would anybody choose to be gay? And, you know, the thing is, if somebody did, that's not my job.

I think most people are queer don't choose to be because. Why would you choose to be? Because you face a lot of criticism. You can also face shaming. You can face ostracism, so why would you choose it?

Or if you're a very religious person, you could lose your church, family and stuff. Why would you choose that?

And, you know, the thing is, is that people who are not really aware of the queer community or awareness, you know, they haven't given much attention to sexuality or gender stuff because it really doesn't affect them. If they're men, they've found women attractive. If they're women, they've found men attractive. A lot of times, people don't understand gender and sex.

They don't give it a lot of thought. Right? In nature, there are so many instances of same sex relationships.

It's very binary to think that there's just men and women, straight sex between men and women. The world is much more beautiful and complicated than that and diverse than that. So diversity is all around us.

Why are we trying to limit sexuality to one kind of way that does not make sense? It doesn't even make sense in the sense of creation either.

I understand the Bible and everything like that, but it doesn't make sense in the sense of creation if you look around and see the diversity within nature.

Sarah St. John
00:18:57

Yeah. And so speaking of the Bible, the thing that I run into is people are like, well, the Bible's clear. And da da da da da da da.

It's like if they spent any kind of time trying to understand what those verses are actually referencing, I feel like people don't, even if it's not personally impacting them in some way, like say they have a gay kid or something, then they don't want to spend the time to, they'd rather just end the friendship with you or not have the discussion or whatever than to try to do the research.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:19:31

Well, this, so we're talking about the clopber passages. There's seven of them, Leviticus, Romans, deuteronomy. Several of the books have the clabber passages in it so they take them out of context.

And I know that because I've studied the Bible and I've studied it from a historical perspective. And so things like, I saw a very funny meme the other day.

It said in 2000 years we're not going to know the difference between a booty call and a butt dial. Oh yes, and that's really true because we're going to lose the context in which it is in. So the Bible is 2000 plus years old.

We're losing, we lose the context because we were not there. And when things are written.

But beyond that, when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he said to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. That's the greatest commandment. Love God, love your neighbor, love yourself. He didn't say, oh, except the homosexuals. Don't love them.

Don't love them, folks.

But also to, another thing about the Bible is the Bible has a lot of passages in there like in numbers of deuteronomy, they talk about not wearing mixed clothes. That's mixed thread. They talk about not eating anything with a hoof. They talk about not eating shellfish.

So if you're going to take the Bible really literally like that, then you make sure that your clothes is pure and you're not eating. You're basically eating kosher. So people, I find the Bible isn't clear about it.

The Bible didn't mention the word homosexuality until 1946 with a mistranslation. But I also know, Sarah, I'm never going to change those people's minds.

So I don't waste my emotional energy on them because I could talk to them until I was blue in the face about this. But they're not going to listen to me. They believe what they believe and there's nothing I can do about it.

So my emotional energy is best reserved for people who deserve it.

Sarah St. John
00:21:31

Right? Yeah. And there's a whole documentary actually, I'll link to that as well, called 1940 619 46.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:21:36

Yeah.

Sarah St. John
00:21:37

And it's like, yeah, it was mistranslated and they've even admitted the error and have fixed it, but yet there's still versions or translations of the Bible that have that in there. So then when you came out, how did your ex husband and children respond?

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:21:53

Not well. Husband was very angry about the divorce.

I mean, I think my queerness was all mixed in with that, but he was pretty brutal during the divorce, and I didn't have a lot of support. My now wife was my girlfriend at the time.

She provided me with a lot of support, but I just didn't have much support with any of, like, I sort of lost. I was in Connecticut. You think it would have been like no big deal.

But I was in a very, again, I'm going to use that word, heteronormative society where people get married and have babies and they raise their children together. And I was going against the norm. So I lost a lot of our friends during that. And also, too, my kids had a hard time.

We were pretty slow, snit, interconnected family. And my oldest child and my youngest child did the best with everything.

My youngest one, who was only twelve at the time, really did the best, the quickest. But he also had to go through everything.

He had to go through the divorce, he had to go through the separation while the other children were living in college and stuff like that. They had a really hard. The two middle ones had a really hard time.

For a long time, I felt bad about all of those things, but now, almost a decade out, I feel like they could have been better people because I was a very good mom to them and a very good wife to my ex husband, and they just were angry and they took it out on me, and I felt guilty about it for a long time. But I've really noticed a shift lately with my oldest child, who is, I think, feels bad. My youngest child always has been.

We have a very special relationship, and I was his mother the entire time, you know what I mean? He never had anger at me. He was sad, but he was never angry or anything like that. My third child really struggles with the fact that I'm gay.

He does not like it. He really has a hard time with that.

Even up to last year, he was saying something about it being a choice, and I'm like, his girlfriend hit him under the table. My second child, who is non binary and is pretty active in the queer community, has really had a really hard time about it.

But I think that has to do more with mental health issues as well. So they've had a very, very hard time.

Sarah St. John
00:24:23

Now. When did you get divorced?

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:24:25

In 2018.

Sarah St. John
00:24:27

Oh, okay.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:24:29

It took two years to get divorced, like a year well, almost two years. I mean, the process started in May of 2016. Not the divorce process.

The divorce process started in November or December of 2016 when we got divorced in April of 2018. So it took a while. It was a long time.

Sarah St. John
00:24:50

Yeah. Yeah. And so then. Cause now you have, like you do coaching, coming out coaching.

You have workshops and resources, and even there's actually a conference coming up.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:25:01

Yeah, I have a conference coming up.

Sarah St. John
00:25:03

Yeah. And then you have a book as well. Authentic peace. A story of courage, change, transformation, hope.

So did you start doing all of this after getting divorced and coming?

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:25:14

Well, I moved down to Nashville to live with my now wife. We were partners at that time. And I started working in the hospital again as a chaplain. And I'm like, I can't do this anymore. I just. I just can't.

So I started with the small support groups, and then I have actually had eight conferences. This is my 8th one coming up. Yeah. And I just knew that when you got a group of women who are going through this in a room together, magic happens.

And so I started with the groups, and then I did individual, and then I basically landed on a group coaching program because I believe in really three things, and that is, to go through this process, you need self kindness. You have to be really, really kind to yourself. And you can see it. The way I talk about what my family, they should have been nicer. Two.

Shared common humanity, that experience of being with other people. Like, when you and I got together, we just. We've both been through this.

And third, I really believe in mindfulness, being very aware of our emotions and teaching people mindfulness. So I started the group coaching program because it was helpful. I started the podcast to really sort of highlight the work I was doing.

And at first, that's all it was. So if you really want to hear, the first two seasons are all late in life women. And then as what happens as you grow, right?

I mean, you've been doing your other podcasts for years, and so you grow. And so now I talked. I talk to all kinds of people and queer people.

The common thread is everybody's got a coming out story, so we all share our coming out stories. And then also the conferences are just a wonderful way to get people together.

And so for a long time, I wanted to get people during women's week in Provincetown. And so because women's week in Provincetown is like the lesbian Mecca, and it's so much fun, and so I'm doing the conference there.

I really believe in the power of community when people come out when people are like to me, what's the first thing I should do when I'm coming out? I need to find my person. And I'm like, don't worry about that. Find your community. Find people that are going to support you.

When you're first person you fall madly in love with, and then you get break up, you need your people. And so that community is intensely important to me. And so I like being in community. I'm very excited about going to Provincetown.

I like to go there, and I'm actually going for five days before, so I'm going to be with my people before I have to take care of other people. So I'm going to recharge with them before I do the conference.

Sarah St. John
00:27:52

So do you do that conference every year?

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:27:54

First year I've done this, but I do one or two conferences a year. And I also own an Airbnb here in Nashville that sleeps twelve.

So I'll do one at the Airbnb during the winter months because, you know, it's less rented then. So I will do a conference, and that one's less expensive because they can stay at the house. They don't have to rent a hotel room.

Typically, we drive people around. It's much more intimate conference, and usually I get six to eight women at those. And that's just a small little one that I do.

So I typically do two a year. They're a lot of work.

Sarah St. John
00:28:29

Yeah, I would imagine so.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:28:31

Yeah, they're a lot of work. So you have to reserve your energy. Yeah.

Sarah St. John
00:28:36

Have you ever been to, like, Dinah Shore or girls in wonderland?

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:28:40

I have not. I want to. I have been to provincetown during women's week.

So this is third time, I think second or third time, but time that my wife and I have gone to provincetown a bunch of times. I'm a New Englander, so I like being there. And Dinah Shore, I hear, is really wild. I would like to go. Have you been?

Sarah St. John
00:29:01

No, I haven't been, but I think it's fun.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:29:04

Yeah, I would like to try it. I would really be curious about the age ranges.

One of the things I like about P town is that you get baby dikes who are 18 or 19 years old to women that are in their eighties, and we're all together. And that's what I love about p town is the age range. Sometimes when I go to these events, I'm 60 now. So one of the.

When I go to these events, sometimes not all the time. My wife and I feel really old, though. People love my wife, because she came out in 1985, so she has been out forever. And, you know, she's an old.

She's an old dyke. She's like, we love that term. My wife and I embrace.

Sarah St. John
00:29:47

Oh, really? Yeah. I thought that it wasn't, like, an acceptable term anymore or something.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:29:52

Oh, no, it's. It's a reclamation word. Okay. I mean, you can use it, but somebody who's not a dyke can't use it.

Sarah St. John
00:30:00

Oh, gosh.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:30:00

Like the n word. You know, black people can use that word, and they reclaim it, which they should, because it's been used to make people feel bad about themselves.

But dyke is definitely a word that my wife calls herself a handy dyke because she fixes things, you know? So Shane loves that word.

And so as long as you're somebody who's within the community and identifies as probably a woman loving woman or a lesbian or someone who likes girls, you can use that word.

Sarah St. John
00:30:27

Okay, well, that's good to know.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:30:29

I guess people love her because, you know, she's got a perspective, and she's been at this a long time, and she has lived. A lesbian who's come out in the south and has lived in the south her entire life. She has lived that experience.

And so she has a lot of wisdom around it. And she's funny. And so people think she's really funny, and so they, like.

It's funny because I see the women that are like, you know, maybe younger than us, that are in their thirties or forties, they really gravitate towards her, especially if they're women who come out, like, in their teenage years, because they're like, this woman did this when she was a. She was a teenager. Her first lover was her prayer partner from the Tuscany Union.

So that when she thought she was going to go to hell, and she spent a couple of years being very pushing the envelope in a lot of ways because she was like, I'm gonna go to hell. I might as well live like, I'm gonna go to hell. And then realize she wasn't gonna go to hell and stuff. And then. More comfortable with herself.

Yeah, it took her about five years, too, from, like, 18, and then she was outed at 23, and that's when she really learned to accept herself.

Sarah St. John
00:31:39

When she.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:31:40

Once she got outed, it wasn't a secret anymore.

Sarah St. John
00:31:42

Yeah. So, like, what suggestions or tips would you have for someone, maybe who's listening, who isn't out or fully out in that process?

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:31:54

So I had a client once that she did one gay thing a week. And so what I always like to recommend is that first of all, there's a lot of great podcasts out there.

So that can be your gay thing for your two years because, you know, there's Sarah's podcast, there's my podcast, there's lots of other podcasts out there that talk about queer life, queer women, and just learning about the community and stuff like that. That's really important. So podcasts are a great way to follow somebody that you like. And there's, I mean, there's so many of them out there.

You'll find one, no problem. I also suggest doing one gay thing a week. So if your podcast, and then you want to get a little bolder, maybe wearing.

So the lesbian colors are pink and.

Sarah St. John
00:32:41

Orange, which is a shirt that I have on.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:32:43

Yeah, yeah. So you wear the pink and orange.

Maybe wear a pink and orange bracelet if you're not ready to wear a rainbow bracelet yet, because pink and orange people don't know unless you know.

So if you're trying to be noticed by women, there will be women who might see your pink and orange bracelet and say, oh, I wonder if she's gay, then there's wearing a rainbow bracelet. Pins are great.

If you have a backpack, putting a bunch of pins on there that say something about trans lives matter or something that signifies that you are supportive of the queer community because you could just be an ally. People don't know. So if you want to, like, it's tiny steps. Also too consuming queer content on media.

There's lots of movies out there, there's lots of stories, there's old shows, there's new shows. You could watch the first version of the L word and then the second version of the L word.

Sort of dig into queer culture because you'll learn a lot about queer culture when you watch those movies and tv. Gay male culture is a lot different than lesbian culture.

So really look for lesbian content because we're just, we just have a little bit of a different cultures also too.

I like wearing, like, if you can, if you get to a place where you're comfortable enough, wearing clothing that has a rainbow on it at first or maybe human rights or something like that, just to signify just something like a little thing each week or each month that pushes you on your journey. Because I'm going to sound like a fortune cookie, but the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.

Just take a little bit of steps each month. Find support. I do support Emily better, who Sarah mentioned she does support. There's tons of lesbian later in life.

Lesbians out there that do support, especially sometimes even in niches like, there's the woman Mormon no more. She does support.

If you're a mormon woman coming out, I'm going to tell you, getting support around this makes this journey so much easier because things you think are weird and different are actually just really normal. That's most of the time. My co coach and I, Barb and I, we spend a lot of time going. That's really normal because we normalize this experience.

Sarah St. John
00:35:06

Yeah, that's awesome. I love that idea. Well, awesome. Well, I appreciate your time today, and people can learn more about you if they go to Ann Marie zanzel.com.

that's z a n c a lithe.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:35:20

And Anne with an e. Oh, yeah.

Sarah St. John
00:35:23

That'S a good point. Anne with an emarizanzel.com. of course, I'll have links and everything in the show notes, but yeah, I really appreciate your time today.

And, yeah, looking forward to being on your show again, too. And when I'm fully out, when you're.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:35:38

Fully out, that will be really fun. And we'll do an announcement. I want to really talk to you about that.

So, Sarah, when Sarah's on my podcast, we talked a lot about her not having talked to her family yet about her being queer. And so I sort of coached her through that. And so she's going to try to come out this week.

So give her all the love in the world so that she can do it and find the courage to do.

Sarah St. John
00:35:58

It well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Anne-Marie Zanzal
00:36:02

Yeah, thank you, Sarah. Thanks for having me on the show.

Sarah St. John
00:36:04

A quick note before I go, I wanted to let you know that you can get 10% off of any of Anne- Marie's services with the code. Lesbihonest. Lesbihonest. And you will get 10% off of any service. Thank you again for listening, and I hope you enjoyed the episode.