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Coming Out To Ourselves with Anne-Marie Zanzal, M.Div · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapists podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
0:07
Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
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Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
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Speaker 1: So five four, three, two and one our folks, welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have as my
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Speaker 1: guest today. Am Marie Zanzal and Marie welcome.
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Speaker 2: Thank you guy for having.
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Speaker 1: Me appreciate it. So Emory is a coming out coach,
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Speaker 1: ordained minister, and grief counselor who specializes in supporting individuals,
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Speaker 1: particularly women navigating later in life sexuality, divorce, and identity transitions.
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Speaker 1: A graduate of Yale Divinity School and former hospice chaplain,
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Speaker 1: she blends spiritual care, group coaching, and lived experience to
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Speaker 1: help clients move toward authenticity, self trust, and connection. Through
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Speaker 1: her coaching programs, Community Spaces, and the Coming Out and
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Speaker 1: Beyond podcast, Emory has guided thousands of people building lives
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Speaker 1: that align with who they truly are and Marie, Wow, Okay,
1:06
Speaker 1: before we could go in share with the listeners where
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Speaker 1: you're from originally and where you are currently.
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Speaker 2: I'm originally from Connecticut, but I live in Nashville, Tennessee
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Speaker 2: with my wife.
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Speaker 1: Now, okay, so how the heck did all this start
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Speaker 1: for you?
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Speaker 2: Well, like a lot of women that come out later
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Speaker 2: in life, okay, let me drag backtrack. A lot of
1:31
Speaker 2: times people when they come out later in life, they
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Speaker 2: come out in about three or four different ways. One
1:36
Speaker 2: is they fall in love with somebody that makes them
1:38
Speaker 2: realize they're not as straight as they thought they were. Two,
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Speaker 2: they have something called a catalyst, which means it's a
1:45
Speaker 2: woman that it may be requited unrequited. It may be
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Speaker 2: a movie star, it may be somebody from your office,
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Speaker 2: but that makes them realize they're not as straight as
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Speaker 2: they thought they are. And then there's like about fifteen
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Speaker 2: to twenty percent of people, and that's me. I'm somebody
2:02
Speaker 2: that realized that I wasn't straight, probably when I was
2:07
Speaker 2: younger and it was more unconscious thing, but I consciously realized,
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Speaker 2: you know, wonder to outlaw when I was about twenty
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Speaker 2: three or twenty four, like, maybe I'm not straight? How
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Speaker 2: do I do this? How do I find you know,
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Speaker 2: how do I find community? And just I'm a certain age.
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Speaker 2: So this was the nineteen eighties, and we were going
2:26
Speaker 2: through a time in our country of very bad homophobia
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Speaker 2: because of the Eighth Crisis that was going around. So
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Speaker 2: even though I was a you know, I would have
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Speaker 2: been a lesbian or identify as a lesbian. Excuse me,
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Speaker 2: you know I did, you know, I heard, I heard
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Speaker 2: all the homophobia that was going on at that time
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Speaker 2: and just said I've got to get married and have
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Speaker 2: babies and do that. So I was somebody that was
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Speaker 2: sort of conscious about it. And then I put it away.
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Speaker 2: I put it away for a really, really long time.
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Speaker 1: You put it away meaning you shoved it away, or
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Speaker 1: you shoved it away you didn't want to think about it.
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Speaker 1: One will acknowledge what was going on, so what.
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Speaker 2: Both? And you know, there's a saying in our later
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Speaker 2: in life community guy that straight girls don't lie awake
3:19
Speaker 2: at night wondering if they're gay, and that was very
3:24
Speaker 2: true for me. I spent a lot of time wondering
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Speaker 2: if I was gay or not. It would come up
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Speaker 2: for me when I saw a woman that was particularly attractive.
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Speaker 2: It would come up for me when I knew it
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Speaker 2: was a gay woman. I never had like crushes on
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Speaker 2: my straight friends or anything like that. Lots of people
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Speaker 2: have that, but not me. And I would like spend
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Speaker 2: three or four or five weeks thinking about this person,
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Speaker 2: like even if it was a chance meeting, you know
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Speaker 2: what I mean, like three or four and then I'd
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Speaker 2: be like, Okay, well, I can't do anything about it.
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Speaker 2: Until I realized that that if I didn't do something
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Speaker 2: about it, I was going to die.
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Speaker 1: How old were you at that point I first.
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Speaker 2: Started really considering my sexuality was when I was forty two,
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Speaker 2: and I came out at fifty two, so it took
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Speaker 2: me about ten years. Yeah, yeah, And there was a
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Speaker 2: lot going on in between there. I went to Yale
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Speaker 2: Divinity School during that time. I became an ordained minister
4:23
Speaker 2: during that time, I you know, I had four kids
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Speaker 2: between the eight when I started Divinity School. I had
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Speaker 2: four kids between the ages of two and fourteen. I
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Speaker 2: was really busy, so there was a lot going on.
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Speaker 2: The ten years is really the most part where I
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Speaker 2: really tried a lot. So in two thousand and nine
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Speaker 2: I was at Yale Divinity School. I was a good ally.
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Speaker 2: A lot of late in life people are amazing allies.
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Speaker 2: We're so accept you know, we don't care if anybody's gay,
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Speaker 2: but you know, the only person that can't be gay
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Speaker 2: is me, which was my own internalized homophobia, and so
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Speaker 2: I realized I was gay at a coming out day
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Speaker 2: ceremony and had to like was really had a visceral
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Speaker 2: out of bodiv experience where I realized, oh shit, I'm
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Speaker 2: gay and I got to do something about it. I
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Speaker 2: was married, been married at that time for twenty plus years.
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Speaker 2: Told my husband in twenty ten I thought I was gay.
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Speaker 2: He said, no, you're not, and I said okay, because
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Speaker 2: I didn't want to be gay, but didn't realize the
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Speaker 2: only person who can name my sexuality is me. Went too.
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Speaker 2: I did something called clinical pastoral education at the time
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Speaker 2: where I became a chaplain. It's how it's a way
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Speaker 2: you become a chaplain, and I spent my whole unit
5:41
Speaker 2: thinking about whether I was.
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Speaker 1: Gay or now.
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Speaker 2: My CP supervisor was a lesbian and the only other
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Speaker 2: woman in the cohort was a lesbian, so I felt
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Speaker 2: like the universe was surrounding me with lesbian saying okay,
5:52
Speaker 2: figure this out, amory. I went to a therapist in
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Speaker 2: twenty ten twenty eleven with the explicit thing of wanting
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Speaker 2: to work on this, and I said, you know, I
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Speaker 2: don't think I'm straight. She said, have you ever selped
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Speaker 2: with a woman? I said no, and she never brought
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Speaker 2: it up again. I think I failed some sort of test.
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Speaker 2: In twenty fourteen, my ex and I were in marriage therapy.
6:15
Speaker 2: I brought it up again and said, hey, I don't
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Speaker 2: think I'm straight. And my my therapist, who by the way,
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Speaker 2: was a lesbian who had been married to a man
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Speaker 2: back in the early seventies. She was older who I
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Speaker 2: really love and I've written a wonderful piece about her.
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Speaker 2: But she really messed this up, she said to me.
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Speaker 2: She chalked it up to my bad relationship with my mother,
6:38
Speaker 2: which is so cliche, like almost makes your eyes roll.
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Speaker 2: So but she also had a dual role in our
6:45
Speaker 2: relationship because she was my marriage therapist, but she also
6:48
Speaker 2: was my individual therapist, which is a no no know.
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Speaker 1: It at the time, no no one on one.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so but I didn't know that, you know. And
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Speaker 2: so my coming out was really hard and I tried
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Speaker 2: a bunch of times. And what I say when I
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Speaker 2: write about this now, I was looking for professionals to
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Speaker 2: name my sexuality. But the only person that can name
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Speaker 2: my sexuality.
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Speaker 1: Is me all right? Let me let me ask you
7:16
Speaker 1: something here a couple of things. I'm curious what degree
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Speaker 1: your suppression of your the fact that you were gay
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Speaker 1: impacted the direction the trajectory of your professional life, i e.
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Speaker 1: Going to divinity school or what else.
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Speaker 2: That is a wonderful question, guy. No one's ever asked
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Speaker 2: me that before. I do think that me going into
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Speaker 2: ministry probably was a subconscious way for me to prove
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Speaker 2: how good I was m and it really at this
8:02
Speaker 2: I know why because I had a fourth child, who's
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Speaker 2: my bonus baby, and I for a while considered not
8:11
Speaker 2: having him, and I felt such shame around that that
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Speaker 2: a good Catholic girl wouldn't consider having a you know,
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Speaker 2: a by baby's a blessing and a joy would even
8:22
Speaker 2: think about something like that. I think that propelled me
8:25
Speaker 2: into ministry. And I also think that I also have
8:29
Speaker 2: a natural bent to being with people. And I'm also
8:32
Speaker 2: like people tell me their life stories all the time,
8:35
Speaker 2: and I'm a good listener, and so I think those
8:38
Speaker 2: were all the combinations. I never went into ministry to
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Speaker 2: be a pastor. I went into ministry to be a chaplain.
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Speaker 2: And there's a difference which is what a chaplain is.
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Speaker 2: Someone who serves in a secular or non secular institution
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Speaker 2: that walks alongside of people, and often they're in the background.
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Speaker 2: While a pastor is meant to lead, they are mentally
9:01
Speaker 2: the church, their congregation. Uh and so it is a
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Speaker 2: much more outfront position where you are the leader, while
9:10
Speaker 2: as a chaplain, you're more of the alongside person. And
9:15
Speaker 2: health care chaplaincy was a lot different than hospice chaplaincy.
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Speaker 2: One of the things I didn't like about healthcare chaplaincy,
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Speaker 2: I never knew the end of the story because patients
9:23
Speaker 2: would come in, they would go. But hospice chaplaincy, I got.
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Speaker 1: To know the there's an end.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, but I got to with your families too, and
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Speaker 2: I did grief keeping with them. So there was a
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Speaker 2: lot of wonderfulness about hospice chaplaincy until it got to
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Speaker 2: I got too tired. I'd been did it about five
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Speaker 2: years and that was enough. It's hard being around people
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Speaker 2: dying all the time.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I know, I know. I've done some work
9:48
Speaker 1: in that periods. It's but okay. So you you talked
9:53
Speaker 1: about this struggle of identifying, owning, accepting, I call it
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Speaker 1: okay but at a point you said I didn't want
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Speaker 1: to recognize or accept my internalized homophobia. Correct, Now, I
10:15
Speaker 1: guess define that because when you said that, I guess
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Speaker 1: I have an understanding of homophobia as something very kind
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Speaker 1: of I don't know, aggressive or negative. But the way
10:30
Speaker 1: you were describing it, I read it more as not
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Speaker 1: as aggressive or negative, but more as just like an
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Speaker 1: inability to recognize who we are, and that could be
10:44
Speaker 1: many things underneath that, such a shame or whatever. But
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Speaker 1: explain that if you will.
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Speaker 2: So homophobia is a harsh word, right, I like when
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Speaker 2: I hear internalize homophobia even now, it makes me sort
10:58
Speaker 2: of go cringe. By the way of referring to it
11:01
Speaker 2: is compulsory a heterosexuality. Everybody is assumed to be straight
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Speaker 2: and less proven otherwise. And a lot of times what
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Speaker 2: I found with my clients is they were really they
11:12
Speaker 2: felt shame around having internalized homophobia. But the thing is
11:16
Speaker 2: is that we live in a society where being gay
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Speaker 2: we still see all the drama around it. We see
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Speaker 2: people saying that it's not real and all those things
11:26
Speaker 2: like that. So it's very hard to come out in
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Speaker 2: this world, not because we're gay, because the straight world
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Speaker 2: makes it really really hard. And so my internalized homophobia
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Speaker 2: was like it was a mild one. But the person
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Speaker 2: that couldn't be gay was me. I'm okay with anybody
11:44
Speaker 2: else being gay. I'm very you know. I was a
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Speaker 2: huge ally all those things like that, But I couldn't
11:50
Speaker 2: be gay because it would hurt the people that I loved.
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Speaker 2: It would change my life significantly. I would have to
12:00
Speaker 2: figure out what to do with my marriage, I would
12:03
Speaker 2: have to come out to a boatload of people. And
12:05
Speaker 2: I was a minister, so there was a lot that
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Speaker 2: I had to work through to be able to claim
12:11
Speaker 2: my queerness.
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Speaker 1: So almost everything you mentioned there was kind of external factors.
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Speaker 1: Correct What were the internal factors if there were any?
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Speaker 1: Was there? Embarrassment? Was there? Shame? Was their fear?
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Speaker 2: Was there for a lot of people coming out? It's
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Speaker 2: this is some of the things, and not all of
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Speaker 2: them include me. I haven't suffered enough to be gay
12:42
Speaker 2: and being in a closet for twenty thirty years, you've
12:45
Speaker 2: suffered enough that how am I going to find community?
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Speaker 2: Will I be accepted as a queer person? That has
12:55
Speaker 2: really lessened since I came out. I came out ten
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Speaker 2: years ago. There was this sort of stigma around women
13:02
Speaker 2: coming out later. Oh they've been with a man. Am
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Speaker 2: I going to be someone's experiment? All those questions that
13:09
Speaker 2: people within the community would ask. Now ten years have
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Speaker 2: gone by, and because of the work that I've done
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Speaker 2: and a lot of other people as well, there's more
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Speaker 2: on an understanding that women tend to come out later
13:21
Speaker 2: in life. There is a revolution going on right now.
13:25
Speaker 2: Lots of women are coming out late, and that's because
13:28
Speaker 2: of visibility, and because visibility matters. So, yes, our gen
13:35
Speaker 2: Zs are the the gen Zs are I can go
13:39
Speaker 2: turn my phone off if you want me to. Yeah, okay, yeah,
13:45
Speaker 2: I will go do that because if my phone keeps ringing.
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Speaker 2: But the gen Zs are the most LGBTQ generation ever
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Speaker 2: and the reason why is because of visibility and that matters.
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Speaker 2: They see queer couples, they saw people on TV on
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Speaker 2: Disney when they were growing up, there would be a
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Speaker 2: gay character now and then. And so just for like
14:10
Speaker 2: the little kids, the kid the kids, the generation of
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Speaker 2: gen Z they're not little. A lot of women are
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Speaker 2: seeing it now. They're seeing women coming out after being
14:19
Speaker 2: married for years. They're seeing other women declaring, you know,
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Speaker 2: I was I was with my ex for a long time,
14:26
Speaker 2: or I've never been married. I never could find anything anybody,
14:29
Speaker 2: and I thought there was something wrong with me. Turns
14:32
Speaker 2: out I was just fishing in the wrong pond. Because
14:36
Speaker 2: the narrative narrative is is everybody is straight unless proven otherwise.
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Speaker 1: So let's talk about how you got into well, I
14:50
Speaker 1: don't know where. I have a lot of questions here.
14:52
Speaker 1: Ask when did you come out?
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Speaker 2: I came out in twenty.
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Speaker 1: Sixty and what was that? How did you do that?
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Speaker 2: Well? I was working at the hospice at the time,
15:02
Speaker 2: and I had a client that signed on to hospice,
15:06
Speaker 2: and at one point during our eight months together, she
15:09
Speaker 2: said something to me of like, I have been waiting
15:12
Speaker 2: for something in my entire life, and it really hit me.
15:17
Speaker 2: You know when a client says something to you that
15:19
Speaker 2: just sort of hits your internal world. And she hit
15:22
Speaker 2: my intern She wasn't gay, but she hit my internal
15:25
Speaker 2: world because she was waiting to die. She had a
15:28
Speaker 2: very bad death. Just to assure you, ninety nine percent
15:32
Speaker 2: of all people in hospice have beautiful deaths. She was
15:34
Speaker 2: not one of them. I held her while she was
15:37
Speaker 2: she died and said, you can go, you can go,
15:39
Speaker 2: you can go, a little traumatized after that, in twenty sixteen,
15:45
Speaker 2: I was ordained. Finally. It took me a long time,
15:49
Speaker 2: and the morning after my ordination, I woke up and
15:52
Speaker 2: I said to my sister, this is really hard work
15:55
Speaker 2: that I'm doing, and I need a soft place to land.
15:58
Speaker 2: Went back to my therapist, the same one that I've
16:01
Speaker 2: been seeing a long time, and started talking to her
16:03
Speaker 2: about happened, told her what happened with that patient, and
16:06
Speaker 2: of course, being the consummate therapist that she was, she
16:09
Speaker 2: asked a Marie, what are you waiting for? And I said,
16:13
Speaker 2: I think I'm gay. And that was the third time
16:17
Speaker 2: that like I tried to come out to somebody, but
16:19
Speaker 2: this was such an outer by experienced guy like I
16:23
Speaker 2: literally saw my life pass before my eyes, and I
16:26
Speaker 2: knew that this time there was no going back. And
16:29
Speaker 2: I said to her, if I do this, this is
16:32
Speaker 2: going to open up a Pandora's box. And she said, no,
16:35
Speaker 2: it doesn't. And I'm so glad she lied that right,
16:38
Speaker 2: because it did open up a Pandora's box. And so
16:43
Speaker 2: that is how I came out, and that year started
16:47
Speaker 2: my whole journey. What I did differently this time was
16:52
Speaker 2: I googled late in life lesbian and I found one blog.
16:55
Speaker 2: Now you can find a million, but I found one
16:58
Speaker 2: blog and at the bottom of the blog they talked
17:01
Speaker 2: about having a Facebook group, and like every true late
17:05
Speaker 2: in life lesbian three months later, now three months later,
17:09
Speaker 2: I like emailed her and I got into that. I
17:13
Speaker 2: entered that Facebook group. And this is why I'm such
17:16
Speaker 2: a believer in shared common humanity because when I entered
17:20
Speaker 2: that group, I had women saying and talking about things
17:23
Speaker 2: I had only thought about in my head. And that
17:27
Speaker 2: changed my life. That group changed my life, and it
17:31
Speaker 2: gave me the courage to come out. So a lot
17:34
Speaker 2: of times, when women are in the process of coming out,
17:37
Speaker 2: and men too, it's not just women. When humans are
17:40
Speaker 2: in the process of coming out, a lot of times
17:42
Speaker 2: we think about it for years and years and years
17:45
Speaker 2: and we never get any kind of input even if
17:48
Speaker 2: we tried, like with the therapist, we don't get the input.
17:51
Speaker 2: So what ends up happening is our brains keep going
17:53
Speaker 2: to worst case scenarios, worst case scenarios. So once we're
17:57
Speaker 2: in community and we begin to because this is a
18:00
Speaker 2: relational wound. Once we're in community, that is where the
18:04
Speaker 2: wound of being gay can start to heal, because you're
18:07
Speaker 2: with a whole bunch of other people that understand exactly
18:10
Speaker 2: what you're talking about.
18:14
Speaker 1: What was it like coming out to your husband and
18:18
Speaker 1: your kids?
18:18
Speaker 2: Well, I had come out to him in twenty ten, Okay,
18:21
Speaker 2: so when I came out to him the last and
18:24
Speaker 2: final time, you know what he said to me, Oh
18:27
Speaker 2: thank God? And I really do like I like, it
18:32
Speaker 2: was like, well, that's a really weird thing. But I
18:36
Speaker 2: think what it meant is a lot of the husbands
18:39
Speaker 2: that I have witnessed from my clients is they want
18:44
Speaker 2: to be the good guy. Right, So if I come
18:48
Speaker 2: out as a lesbian, then all the problems of our marriage,
18:51
Speaker 2: every single one of them, would be placed squarely on
18:56
Speaker 2: my lesbian shoulders, even though our marriage had a lot
18:58
Speaker 2: of problems that had nothing to do with Mekay. But
19:02
Speaker 2: I think that what for him, he was just glad
19:06
Speaker 2: that he wouldn't have to have the responsibility for the
19:08
Speaker 2: ending of our marriage. I think that's what him I
19:12
Speaker 2: should ask him. I mean, I'm not quite sure. My
19:14
Speaker 2: kids had all kinds of ranges of emotion. They were older,
19:18
Speaker 2: you know, like with my clients, people that have kids
19:20
Speaker 2: under nine or ten, I'm like, you're that's fine, they'll
19:23
Speaker 2: be fine. It's when you have teenagers and adult children.
19:26
Speaker 2: So my kids at the time were twelve to twenty four.
19:31
Speaker 2: My twelve year old and my twenty four year old
19:33
Speaker 2: did the best. They tried, like they really tried. My
19:36
Speaker 2: youngest had. My youngest had to go through it, right.
19:40
Speaker 2: He had to go through him and his dad, his
19:43
Speaker 2: dad and I separating. He had to go through me
19:46
Speaker 2: bringing my girlfriend to his basketball games. I mean, he
19:49
Speaker 2: had to go through those things. So he accepted it
19:53
Speaker 2: much more quickly. My oldest did too. My two middles
19:56
Speaker 2: really had a hard time. And that's the thing, right,
20:01
Speaker 2: Our kids are human beings. So when I look back
20:04
Speaker 2: at my kids and see how they handle news or
20:07
Speaker 2: things that are upsetting or things that challenged or belief systems,
20:11
Speaker 2: each one of my children reacted the exact way that
20:15
Speaker 2: they would have reacted no matter what it was, because
20:18
Speaker 2: that's how they handle big news in their lives. So
20:22
Speaker 2: and my second my second child's non binary, they had
20:25
Speaker 2: the hardest time of it of all. They really did.
20:30
Speaker 1: What with what, specifically with the fact that mom is
20:34
Speaker 1: now a lesbian or no.
20:37
Speaker 2: I think my medicals had a really hard time that
20:40
Speaker 2: I wasn't going to be married to their dad anymore. Okay,
20:43
Speaker 2: I don't think any well, my third child. My kids
20:47
Speaker 2: don't listen to my podcast, so I'm not saying anything
20:50
Speaker 2: that they will care. But my third child has a
20:54
Speaker 2: lot of homophobia. I mean I experienced that from him
20:58
Speaker 2: a lot. I think that they were really upset that
21:03
Speaker 2: their family was going to change, and that's really for me.
21:08
Speaker 2: The queer part wasn't the hardest part. The hardest part
21:11
Speaker 2: was getting divorced and rethinking everything I ever thought about
21:17
Speaker 2: family and children and motherhood and all those things like that.
21:22
Speaker 2: I had to totally like reinvent, not reinvent reevaluate my
21:29
Speaker 2: life and decide what I was going to keep in,
21:32
Speaker 2: what I was going to to jetson from my life.
21:35
Speaker 2: And that was a long process. I often tell because
21:39
Speaker 2: you know, coming out later in life, there's four things
21:42
Speaker 2: that hold us. There's the conditioning that we receive. There's
21:45
Speaker 2: our internalized homophobia, there's compulsory heterosexuality, which our culture is
21:51
Speaker 2: a washin. And there's something called cognitive dissonance. So a
21:55
Speaker 2: lot of times our brains will see information that we're
22:00
Speaker 2: not straight, but we keep insisting we're straight. So that's
22:03
Speaker 2: that cognitive dissonance. But what needs to happen for people
22:06
Speaker 2: that are coming out later in life we need to
22:08
Speaker 2: build new brain neural pathways. And so it took me
22:13
Speaker 2: probably five six years to get to the point where like,
22:18
Speaker 2: I just think of myself as gay, Like I don't
22:20
Speaker 2: think of like my last my previous life or anything
22:23
Speaker 2: like that. But it took a while from my brain
22:26
Speaker 2: to catch up to where I was because my brain's
22:30
Speaker 2: job is to keep me safe. So the brain doesn't
22:33
Speaker 2: want me to leave my comfort zone. And even though
22:35
Speaker 2: my comfort zone, my straight, dysfunctional marriage was my comfort zone.
22:40
Speaker 2: I mean it was dysfunctional, but it was still my
22:42
Speaker 2: comfort zone. So my brain is trying to keep me safe.
22:45
Speaker 2: And so every time I would try to leave my
22:48
Speaker 2: comfort zone, all the fear would step in. And it
22:51
Speaker 2: wasn't until I found that community and I was able
22:55
Speaker 2: to walk through some of that fear around all of this,
22:59
Speaker 2: was I able to to get to that learning and
23:01
Speaker 2: growth zone to grow my queer identity.
23:05
Speaker 1: You it's interesting you weren't just coming out, but you
23:07
Speaker 1: were getting a divorce.
23:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably both of the women that I work with
23:12
Speaker 2: are coming out and getting a divorce at the same time.
23:14
Speaker 1: So double a double whammy exact for the kids.
23:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I would say the majority. I would say
23:24
Speaker 2: about eighty percent of seventy to eighty percent of all
23:27
Speaker 2: women that I work with also are getting a divorce.
23:31
Speaker 2: Then the other thirty percent have never been married, they're
23:33
Speaker 2: already divorced. They might be widowed men. But it is
23:39
Speaker 2: the sense of loss, like when you look at that
23:42
Speaker 2: you know, that old scale from the seventies where it
23:44
Speaker 2: talks about like this, like the lot like loss of
23:47
Speaker 2: your identity, loss of your longtime partnership with your spouse,
23:53
Speaker 2: a rearrangement of your children. A lot of times if
23:57
Speaker 2: you're the gay one in a straight relationship, you've it
24:00
Speaker 2: was a lot of friends, lost a ton of friends.
24:03
Speaker 2: Not because I was gay so much, I don't think.
24:05
Speaker 2: I think it's because I messed up the dynamic of
24:09
Speaker 2: being a divorced person in a married person group.
24:13
Speaker 1: Right.
24:14
Speaker 2: My job, I was a hospice chaplain at that time,
24:18
Speaker 2: and my uh, the director know, I used to be
24:23
Speaker 2: the face of the hospice. I would do all the
24:25
Speaker 2: events and you know, go and talk and everything. She
24:28
Speaker 2: didn't use me once I came out. She had another
24:30
Speaker 2: male chaplain do it. Then I also knew that, like,
24:35
Speaker 2: I couldn't work in ministry anymore. I was sort of
24:37
Speaker 2: done with ministry after I came out. But I still
24:41
Speaker 2: do ministry in a way. But there's a tremendous I
24:44
Speaker 2: moved three times within one year after living in the
24:48
Speaker 2: same in twenty years. I mean, it's a lot of
24:51
Speaker 2: loss and a lot of change for a lot of people,
24:54
Speaker 2: and that's why the support that think they need has
24:59
Speaker 2: to be so specific.
25:02
Speaker 1: So when did you get to the point where you said,
25:06
Speaker 1: I want to start helping people navigate this.
25:10
Speaker 2: So my background was in grief counseling. So when I
25:13
Speaker 2: was in that support group, I saw people grieving, like
25:17
Speaker 2: really all over the place. And in my own experience,
25:20
Speaker 2: it took me six months into my own coming out
25:22
Speaker 2: to realize I was grieving. I literally was like, Oh,
25:26
Speaker 2: I'm grieving.
25:29
Speaker 1: And grieving what specifically everything?
25:32
Speaker 2: I just mentioned everything, And so I was grieving and
25:37
Speaker 2: I was up, I was down, I was up, I
25:39
Speaker 2: was down. I was all over the place emotionally. I
25:42
Speaker 2: made some very poor decisions during the time, like a
25:44
Speaker 2: lot of people do, and I was just grieving everything
25:50
Speaker 2: I knew like I was, and also too, you know,
25:52
Speaker 2: another thing you grieve is you you grieve the life
25:56
Speaker 2: that you could have had as a queer person. And
26:01
Speaker 2: I agree with the future I thought I was going
26:02
Speaker 2: to have with my husband, like we were in our fifties,
26:05
Speaker 2: I mean we were getting towards the end. Our youngest
26:07
Speaker 2: was fourteen. I mean we were getting to the end
26:09
Speaker 2: of like being me and you know that everyday parenting
26:12
Speaker 2: kind of thing. And so I had to grieve all
26:15
Speaker 2: of that. And so it was in that group when
26:18
Speaker 2: I saw everybody grieving, I was like, I can do
26:20
Speaker 2: something to help this. Now, let me just do a
26:23
Speaker 2: little caveat here. It was only two years in I started.
26:26
Speaker 2: It was too early, and now, like looking back on it,
26:30
Speaker 2: my therapist has been very wonderful. She's like, you saw
26:33
Speaker 2: a need, amory, and you fulfilled the need within a community. Yeah,
26:37
Speaker 2: But I also, in tandem with that, my feelings were
26:42
Speaker 2: so difficult that I went taking care of other people's
26:45
Speaker 2: feelings and so probably in hindsight, being twenty twenty, probably
26:51
Speaker 2: starting maybe four or five years after I came out,
26:53
Speaker 2: might have been a little bit better. For my own
26:56
Speaker 2: mental health and stuff like that. But I did start
26:59
Speaker 2: working with people, and so it was it's based on
27:02
Speaker 2: the grief groups I did in hospice. And then I
27:05
Speaker 2: realized it was so much more everything I've named already,
27:08
Speaker 2: the conditioning, the internalized homophobia, the the the compet you know,
27:15
Speaker 2: the brain stuff. I realized it was so much more.
27:18
Speaker 2: And as time went on, I began to add more
27:21
Speaker 2: and more to what I offer people because it's it
27:24
Speaker 2: is grief. There's a lot of grief in this coming
27:26
Speaker 2: out process, especially late in life, but it is there's
27:31
Speaker 2: a gazillion factors that are in play here.
27:35
Speaker 1: The people listening to this, the therapists of all kinds,
27:39
Speaker 1: coaches of all kinds, consumers, what do they maybe need
27:45
Speaker 1: to hear if they're working with someone who might be
27:48
Speaker 1: going through this process? And is it necessary that they
27:53
Speaker 1: see a therapist or coach who that they themselves is
28:00
Speaker 1: a gay person.
28:05
Speaker 2: I love that question. It's a very hard one to
28:08
Speaker 2: answer because I had a gay therapist and you know,
28:13
Speaker 2: she failed me. I think it's really helpful to have
28:20
Speaker 2: an LGBTQ therapist or someone who is extremely informed about
28:26
Speaker 2: the queer world. I think what a lot of therapists
28:30
Speaker 2: miss with this is they don't realize how consuming this
28:34
Speaker 2: is in their effort to be good allies. They affirm
28:39
Speaker 2: people because and but they don't like I've had so
28:43
Speaker 2: many women say to me, this is so important to me,
28:48
Speaker 2: and my parent therapist all she wants to talk about
28:50
Speaker 2: is my childhood, and she goes, I want to talk
28:54
Speaker 2: about what's going on right here, right now. And I
28:58
Speaker 2: think what therapists miss is how life changing, in life
29:04
Speaker 2: shaking for people. I also think a lot of times
29:09
Speaker 2: therapists miss the minority stress because once you once you
29:20
Speaker 2: leave your the straight world, you lose privilege. I was
29:26
Speaker 2: at the epitome for a woman in the straight world
29:29
Speaker 2: with privilege. I was married to a successful man, I
29:33
Speaker 2: had four children, I pastored two churches in my local town.
29:38
Speaker 2: I like, I had checked all the boxes and I
29:43
Speaker 2: had checked him, and I was still not happy. And
29:46
Speaker 2: so when I got divorced, I went down a pig.
29:51
Speaker 2: When I got I'm now married to a woman, you know,
29:57
Speaker 2: And so I lost privilege. But the side of this,
30:01
Speaker 2: as somebody who had lived a straight life for fifty years,
30:05
Speaker 2: I'm very aware of the privilege I lost. So like
30:07
Speaker 2: for example, my wife who came out in nineteen eighty
30:10
Speaker 2: five at like eighteen, she doesn't see the slights the
30:15
Speaker 2: way I do because she never had the privilege. Do
30:19
Speaker 2: you understand what I'm trying to get out? So there's
30:22
Speaker 2: a lot of minority stress that people experience. If your
30:26
Speaker 2: client is not fem presenting, if your client is more
30:30
Speaker 2: butcher presenting, the way they experience the world is very
30:35
Speaker 2: different than somebody that is more fem presenting. Also, a
30:42
Speaker 2: lot of the clients that I work with have religious trauma.
30:46
Speaker 2: There is and that is a real field of expertise
30:49
Speaker 2: for therapists, but the religious trauma that people have faced
30:54
Speaker 2: from conversion therapy to being told that they're abomination to
30:59
Speaker 2: being you know, to me, my religious trauma, even though
31:02
Speaker 2: I'm a minister, was that I was a girl. And
31:07
Speaker 2: a lot of times I have to get through the
31:08
Speaker 2: girl's stuff before I can even get to the queer
31:11
Speaker 2: stuff because as a woman, I was told I was second,
31:15
Speaker 2: I told I was less than. I was told that
31:17
Speaker 2: my job is to be the emotional caretaker of everybody
31:21
Speaker 2: in my family. So and I was raised Catholic, so
31:25
Speaker 2: I internalized all those messages and a lot of times
31:31
Speaker 2: people that are therapists don't understand like the catalyst relationship
31:35
Speaker 2: and that's the woman that makes you realize you're not
31:38
Speaker 2: as straight as you think you are. That relationship can
31:42
Speaker 2: be really, really unbelievable for people. It opens up their world.
31:47
Speaker 2: They often feel seen for the first time, they feel
31:51
Speaker 2: at home for the first time. And then if that
31:55
Speaker 2: relationship should end, it is one of the most devastating
31:59
Speaker 2: people have said to me millions of times. The breakup
32:02
Speaker 2: with my catalyst was harder than the breakup with my husband.
32:06
Speaker 2: And the reason is is because the catalyst, it's not
32:10
Speaker 2: only her, it's because you're coming home to yourself. So
32:14
Speaker 2: when you lose that person, the question becomes am I
32:18
Speaker 2: still gay? Am I gay without her?
32:21
Speaker 1: Like?
32:21
Speaker 2: Because she brings us she or he can be a
32:24
Speaker 2: man if you're a man or a non binary person,
32:27
Speaker 2: of course, but that person makes us aware that were
32:31
Speaker 2: that were not straight, And what is my identity if
32:35
Speaker 2: this person is no longer in my life. So a
32:37
Speaker 2: lot of therapists miss how devastated people are around the
32:41
Speaker 2: loss of the catalyst.
32:44
Speaker 1: As we kind of wind down here and Marie, who
32:48
Speaker 1: comes to you, who works with you?
32:50
Speaker 2: What does it look like my avatar. The people that
32:55
Speaker 2: I work with tend to be highly educated women. Most
33:00
Speaker 2: of my clients are bachelor's, masters, are doctorates, and I'll
33:04
Speaker 2: tell you why. A lot of times we keep getting
33:08
Speaker 2: more and more degrees. I went back to get my
33:11
Speaker 2: master's degree in my forties.
33:13
Speaker 1: Maybe that's going to fix everything.
33:16
Speaker 2: Well, because we don't want to face something right right?
33:19
Speaker 1: Right?
33:19
Speaker 2: Oh, and it makes a lot of sense. I came
33:21
Speaker 2: out right after I was ordained, right, so there's a
33:24
Speaker 2: piece of me that Okay, there's the spiritual piece God
33:27
Speaker 2: or danger whole self. So God ordained the piece of
33:30
Speaker 2: myself that was gay, and I had reached a goal
33:36
Speaker 2: I no longer had to It was no longer taking
33:38
Speaker 2: up space in my brain. So what came back right away?
33:42
Speaker 1: Right?
33:43
Speaker 2: So, a lot of the women that I work with
33:45
Speaker 2: tend to be just like me. You know, they're created,
33:49
Speaker 2: they're they're like And what the thing is is we're
33:53
Speaker 2: women that are used to thinking our way out of situations.
33:58
Speaker 2: We're very good at that, we're high achievers. We have
34:01
Speaker 2: thought our way out of a lot of things, and unfortunately,
34:04
Speaker 2: this is a feeling.
34:07
Speaker 1: Ain't no way to think the way.
34:10
Speaker 2: Out of this you've got it, you've got to feel
34:12
Speaker 2: the feelings. And one of the things that I have
34:15
Speaker 2: really I've studied this now for ten years and eight years,
34:19
Speaker 2: and what I have noticed there's definite patterns. There is
34:22
Speaker 2: patterns that everybody follows. And you know, because we don't
34:25
Speaker 2: study people coming out, people haven't noticed it. But I
34:28
Speaker 2: can tell you every pattern that happens to people when
34:31
Speaker 2: they're coming out, because it is it is, It is
34:37
Speaker 2: something that has an order to it. And also too,
34:43
Speaker 2: one of the biggest parts of everything I do is
34:45
Speaker 2: about community. So I you know, from my authentically US
34:49
Speaker 2: community which is a small community on Mighty Networks, to
34:52
Speaker 2: my coaching programs, which is my you know, my cohort
34:56
Speaker 2: that's like sixteen weeks, I always have a community component
35:00
Speaker 2: to it because when you get a bunch of people
35:02
Speaker 2: in a room who've been thinking about something on their
35:05
Speaker 2: own for a long time, and all of a sudden
35:07
Speaker 2: they're with ten to fifteen women that are saying me too,
35:10
Speaker 2: me too, me too, that's where common humanity works. It
35:15
Speaker 2: changes everything. So I don't do anything without a group
35:18
Speaker 2: component to it, because I'm not good enough on my own.
35:21
Speaker 2: People need a community.
35:24
Speaker 1: I love it I love it all. Right, let's wind
35:27
Speaker 1: down here, how do people learn more about you? And
35:32
Speaker 1: also let's also mention your podcast too.
35:35
Speaker 2: Sure so you can find it everything I do at
35:37
Speaker 2: Amrizanzel dot com my full name without the hyphen in it.
35:41
Speaker 2: If you google late in Life lesbian, I'll show up.
35:45
Speaker 2: My podcast is coming Out and Beyond. It's lgbtqis AI
35:49
Speaker 2: plus stories for women coming out later in life. I've
35:53
Speaker 2: had that podcast now for seven years and we talk
35:55
Speaker 2: about later in life stuff. But we also feature guests
35:59
Speaker 2: that do work in the field and stuff like that. So,
36:02
Speaker 2: for example, I recently had a psychologist that focuses on
36:05
Speaker 2: queer joy, so I have people on that talk about
36:08
Speaker 2: things that are important. So I'm on every social media platform.
36:12
Speaker 2: My favorite right now is Substack. I've been writing every
36:15
Speaker 2: week and that has really helped me become very focused.
36:19
Speaker 2: And my social is all around what I wrote in Substack.
36:22
Speaker 2: So Substack, Facebook, Instagram LinkedIn, that's where you can find me,
36:26
Speaker 2: and YouTube you can find me there too.
36:28
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll have those linked up here at the show
36:30
Speaker 1: notes page at the Trauma Therapist podcast dot com. Emory
36:33
Speaker 1: love it, love you, Love to have you back at
36:35
Speaker 1: later date. There's a lot to talk about here.
36:38
Speaker 2: There is a lot to talk about. And one of
36:40
Speaker 2: the things I did want to mention is that we
36:42
Speaker 2: did create a document, so that will be you're going
36:45
Speaker 2: to link yes, called eight things to consider when working
36:49
Speaker 2: with clients questioning their sexuality. It was written by my
36:52
Speaker 2: co coach, who is a brand new therapist, so she's
36:55
Speaker 2: very very folks you know, passionate about this and has
36:58
Speaker 2: had a lot of the same experiences as I have
37:01
Speaker 2: as we both came out later in life.
37:03
Speaker 1: So we'll link that up.
37:05
Speaker 2: Also, I would really love that. Thank you guys.
37:08
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, well I'd love to have you back.
37:12
Speaker 1: Okay a later date because there's pay again, start to
37:17
Speaker 1: pay again, no paying.
37:19
Speaker 2: Okay, have me back. We can talk about this, all right.
37:23
Speaker 2: There's all. It was nice fun. Thank you. B