This weekend I had the chance to walk in my first Pride parade as part of New Hope Celebrates. I joined the Bucks County Lesbian Alliance(BCLA) group for the parade route and had a great time. It has been ages since I last attended any specific Pride event and the first time I ever got to be up close and personal in part of the official fun. I can remember years ago when I first came out (say like 16 years ago… as long as my partner and I have been together… it’s a story & a revelation, let’s just say that) — we were a magnet to attend Pride and Women’s Festivals for the first few years. Since then we’ve been out and about doing a variety of things, but never found our way back to the fest.

I’m not a big parade or party person in general. I’m more of a quiet, small group of friends type of social engagement. Or, more likely out and about in nature solo, with my partner, or a small group of like-minded folks gay or straight. Yet I have to say this first experience was very moving! What the heck have I been waiting for?

While the parade was fairly short and sweet it was a lot of fun. Read the rest of this entry »

In honor of today being “Blogging for LGBT Families Day”, I wanted to talk a little about the single most important lesson you can teach your kids. While I’m no expert in raising kids (my cats aren’t too hung up on worry or guilt long as they see food, water, and fresh litter), I do know that teaching your kids how to be comfortable in their own skin is the most important lesson you can ever gift them. And, the good news is that you get to learn more about yourself and benefit in the process.

LGBT families bring a whole additional level of confidence and self-esteem challenges both for the parents and the kids. This means in order to thrive you need to be even more comfortable in your skin than the typical Mom, Dad, 2.5 kids down the street configuration because you will have to address questions about who you are and what your family is about throughout the years.

So, why is being comfortable in your own skin the #1 lesson for you and your kids to learn? Read the rest of this entry »

In this installment of my interview series I get the pleasure of introducing you to Joanne Fleisher of Lavender Visions. I first heard of Joanne’s work when I was networking with some folks at the Bucks County Lesbian Alliance during a virtual networking meeting I hosted. Some time passed, and then I heard about Joanne again and then again. It was one of those things where the same message - “you should connect with Joanne” came to me several times and then I finally engaged my brain and contacted her. (Sometimes I need to listen more closely to the messages around me too!)

If you (or someone you know) is a married woman coming to grips with her sexuality, you won’t want to miss Joanne’s work. To learn more about Joanne in her own words…read on…

1) What was your inspiration to start Lavender Visions?

I was conducting my private therapy practice some 15 years ago, helping numerous women with coming out issues and other concerns that would have been helped best through support or therapy groups. There were NONE in Philadelphia at the time. I decided to fill that need.

There is always an issue of how to reach women who are dealing with different aspects of coming out when they are not connected to the gay media or resources. I saw the value of the Internet- back then even though most therapists were not yet using the Internet to reach people. Lavender Visions became the site I developed to market the groups that I was offering- which included, coming out, relationship loss, and married women attracted to women groups. Women who were searching the internet found me. I also used straight media resources to reach these women. Over the years I developed many resources that became a part of my web site.

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Deborah at a business networking event sponsored by the Bucks County Lesbian Alliance here where I live. I (and everyone in the room) was intrigued by her business venture Womynsmovies.com, an online DVD rental service specializing in offering movies of interest to gays and lesbians. She’s a sharp and smart lady with passion and a vision and thought you could benefit as well from getting to know more about her and Womynsmovies.com.

What was your inspiration to start womynsmovies.com?

My inspiration is my love of lesbian movies. Since my childhood was spent in Northern Ireland during the inspirational 70’s and 80’s it was extremely difficult to find any positive images of lesbians represented in television or the movies. I would be excited by any movie that featured lesbian characters and would secretly watch it after dark with the little pink triangle in the corner of my TV screen.These movies assisted me to make sense out of my life and to understand that my feelings towards women were neither unusual nor strange.
Read the rest of this entry »

Every October 11th the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community recognizes National Coming Out Day; a day to celebrate, educate, inform, and stretch in terms of being honest with ourselves and with how we show up in the world. National Coming Out Day was born on Oct. 11, 1987, when half a million people participated in the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. A complete historic timeline of important dates along the journey can be found on the HRC website.

This year’s theme is “Talk About It” .
Every time we talk openly and honestly about our lives, we get another step closer to equality. Why? Because studies show that people who personally know someone who is LGBT is more likely to become one of our allies because it puts a face, a person, and a name on the cause. It’s much harder to hate or discriminate against a group when someone you know and care about is a member of that group.

That is the basis of another new website aimed at promoting the conversations of equality. I Am Your Neighbor is a new website that has rallied around the belief that “Its easy to dehumanize people you don’t know”. Their goal, and that of National Coming Out Day is to encourage us to reduce the number of people who don’t know someone who is gay or lesbian. While I must say this whole approach seems to be lost on the high profile politicians (think: Mary Cheney, father Dick, and buddy George W.), it is a sound approach because when we know and like people in our lives, we empathize with and support them. The distant “they” (people they don’t know) becomes “one of us” (people in our lives). The trickle down can be tremendous in the richness of our day to day lives as well as the bigger fight for equality.

The thing about coming out is that you’re never really finished. Everytime you meet someone new or end up in a new situation you have to make the “to come out or not to come out” choice. While no one needs to come out to every Tom, Dick, and Jane that they meet, for professional women or business owners this becomes an issue in every new business situation, especially when part of the responsibility of the position is being “sociable” at events with peers, vendors, suppliers, or co-workers. That is why it is so important for the tide to turn and the lines of communication to constantly open up between us and those we interact with.

Personally I’d never out someone who didn’t want to be, but I do believe the only way to live a truly authentic and fulfilling life is to be honest with yourself and with others. Unless your safety is at stake, my opinion is that it is better to come out than dance around the topic all the time. After all, how many of us ended up coming out after painfully agonizing over it only to realize - DUH, they already knew!

I have create a 10 step process for coming out with confidence that I will be unleashing in the upcoming weeks and months. Meanwhile….. I wish you all a happy National Coming Out Day and challenge YOU to find one new way to be more honest about who you are.