This isn’t a dramatic coming-out story. It’s more like a slow-burning plot twist — one that played out between snack time, shared custody handoffs, and me realizing I wasn’t actually into men so much as I just liked being liked.
At twenty-nine, I was married to a man, raising two kids under the age of four, and running a business I had started that same year. I hadn’t questioned my sexuality much, but when I finally did, I came out as bisexual. Then pan. Then queer. There was a post-divorce girlfriend, a rebound with a man, then a ‘maybe-I’m-poly’ era.
And finally, in early 2024, a quiet “ohhhh. I’m a lesbian.”
For a long time, I wasn’t questioning anything, because I didn’t think I had to. My idea of what a lesbian looked like didn’t sound like me. I wasn’t sporty (FWIW, I’m still not), I didn’t want to dress more masculine, and I fully believed it was normal to think you’d make a better boyfriend than the guy your friend was dating. (Spoiler: it was not.)
That said, growing up, I was genuinely “boy crazy.” I loved being wanted. I loved being chosen. Or at least, I loved the attention — which I thought was desire. Close enough, right? I married young, fresh out of college. We were together for eleven years, married for nine. We had two kids, a mortgage, a system that mostly worked, and a calendar built on color-coded survival.
By the time I got married, most of the “chasing” faded into routine. I wasn’t looking for attention anymore; I was living my life: partner, family, house, dogs, all of it. And because nothing felt obviously wrong, I never thought to question it.
It wasn’t that I thought I wasn’t attracted to men. I just hadn’t considered I could also be attracted to women.
In late 2019, I met a woman at an event with friends…and we danced. It wasn’t some dramatic, movie-level moment, but I could not stop thinking about it afterward, for way longer than made sense.
At the time, I told myself it was just flattering. Or fun. Or…whatever straight married women tell themselves to avoid spiraling. But that moment lodged itself in my brain, and once it was there, I went into a full-blown mental spiral: Wait. Am I attracted to women? What does that mean? Am I bisexual? Is this a phase? What am I supposed to do with this information as a married woman with a husband two kids, and a house full of Paw Patrol merch?
There’s not exactly a manual for How to Have a Sexuality Crisis While Loading the Dishwasher.
Then came 2020. It was the middle of a pandemic (because of course it was), and one day I sat my husband down and said something I never thought I’d say: I was attracted to women.
At the time, bisexual seemed like the most logical place to land. I was already married to a man, I loved my family and nothing imploded overnight. Our marriage didn’t end because of that conversation — it slowly unraveled for other reasons that had nothing to do with my sexuality.
But the truth is, our marriage had already been unraveling — slowly, quietly, and for reasons that had nothing to do with my sexuality. We were growing in different directions. There were patterns we couldn’t break, trust we couldn’t rebuild, and hard moments I didn’t want my kids to grow up thinking were normal. By the time we ended up in couples therapy for the second time, I told him it would be our last try — not because I didn’t care, but because I needed to be able to look my kids in the eye and say I had done everything I could. And I did.
Ultimately, I wanted my children to have two happy, healthy parents. And the truth was, the healthiest version of our family no longer included us being married.
I got married young, fresh out of college. A big part of that decision was my dad: the one who adopted and raised me after my biological father passed away… and who was sick with cancer. I wanted him to walk me down the aisle. I felt this urgency to hit all the milestones I thought I was supposed to. At the time, I believed that was my job: go to college, marry a good man, build a family and make it all work.
And to be fair, I was in college from 2008 to 2012 — peak “MRS Degree” era. We wore Lilly Pulitzer like it was a uniform, treated The Notebook like a manual, and curated Pinterest wedding boards before we were even legally allowed to drink. It was a fever dream of monograms, Kate Spade optimism, and a very sincere belief that love was supposed to look a certain way.
I told my mom around Thanksgiving. And because I apparently enjoy making things harder for myself, I accidentally came out publicly on TikTok after a few glasses of wine in December 2020. (Not recommended.)
By early 2021, that’s the label I was publicly using. It felt like the safest place to start while I was still figuring out what any of this meant: juggling nap schedules, daycare pickups and two small humans who were blissfully unaware that their mom was spiraling.
The next few years were a combination of romance, comedy, horror and an utter identity crisis.
After my divorce, I jumped headfirst into dating. Because obviously, the best time to unpack your entire sexual identity is while rebuilding your life as a single mom.
I decided the only way out was through. Through what, exactly? Emerging from a decade-long relationship like I’d been defrosted from a Y2K time capsule, a regrettable hair color phase (note to self: I have no business being a redhead), and a queer coming-of-age arc no one asked for — least of all me.
This was also my first time ever using dating apps, because when I got married, the apps basically didn’t exist yet. Suddenly, I was swiping through strangers on my couch, drafting flirty-but-not-unhinged first messages while Bluey played in the background and my kids asked for another snack. I would download the apps, regret my life choices, delete them and re-download them like everyone else in a post-breakup spiral. Rinse, repeat.
I briefly convinced myself maybe I was poly. I started dating women. I had my first girlfriend — which felt exciting and affirming — until I also had my first girlfriend heartbreak, which hit harder than I expected and sent me right back into the spiral.
That’s when I started dating a man again. Safe felt appealing. He was kind, easy to be around, familiar, and at the time, I still believed I was attracted to men. When we eventually broke up, it wasn’t dramatic and both of us realized we were better as friends. Looking back, I can see now that I was still choosing what felt familiar, not what I actually wanted.
The whole time, I kept trying to land on the right label like it would somehow unlock the answer: bisexual, pansexual, queer — each one feeling almost-but-not-quite right as I mulled it over while listening to Reputation again.
Meanwhile, I was still a mom, running my own business, and holding it together like I hadn’t just been mid-crisis in the group chat the night before, scrolling lesbian TikTok.
Dating while queer in Florida, as a single mom, in the middle of an identity crisis—now that’s very specific, very niche kind of chaos.
By early 2024, I met my partner Ash — thanks to my Bumble radius being stretched far enough to cover cities I don’t actually live in. She was visiting a city two and a half hours away, and somehow we still managed to match.
From the start, it felt different — not because of who I was with, but because of who I was while I was with her. For years, I’d been cycling through labels and overthinking every version of my identity, trying to explain why nothing ever fully landed. But being with her made it obvious: this was what it was supposed to feel like. This was the missing piece.
For so long, I had looked to my partners to help me figure out who I was. But for the first time, I was able to look at myself and actually know. I knew what I wanted. I knew who I was. I knew where I stood.
And when I watched my kids fall in love with her — not because I told them to, not because they had to, but because they wanted to — it made everything even more certain. This wasn’t just my peace. It was all of ours.
There was never a big, dramatic coming-out conversation with my kids. I’ve always parented with openness and neutral language, long before I had the words for myself. I never wanted them to feel like there was one version of what love or identity was supposed to look like. I just wanted them to know that whoever they were, and whoever they loved, would always be okay with me.
So when I did finally land in my identity, it didn’t feel like news to them. When my oldest casually stated in passing, “Mom’s a lesbian,” he didn’t flinch — because to him, I wasn’t becoming something new. It was just a fact.
My kids reminded me that you don’t need to have everything figured out — and honestly, you won’t. Sometimes you just figure it out as you go. Parenthood? Coming out? It’s all one big scary unknown. You walk in completely unqualified, completely overwhelmed, and somehow you learn as you go. And the truth is, that same blueprint worked for this part of my life too. I didn’t need to have it all mapped out to end up exactly where I was supposed to be.
