Coming Out & Beyond | Support for Women Questioning Their Sexuality

It is the second Friday of the month, which means Anne-Marie is joined by dating coach Barbara Rowlandson and Nashville photographer Tonda McKay, to talk all things sapphic dating and relationships. This month the trio takes on four real questions from women navigating the queer dating world. How do you slow down when every connection turns intense within weeks? Are you a jerk for losing interest...

When you come out to someone, you learn very quickly to tell the difference between the half embrace and the full embrace. The half embrace turns the conversation back to your husband, your children, your family system within the first thirty seconds. The full embrace simply asks, how are you doing. In this episode, Anne-Marie sits down with frequent guest Anna Empey for a tender and honest conver...

In Part 2 of this conversation, Anne-Marie Zanzal continues her talk with Dahron Johnson, a trans woman, advocate, lifelong cyclist, and chair of the Metro Human Relations Commission in Nashville, who came out in her late forties after decades of quietly knowing. Dahron shares the rush of the days right after she realized a change had to be made, from calling care providers within 48 hours to play...

Dahron Johnson grew up surrounded by voices. Thousands of books in her parents' home, two people who met in divinity school, and a faith that taught her every person is fearfully and wonderfully made. And still, for decades, she could not find the words for who she was. In this episode, Anne-Marie sits down with her dear friend Dahron, a clinically trained chaplain, a tireless advocate, and the fi...

This month we return to our lesbian dating and relationship conversation, the one we share on the second Friday of every month, and by popular request Tonda is back at the table! Anne-Marie is joined by her wife, Tonda McKay, our longtime out lesbian and resident truth teller, and by Barbara Rowlandson, fellow coach and the woman who helps lead our Authentically Us community. Together we work thro...

TW: This episode includes honest discussion about grief, estrangement and suicidal ideation. Listener discretion is advised. There is a kind of loss that arrives without a funeral. No casserole on the doorstep, no card in the mail, no ritual to mark it. It is the loss of people who are still alive, of communities that keep meeting without us, of the versions of ourselves we performed for decades....

In this revisited Season 5 favorite, Anne-Marie sits down with photographer Tonda McKay, who also happens to be her wife. Tonda came out at eighteen as a good Southern Baptist girl whose prayer partner became her first love, and she has spent the decades since building a life as a long-out lesbian in the South. She shares what those early years held: the isolation of believing she was the only one...

This week on Coming Out & Beyond, Anne-Marie sits down with Keith Aron (he/they), a trans and queer transformational coach, writer, proudly witchy weirdo, and self-described honorary tree. Keith writes the Substack Big Blue Sky Dragonfly, where he explores the sweet spot between belonging and authenticity — and his story is one Anne-Marie has been wanting to share for a long time. Keith came o...

A decade ago, Anne-Marie and Katrina Anne Willis met inside a small Facebook group that no longer exists — a quiet corner of the internet where women who had Googled "late in life lesbian" found each other. They were both raising kids. Both married to men. Both trying to understand a feeling they didn't yet have language for. This week, they finally meet face to face. Katrina is the author of Hurr...

A woman in our community wrote in and asked: "What if my lesbian sex experience doesn't live up to the hype? Does that make me not gay?" That question deserved more than a one-line answer. So Anne-Marie brought in two of her favorite humans to tell the truth — the kind of truth nobody hands you before you get here. Her wife Tonda McKay has been out for forty years and brings the long view: what th...

Join the 3-Day Clarity Experience , May 5–7. A live space for women in the long middle who are ready to stop doing it alone — not to get a fix, but to sit with the questions alongside a community of women in exactly the same place. Standard admission is $47, or $87 for VIP, which includes a private 45-minute call with Anne-Marie. https://annemariezanzal.com/3-day-clarity-experience/ The fantasy is...

Something in you already knows. Maybe it's been whispering for years. Maybe it got louder recently. Maybe you can't quite name it yet — but you know something is asking to be looked at. If you've been sitting with questions about who you are, who you love, or what this next chapter of your life is actually supposed to look like, the 3-Day Clarity Experience was built for you. Three evenings. One g...

In this week's episode of Coming Out & Beyond , Anne-Marie traces the winding, decade-long road that led her from a single paragraph in an Oprah magazine to finally saying the words out loud — and finding the woman who would become her wife along the way. She begins in 2006, when an article about women who had left marriages with men to be with women cracked something open in her — a joy she c...

You're finally dating women — and maybe dating in general for the first time in decades. The apps are confusing, the feelings are big, and it can be hard to know when to trust your gut and when you're overthinking it. In this episode, Anne-Marie sits down with resident dating authority Barbara Rowlandson — therapist, dating coach, and marriage officiant who has literally married hundreds of couple...

Coming out names something true. But it doesn't hand you a place to land. In this episode of Coming Out & Beyond , Anne-Marie sits down with returning guest Anna Empey — LGBT coach, business development consultant, and community builder — for an honest, tender conversation about what it really takes to find your people after you've found yourself. Anna knows firsthand what it costs to lose the...

Five weeks before her wedding, Danni Hoshino was lying in bed next to her fiancée when something shifted. She asked herself a question she had never quite let herself ask — and then she knew. In this episode of Coming Out and Beyond, host Anne-Marie Zanzal sits down with Danni, a singer, songwriter, and guitarist who creates music under the name Light Bird. Her debut album, See Her , is a ten-song...

What do you do when a single moment — a woman's hand on your thigh at a work dinner — unravels 45 years of the story you thought was yours? That's exactly what happened to Kathy Houston. A West Point graduate, U.S. Army officer, 30-year retail leader, wife, and mother of two — Kathy spent decades doing everything exactly right. She married the day after she was commissioned. She left the military...

Are you ready to date — or do you just want to be? There's a difference, and this episode of Coming Out and Beyond is here to help you figure that out. Anne-Marie is joined by the wonderful Barbara Rowlandson — dating coach, psychotherapist, and co-host of our monthly dating segment — for an honest, warm, and often hilarious conversation about what it really takes to step into the dating world as...

Coming Out & Beyond has evolved. This season is now exclusively for women questioning their sexuality, coming out later in life, and creating a life beyond—at a human pace, with honesty and community. And if you found yourself here… you’re exactly where you’re meant to be. If something in you has been quietly asking a question you haven't said out loud yet — there's a free guide for exactly th...

What happens when the life you’re told to live is slowly killing you—and the life you’re afraid to live is the one that sets you free? David Hulse has been a spiritual teacher for over 60 years. But his journey to get here took him through Pentecostal fundamentalism in Tulsa, Oklahoma, conversion therapy at 17, a church in the Jim Crow South at 19, and a marriage to a woman he thought would save h...

What Heated Rivalry Gets Right About Coming Out You wouldn't expect a steamy male hockey romance to hit so close to home for later-in-life lesbians — but Heated Rivalry on HBO Max did exactly that. In this episode, Anne-Marie and returning co-conspirator Barb Rowlandson break down why this show has gone viral across the LGBTQ+ community and beyond. From the real cost of staying closeted as strateg...

🔥 Ever get all dressed up for a date... and they never show? Ever wonder if you're too old for love at 43? Ever think maybe lesbian dating culture is just... toxic? Girl, pull up a chair. We're talking about ALL of it in this episode — and trust us, you're not alone. 📞 FEELING STUCK IN YOUR DATING LIFE? Dating is hard enough without doing it alone. If you're a sapphic woman feeling stuck, frustr...

It's the first Friday of the month, and that means we welcome back Anna Empey to the show! In this episode, Anne-Marie and Anna delve deep into their personal journeys of deconstructing their Catholic and Mormon faith, particularly in the context of their LGBTQIA+ identities. Each paints a vivid picture of what it was like to grow up in a home with conservative faith traditions, noting the moments...

This week, we're revisiting an episode from Season 6 featuring GLAAD Media Award nominee, documentary photographer Morgan Lieberman. Morgan's project, "Hidden Once, Hidden Twice," published with NPR last June was recently nominated in the category of Outstanding Online Journalism – Video or Multimedia Morgan's work has been featured in publications such as The New York Times , Bloomberg, National...

Authentically Us is a support community for later-in-life LGBTQ women at all stages of the coming out and beyond process. Coming out later in life is often accompanied by suffering. Whether you're looking to deconstruct messages from a conservative faith tradition, experience divorce-related guilt, or struggle with feelings of shame around your coming out or sexual identity, Authentically Us has t...