I want to celebrate the femme/butch history that defines lesbianism for so many women in our community without feeling like my own queer family expects me to perform gender in a particular way. I feel like a woman enough of the time, but I don’t connect with so many of the things womanhood is “supposed” to mean. I’ve never felt as right in the world as I did the night I spilled gold glitter eye makeup on my necktie. I want to be that alive all the time.
My sexuality is not a phase. I am who I am.
On this day that is set aside for us to celebrate what and whom we have in our lives, I want you all to know that you’ve been a huge part of mine and I am thankful for the two years I’ve had getting to know, learning from, and growing with this community.
My early goals involved simply seeing if my business idea would interest anybody. Were there other people out there who had trouble picking just one thing? Could we really build a community of people determined to build lives around our MANY passions?
Let’s be real, these essays urge us. Let’s roll up our sleeves and do the work that needs to be done.
This is a book you’ll probably want to read in your room with the door closed.
If there was advice that I wish I’d received two years ago when my relationship with my long-term live-in partner began dissolving and I eventually became homeless, cat-less, best friend-less, broke, and the mortified new owner of a single bed crammed into my 76-year-old great aunt’s home study, it would be to give myself plenty of time and space to mourn before charging ahead into the future. Even though in my case, losing it all was voluntary; it was The Right Thing To Do and The Best For All Involved. You can still grieve something that you don’t want back.
I didn’t intend to create a tarot business – it sort of happened organically. I saw opportunities to help people out, so I started gearing my blog more towards tips for learning tarot, how-tos and helpful posts. After a while it became clear that I could make a living from this, so I designed and wrote an online course – that was my first digital product and I launched it at the start of this year. It felt incredible! People liked it, and I made a bunch of money, I was able to buy a new laptop, invest in my shop and go on a road-trip. That was the point where I really thought ‘yeah – I’m good at this. I want to put loads of energy into this and build a really sustainable, awesome business that people love.’ It was a scary thing to do – to create a project and put it out into the world not knowing if it will succeed or fail, but now I’ve done it, it’s given me loads of confidence.
Beth’s interviewing LGBTQ business owners for our new series, Follow Your Arrow. This week, she’s interviewing herself.