I’m a therapist. My job, amongst other things, is to hold space for others. To offer a safe, nonjudgemental place for clients to cry, grieve, and process. I sit as empathic as possible, being reflective and supportive, without judgement. But today was different. Today, I threw out everything I’ve learned in grad school. We are...
In response to the recent news coming out of Indiana’s “Religious Freedom Law”, I have decided to brainstorm what it might look like if LGBTQ folks also decided to discriminate against people they deem “religious”. Some of this brainstorming might be deemed stereotypical (and thus maybe offensive) but my intention is to make a point....
I have a few clients who identify as queer or lesbian, who also have kids. I myself have a kid. I have queer friends who have kids. I love that people from the queer community have children. But being queer and having a kid isn’t an easy task. Besides the obvious obstacle of actually making...
Joe Purdy sings a very powerful song entitled “isn’t love”. The singer is singing about all of the ways in which he is so pained, betrayed, and broken in so many different ways by the person he supposedly loves. And then over and over again he repeats, after poetically explaining his anguish, “…and I hope...
I recently was having a discussion with someone about his sexual identity. He reported that he struggles to come out to his mother (despite him being middle aged) because she seems to over-sexualize everything, and yet isn’t comfortable discussing sex at all. She is, as we deemed her, “sex-negative”. He was able to realize, through...
Over the course of my time as a therapist, one particular issue has peaked my interested more than any other: This notion that lesbians, more than any other “type of gay (or straight) person”, struggle to find what “type” they are. In other words, I have seen numerous clients come in to therapy, trying to...
