More Than One Thing

A few years ago, I was talking with someone in the Star Trek community when they started asking questions about my life.

By the end of the conversation, they knew I was a musician, a writer, a podcaster, a coffee enthusiast, a dog lover, a Midwesterner, and someone who spends an unreasonable amount of time thinking about fictional starships.

At some point, they also learned that I was a lesbian.

And what struck me was how completely ordinary that felt.

It wasn’t the headline.

It wasn’t the defining characteristic.

It was simply one thing that happened to be true about me.

I found myself thinking about that conversation recently because there is a strange thing that happens when people learn something significant about another person.

Sometimes they take a single piece of information and quietly place it in the center of the room.

Everything else gets arranged around it.

The truth is, I am a lesbian.

That is an important part of who I am.

It has shaped the way I move through the world. It has influenced my relationships, my understanding of kindness, my awareness of injustice, and my appreciation for communities that welcome people exactly as they are.

It is a meaningful chapter of my story.

But it is not the entire book.

I make music.

I write essays.

I host podcasts.

I worry about the people I love.

I drink too much coffee and spend far too much time thinking about Star Trek.

I believe kindness is one of the strongest things human beings can offer each other.

I believe a good conversation can change a day, a piece of music can change a mood, and a little empathy can change a life.

All of those things are true.

And I am still a lesbian.

That is the part I think many people misunderstand when they talk about queer people.

Some people reduce us to our sexuality because they dislike us.

Others sometimes reduce us to our sexuality because they only see us through the lens of advocacy or representation.

Both approaches miss something deeply human.

We are not one thing.

No one is.

The people we love are not their jobs. They are not their hobbies. They are not their hardest moments. They are not the worst mistake they ever made. They are collections of stories, experiences, relationships, fears, dreams, talents, and little quirks that make them wonderfully, beautifully themselves.

Why would queer people be any different?

It did not take long for me to realize how willing some people are to form opinions about others they barely know.

I have seen it happen because of sexuality.

I have seen it happen because of religion.

I have seen it happen because of race, culture, gender, and countless other differences people decided were more important than the human being standing in front of them.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I did not need to introduce myself as a lesbian because it was not the most important thing about me.

It was not the least important thing either.

It was simply one part of a much larger story.

That realization helped me navigate the world.

It helped me decide who had earned access to different parts of my life.

Some people might call that a defense mechanism.

Maybe it was.

But I think it was really an instinct to stay safe.

So I built a circle of trust.

I found people who could know all of me.

Not just pieces of me.

All of me.

And one of the most unexpected places I found that kind of acceptance was in the Star Trek community.

I did not walk into those spaces expecting acceptance.

I walked into them hoping to avoid judgment.

Those are not the same thing.

A short time later, I had a conversation that stayed with me.

I mentioned my wife.

Without missing a beat, the person I was talking to immediately became excited and started asking all the questions people typically ask married couples.

How did you meet?

How long have you been together?

What is your story?

There was no awkwardness.

No hesitation.

No sense that my marriage required a different set of rules because I happened to be a woman married to another woman.

My relationship wasn’t treated as something unusual.

It was treated as something worth celebrating.

That moment surprised me.

Not because it should have.

Because for much of my life, it had been easier to expect tolerance than acceptance.

But this was acceptance.

Simple.

Genuine.

Uncomplicated.

And I quickly realized that it wasn’t an isolated experience.

It was simply part of the culture of a community that had already decided there was room for all kinds of people.

Being an aging lesbian from the Midwest was no more remarkable than having blue eyes.

It was simply one thing that happened to be true about me.

There is something profoundly healing about being seen as a complete person.

Not a category.

Not a label.

Not a stereotype.

A person.

The Star Trek community taught me a great deal about what acceptance can look like when it is practiced instead of merely discussed.

It also taught me how much the world has changed.

When I was a teenager, the word “queer” was almost always used as a weapon.

Today, I have friends who embrace that word as part of their identity and community.

When I was younger, being a lesbian often felt like the thing that made me different.

Today, I understand it differently.

Being a lesbian does not make me more or less human than anyone else.

It simply gives me a unique perspective on experiencing the world.

Have I experienced negativity because I am a lesbian?

Of course.

But I have also experienced negativity because people disagreed with me, misunderstood me, or simply saw the world differently than I do.

That is part of being human.

The lesson I keep coming back to is that the positivity almost always outweighs the negativity.

The kindness outweighs the cruelty.

The acceptance outweighs the rejection.

The community outweighs the isolation.

That is where I find hope.

Not because the world is perfect.

It is not.

But because I have spent enough years watching people choose empathy, understanding, and acceptance to know those things are real.

They exist.

We simply have to give them a bigger voice.

Being a lesbian is not the most interesting thing about me.

But it is also not something I would ever erase.

It is a part of me.

A meaningful part.

A beautiful part.

But there are many other parts too.

I think about those conversations in the Star Trek community sometimes.

Not because people ignored the fact that I am a lesbian.

And not because they treated it as extraordinary.

They simply treated it as one part of a much larger story.

I am a lesbian.

I am also about a thousand other things.

And if there is one thing I have learned, it is that every person you meet is more than one thing too.

That is what makes us interesting.

That is what makes us human.

And I happen to love the whole story.

Remember…

✨Be Kind. Do More Good. We Got This.

💫Until next time, lovelies, keep jibber jabbering about the stories and things that move you.