Thank you for visiting! Your presence is appreciated. Chelsey can’t wait to launch the Queerz in Progress podcast. QUIP is an opportunity to write unique people into existence. It is Chelsey’s hope that someone’s story will make you feel empowered, safe, and unified with a larger community while trying to navigate through this thing called life.
Check out this snippet from episode 1, “When You Know, You Know”!
Shavonne is a former teacher turned occupational therapist, doctoral student, and all around space maker. Listen to her explain her journey of accepting herself as a queer black woman
Transcript:
Being gay, is being different and it is something that is not talked about, it is not seen… And to tie it all together, I think that’s why this is so important! A platform like this to be able to have visibility and I think that’s something that we’re definitely lacking in the Black and the queer community. But back to the main question, which is when did I figure it out?
So I’m young I’m noticing that I’m having these thoughts, these feelings. I noticed that I’m always more attracted to female artists, female stars, singers. I’m attracted to my female teachers. I’m attracted to different things that I notice about women that I noticed that I don’t take the time to really think about and have the same feelings for men. So I think, I figured it out at a young age but, it wasn’t until college where I had my first same-sex experience.
And that’s when I knew that hey, this feels right, this is… this feels like something that when people talk about love and when people talk about ecstasy and what people talk about is just is right it, it wasn’t until I have my first same-sex experience. And even that was something that I figured it out! Like oh okay! But I still didn’t accept it.
I didn’t accept that I like women. As another woman it was really, really hard. I had so many years of people telling me that is not right, of me having that own conviction within myself, it just made me a recluse. It made me go… it made me feel like a snail. I was always just in my shell. Very friendly! You know? People still… I was still… You know… I was an athlete I was doing all kind of stuff. So I still knew people! I still talked to people everyday that wouldn’t have known, but for many years it still was hard for me to accept that you know I was gay!
And so when I accepted it, it was about… let’s see I’m 25 about to be 26… It was honestly about a year… or not…if not two years ago where I was just like you know what? I have to start telling myself…I had to give myself confirmation that I approved myself. I had to… and this was not by myself, this was through therapy, this was through you know… all kind of spiritual awakenings and all that stuff. But… it was… it took a lot to really just say you know what? I approve of myself! However way that myself chooses to carry out life I have to be okay with it first and once that started happening I started to notice that other people respected me for it.
I remember like growing up I always felt… I was okay with being alone but I know that I was hiding from the world. I didn’t want people to know that I was gay so I was hiding, in every facet. And it’s just been a beautiful journey to see that when you are your authentic self, you are being, and your showing up as the soul that you were meant to be, people attract towards that! And people… people see that light and that it makes them want to be there more authentic self too. And I think that what’s so beautiful, is that in this world you know we have one job, and the one job is to show up. You have to show up. You have to be yourself. We have to show…
