National Coming Out Day
Happy National Coming Out Day, dear community!
I’ve become increasingly bad at keeping up with trends, following a content calendar, and generally opening my social media. (Deepest gratitude to the lovely humans who keep sending me memes they think will delight me, and who accept that we’ll laugh about it together sometime in the next month. 😅)
And, for me, that mostly feels okay.
We keep shifting, growing, and changing. The longer I do this work, both personally and professionally, the more it feels important that this evolution is visible, too. “Coming Out” certainly isn’t a monolith, and it’s not a static point on a linear timeline either. It’s dynamic and organic. It’s an unraveling and unearthing of our truest selves from all the containers that don’t hold us very well. It’s an acceptance that each version that surfaces is just as important as the ones before it.
I’ve been a queer person existing mostly in non-queer spaces, and a queer person whose personal and professional life is built on, and centers, queerness as an ethos. I’ve been a queer person who’s spoken about queerness at churches and dungeons. I’ve been a queer camp counselor for queer kids and a licensed therapist offering LGBTQIA affirming care to my community for just over a decade. I’ve been a young queer person who got to experience the magic of a dive bar that feels like a safe house and a lifestyle conference that unlocked a community you thought was the stuff of fantasy.
I’ve been all kinds of queer, and have started to feel really attached to the idea that this is a quintessential part of my queerness in and of itself.
Currently, I’m a queer person in this wild world who values nothing more than a slow Sunday morning, a hot cup of coffee, and my little familiar curled up by my side. So I humbly come out to you once again, during the best time of year, Tuna Melt Season (Government Name: Luna, the Night Fury). Appreciating the Me + Tuna we’ve been and the Me + Tuna we are now. A few more laugh lines, white whiskers, and a turn toward quieter days - all wisdom from our adventures along the way.
In community,
Traci & Tuna Melt (for Team GGOC)
