The Most Spiritually Aligned Thing I Ever Did

Four years ago, I posted something that changed my life.

I remember sitting with it, reading it over and over, trying to figure out if I was really about to do this. I was terrified. But I was also tired of carrying a lie. So I posted it.

On February 22, 2022, I came out as bisexual. Publicly, on the internet, to people I knew and people I didn’t. And I want to tell you what happened after that. The real version, not the highlight reel. The first thing that happened was grief.

I wasn’t prepared for that part. I thought coming out would feel like exhaling. And it did, to a certain extent, but it also revealed some things I had been keeping sealed for a very long time. I started moving backward through my own life, looking at things differently. All the times I had called attraction "admiration." All the times I had felt a pull toward a woman and filed it under "she’s just a good friend." All the times something in me was speaking and I translated it into a language that felt safer.

I had spent so many years being good at being what everyone needed. Good daughter. Faithful wife. Present mother. Dependable friend. I had gotten so skilled at shapeshifting around other people’s comfort that I barely noticed how little space I was leaving for myself. Coming out didn’t just change what people knew about me. It made me sit down with the full weight of how long I had been doing that and why.

That kind of grief is quiet and it mostly shows up late at night, when you’re alone with yourself and your own history. If you’re in the middle of that right now, I need you to hear me: you did not make the wrong choice. The grief is part of the real thing. It means you finally made a choice that was actually yours.

Something else I didn’t expect was how much coming out would change my relationship with God.

I grew up being taught that who I am is a sin. Attending Lutheran schools 4th - 12th grade, I was taught that being queer was a choice, and that it was something that would separate me from God. Very quickly I learned that it was the kind of thing good girls didn’t do, feel or say. And even when I stopped believing that consciously, it was still living in my body and operating underneath everything.

Coming out publicly wasn’t just a social moment for me, it affected me on a deeply spiritual level.

I had to go into the stillness and ask myself a question I had been avoiding for years: do I actually believe I am loved as I am? Or only as I was told to be?

The answer came, not all at once, but through journaling, sitting quietly with God in a way I had never been taught, and through the kind of clarity that shows up when you finally stop arguing with yourself.

I am not an abomination and my love is not a sin. The very essence of God, as I understand her now, is woven into the love I have given and received as my whole self. I did not lose my faith when I came out. In fact, I grew closer to God than I had been in all my years of attend multiple church services a week. I shed the version of my faith that required me to disappear, and what grew in its place has been the most alive, most honest relationship with the Divine I have ever experienced.

I grew closer to God, and closer to myself, by telling the truth. That still moves me every time I think about it.

Four years later, here is what I know:

My queerness is not the most dramatic thing about me, it is just part of my fabric. It explains things about myself I spent years finding confusing — the way certain music impacted me, the depth of the bonds I formed with women, the way I could feel a connection in my whole body and not know what to do with that information. It connects me to a lineage of women who refused to shrink, who chose truth over approval, and who loved out loud even when it cost them something.

Coming out changed the question I make decisions from. I used to move through life asking "how do I stay loved?" Now I ask myself "how do I stay honest?" That is not a small shift. That shift is visible in everything about me — the boundaries I hold, the work I do, who I let close to me, how long I stay in rooms that ask me to make myself smaller.

The thing that's been the most surprising though, is this community. I did not think that telling the truth about myself would create a space where other people felt safe enough to tell the truth about themselves. The women in my comments, in my DMs, in the community events I’ve hosted are not something I take for granted. That is the thing about this work that I will never be able to fully put into words. We were not supposed to find each other, but we did anyway.

To the version of me sitting with that draft four years ago, reading it over and over, trying to figure out how to say it without saying too much of it — stop worrying and just post it. The people who are meant to love you for your truth will show up for your truth. And the ones who needed you to stay small? You were never really safe with them anyway, and some part of you already knew that. You have spent your whole life making yourself easier to hold, well, you are allowed to stop doing that.

Today I am not in crisis, I am not performing, nor am I waiting on anyone’s permission to take up space. I am still becoming and regardless of how uncertain things may get, I am returning home to myself from a place of peace, wholeness, and safety. This journey has been enlightening, painful, and beautiful. All three, fully, at the same time. And I am grateful for every part of it — including the hard parts, especially the hard parts — because they are what made this version of me possible.

And if you are somewhere at the beginning of your own truth — scared, uncertain, holding something you haven’t said out loud yet — I wrote this for you too. You don’t have to have it all figured out. You just have to be willing to stop hiding you from you.

The rest has a way of following.

I am in this with you. I love you.

Writer’s Note: Thanks for reading Pieces x Pages! This post is public, feel free to share it! I wrote this as an offering to myself, and to anyone who is on a journey of their own becoming. Some of it is tender. All of it is honest. With love, Chanel

Chanel is a Black queer writer and mother whose work centers personal narrative, spiritual deconstruction, and cultural commentary. She writes about identity, queerness, motherhood, and healing, with a focus on telling the truth without self-abandonment.