Working with a queer life coach who actually gets it.

There's a specific exhaustion that comes from explaining yourself to someone who is being careful with you. The careful ones mean well. But careful means they're managing the distance between your experience and theirs, and you can feel that distance even when they're doing everything right.

I'm queer and bisexual. I grew up in a Christian Nationalist community in South Africa with a very clear picture of who you were supposed to be. That picture didn't include me. I came out later in life, after years of performing a version of myself that kept things quiet. I know what it costs to do that and what it takes to stop.

The people I work with are at different places in this. Some are still figuring out the language. Some came out years ago and are working through what it means to actually live in it now, after the announcement, when the real life has to be built. Some are navigating being queer in spaces that weren't designed for them: marriages, religious communities, workplaces, families.

Some are gay men who came out late and are building an identity in their 40s or 50s with no template. Some are bisexual and tired of being invisible in both directions. Some are queer women figuring out who they are after a life spent inside other people's definitions of them.

What I can offer is directness without performance. I won't handle you. I will ask the questions you've been circling and say the things out loud that you've been keeping quiet. That's usually where the work actually is.

This is coaching, not therapy. Forward-facing. What you want to build, what's in the way, what it would take to move. If therapy is the right tool for what you're carrying, I'll tell you that too.