Coming Out & Beyond | Support for Women Questioning Their Sexuality

Anne-Marie Zanzal 1ac1f670-c17c-11f0-806a-ef1502adef07
  • 4.4 (27)
  • Sexuality
  • Updated Weekly

Coming Out & Beyond is a podcast for women questioning their sexuality later in life — no matter where you are or what your life looks like right now. Maybe you're sitting with a question you've never said out loud. Maybe you fell for a woman or something woke up recently, everything shifted and you can't put it back. Maybe you're untangling years of religious conditioning or compulsory heterosexuality and trying to figure out who you actually are underneath all of that. Whatever brought you here — this space is for you. Hosted by Anne-Marie Zanzal — Yale Divinity School graduate, ordained progressive minister, grief counselor, and LGBTQ+ coach who came out in midlife — Coming Out & Beyond offers real conversations, emotional clarity, and grounded support for women coming out after 30, 40, 50, and beyond. We talk openly about late bloomer experiences, being married with kids and questioning, single and not finding someone who is right for us, catalyst relationships, faith deconstruction, divorce, grief, identity shifts in midlife, and learning to trust the voice inside you that’s getting louder. This isn’t about rushing labels or blowing up your life. It’s about integration. Self-trust. And the kind of community that changes everything. Because women navigating later-in-life coming out do better — emotionally and practically — when they’re not doing it alone. New episodes weekly. Join the conversation on YouTube, and when you’re ready, step inside Authentically Us (https://community.annemariezanzal.com/)— Anne-Marie’s private community for women on this journey. This journey is yours and you are coming home to yourself. https://annemariezanzal.com/maybe-im-not-straight-guide/

  1. 3d ago

    You Look Great for 200! Celebrating Our 200th Episode and National Coming Out Day

    Content note: this episode includes discussion of conversion therapy and religious trauma. Two hundred episodes. We still can't quite believe it either. To celebrate this milestone, and National Coming Out Day, Anne-Marie Zanzal gathers three of her all-time favorite guests around the mic: her wife Tonda McKay, coach and therapist Barb Rowlandson, and coach and business consultant Anna Empey. Anne-Marie shares how the show began, with Anna nudging her for three years to start a podcast until a pandemic finally changed her mind. Then each woman tells her own coming out story, from oldest to youngest by coming out date. Tonda was a good Southern Baptist college student in 1981 when a kiss with her prayer partner sent her walking back to her dorm convinced there was no going back. Anna grew up Mormon, went through conversion therapy at BYU, and then fell in love with her friend Katelyn by accident. Barb came out at 45 after 21 years of marriage, in a small town where the news traveled faster than she did. And Anne-Marie, who took ten years to come out, remembers the Facebook group that finally gave her language for who she was, and the Nashville woman with the Southern accent who was willing to wait. Along the way, the four talk honestly about what community looked like before the internet, why "go find an old lesbian" can be hit or miss, the quiet power of the casual coming out, and why none of them care anymore who has an opinion about their queerness. If you are in the messy middle right now, take heart from one of our longtime community members, who reminded a room full of newcomers this week that it gets better. So many of the stories in this episode come back to one thing: how much harder coming out is when you are doing it alone. Authentically Us is the community Anne-Marie built so you don't have to. It's a private online space for women questioning their sexuality and coming out later in life, with live group gatherings every week, a monthly spiritual circle, and a room full of women who understand exactly where you are because they've been there too. Membership is $39 a month or $390 a year. Come find your people at https://bit.ly/Authentically-Us n.b. In the show, we mention National Coming Out Day as being founded in in the late 1970s, but it was established in 1988, marking the anniversary of the 1987 March on Washington.

  2. 3d ago ·  Bonus

    You Might Also Like: The Oprah Podcast

    Introducing Why Is America Different Than Every Other Country When It Comes to Guns? from The Oprah Podcast. Follow the show: The Oprah Podcast BUY THE BOOK!  The American Way of Killing by Malcolm Gladwell ⁠https://amzn.to/4jvQMuE⁠  Malcolm Gladwell - one of America’s foremost thought leaders - examines our country’s obsession with guns and the devastating toll gun violence has taken on our communities. In his new book, The American Way of Killing: The Invention of an Epidemic, Malcolm challenges some of our most deeply held beliefs about American gun violence: what we’re missing about the root cause of most violence, how modern medicine is obscuring the reality of the problem, why the answer might be more police—not less—and how we’ve lost sight of the historical context surrounding the Second Amendment. Oprah and Malcolm speak with a Chicago based E.R. doctor who lost 15 close friends and family members to gun violence. He teaches students as young as fourth grade how to treat a gunshot wound. This episode also offers some common sense solutions to a seemingly intractable problem. 00:00:00 - Welcome Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The American Way of Killing” 00:04:20 - European vs. American police 00:08:50 - Stats around more police 00:09:50 - Malcolm’s experience with guns 00:13:30 - Welcome Dr. Pratt 00:16:33 - Talking to kids about gun violence 00:19:15 - Changing gun violence 00:21:00 - Treating gun shot wounds 00:25:13 - The 2nd amendment 00:29:00 - Crime vs. violence 00:33:45 - Instrumental vs. expressive violence 00:40:00 - Are we learning from our mistakes? 00:43:00 - The gun problem is not unsolvable Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/oprahpodcast/⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ DISCLAIMER: Please note, this is an independent podcast episode not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced in conjunction with the host podcast feed or any of its media entities. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the creators and guests. For any concerns, please reach out to team@podroll.fm.

    You Might Also Like: The Oprah Podcast

  3. Oct 2

    Coach vs. Therapist? Knowing What You Need

    What is the difference between a coach and a therapist, and how do you know which one you need? Anne-Marie Zanzal welcomes back her frequent guest and longtime business coach Anna Empey, owner of Business Inspired Solution, for an honest conversation about the kinds of support available to women coming out later in life. Both women have spent years in therapy, and both are clear that it matters. They talk about what licensed therapists do that coaches cannot, why anyone leaving a high control religion deserves a therapist who truly understands religious trauma, and how a good coach knows when to refer out. Anne-Marie shares how she resisted the word "coach" for years before becoming the first coming out coach, and how her work as a hospice chaplain taught her to sit with people without trying to fix them. They also explore the difference between group therapy and mutual support, why knowing your values makes so many decisions easier, and what to ask before you hire anyone to walk beside you. Whether you are questioning, coming out, or building a business, you will leave with a clearer sense of what support fits your life right now. If this conversation stirred something in you, This Authentic Life may be the next step. It is a 16 week cohort program for women coming out later in life, and you will meet with the same small community of women every week, women who come to know your story, along with Barb and me. The October Cohort meets Wednesdays at 7:00 PM Central on Zoom, beginning October 7. Enrollment includes two private calls with me, membership in our Authentically Us community, and immediate access to the Maybe I Am Not Straight course and the Catalyst Chapter, so you can begin before the first session. Enrollment for this cohort closes October 6. You can learn more and enroll here: https://annemariezanzal.com/this-authentic-life-community-course/ If you are building a business or ready to grow a side project into something more, Anna Empey's Deep Dive is a wonderful place to begin. It is the same process I started with eight years ago, and it helped me build a business that reflects my values and sounds like me. Anna has a couple of Deep Dive spaces left this year, along with two openings for six month private business coaching. Learn more here: https://businessinspiredsolutions.co/ Join us next week for the 200th episode of Coming Out & Beyond! We are celebrating this podcasting milestone with Anne-Marie, Tonda, Barb and Anna. We'll be reflecting on some of our favourite episodes, coming out stories, and chatting about what's in store for the future!

  4. Sep 25

    Starting Over in the Sapphic World

    This week on Coming Out & Beyond it is the three of us again: Anne-Marie, dating and relationship guide Barb Rowlandson, and Anne-Marie's wife and resident realist, Tonda McKay. Twice a month we set the dating talk to the side and answer the questions that come in from all of you. This time they gathered around one tender thing, which is how you actually step into queer community when you are starting at the very beginning. The women who wrote in were standing at the door and could not quite walk through it. One had not dated in decades and no longer recognized her own body. One kept hearing the voice that said no one wants a woman who looks like me. One had driven past the building twice without ever going inside. If any of that feels familiar, you are in good company here. We talk about starting with friendship rather than rushing toward a girlfriend, about finding the rooms that already bring you joy, about volunteering and pickleball and Sapphic dances where you can happily lose yourself in the crowd. Barb speaks to the freeze response that shows up when belonging has never felt safe, and why the fear is real and still worth walking through. And because it would not be us without a little mischief, Tonda and Anne-Marie tell the story of the photograph that finally moved things past the flirting stage, ten years ago now. The heart of it is this. You do not need an instruction manual, and there is no wrong way to begin. If you are here, you have already started. If you have a question you would like us to talk through on the show, you can reach Anne-Marie at annemariezanzal.com or send Barb or Anne-Marie a message on social. And if you are longing for real community as the days grow shorter, This Authentic Life, our group program that runs for sixteen weeks, begins in early October. It is our last cohort of 2026, and there is a place in it for you: https://annemariezanzal.com/this-authentic-life-community-course/ 🌈 Send in your questions. Email to support@annemariezanzal.com, or message Barb or Anne-Marie on social, and they will answer on the show.

  5. Sep 18

    The Best Sex of Your Life Can Come After 50

    Note for Listeners: This episode contains explicit language and conversation about sex and sexual pleasure. Listener discretion is advised. What if the best sex of your life is still ahead of you? In this episode of Coming Out and Beyond, Anne-Marie Zanzal and dating coach Barbara Rowlandson sit down with Susan Bratton, the intimacy expert to millions and one of the most prolific and widely read sex educators in the world. Susan has spent more than two decades teaching the kind of sex education most of us were never given, the kind rooted in pleasure rather than shame or silence, and she brings all of it to this conversation with warmth, science, and a whole lot of joy. Together they talk about what it means to come home to your own body, often for the first time. So many women arrive in midlife having only known sex that was performative, dutiful, and centered on someone else. Susan offers another way. She walks us through calming the nervous system with the soulmate embrace, moving out of performance and into sensation, and understanding why a woman's arousal is slow, responsive, and worth every unhurried minute. This is an honest, tender, sometimes very funny conversation about pleasure as something sacred rather than shameful, about the body as something to be understood rather than judged, and about why, for so many Sapphic women, the intimacy they find after coming out is the most connected they have ever known. If sex was ever framed for you as a duty or a source of shame, this episode is an invitation to imagine something better. Pleasure is a skill. It is learnable at any age. And you are far more capable of it than you were ever allowed to believe. Want to learn more about Susan and Better Lover, her library of resource materials for improving sexual pleasure? Visit her website at https://susanbratton.com/ The toys that Susan highlighted in the episode can be found at https://drivedesire.com/Jamie McCartney's Great Wall of Vulva project, mentioned in this episode, can be found here: https://www.thegreatwallofvulva.com/ Ready to explore this for yourself? Join us for the 3 Day Clarity Experience, a live event for women who are questioning, wondering, and ready to understand what they are feeling. Over three evenings together we make space for your story, your clarity, and the beginnings of real community. The next one runs September 22 through 24. You can join for $47, or $97 for VIP, which includes a group Clarity Circle with Anne-Marie. Register here: https://annemariezanzal.com/3-day-clarity-experience/

  6. Sep 11

    Should You Run? Unfiltered Sapphic Dating Advice

    This month on Coming Out and Beyond it is our monthly dating and relationship show, and Anne-Marie is joined by her co-coach Barbara Rowlandson, a psychotherapist and dating coach, and her wife Tonda McKay. Before the questions, the three of them catch up on a summer of kayaking, wineries, and a 2,500 mile road trip through Michigan that somehow ended without a single argument. Anne-Marie and Tonda talk honestly about what ten years together and five years of marriage have actually asked of them, because the falling in love was real and so was the work. Then we open the mailbag. All of this month's questions come from the Late Blooming Lesbian subreddit, and they are the ones so many women ask quietly when they are new to dating women. What is it like to hold your girlfriend's hand in public for the first time, and where is the line between joy and scanning the room for other people's reactions. How do you think about an age gap when you are coming out later in life. What does reciprocity look like when one person keeps paying and the other keeps apologizing for it. And when someone pushes for exclusivity after a single date, is that really the U-Haul, or something else underneath. Barbara brings the therapist's lens, Tonda brings the honest one word answer, and Anne-Marie holds the pastoral middle. If you are somewhere on this road yourself, you do not have to walk it alone. Anne-Marie and Barb are hosting the 3-Day Clarity Experience on September 22, 23, and 24 at 7:00 PM Central. It is our most loved event, with 62 women in the room last time, and it is a warm, honest place to sit with exactly these kinds of questions alongside other women moving through this chapter too. We would love to have you there. Register at annemariezanzal.com and click the banner at the top. If coming out later in life is your story, Authentically Us is a good place to land. Authentically Us is our online community of women who genuinely support each other through this time. We hold a minimum of three online events/week where you can learn, share, and connect with other women who are navigating the coming out later in life process. You can find it at community.annemariezanzal.com.

  7. Sep 4

    🚩 The Signs We Only See Now: Were We Ever Really Straight?

    This month's episode with Anna Empey is the one we have all earned after a tender chapter of heavier conversations. It is lighter, there is a lot of laughing, and it is about the signs. Not the ones we noticed at the time, but the ones we can only see now, the ones that were quietly flashing the whole time while we went about our lives. Anne-Marie and Anna compare notes on the intense friendships they once organized their whole worlds around, and on the celebrity crushes they were so sure were nothing more than admiration. They get into the jealousy that felt far bigger than friendship, the difference between wanting to be her and wanting to be with her, and the church language of same sex attraction that so many of us were handed like a diagnosis. There is one loving thing to hold onto before any of us starts feeling foolish. We did not miss these signs because we were oblivious. We missed them because nobody had given us the words yet. Growing up in religious and conservative homes decades apart, neither Anne-Marie nor Anna had the language to name what was right in front of them. Wherever you are in your own questioning, you do not have to check every box, or any box at all. The only person who can name your sexuality is you. And if there is one thing this conversation makes clear, it is that you have not missed the boat. Your heart is beating, and the fullest version of your life may be waiting on the other side of what you have not yet let yourself see. 🔥Anne-Marie mentions a do-not-miss Brandi Carlile performance covering the Alanis Morrissette song "Uninvited" in this episode, so if you're curious, here's the link! https://youtu.be/kyvDyZoyGUg?si=rWXmdQGaLf6CG1gU 👉Here's a little teaser of Fortune Feimster's Netflix comedy special, "Sweet & Salty": https://youtu.be/Rdj_fEEH5oU?si=rhaJa92JvoQIuYO7 🗓️Reminder: Anna Empey joins Anne-Marie on the pod on the first Friday of every month! You might want to subscribe so you don't miss it. ;) If this conversation stirs something in you, you do not have to sit with it alone. Authentically Us is our community for women navigating questioning and coming out later in life, with group support gatherings every week and people who understand exactly what this chapter asks of you. We would love to have you with us. Come find your people here: https://bit.ly/Authentically-Us

  8. Aug 28

    Straight Women Don't Lie Awake Wondering if They're Gay

    This is the start of something new. The episodes you have told us you love most are the ones where the three of us sit down together, so we are making them a monthly gathering. Once a month, Tonda, Barbara, and I will open the letters and answer the questions women are actually asking: the real ones, the tender ones, the slightly awkward ones, and the ones you would only ask us at two in the morning with the door shut. If you are new to the show, here is who you are sitting with. I came out in my fifties, and I have kept all the receipts. Barbara is a psychotherapist who will advise you gently, and she means it as the highest compliment. Tonda has been out for more than forty years, so she has quietly seen most of it. We think of ourselves as the slightly older, slightly wiser, occasionally ridiculous friends who happened to get here first. This month we read five letters, and the same quiet question ran underneath every one of them. Woman after woman, wondering whether she is allowed to believe what she feels. Here is what we opened this month: How do I know if what I'm feeling is real, or if I am imagining it? I have never been with a woman. Am I allowed to call myself sapphic or queer at all? Is there such a thing as too late? (from a listener in her late sixties) What is compulsory heterosexuality, and how do I know if I have been living inside it? I know I am not straight, but I do not feel drawn to women the way I expected. Where do I fit? We talk about the comfort zone and the fear that shows up the moment you step out of it, the gatekeepers who think they get to decide who belongs (they do not), why it is never too late, and the grace you deserve when the feelings arrive on their own timeline instead of the one you imagined. Pour something you like, get comfortable, and come sit with us. 🌈Email your questions to support@annemariezanzal.com. You might hear yours answered on a future episode. 🌈Leave your questions in the comments below. 🌈If you are already inside Authentically Us, you can privately message Anne-Marie or Barbara with your question. 🌈This Authentic Life, the community course Barbara and Anne-Marie are hosting together, begins the first week of October. Registration is open now at https://annemariezanzal.com/this-authentic-life-community-course/ 🌈Join Authentically Us, our online community, at https://community.annemariezanzal.com/ If the questions in this episode sound like the ones living quietly in you, you do not have to sit with them alone. Authentically Us is our online community, a growing circle of women who are all somewhere in this process of coming out and coming home to themselves. You can ask your own questions there and hear from us, and from women who understand because they are walking it too. We would love to see you inside. Join us here: https://bit.ly/Authentically-Us

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4.4
out of 5
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About

Coming Out & Beyond is a podcast for women questioning their sexuality later in life — no matter where you are or what your life looks like right now. Maybe you're sitting with a question you've never said out loud. Maybe you fell for a woman or something woke up recently, everything shifted and you can't put it back. Maybe you're untangling years of religious conditioning or compulsory heterosexuality and trying to figure out who you actually are underneath all of that. Whatever brought you here — this space is for you. Hosted by Anne-Marie Zanzal — Yale Divinity School graduate, ordained progressive minister, grief counselor, and LGBTQ+ coach who came out in midlife — Coming Out & Beyond offers real conversations, emotional clarity, and grounded support for women coming out after 30, 40, 50, and beyond. We talk openly about late bloomer experiences, being married with kids and questioning, single and not finding someone who is right for us, catalyst relationships, faith deconstruction, divorce, grief, identity shifts in midlife, and learning to trust the voice inside you that’s getting louder. This isn’t about rushing labels or blowing up your life. It’s about integration. Self-trust. And the kind of community that changes everything. Because women navigating later-in-life coming out do better — emotionally and practically — when they’re not doing it alone. New episodes weekly. Join the conversation on YouTube, and when you’re ready, step inside Authentically Us (https://community.annemariezanzal.com/)— Anne-Marie’s private community for women on this journey. This journey is yours and you are coming home to yourself. https://annemariezanzal.com/maybe-im-not-straight-guide/

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