{"podcast":{"title":"Coming Out & Beyond | Support for Women Questioning Their Sexuality","slug":"coming-out-beyond-support-for-women-questioning-their-sexuality-3916256","podcast_index_feed_id":3916256,"rss_url":"https://rss.pdrl.fm/61288f/feeds.captivate.fm/comingoutandbeyond/","website_url":"https://annemariezanzal.com/coming-out-stories-beyond-podcast/","image_url":"https://artwork.captivate.fm/baa17cb3-0a45-417c-abd2-7bef950f96a4/Z7j4qj8k47aF8JnsB9FSHKaU.png","author":"Anne-Marie Zanzal 1ac1f670-c17c-11f0-806a-ef1502adef07","episode_count":189,"summary":"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-…","last_synced_at":"2026-07-24T12:21:24.406773+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/coming-out-beyond-support-for-women-questioning-their-sexuality-3916256"},"episode":{"title":"Too Gay to Fit In, Too New to Feel at Home","slug":"too-gay-to-fit-in-too-new-to-feel-at-home","published_at":"2026-04-03T04:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/coming-out-beyond-support-for-women-questioning-their-sexuality-3916256/too-gay-to-fit-in-too-new-to-feel-at-home","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/coming-out-beyond-support-for-women-questioning-their-sexuality-3916256","url":"https://annemariezanzal.com/coming-out-stories-beyond-podcast/","audio_url":"https://episodes.captivate.fm/episode/64066bb8-2e1c-44e2-a8ad-79ba4b65a670.mp3","summary":"Coming out names something true. But it doesn't hand you a place to land. In this episode of Coming Out & Beyond , Anne-Marie sits down with returning guest Anna Empey — LGBT coach, business development consultant, and community builder — for an honest, tender conversation about what it really takes to find your people after you've found yourself. Anna knows firsthand what it costs to lose the communities you thought you'd hold forever — her faith community, her family connections, her sense of where she fit. And she knows what it took to build something new, not because it was easy, but because she understood, bone deep, that healing doesn't happen in isolation. Together, Anne-Marie and Anna explore why queer community isn't a nice bonus on the side of your coming-out journey — it's where the healing actually lives. They talk about the low-grade wariness so many women carry walking into queer spaces, the voice that asks am I gay enough? and the gatekeepers who don't have the authority they think they do. They talk about what safe enough really means (hint: it's not a place where nothing hard ever happens), about the muscle memory of performing belonging we carry in from our straight lives, and about why the rawest, most honest thing you say in community is almost always the one that gets the most me too. Anna also shares something she learned after years of searching for the roadmap someone would just hand her: nobody can tell you exactly what it looks like for you. But there are people who will show up and walk with you while you figure it out. And that is still community. That still counts. Reflection question from this episode: Where do you feel most yourself in the presence of others? Sit with it. Write it down. Let it open something. Resources + Ways to Conne…","meta_description":"Coming out names something true. But it doesn't hand you a place to land. In this episode of Coming Out & Beyond , Anne-Marie sits down with returning…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2414,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/coming-out-beyond-support-for-women-questioning-their-sexuality-3916256/episodes/too-gay-to-fit-in-too-new-to-feel-at-home/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/coming-out-beyond-support-for-women-questioning-their-sexuality-3916256/too-gay-to-fit-in-too-new-to-feel-at-home.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}