What Is a Baby Lesbian, and How Do You Learn to Fly?
Updated: Oct 23
I was just having a conversation about being a baby lesbian. Gotta admit, I love this phrase.
Because what is a baby lesbian, really? You're just starting out. You're figuring out who you are. You don't totally know what you're doing yet. You're trying to spread your little lesbian wings and fly, except nobody handed you an instruction manual. There is no official Baby Lesbian Orientation Day where somebody gives you a name tag, a handbook, and a complimentary carabiner and says, “Welcome. Here's how this works.”
You're just out there learning.
Depending on when you come out, that learning process can look very different. If you're coming out in your teens or twenties, you may be learning about attraction, dating, relationships, and sex at roughly the same time a lot of your heterosexual peers are figuring those things out too. Everybody is a little awkward, making questionable dating decisions, trying to determine whether that text meant "I like you," or "I'm just being friendly." You're learning something specific about yourself, but you're also learning within a developmental period where lots of people around you are beginners at relationships.
But what happens when you're a baby lesbian at 35? Or 42? Or 48? Now you've lived an entire adult life already. Maybe you've been married to a man, had children, built a career, a home, and an identity that made perfect sense from the outside. Maybe you knew you were attracted to women years ago but didn't feel safe enough to say it. Maybe you genuinely didn't understand that part of yourself until later. Maybe you understood it perfectly well but grew up in an environment where acknowledging it came with very real consequences.
Suddenly, you're a fully functioning adult who can pay a mortgage, manage a staff meeting, raise children, and generally navigate the world, but someone attractive smiles at you and you're approximately 14 years old again.
Welcome, baby lesbian. Your wings have arrived.
Why Can Coming Out Later Feel So Scary?
For many people, coming out later isn't simply about finally discovering the correct label. There may be years (sometimes decades) of fear, shame, cultural expectations, religious messages, family expectations, or actual concerns about safety underneath that moment. Sometimes being a lesbian has essentially been coded as a bomb in the nervous system:
Don't look at that.
Don't acknowledge that.
Don't tell anybody that.
Definitely don't become that.
I remember growing up in an environment where plenty of LGBTQ people had to hide. Some found little pockets where they could breathe, often in drama clubs, theater, music, or artistic communities.
You could find other people who felt a little different too. Maybe you couldn't fully name everything yet, and maybe you still had to hide parts of yourself, but at least there was somewhere you could exist with a little more freedom.
Not everyone had that. Some people learned to hide extraordinarily well, and some of those people are in their 30s, 40s, and beyond now, finally giving themselves permission to explore who they are.
There is nothing wrong with that. You didn't miss your opportunity. You aren't behind. But it can feel incredibly disorienting to be a beginner in one part of life when you're accustomed to already knowing how to do everything else.
That's where I think my learning model is particularly helpful:
Anxious
↓
Awkward
↓
Familiar
↓
Competent
↓
Confident
We keep expecting ourselves to start with confidence, but confidence comes at the end. So of course you're anxious when you're doing something you've never done before. Of course dating women might feel awkward if you've never dated women. Of course you don't know all the social cues yet.
That's not evidence that you've made the wrong decision. That's just what learning feels like.
Maybe Start With Something Funny
One of the things I suggested in this conversation was starting with comedy. That may sound silly, but I actually think humor can be incredibly useful when something still feels dangerous or heavily charged in your nervous system.
This is one of the ideas behind my book, It's Not a Bomb, It's Just Sex. When sexuality has spent years feeling like a bomb, humor, joy, curiosity, and play can sometimes give us a safer way to approach it.
So maybe your first assignment as a baby lesbian isn't downloading three dating apps and immediately going on six dates. Maybe you sit on your couch and watch Fortune Feimster, Tig Notaro or Hannah Gadsby. Listen to queer people tell stories about their lives, relationships, identities, coming-out experiences, and awkward moments.
Let yourself laugh.
There's something comforting about realizing other people had to figure this shit out too. They didn't emerge from the womb knowing exactly how to navigate queer relationships. They learned. They had awkward moments, misunderstood things, dated people who weren't right for them. And they figured themselves out.
Humor lets you approach something that may have previously felt terrifying and think, "Oh. Other people have done this. Maybe I can do this too."
Then Let Yourself See Lesbian Lives
Once the subject starts feeling a little less threatening, media can provide another way to build familiarity. Representation matters because seeing lesbian and queer women simply existing can help something that once felt foreign become more normal.
The L Word is obviously one of the classic starting points, but there are far more options now. Shows such as Feel Good, Gentleman Jack, Orange Is the New Black, The Ultimatum: Queer Love, Yellowjackets, and Hacks all offer different kinds of queer female representation. None of these shows should be treated as an instructional manual for how lesbians are supposed to behave (and God help us if The L Word becomes anyone's official relationship manual) but that's not really the point.
The point is familiarity. You get to see queer women date, flirt, fall in love, break up, have sex, make mistakes, build relationships, laugh, argue, and generally be complicated human beings. You start to see that there isn't one correct way to “be a lesbian.” There are simply people figuring out their own lives.
That matters because familiarity is part of learning. Something that initially creates anxiety can eventually become something your nervous system recognizes. "I've seen this before. I know people who live this way. This exists. This is okay."
Eventually, You Have to Meet Actual Humans
Eventually, though, Netflix cannot date you. At some point, spreading your baby lesbian wings probably means finding some actual community, and this is one place where I genuinely think St. Louis has something wonderful to offer.
We have The Grove, which has long been an LGBTQ-centered area of St. Louis and gives people opportunities to be around queer community, nightlife, businesses, and events. If you're newly out, you don't have to show up and immediately find a girlfriend. In fact, please don't put that kind of pressure on yourself. Bring a friend. Go somewhere. Have a drink or a coffee. Attend an event. People-watch. Let yourself simply exist in a place where seeing queer couples and LGBTQ people isn't unusual.
You also don't need to march into The Grove wearing a shirt that says, HELLO, I AM NEW AT LESBIANING. Although, honestly, that would make networking considerably more efficient.
The point of community isn't simply finding somebody to date. Community gives your nervous system another experience: "I can exist here. There are people like me here. I don't have to explain myself here."
If you've spent decades experiencing your sexuality as something that needed to remain hidden, simply being around people who don't require you to hide can be an incredibly meaningful part of learning.
If you're in college, you may have even more opportunities to start there. Look for organizations with names like:
Rainbow Alliance,
Pride Alliance,
Queer Student Union,
LGBTQ Resource Center, or
GSA.
Many colleges have LGBTQ organizations, social events, educational programs, and peer communities where you can begin meeting people without dating being the entire point.
And you don't need to walk into your first meeting announcing, "Hello everyone, I have completed my sexual-orientation analysis and am prepared to present my final results."
You can just show up. You can be questioning. You can listen. And you can say, "I think I'm figuring some things out."
You're allowed to learn before you have everything perfectly labeled.
Being a Baby Lesbian Doesn't Mean Being a Baby Human
I think this distinction is especially important for people coming out later in life. You are not starting your entire life over. You're bringing everything you've already learned with you. Your emotional maturity, career skills, and experiences from other relationships come with you. Your ability to communicate, make decisions, recognize kindness, establish boundaries, and repair conflict comes with you too.
But there may be some areas where you genuinely are new. Maybe you've never flirted with a woman, or you have absolutely no idea whether another woman is flirting with you. Maybe you're terrified of your first date. Maybe you're trying to understand what sex looks like without the heterosexual scripts you've known your whole life. Maybe you're still figuring out exactly how you identify.
That's okay. You can be 43 years old and awkwardly learn something for the first time. That's not regression. That's development.
And please don't take all the shame you may have carried before coming out and immediately create a brand-new shame project now that you're out.
"I should know what I'm doing. I should have figured this out earlier. Real lesbians probably know this. I'm too old to be this awkward."
No. You're learning.
Watch something funny. Let yourself see queer lives represented on screen. Find community. Go somewhere LGBTQ-friendly. Talk to people. Take a chance when you're ready. Have an awkward date, or maybe a fantastic one. Maybe discover that the woman you were absolutely certain was flirting with you was, in fact, just extremely friendly.
You will survive.
The goal isn't to immediately become the world's most confident lesbian.
The goal is to follow a healthy learning cycle. Let anxious become awkward, awkward become familiar, familiar become competent, and eventually competence become confidence.
Somewhere along the way, the thing that once felt like a bomb in your nervous system may start to feel much simpler. You may start to realize, "Oh. This is me. I'm okay. I can do this."
So to all the baby lesbians out there (whether you're 18 or 48) take your time. Find people who make you laugh, stories that make you feel seen, communities where you can breathe. Give yourself permission to be new at something.
Then spread those tiny baby lesbian wings.
You don't have to know how to fly yet.
That's what the wings are for.
Want to Learn More?
Link to my books: https://www.openbedroomdoors.com/books
Instructional video:
