The Party Still Starts When I Walk In (Even If I Came Out and My Toilet Exploded)

Walking into my mom friend's house for the first time since I came out and told the internet my marriage was over, my body went full microwave mode. Hot. Buzzing. Prickly.

My brain:
What if this group of moms doesn’t support me?
What if they judge me?
What if the straight-soccer-softball-mom’s world quietly votes me off the island?

My body wanted to bolt. My nervous system was like, “Hey girl, we could just go back to the car and pretend we forgot the appetizer.”

Instead, I gave myself a little pep talk right there on the doormat:

“I am me. I deserve to be me.
If I don’t feel safe and supported, I will leave.”

Not, “I will win them over.”
Not, “I will be extra charming and funny and host the room like a TED Talk.”
Just: I will be me. And if it’s not safe, I will go.

Boots came off. I tucked them into the pile with the other moms’ shoes and tried not to read too much symbolism into that.

I was also 25 minutes late which, for former “the party starts when I walk in” Shannon, is off-brand. Normally I’d burst through the door with a full face of makeup, big energy, and at least three jokes ready.

This time, I felt more like: “The party might start when I walk in, but also the party might eat me alive, and that’s fine too.”

But before we get to the hug that changed the night, let’s rewind a bit.

The Day Everything (Literally) Overflowed

This particular Friday, I had big “new me” energy planned:
Less work. More taking care of myself. Good intentions all around.

I hit the gym, moved slow, made a quick Target run for a kid’s birthday gift, a couple of random things, and Draino (because of course). Earlier in the week, our 1951 house had gifted me the joy of cleaning up toilet water on the main level. Love that for me.

By afternoon, the kids rolled in deep from middle school, and I headed to the stove to make my very festive Christmas Tree Artichoke Dip. I was feeling… dare I say… ahead of schedule.

So obviously, this is when the universe said, “Let’s spice things up.”

I’m stirring dip, multitasking, checking emails (because I still haven’t fully broken up with over-functioning), when I hear what sounds like rain.

Inside.

“Cool cool cool,” I think, half-panicked, half-trying to pretend this is normal.

I peek down the stairs and—yep—there’s water pooling. Again.

I rush to the basement. Toilet water has made her encore performance.

I sprint upstairs and yell, “What are you doing in the bathroom?!”

I fling open the door to find my 5’10”, 200-something-pound bonus boy standing on the side of the tub, looking like a terrified mouse who just burned the house down by accident. The shame was all over his face.

My heart drops. I’m annoyed, but I also see how scared he is. So I go into crisis-mom mode: grabbing towels, barking instructions in what I’m hoping is a calm voice, trying to save our wood floors from curling up like potato chips.

My oldest daughter races to get more towels. I think we used all but three in the entire house.

Meanwhile, upstairs, the electricians are installing the first pieces of our ownership suite remodel, also known as the soccer mom and soccer coach's choice to build something beautiful from the brutal project.

And on top of all that, it’s almost time to go pick up my youngest and her friend to get them to gymnastics.

Internally, I am the anger character from Inside Out: flames, rage, tiny suit on fire.
Externally, I’m saying things like, “Okay guys, you finish wiping that up, I have to go do pickup.”

I shove my foot inside my winter boots, whisper a small prayer of gratitude that it’s 30° instead of single digits, and bolt to the car, texting my youngest that I’ll be a few minutes late.

When we get back, I survey the situation like a grizzled war general:

• Toilet water mostly contained? Check.

• Wood floors still intact? Probably.

• Towels absolutely wrecked? Yep.

I haul the sopping towel mountain to the laundry room. It looks like a light rainstorm escaped into it and left its mark on the washer, the basket of laundry from the clothing drop, and the blankets that were hanging—soaked and dripping onto the floor. Definitely not feeling like a win. I’m trying not to panic more.

I’m determined not to lose it on the kids. One, because I actually hate yelling. Two, because I’m still sensitive to the bonus kids' feelings in this house and this new version of life. Their mom is Jamie's best friend, Jamie’s been another steady grown-up in their world for years, and I’m the newer adult trying to help keep things running without turning into some horror-movie step character.

My bonus boy once made a 3D print that said, “Shannon is loving, caring, and a little bit scary.”
So yeah, I’m very aware of not wanting to tip the scale too far into “more scary."

And honestly? I’m still not always sure I can fully claim this house as mine, even though I’ve lived here for four months. There’s this constant little voice asking, “Do I say what I actually want here, or will that be… too much?”

So instead of screaming, I take a breath. Sit at my desk. Check a few emails like that’s going to regulate my nervous system (10/10 do not recommend as a soothing strategy). I'm still unlearning the overfunctioning part of me. 

Then I hear gagging behind my chair.

Buster, our 9-year-old beagle, has decided that the combination of kids sprinting through the house, strange men with tools, and my anxiety filling the air like Axe body spray is just too much. So he vomits. On the floor. Obviously.

Old me would have absolutely lost my shit at this point.

New me? She snickers, grabs the paper towels, and has a tiny internal fork-in-the-road moment:

• Path A: spin out, cry on the carpet like a breakdancer in emotional freefall, and declare, “I can’t fucking do this.”

• Path B: pull out my “Oh Shit, Don’t Lose It” toolkit, breathe, find a way to laugh, and remember that everything is figure-out-able.

I chose Path B. Not gracefully, but still.

And somewhere between cleaning beagle puke, answering the electrician’s questions about the main electrical panel, and scooping Louie’s poop off the one exposed patch of carpet upstairs (oh yeah, he went too)… I realized:

I am actually handling all of this.
Alone. In my queer blended family circus.
And I am not collapsing.

Old relationship me would have felt helpless, incompetent, like I wasn’t “house-capable” enough. I grew up in apartments calling the super to fix leaky sinks. I’ve held a lot of shame about not growing up with a house, not knowing “how things work,” not being “handy.”

That narrative was loud in my previous marriage.

This time, I’m standing in toilet water, surrounded by children, dogs, wires, and a Christmas tree-shaped dip, and the quiet thought under the chaos is:

“Oh. I can do this.”

By the time the dip was finally done, and the towels were at least corralled, I spent time curling my hair, putting on a Christmas sweater, and doing my makeup to feel a little more like myself, comfy enough to try and relax, while also praying this first-time recipe for the Christmas tree appetizer didn’t taste like shit.

I FaceTimed my one of my bes friends on a Friday at 5:30 p.m. while she was still at her office (we are both working on the overachieving and overfunctioning personas) and said, “I need a pep talk, and I will not be taking notes.”

She delivered. I scooped up my bonus boy and my oldest daughter, dropped them at gymnastics and youth night, and headed to my friends.

Walking Into the Room as the “New Me”

Less than 24 hours before this party, I hit publish on a blog post sharing my abbreviated coming-out story and the end of my marriage.

I told the truth publicly.

The comments and DMs were rolling in, some beautiful, some tender, some from people I never expected. But walking into a room of actual human women, women who’ve only ever known me as “Jim’s wife,” straight mom Shannon, that felt like a whole different kind of exposure.

As I climbed the split-level stairs into my friend’s kitchen, my brain started spiraling again:

• Will they accept me?

•  Do I still fit here?

• Is there an invisible “good straight lady moms only” sign I missed?
• Are they going to be weird around me now that my partner is a woman?

I scanned the room, waiting for that half-beat of awkwardness, the too-bright smile, the “Oh heyyyy…” with a side of distance.

Instead, my friend who was hosting walked over and wrapped me in a hug. Not a quick, polite hug. A long one. The kind where your body notices, “Oh, we’re being held.” She whispered, “I’m so proud of you,” and squeezed a little tighter. It was like she knew my nervous system was five seconds away from bolting.

Then something in me loosened.

As I moved around the room, I was met with hug after hug. Real ones. The kind you give when you’re genuinely happy to see someone, not when you feel obligated because they just detonated their life on the internet.

There were words of support.
There were tears, joyful ones, for me.
There were “We love you”s and “We’re here”s and “You’re still you's."

And it landed.

The story in my head that said, “There is absolutely going to be fallout, and you are going to be the weird outsider friend now,” had to sit down and shut up for a minute.

What My Nervous System Was Really Asking

Underneath all the toilet water, kid chaos, dog vomit/poop, house remodeling projects, and late arrivals, this night answered some ancient questions for me:

• If I stop over-performing and just show up as I am… am I still wanted?

• If I tell the truth about who I love… do I still get to be in these rooms?

• If my life doesn’t look like the script we all started with… do you still choose me?

And the answer, at least in that kitchen, was yes.

My friend’s hug, the tears, the “Bring Jamie next time,” the way no one made my coming out the whole centerpiece, but also didn’t pretend it wasn’t a big deal, all of it helped rewrite an old script in my body.

Old script: “If I change, I’ll lose everything.”

New script: “I can evolve and still be held.”

And yes, the party still starts when I walk in…but now it’s not because I’m trying to be the loudest, funniest, most “on” version of myself.

It’s because I walk in as the truest version of me, and let the people who can hold that, hold it.

I’m Not a Trend, But I’m Not Alone Either

Here’s the thing: as much as this story is deeply personal, it’s also… not just mine.

There’s literally language now for women like me: “later-life lesbians” and “late-blooming lesbians” — women who come into a lesbian identity in their 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond, often after long relationships or marriages with men. 

One UK mental health organization points out that some theories put the average age of a “later life lesbian” around 46, and notes that many women reach this point after years of raising kids and taking care of everyone else before finally turning toward their own needs. 

Writers and researchers keep noticing the same pattern:

• Articles talk about more women over 40 realizing they’re gay, bisexual, or bi-curious, even after years of being married to men. 

• Coaching programs, support groups, podcasts, and retreats now exist specifically for women coming out in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. The whole “late-in-life” thing has enough demand to be its own niche, which is both wild and comforting. 

Zoom out even more, and the whole landscape is shifting:

• In the U.S., recent Gallup data shows nearly 1 in 10 adults (about 9.3%) now identify as LGBTQ+, up from about 3.5% just over a decade ago. 

• Women are more likely than men to identify somewhere under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, and younger generations are leading the way. Still, therapists and researchers note that more adults are naming their queerness later in life, too, not just at 16 or 18. 

And for women specifically, there’s a whole body of research on sexual fluidity, basically, that women’s attraction patterns can change over time, and that their identity labels often shift more across adulthood than men’s do. 

So no, I’m not “joining a trend” like it’s the latest TikTok dance.

What I am doing is joining a long, quiet line of women who decided their truth gets to matter, even when it arrives later than expected, and even when it blows up the highlight reel they thought they were supposed to stick to.

Knowing there are words for this, groups for this, data for this. Women in their 40s, 50s, 60s saying, “Wait… me too”, doesn’t make the grief smaller. But it does make me feel less like a glitch in the system and more like part of a wave.

A wave of women who are tired of almost-lives, and are choosing, sometimes painfully and messily, to live honest ones instead.

Straight Friends, You Matter More Than You Know

Let me say this clearly, because I don’t think straight women always realize it:

When your friend comes out later in life, especially if there’s a marriage and kids involved, your support is not “nice to have.”

It is lifeline-level.

There is so much quiet grief and terror wrapped up in coming out:

• “Will they still invite me to things?”

• “Will I be the only gay in the room — again?”

• “Will they treat my partner like a guest star or like my actual person?”

• “Is someone’s husband going to make weird comments or jokes?”

• “Will they worry I’m suddenly flirting with everyone?” (Spoiler: I’m not.)

I wrestled hard with whether I’d still be invited, whether I’d be “too much,” and whether people would be uncomfortable around Jamie.

So when my friend casually asked, “Why didn’t you bring Jamie? You know she’s always invited,” it landed in a place so deep I wanted to cry on the charcuterie board.

A few minutes later, another friend said, “I’d love to get to know her more.”
Others talked about what a phenomenal human she is.

I felt myself slide into my new sweater (and my new life) a little more comfortably.

I don’t think any of them realized that what they were really saying was:

“You still belong here. Both of you.”
“You are not the weird side story. You are part of us.”
“We see you as Shannon, just more aligned now.”

That kind of support, simple, genuine, unforced, is medicine. It quiets that aching “Do I still belong?” hum that so many of us carry.

If You’re a Straight Friend Wondering How to Show Up

If you have a friend who’s coming out, especially later in life, here are a few simple but powerful ways to show up:

• Say it out loud.
  “I love you. I’m proud of you. I’m here.” Please don’t assume they know.

• Name the partner.
  Use their name. Invite them. “We’d love to have Jamie, too.” It says, “I see your relationship as real.”

• Keep inviting them.
  Playdates, girls’ nights, birthday parties, sports things, all of it. Let them decide if they have capacity.

• Don’t make it a spectacle, but don’t ignore it.
  You don’t have to make a rainbow shrine every time they walk into a room. Just acknowledge this is a big shift and you care.

Reflection Questions for You

If you want to sit with this a little (either as someone who’s come out / is coming out, or as a friend), here are some prompts.

If you’re the one evolving:

• When you picture walking into a room as your full self, what’s the fear story your brain tells you? What’s the hope story?

• Who are the people in your life who’ve quietly shown you, “You still belong here”? What did they do or say?

• Where are you still over-performing for your spot in the room? What would “I can leave if it’s not safe” look like in your life?

• What’s one old narrative about yourself (e.g., “I can’t handle things,” “I’m too much,” “I don’t belong in this kind of house/life”) that this season is actually proving wrong?

If you’re a friend/ally:

• Do you have anyone in your life who has come out, shifted identities, or made a big life change? How did you respond, honestly?

• Is there a text, invite, or “I’m proud of you” that you’ve thought about sending but haven’t yet? What’s stopping you?

• How might you make it more obvious that your friend’s partner is welcomed and wanted, not just tolerated?

• What assumptions about queerness, marriage, or “how life is supposed to look” are you still carrying that might get in the way of being the kind of friend you actually want to be?

• Don’t assume they’re “a different person now.”
  I’m the same Shannon, just in a more honest outfit.

Your support might be the difference between your friend feeling like she detonated her life… and realizing she actually liberated it.

We are Worthy from Shan

I’m sharing stories like this because I spent a long time wondering if I was the only mom in the pickup line whose whole inner life didn’t match the script she was living.

For years, I played the part: wife, business owner, soccer/softball/gymnastics mom, changemaker, holiday host. On paper, it made sense. Inside, something kept whispering, “There has to be a truer version of this.” Coming out in my 40s, while co-parenting and rebuilding my life, has been brutally beautiful. It’s cost me things, and it’s also given me my own breath back.

If you’re a woman reading this and some part of you quietly went, “Oh… that’s me,” I want you to know you’re not broken, you’re not late, and you’re not alone. You don’t have to blow up your life tomorrow to start listening to yourself today, but your truth deserves a seat at the table.

If you’re a straight friend or family member, thank you for being the kind of person who stays curious and keeps showing up. Your hugs in kitchens, your “Bring her next time,” your “I still choose you”, those small things are not small. They’re what make it possible for people like me to live honest lives and still feel like we belong.

Thanks for being here, for reading, and for holding my messy, funny, overflowing-toilet kind of truth with me.

With love, light, and gratitude,

Shan