Many of you are probably wondering… LGBtq… what?
What do all those letters mean? Yes, I know… even I had to look it up as I’ve seen many variations. I happened to recently meet 
Photo on Foter.com
LGBTQAI
More details of this explanation can be found here!
L - Lesbian
G - Gay
B - Bisexual
T - Transgender
Q - Queer, Questioning
A - Asexual, Ally
I - Intersex
I don’t think it really matters whether or not Steemit is 'ready' for our community. We’re already here, whether we have been open about who we are or not. I’m very new to this platform and did not include in my #introduceyourself post that I am gay. I am openly gay however, but it’s not the first thing I tell people when I meet them.
My battle between Acceptance vs. Rejection
Being gay is a part of who I am, but it’s not everything that I am. I have always been hesitant to share that I am gay with others because of the fear I have of being rejected. Even being raised in Canada, a relatively safe and welcoming country for people of all backgrounds, I came from a Mennonite infused Christian family and the initial response I received from my parents when they asked me if I was gay was emotionally scarring for many years to come. I’ll be sharing that story with this community in greater detail at a later point.
The hurt that I felt from my parents reaction to me being gay made me feel like something within me was intrinsically wrong, as if the wiring in my brain had not been laid out correctly by 'God' my 'creator'. I felt like I couldn’t be loved, that my life was one big massive ‘sin’ and from that low point in my life I decided that since I was going to ‘Hell’ anyways, I might as well enjoy the ride there. I then proceeded to get lost in a world of drugs, alcohol abuse, random casual sex, and a constant search for acceptance among my peers… or maybe I should use the word ‘love’.
I’ve come along way since those days in my early 20’s, and so have my parents. We have a really loving relationship and have all gone through a lot of healing. The theme of "Acceptance vs. Rejection" still runs deeply through my life though and all I know is that loving oneself is the most important thing for healing, and I’m trying to love myself more and more every day.
How can we make Steemit a more inclusive community?
I think that opening up the dialogue is the first step to making people feel welcome to share of their experiences on Steemit. I think that
One of the really interesting things about Steemit is that it’s a VERY internationally used platform. I’m seeing huge communities of people sharing content from places I have never even heard of. Many places in the world that are being represented on Steemit are not friendly towards the LGBTQAI community, in many places it’s even against the law! We have a very unique opportunity to share our stories and bring understanding to people from places that have traditionally been very intolerant towards our differences. This won’t happen overnight, as acceptance still isn’t as widespread as we would like it to be even here in North America or many other progressive countries around the world.
I believe that the backbone of our movement must come from a place of love. It must come from within us, learning how to love ourselves for who we are, learning how to love our neighbours for who they are, and sharing that love indiscriminatly to those we encounter. I have to admit, this is something I’m working on within myself, as there are pockets within the LGBTQAI community that are so different from myself that even I have a hard time understanding them, and sometimes I’m afraid to get to know them. This comes from a place of personal insecurity though and I know that when I hear their story, their true and honest story… that I will have nothing but love and understanding for them.
So let’s create a place where people can share their true and honest stories with the world, so we can experience more love and understanding.
If I were to be delegated Steem Power to be a Curator in this niche…
Another little secret about me… I’m a healer. Again, I didn’t ‘out' myself as a healer in my #introduceyourself post. This also will have to be more fully explained in a future post but in short, I believe that now is the turning point in my life where I start living more aligned with who I truly am. I believe that in the work I am doing to heal myself, I can help others. I still have a long way to go but I believe that from my personal experiences I can help a lot of people overcome the internal battles that they face. Our community still needs a ton of healing!
Curating in this community will only help me to do work more closely aligned to my true calling in life. I have pursued creative projects in the past to bring the community together through sharing our truth with the world through video. Now has never been a more opportune time in my life to bring these creative projects forward with love and energy.
Being immersed in this community will allow me to help share some of the great stories I discover from people all around the world. With more and more of us finding this unique content, up-voting it, re-steeming it, and commenting on it we are ultimately going to be able to help attract and retain great content creators within our community. I think that one person can do great things, but together we can change the world.
Let’s start here in Steemit!
I think we have a really opportune time to start encouraging our friends to join Steemit and start sharing their stories. We'll be able to make Discord groups and Steemit.chat rooms where we can meet together and share strategies to engage our community more. If it's hard for anyone to share their stories to the whole world at first... let's at least start in the chat rooms to see how our stories can help others.
We can have brainstorming sessions and work together on awesome collaborative projects to build our community up. I feel such an incredibly magical feeling in the air about all of this blockchain technology entering into our lives at this point in time. I'm really optimistic that revolutionary change will be occurring in our lifetime that will be absolutely unreal to be able to watch unfold.