Finding my community

This post contains reflections on a period of acute emotional crisis following a major life rupture. It includes descriptions of disordered sleep and eating, emotional distress, and recovery through community support. Photo cred: Les Go Hiking GroupMe Chat.

Since my arrival in Atlanta at the end of 2017, I’ve been looking for my people. It hasn’t been easy.

Part of the challenge is that I’ve never been entirely sure who my community is supposed to be. That question has followed me for most of my life. I have diverse skills, hobbies, and interests, and each of those attracts different kinds of people. Sometimes I connect with people over shared interests but struggle with their personalities. Other times I genuinely like people, but we don’t have much in common.

For me, community isn’t just proximity or convenience. It’s a group of like-minded people who share interests and show up in the world in similar ways, with curiosity, open hearts, and a genuine appreciation for others.

Occasionally, I’ve found pieces of that. I’ve checked a few boxes here and there. But sustaining it has been harder. I haven’t really had a solid group of people who liked one another and enjoyed being together. Too often, those groups felt built on tolerance rather than connection. Sometimes it only takes one or two difficult personalities to drain the warmth from a space entirely.

I do have friends in Atlanta. Not many, but a few really good ones. The problem is that they aren’t friends with one another. Coordinating group time feels forced, like trying to stitch together pieces that were never meant to form a whole. I didn’t need more one-on-one conversations. I needed a sense of belonging.

Then, in August, my life changed in every possible way. Suddenly, the desire for community wasn’t optional or aspirational. It was urgent. It wasn’t about filling my calendar. It was about survival.

So I knew I had to look beyond the connections I already had.

I went on Meetup and started searching, casting a wide net and staying open to anything that might overlap with my interests. The hope wasn’t just to attend events. It was to find people. To build something. To feel less alone.

I love being outdoors and hiking the trails throughout Georgia and beyond. I found several hiking groups, each with its own niche. Some were more active, some age-based, some identity-based. I had to decide what mattered most to me: hiking over forty-five, LGBTQ hikers, Atlanta adventurers.

And then I saw the group that stopped me.

Les Go Hiking, a group for queer women. All women. And honestly, the creativity in the name alone was enough motivation to sign up.

I had been out since I kissed my first woman just weeks after separating from my husband in 2018. Mentally, I had been out for much longer. The kiss felt momentous, but it also felt strangely normal. We lived as a queer couple, but we were never poster children for a movement. We didn’t wear rainbows or speak loudly about queer identity. We spoke up for equality and equity, for everyone.

I’d always had gay men in my life, many of them my closest friends. But I’d never really had lesbian friends. It wasn’t a conscious choice. It was just how my life unfolded. Part of me longed for that: women who could talk openly about coming out, dating, and the unspoken challenges and shared language of queer life. Even though I’d been in a long-term relationship with a woman, I’d missed those moments that seem to shape queer belonging.

Until now.

Less than three weeks after my life fell apart, I signed up for my first hike.

At the time, I was barely functioning. The breakup had detonated everything I thought I knew about love, honesty, and the future I believed we were building. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t sleeping. My body registered hunger and exhaustion, but I couldn’t make myself respond to either. I cried every day. Some days for hours. Some days without stopping.

The morning of the hike, I was wrecked. Under-rested, emotionally raw, barely recognizable to myself. While getting ready, a brief text exchange with Steph spiraled into something ugly and final. When she declined my calls twice, I unraveled. It felt small and enormous at the same time. I sent words I wish I hadn’t. Then I shut everything down.

I sobbed. I dry-heaved. I curled into myself on the couch and wished, briefly and frighteningly, that my heart would stop so the pain would end. It sounds dramatic. It was. And it was also the only language my nervous system had left.

And yet, somehow, I still got in the car.

That decision mattered more than I understood at the time. I didn’t feel brave or hopeful. I just knew that staying still wasn’t an option. Being alone wasn’t an option. I couldn’t be trusted.

I was terrified. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know how to talk about my life without slipping into the language of we, the house we bought, the dog we adopted. I wanted to show up as clearly single, even if I wasn’t ready to date. I wanted honesty. I wanted authenticity. But I didn’t yet know how to be this version of myself.

The hike was set to start at 10 a.m.

In the final five minutes of the drive, as I searched for the designated parking lot, my hands began to sweat. My heart raced. Not wildly, just enough to remind me I was stepping far outside my comfort zone.

Still, I parked.

We gathered in a group of about forty women and introduced ourselves by name, where we live, and a fun fact. I usually mention that I’m multilingual. It tends to spark conversation.

It worked.

As soon as the hike started, someone approached me to ask about my languages. She was learning Spanish and loved German history. We talked for a while, and then she drifted toward the back of the group. It was a perfect distraction from my fear that I wouldn’t know how to engage with others. My life I had been so one-dimensional with Steph as the only main character. And these stories were no longer ones I could repeat out loud, not without emotions taking over.

However, as the hike went on, I found myself circulating naturally. We stopped a few times, and I chatted with people who said they lived in my neighborhood. It turned out they lived on the east side of Atlanta, not East Atlanta specifically. Two interpretations of the same phrase.

The conversation helped me really relax.

I ended up walking most of the hike with Lindsay. We bonded over the irony of sharing a trail with another group whose leader wore a MAGA hat while forty queer women passed by in a never-ending chain. The contrast was impossible not to laugh about.

It was a six-mile hike, plenty of time to absorb the conversations around me. I heard people talking about coming out, about breakups, about starting over. I wasn’t alone. It felt like many of us had arrived for similar reasons.

Before we parted ways, Lindsay and I exchanged numbers. She told me she was a good listener. I had a feeling she sensed I might need that. I told her I was down for doing “gay things” together. Building a network. Finding community. Maybe even stumbling into love along the way.

This felt like a beginning. I decided I would be consistent. I would show up.

A few weeks later, in November, I went to a Friendsgiving hosted by some of the same hiking women. A social event. It would be the first for me, but the day was too beautiful to stay home. At the last minute, I drove to East Point. I arrived alone, walking into a house full of people who already knew one another. Many of them were coupled, settled, at ease. And then there was me.

I stayed anyway.

While I was there, a woman I’d met on a hike earlier that day pulled me aside. She told me she’d overheard a conversation I’d been having with my friend Ashley. We had been joking about survival, about being grateful for a good therapist, about noticing that I hadn’t cried on a random Tuesday. We were keeping it light, but anyone listening closely would have heard the weight underneath.

She looked straight into my eyes and said, quietly and without hesitation,

“Don’t worry about any of that. This is your community now. These are your people.”

I believed her.

Since that first September day when I didn't know what kind of future I could possibly have, I haven’t skipped a group hike. I’m gradually opening up. I’m not shy, just learning what I should say and when. Each time, the movement that strengthens my heart, the sunshine that steadies my mind, and the community that holds me, even without fully knowing what it has carried me through, keeps me alive.