One Sunday morning each month I meet with some extraordinary women to discuss books and catch up on their lives. Several of these women recently leant their talents and time to a documentary entitled, “Project Visibility Creating Inclusive Communities for LGBTQ+ Older Adults.”
The goal of the video is to bring awareness to the project itself but also to the unique needs of an aging LGBTQ community.
I wasn’t aware until I saw the video that many seniors end up back in the closet when they enter a nursing home or senior facility. These places are typically a bastion of conservatism and bigotry which makes total sense if you think about it.
Project Visibility is based in Boulder, for now. It’s aim is educate “managers and employees of nursing homes, assisted Iiving facilities and home health care agencies” with the goal of creating “an aging services community that is informed, sensitive to, and supportive of LGBTQ+ elders”. It’s a worthy cause and I am hoping it moves beyond Boulder.
Project Visibility – Boulder County
I’ve seen this meme
and variations of it floating around social media. Because there are so few left they deserve at a minimum to be cared for with respect, dignity, and acceptance. I think one of the women in the video said it best though, they deserve more than that. They deserve to be celebrated.
Baby Gay When You're Fat and Gray 
I remember having a midlife crisis last summer. I was at a lesbian BBQ and looked around and realized “fuck! I’m the oldest one here!” And though that’s rare, and it wasn’t any sort of dig in the young whipper snappers, it was eye opening when one of the kids (*cough* 32 year old *cough*) asked me about my coming out story. I laughed and asked “which one?” Explaining that due to my parents bigotry and being sent to gay conversion therapy that I’ve had to come out twice. EVERYONE slow blinked and asked me to explain because they “didn’t get it” thanks to the fact they grew up in a society that let them be who they are and their parents celebrated them.
I had to educate them on Reagan’s genocide of the 80s, and how I was closeted through all of high school thanks to what happened to Matthew Shephard, Rosie O’Donnell, Ellen, and Anne Heche after they all came out and the vicious vitriol during gay marriage rights.
It was hard to realize that they didn’t have a clue
Because we don’t have elders telling our stories
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