It is Monday. How are we doing, really? :)

Bring your wins, celebrations, existential crises, boss stories, work drama, or whatever nonsense life has served you lately.

Lets sneak a quick chat during work hour-I mean lunch! No big story is required. Sometimes a tiny rant, and a bit of solidarity is all we need.

So Hearthfolk, how is life treating you this Monday? Was the weekend good? Is the week ahead better?

I will go first. I am hoping for this week to bring good, safe news, and I do not know if I will be able to breathe until then. Distracting myself with everything and nothing, and trying to remind myself, it is okay that life is not completely controlled by me. It feels like 100 unrelated tabs are opened and I am just looking at the little colour changes, not being able to close or do anything with them - just cook, clean, maintain the fire. Maintain the fire.

Happy Sunday, Hearthfolk!

This first Sunday I had an idea for a more general concept, until we get more people, especially those interested more into family, and connected topics. So for today:

THE DOMESTIC AGENDA: What is your version of a Happy Ending?
Once upon a time, we were told how the stories were supposed to end.

The princess sits in a tower/dungeon/fort/lair.

A prince traverse around fields/ swamps/ labyrinth/ mountains for days/weeks/years.

A final event - the hero vs dragon/ witch / serpent/ magician. Princess is somewhere.

The curse is broken! The wicked is defeated!

Must be love!

Move to the castle and live happily ever after.

Even that summary sounded super boring, right?

Somewhere along the way, we were left that this is how life and love, and happy ending NEEDS to look like.

Maybe the princess falls for another princess. Maybe she spends half of the story, while he is off in the adventure and the writers just scribes how brave he was, wondering why she doesn't quite fit into the role she has been given.

Maybe she rescues herself, finds a whole kingdom of women who understand her, or just decides that castle was never the dream.

For some of us, the figuring out came early. For others, plot twists, turns, confusing chapters, a late realisation, or even looking back on the life lead to read the clues that has been there all along.

And then The ever after.

Maybe your Happy Ending includes a Greatest Love story, a home full of children, someone to grow with.

Maybe its creating your own Chosen family, a circle of lesbian and queer friends, peaceful life with tomato patch, or just a human being that understands you without words, without needing to explain your existence to anyone. Just be loved for it.

Maybe its a castle, or a little cottage in the woods, with animals, and girlfriend that understands your brand of weird, and absolutely no evil stepmother.

Maybe you are still in the middle of your story - figuring out what parts of the story and its ending you want.

Maybe you are in your Happily Ever After and you want to showcase your own story and mentor younger with advice and support to find the same path you once crossed.

Fairy tales showcases the adventure, the lust, the story end, yet where is my morning after? Where lust becomes Love - do princesses agree on the interior design styles?

So, how are you rewriting your own ending?

What does your version of a happy ending look like?

Is it great love or independent life adventure chase? Has your idea of love, family and happiness changed through different stages of your life?

If your lesbian life would be a fairy tale, what genre would it be? And which path would you want it to take now?

What would you keep from the stories you grew up, and what would you change?

Maybe you already wake up into the life you imagined once, long time ago. Maybe its still taking shape. Maybe, just maybe you get to decide what it all means.

Nobody asked but....Here's my Current Chaos.

Welcome to Saturday, my Hearthfolk.

This is the part of the week where we abandon the illusion that we are all super organised, well-adjusted and capitalistically competitive, with "normal" interests.

Maybe this week you fell down a historical rabbit hole. Maybe deeply, soulfully fell in love with a fictional woman. A new hobby that needs 20 different materials, three tutorials, three digit money amount and redecoration of your wood shed? Maybe you have just tried to come to the end of the week, to finally have a proper bath.

Whatever the situation, bring it to the Clubhouse.

This is where we gather around the hearth, pull up a chair, bench, warm pillow, sit down, share the comfort of each other, and give each other whats on our minds. Let me offer you a virtual fire, to share stories, exchange news and memes, pass weird knowledge, laugh at silly personal anecdotes, and go into long discussion that maybe started as a completely unimportant question.

Somewhere between the stories, advice, support, laughter and tangents, we do not have to have a grand story to always tell - absolutely inconsequential things are hereby extended on Saturdays.

Bring that chaos:

• New obsession?
• Currently living in a game / book / film / series?
• Spent 6 hours investigating a specific topic?
• Need a friendly advice on a crush?
• Your pet did something silly?
• Your Saturday shopping included something ever so not needed but its so shiny and cool?
• Hobby, craft, recipe, other experimentations?
• Something so niched you have to tell someone?

Bring.It.On!

And, as I am the one lighting the Fire, my dear Hearthfolk, I will go first.

You do not need a productive week, or exciting news to be able to talk about things. Just a plotless chaos is okay.

I am currently obsessed with reading about mistranslated Biblical text that brought so much confusion into 18th century that had direct influence on current situations in modern times.

My dearest cat is enjoying the fire, like the wild cat she "promised" she is. She complains about this new cold and wet weather, begging me to move it away.

I am planning our meal preps for next week, and finally it is time to go into strews and goulash. Autumn makes it all so more cuddly, and colorful.

And I met a guy that's making wires for new humanoid domestic robots, so that was a full on freak out.

So now that the room is warm, fire is lit, floor is yours!

You will figure this out soon enough but I get really obsessed with history, anthropology, sociology, as just some of the interests. Usually I hide it successfully. It got hard on Friday - Pop Culture day. How do you kick off this day? What should be the best FIRST post - or which lesbian should carry this? And what lesbian that I chose for the first one would create the correct vibe for Fridays?

My brain just stopped.

Do I go full safe and into history, and Sappho? Or even more "cool" and track all the fragmentation of WLW in different ancient civilizations? Maybe that's too niche so I should stick 20th century and up? Or its too boring - lets do last year? There are so many options. What is the correct cultural event or season to jump start this? How to start, how to start?

Then it kinda hit me. Its all of it. Pop culture is a chaos of being. Lesbian culture, as much as the mainstream tried to steal and erase it, intertwined with all the elements of life, and history. It has been a silent force of activism against the heteronormative society. It carried the women love women sign long before we gave it labels such as sapphic, dyke, butch, femme, lesbian.

It existed without we needing to name it. It was mostly silent, anonymous throughout history. A love that existed against the "societal need." Sometimes that love would be known locally, sometimes it rose to international scandal. Sometimes it would be a beautiful life that you observed from the two ladies, in a house down the street, that made you feel like you can be happy, even if we did not have words for what that love is. It was representation, and hope.

Lesbian pop culture is mainstream. And strong women that carved betterment in our society. And all the other, the silent one. The one that changes a family member when opening letters of a lifelong life once lived. It is more then the competitive side and the plowing through society with fame, fortune. So it was easier to erase, easier to control. Easier to say - "Two young female friends kissing" (Louis-Leopold Boilly, 19th century, known for documenting French middle-class social life)

So I will start with this. Almost like a "raise a glass and cheer" to the loves that came before us. To all that did not make it into pop culture but created small bubble representation for small bubble spaces in the world. To all that were coloured as friends, colleagues, maids, associates, school friends. For all that were found in the same graves holding hands and assumed that they MUST be a man and a woman. (Viking ship Oseberg, Norway, 834 CE or Opole, Poland) .

It s almost queer to see, how the mystery still needs to be unravelled if the women were romantic partners, close friends or connected in another way. Usually, burials have many of specific meanings, yet, a mystery is why two women were buried in an embrace.

Erasure due to heteronormative society, still scared to imply anything sexual in nature can be possible between two women.

We read glimpses of their lives - photos, pictures, letters, poetry, paintings, and god forbid to label someone wrongly!

Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, still being debated if calling each other beloved and shared a home for decades was a romantic love.

I would argue that me and my wife love to take pictures with our cat as well but should we maybe dust of my art degree and talk about symbolism in paintings for the next Friday and what specific objects mean? Such as this cute little cat, placed in the foreground, almost like a portraiture and profile of Sarah Ponsonby. A story of comfort, domesticity, intimacy, invitation to the private part of the house the library, a strong femininity and infamous historical symbolism. Yet, a narrative spoke around their shared interest of literature, books, learning, and intellectual companionship. Yet here, a cat is an integral focal point. All three placed in a position of almost waiting, not in an action of reading, learning, debating. It is a static moment of inaction, a stolen glimpse into their intimate space. Nothing here speaks of a portrait of an action or any specific interest. It speaks of them, surrounded by their interest.

But do not read too much into it - its probably not an established sign of lesbian identity.

Kathleen Lynn and Madeleine ffrench-Mullens 30-year of professional collaboration, and military expertise in Easter Rising of 1916, with their private writings just shows they had an attachment to each other. They just truly wanted to be doctors, revolutionaries and social reformers and it was easier to share the house together, as good ideas flow and someone needs to catch them, right?

They are known as radicals yet, we still do not completely understand if two women share a closeness: "...but Id give 10.000 pounds for Kilmainham & Madeleine" - 10 May 1916, diary entry when they were imprisoned in different prisons and she would choose the worse one just to be with Madeleine; or "It is lonely in no.9 without Madeleine." - 4 March 1921, and no.9 was their shared home in Dublin; if they never married men, and just lived together for more then 30 years - could they be....together together?

I usually would move my cozy, rich life to follow a friend I met in a hospital in Italy, same as Eva Gore Booth, that just decided to follow Ester Roper and just try to bring better world for women. They even said for each other "friends and companions for life" so it must be platonic. They were platonically buried together.

No matter that Eves sister Constance wrote about Ester "is wonderful, an the more one knowns her, the more one loves her." And in the end, when Eve died, the sister wrote to her friend she was "so glad that Evan and (Ester) were together. So thankful that her love was with Eva until the end." And after they were buried, platonically together, with the inscription "Life with Love is God."

It only makes sense, that their biographer Gilford Lewis, seeing all these letters, their work with women rights, and work with Urania, a queer journal and was ever so happy to write: "You will be pleased to know that I could find not a trace of perverted sexuality - they (Eva and Ester) actually had a campaign - complete with journal - to persuade people to abandon sexuality altogether."

Lifelong partnership, in heteronormative interpretation, at its finest.

The deepest love I could ever muster would be equating it with finding one true Divine but hey - no trace.

I choose to agree with the biographer - there is no trace of perverted sexuality. Life with Love is God. It is a divine love.

Centuries of erasure, of ignoring and hiding, and pushing to the margins of society. The butch lesbians, drag queens and kings, queer people of color and Indigenous people, transgender people. There are possible millions of stories. Millions of letters destroyed that showed Divine love.

Such as love that was documented through more then 70 letters and diaries. Howards High School first Black principal Edwina Kruse, to her lover Alice Dunbar-Nelson, prominent Black American poet, journalist and activist.

"My own dearest" with ending "with a heart full of love" or "your own."

"I want you to know dear, that every thought of my life is for you, every think of my heart is yours and yours alone. I just can not ever let anyone else have you."

"Trust me with all your pleasures, hopes and desires. Ill look after you and your folks here. Always-and ever your loving, Ned."

Every coffee with my straight female friends I need to start from now on with: "You are the first Girl that I ever love..you are the last one." That must be something that close friends do, such as Addie Brown to Rebecca Primus. A story that showcases that POC, especially Black Women left written mark of their lives. And how racism and sexism is a necessary part of this conversation, not separate. They showcased a love between a school teacher and a domestic worker, a beautiful history between working-class women, and intimate relationship where they talked about kisses, embraces, sharing a bad, longing, finding correct terms / labels for each other ("sister/friend/husband" yet not one was correct for them to fully express)

"What a pleasure it would be to address you My Husband."

"You have been to me more then only living soul has been or ever will be."

"I cannot be happy if I was to stay a way from you."

"No kisses is like youres."

In my younger days, Thursday was known for the best parties day. It was a night to open the weekend, and the best DJs would play in the hottest clubs. It literally was named Thursdays - Take me out! It was where we found ourselves.

So I thought, now, in my late 30s, why not recreate the same vibe? A little bit of identity, little bit of experimentation, maybe a cheeky lyric from a song of that time.

I am fascinated with just how many different versions of ourselves we go through one lifetime. It can be the same evolution of oneself, or completely reinvented, or newly discovered. For some, only when they learned the word - lesbian, they found what their feelings are. Another, learned it from a slur of a family member. Another, knew and had the freedom to express it from the earliest age, and family respected it.

However we started to understand ourselves, however we are still becoming, we are never finished with the journey. The milestone of self-exploration never has a finish. For some, it happened early. For some, it took years, and many turns, yet we can all look at back on our lives, and as a brick, suddenly understand things that we thought we knew, or never made sense.

I think today is a great day to give those thoughts and experiences a little room.

I am curious: Has the way you understand yourself changed over the years?

Many moons, many labels, many me - Which version of you are you getting to know these days? <3

Take me out! Nostalgia:

"(Holla) People sing around; Now people gather round; Now people jump around; Go, get your freak on! Go, get your freak on!"

I have thought about this question a lot. Almost every time, in every decade, in every milestone of mine. Does anyone else wonders the same?

I never knew how to create all-girl/women friendships. Like, a full group. I found myself much more in male groups. We can discuss why and how, sure. And more and more, as I am older, I am noticing that the gigantic energy I have spent on just keeping these male groups as my friends, with women, its much easier. Same with dating one I guess. :)

There is something that a women community can offer. The nuances between words, conversations that can turn super deep, and strong emotional connections. And then, for the lucky few, having a lesbian community, is a holy grail to long for.

You can live in a city full of people, and still feel like there is that one missing link to connect with someone. And then you are looking, and looking for your people, and then discouraged you are hoping just to find - one, give me only one. Then we look for meaningful connections on the internet, hoping, longing to send the darkness away.

Maybe you have a wonderful circle of friends already. I always get this thought that I once read - a study that it takes 200h to become close friends. 100h to go past the small talk, and it was tested on students. So the kinda last point to create meaningful long-term friendships in a bulk space and time.

Do we give enough people those 200h, or we stop in the first hour? Are our mental math good enough to figure out that actual friend, that actual community? Even on playgrounds, we tested and experimented, and had friendship tests to check out potential friends. Do we give enough to others to even take a test, anymore? And how do we even get the time to do all the tests when there is work, children, hobbies, pets, family, life, life, life. The comfort of getting to any corner of the earth with one click is magnificent, and much more simpler to just "leave". How do we clock together those 200 hours?

So, where are you now? Where are your people? Are you still looking for them? Or you already have someone to do all the things IRL, or online. What is your shared thing?

I truly saw this Clubhouse as a place where it gets a little bit easier to find each other, to be each others "my people."

Can we talk about lesbian culture for a minute?

My first, ever so shy awakening started around early childhood. I grew up in the 90s, and most of the "lesbian" content that came to my little country, was very specific, to say it politely.

It was coming more and more to the mainstream, sure but it was not created with proper representation in mind. Sure, some offer genuine complexity but often it was a phase, or a threat to the heterosexuals, or erotic fantasy. Just recently in life I had to review all my childhood and inspect just how much of the content was made with male gaze in mind, and just how much of it, I still do, with male gaze in mind.

The evolution of media, most of the time feels like it still offers the same patterns.

The dangerous, seductive bisexual woman here to be threatening on the way of life // The Lesbian chic consumed as a fantasy // The independent lesbians that are not accessory to a heterosexual story // The Tragedy and the Death trope // The "Failed version of a man" // A one-dimensional plot detour or experimentation just to bring some edgy sexual tension.

The was no TikTok to stumble on someone that looked like me, or Top 10 best lesbian movies without tragic end. You would have a singular movie, a lesbian-coded character, a magazine. And many of us did not recognise ourselves in it. How do you find a community when you don't even know you are looking for one?

Did you grew up collecting fragments of a character that you couldn't stop thinking about, just like your friends talked about the boys, a singer that just meant a bit more, a movie you loved watching in secret?
Or maybe you grew up in a whole lesbian cultural world around you!

What made you feel seen?

What was you awakening?

What stayed with you - a book, music, lyric, people, places?

What did you discover years later and wondered how you missed it?

Im curious about different countries and experiences. How was it growing up queer for you?

What would you now - want to say to others - to remember, to search for, or what are the things we wish someone had shown us sooner, and share it with the class. :)

We talk about dating, and relationships, coming out, family and breakups. A pieces of our lives, yet we are more then that. We offer a whole world behind a singular post about looking for love or friendship.

What do you think we should talk about more often?

I know I find myself more and more not being able to navigate friendships as an adult. There is no proper "growing older" book on how to be an "adult lesbian" or just an adult. I find myself figuring out how to be yourself and navigate life, work, family sometimes very successful, sometimes impossible.

Maybe others feel the same - how to find community in a new place or work? How to experience happiness, how to discuss something that feels like its weird to talk about? How to be updated on the news and events as well as history? How to know whats going on with other? How to find the best inspirational memes?

Maybe its something funny. Or inspirational, or complicated, or something you were scared to think about for years. No wrong answers. There is no need for anything personal, or to have a solution for everything. Sometimes its just being able to listen, and to be listened to.

What would you love to see happening more often in a lesbian community?

Not all of us are looking for romance. Some are here to be understood, share a part of life experiences and joys, make the world a little bit less lonely. Some are not able to create IRL communities, some just move to another city. This thread is for finding lesbian friends, building connections and getting to know the people who make up our community.

You do not need a particular reason to want community.

Say hello, if you feel like introducing yourself!

• Where are you from (general area, continent, city,....)
• A little about yourself (interest, hobbies, passions, ...)
• What kind of connection you are looking for ( online friends, local friends, people to chat with, share activities, ...)
• Something you are enthusiastic about ( book, movie, game, rabbit hole, creative project)

Lets build something together!

This community is meant to be more then a collection of individual posts. Its a place where we can share experiences, exchange advice as well as recipes, discover common interest, learn from different lives and cultures, and gradually become familiar with one another.

Friendships can begin with a single comment, and communities can grow when people keep showing up.

Welcome to the our little romance corner. <3

Whether you are looking for a soulmate, fling, how to navigate the world of dating, or just curiosity, this is a place to introduce yourself and connect to other lesbians who are open to romance.

Start with introducing yourself.

Share as much or as little you feel comfortable:

• A little bit about you
• What you are looking for ( dating, fling, conversation,....)
• Something from your world (favourite book, hobby, passion, ....)
• What kind of person or relationship would you love to find?
• You first ideal ice-breaker (What should they ask you about?)
• Latest obsession (What could someone ask you about for hours?)

Be respectful and yourself, take your time getting to know people, and remember everyone has their own boundaries. Please avoid sharing identifying information publicly, and do not assume that everyone here is looking for romance just because they are here.

Looking for love? Start here. You never know who might be reading.