Episode 267: Tera Wozniak Stortz

Coming Out Pod

Health & Fitness, Sexuality, Comedy, Mental Health

4.9 • 584 Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tera Wozniak Stortz, founder of the Queer Divorce Club, remembers one fleeting moment in high school when it ever-so-briefly crossed her mind that she might be a lesbian. For the most part, though, Tera thought that her lack of attraction to men simply meant that she was "broken." Like many in her position, Tera ended up in a long-term heteronormative marriage, and kept herself moving at such a breakneck pace that she never had time to truly examine her identity. But when Tera and her husband became polyamorous and Tera started having experiences with women...the truth that she'd been repressing for decades became impossible to ignore. Tera shares how opening her marriage led to her meeting her current partner, and describes how she and her now ex-husband explained their divorce to their two young children in a transparent but age-appropriate way. We also discuss the unique difficulties (not to mention stigmas) that come with getting "queer divorced," and Tera shares how she created the Queer Divorce Club around the central idea that "we can all get divorced in our own way."

Interested in the Queer Divorce Club?? You can check out their website at queerdivorceclub.com, and request to join their private Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/queerdivorceclub. You can also learn more about Tera at terawozniakstortz.com, and follow her on Instagram at @tera.queerdivorceclub and on TikTok at @teraqueerdivorceclub!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody, welcome to the coming out pod.
0:09.8	Hi, I'm your host, Lauren.
0:12.7	Okay, this week, shout out to anyone whose queer root is Jennifer Beals, another classic, whether it's Flash Dance where she wears the sleeveless
0:24.3	tuxedo shirt or, you know, later in life, the L word, obviously, very formative for many of us.
0:31.0	The point is Jennifer Beals has been formative for many in our community and has turned a lot of
0:37.0	us gay. So shout out to her.
0:38.6	Shout out to you if she is your queer rude. Moving on, I am very excited about my guest today.
0:46.1	I am here with Tara Wozniak-Steuarts. Hi, Tara. How are you? Hello, good. I'm so excited
0:52.9	to be here today. I am very excited to speak to you. So Tara is a
0:57.9	queer coach and writer and the founder of queer divorce club. And we will obviously be getting
1:04.9	into what queer divorce club is. All of that. Divorce is obviously one of those words that
1:10.6	tends to make people clench a little bit. And we've talked on the podcast about how in the
1:16.5	queer community, it has like its own challenges. And it's something that we've spoken about
1:22.4	a little on the podcast, but we haven't really delved deeply into it. So I'm very excited to speak to you. It sounds weird
1:30.1	to be like, I'm excited to talk to you about divorce, but I am. I talk about it all the time.
1:36.6	Yes, yes, for sure. But yeah, is there anything, I know you are in Michigan, you are wearing a lovely, colorful sweater. Is there anything that you want the folks to know about you before we kind of dive in here? Sure. I identify as she, her, woman, queer, lesbian. Often, I am divorced. I lived in a heteronormative marriage for 13 years. I was with my partner for 15 years, my ex-husband. And now with a new partner, I'm a bonus mom of three kids. And we hang out at home a lot, play hide and seek, and raise monarch butterflies.
2:17.2	Oh, my God. That's incredible.
2:20.2	You raise monarch butterflies? Well, we do each season have some that we raise in our bathroom
2:26.2	as they grow eggs. Yeah. It's so fun. Yes, it's very fun. We just released our most recent batch,
2:33.4	and it's very sad. That is really cool.
2:37.5	You're definitely my first guest who has ever raised butterflies in their bathroom. So that is a first.
2:44.0	And I like how you use the term bonus mom. Is that a term that I'm unfamiliar with, or is that a
	...

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