Laurie DeJong Zuverink (they/them) is a 53-year-old gender-non-conforming later-in-life lesbian who crashed into the full acceptance of their identity five years ago. Laurie is the descendant of Dutch settlers, and until 2020 engaged in the conservative Protestant Christian community of West Michigan where they lived in the assumption of heteronormative culture while at the same time pressed against them. 

Tune in as host Anne-Marie Zanzal speaks with Laurie about their powerful coming out journey, overcoming the constraints of conservative culture and heteronormativity, their gender and sexual journey from struggle to self-acceptance, their experience of ordination into ministry, the spiritual abuse they experienced upon coming out, and eventual path back to an affirming faith community.

Laurie's coming out album is the sountrack to The Greatest Showman, in particularly the song Tightrope: https://youtu.be/He5NctQPXK8?si=lD04DkzXSn-r-pDN

Laurie's coming out book is Richard Rohr's Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.: https://www.amazon.ca/Falling-Upward-Spirituality-Halves-Life/dp/0470907754