About Siobhan
Surprised Lesbian
I am fun loving, pink mad, chocoholic accountant married to a physiotherapist. I am a legal guardian to my niece and nephew, and have a demanding job that I love. I’m also a gay woman who didn’t know she was looking for a princess.
Beyond the portrait
I have had a bumpy journey up to my marriage to a female physiotherapist. When I was nineteen, I met a man and thought ‘This is it! I’m going to get married and have children’. We didn’t have children, and we split up after nine years and I was heartbroken. A year later I moved to England. 5 years after my arrival in the UK I moved to Nigeria to be with a man, and was again convinced he was the prince of my dreams. The relationship fell apart within a year, and I returned to England and the safety of friends and family. Then, within a year, I met and fell in love with a woman.
I actually met her when I employed her at another company. We came to be friends, and this grew into something deeper. I remember thinking ‘how has this happened!?’ – I was in shock! Having never had a relationship with a woman, it took some time for me to get my head around it and initially I was scared. But I knew I loved her, and it was what I wanted so we got engaged and then got married five years later. Our marriage makes us better people and I would not change a thing, but it has undoubtedly taken me some very big steps to get here, going from loving a man to loving a woman.
Embracing the power of my difference
People surprise you. When I told my family about my partner, my sister laughed – in a good way, my dad was totally fine (surprisingly), my wife’s 86-year-old grandfather welcomed it, but my mother didn’t speak to me for three months and refused to discuss it for a long time. It can be shocking because those people you think will be the most accepting might have the hardest time. It is all very well saying people need to be comfortable (that is in an ideal world), but you cannot avoid the truth that some people may not react favourably. Luckily in my life that has only been a small percentage.
Building #BraverCultures
Coming from South Africa, where gay people are not tolerated well, makes me realise how important the LGBTQ conversation is.
While I am very comfortable in saying who I am, others don’t always have this confidence, and that is something that I want to help promote. In particular, I know it can be more challenging for women to be open about their sexuality than it is for men, which is why I feel it is so important I am open.
I also know how difficult it can be to be open and comfortable about who you are at work and to be fair my ease at doing this has come with experience. My hope is that the more people like me talk about it, the easier it is for others to, irrespective of their own experiences or sexuality.