This LVW, we’ve partnered with LGBT Foundation to find out more about your rainbow families
WORDS BY LIL
Happy Lesbian Visibility Week 2025. This year our theme is all about family. We’ve partnered up with LGBT Foundation, a UK-based national charity that focuses on LGBTQIA health and well-being, to hear what family means to you.
This is what family looks like to Lil.
What does family mean to you?
They’re the people that you go through life with, not just friends you catch up with. You get your groceries together, cook meals for each other back and forth forever, attend community events together. There’s always a seat at the table for them to pop in. They’re first on the list when you’re sending party invites, and you know they’ll show up. They’re the ones you call when you have good or bad news, and the ones you don’t feel any pressure to entertain or be on “good form” for – they take you as you are, and you the same for them.
Tell us about a typical day in your family life.
When I’m hanging around home, I welcome them round for a brew and a chat. They stay for an hour or two, and we just enjoy each other’s presence. They help me do my chores – hang up pictures, load and unload the dishwasher, shift furniture around, stand by me and talk to me while I hang laundry or do other mundane tasks. Often there’s a small gift involved – a pair of trousers that don’t fit anymore, but are your style. A postcard for the fridge. A candle. A houseplant cutting. A jar of pickles. A piece of homemade art or craft. It’s never transactional, and no one keeps track of giving and receiving, because we know the joy is really in the sharing.
When I visit them, I’ll usually make plans with one member of a household, but will see the rest, even briefly, for at least a moment. We have a hug and check up on each other, asking how their week is going and genuinely caring about the answer. I pet their cat. I put my feet up on the chair. I eat a slice of cake.
Maybe we go to the pub for a pint, and sit huddled together outside, smoking cigs against our better judgement, and gossip, scheme or do the Wordle together. We walk home together and feel lucky to live our lives parallel.
How have things changed for LGBTQIA+ families over your lifetime?
There is more recognition of chosen families, or at least they have been given a name, in the last 10 years or so. Every year we heal more and more from the AIDS epidemic, and there are more LGBTQIA people growing older and passing down their wisdom. Section 28 is long gone, the trauma and norms it incited are, dare I say it, diminishing slowly, being rewritten.
Things are worse for trans people, especially trans women, though, and it is the collective duty of all LGBTQIA people to stand together and protect them. As someone with a very trans family (blood and chosen), this is extremely apparent and scary. I have lost three transfemme people from my wider circles in the past two years, and I hear of others constantly. In my lifetime, this has become normal, and I fight for a world where it is not, and we are not pawns in a political game between billionaires.
What are your hopes for the future for LGBTQIA+ families?
Easier pathways for LGBTQIA people to become parents if they so desire, of course. But more importantly (to me), greater recognition of the importance of strong love and bonds outside of romance. Less of the rhetoric that your romantic partner/s should be the central relationship/s in your life, with all else secondary. I love my partner deeply: we too consider one another family, but I would not be the person I am today, and would not feel nearly so adored, confident and whole, without the deep-rooted love and support of my friends and chosen family. I want all LGBTQIA people to experience what I have been lucky enough to.
You can find out more about LGBT Foundation here: https://lgbt.foundation/
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