coming out later in life? here's how to go from isolation...to a warm, welcoming lesbian community.

26 May 2026 · 3 min

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This content was created by Ruth L. Schwartz. This content was uploaded by Ruth L. Schwartz. This is a YouTube video (posted 2026-05-26) titled "coming out later in life? here's how to go from isolation...to a warm, welcoming lesbian community." It is a first-person promotional/educational monologue by Ruth Schwartz (introducing herself as director of the Conscious Girlfriend Academy and author of Conscious Lesbian Dating and Love). She addresses women who come out later in life (40s–70s), describes the Academy's retreats and online offerings (including a 12-week Lesbian Dating Essentials course and a 4-night/3-day retreat in the Catskills), and highlights outcomes such as community-building, dating skills, confidence, and emotional support.

Chapters

I know so many amazing women who have come out later in life, and it can be really hard and confusing. First of all, to just come to terms with who you are and what you want, figure out how to tell friends, family, this whole identity shift, and then figure out how to connect with the lesbian community. How do you do that? Well, one of the really powerful things I've been seeing lately is a lot of lesbians brand new baby lesbians of any age— 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s— coming to the Conscious Girlfriend Academy, and in particular coming to our live retreats. Last January, one woman in this category came having only ever met one lesbian in her whole life that she knew of. She'd been married to a man for decades. It was really rocking her world to finally realize that she actually wanted and needed to be with a woman. She showed up at one of our retreats. It was so brave of her. And a few days later, she left with 18 new lesbian queer friends. And believe it or not, she also left with her new life partner. So the story gives me chills. Now, of course, not everybody meets a girlfriend at our retreats, but everybody who comes does meet themselves in deeper ways and makes a whole bunch of friends and learns a whole lot to say support them in their lesbian queer lives. One of the things that I am most proud of is that Conscious Girlfriend Academy supports both longtime lesbians and newly coming out lesbians or queer or bisexual women and everybody in between. So if you are a self-identified woman who loves women or wants to, we are here to support you. I'm Ruth Schwartz. I'm the director of the Academy. I'm author of the book Conscious Lesbian Dating and Love. I I teach so many classes, most of them online every year. I love my online classes, but the retreats are something else entirely, you know. And if you're not ready to come to a retreat, check out the online work. It's incredible to be in a class with 100 or 125 growth-oriented lesbians, queer women from all over the world learning how to date in smart-for-our-heart ways getting ourselves truly ready to date, finally getting over our breakups, creating our relationships visions, gaining clarity and confidence, learning how to do this thing, how to pace it, how to stay safe in online dating. That's the curriculum in the Lesbian Dating Essentials online 12-week class. But if you want to get a condensed, concentrated version of that, come to our 4-night, 3-day retreat in August in the Catskill Mountains in New York. You will receive so much more than you can even imagine. So I hope to see you there.