Johnetta Elzie is one of the foremost activists to emerge during the Ferguson protests. She is now a nationally recognized public figure who has been featured everywhere from the cover of Essence to Teen Vogue.

As one of the leading forces behind the 2015 Ferguson protests and a co-founder of Campaign Zero, Johnetta Elzie is an activist and writer whose work has had far-reaching impact on the world we live in. We’re proud to publish the following essay, in which she details her journey toward discovering she was queer — on her own, fully empowered terms.

On February 26, 2018, I took one step closer to freedom: I told my grandmother that I am queer.

It was a revelation that had been building up inside me, ready to burst forth — and maybe that’s why it spilled out like a cheap tequila kind of vomit while I was driving us down the highway in St. Louis. It had been on my heart to tell her for a few weeks, even though I was dating an incredible man at the time. But something about that moment and the time we live in told me that I was ignoring a big part of myself by hiding my truth from her.

Anybody who knows me knows that my grandmother is one of the most important figures in my life. I come from a long line of incredible black women — women who have held each other close and raised their children the best they could, who have gifts of sight and soul, who prepared me to speak on the injustice I saw in the world long before it visited my doorstep in St. Louis. It was my grandmother who helped raise me, and after my mother passed, it was she who continued that work, and passed those same gifts and lessons on to my little sister. Through all the tumult, tragedy, fame and scrutiny I’ve experienced in my life, she has been my sole constant. Read more via them.