Memoirs — Lilja Stefansson
My Coming Out Story
Lilja Stefansson was born in Vestfold, Manitoba in 1921. After the collapse of her first marriage she moved to Saskatchewan with her two children. A second marriage to a farmer in the Rouleau district, produced another child. After seventeen years that union also ended unhappily. By happenchance a close friend from church circles was in a similar situation. In 1971 they took a week-end trip to the States as friends. She and Evelyn Rogers came back as lovers. This was the beginning of a devoted relationship that lasted, as Lilja had hoped, until her death which was June 16, 2013.
The two women moved to Regina in 1975 and established a busy life, including participation in the city’s early lesbian and women’s community. Lilja was a prolific writer of short essays that dealt with both personal and public concerns. My Coming Out Story seems to have been written about 1995 and has been slightly edited for publication here. Lilja’s writings will be included among the papers of Evelyn Rogers to be donated to the University of Saskatchewan Archives.
My Coming Out Story
My Coming Out Story
by Lilja Stefansson
What is life like for lesbians? Since I had difficulty finding Lesbian writings that were concise, I decided to write our story , but from my own angle. After all Evelyn and I have lived together for almost twenty years.
At age fifty I had never even heard the word lesbian. I had to look it up in the dictionary. One advantage of that is that I did not have any of the hang-ups that result from hearing all the negatives, particularly prone to come from the churches, about homosexual lifestyle. Evelyn, on the other hand has had to wrestle with guilt feelings due to longer knowledge of her true orientation and all the baggage that goes with that. My feeling has always been that true love, whoever it is for, is acceptable in the eyes of God., so humans should realize that and be accepting of life as it is.
Evelyn and I had a deep friendship of at least ten years, when she told me that she was in love with me. One day she told me I would hate her if she told me the truth about herself. My reply was “Why did you murder someone?” “No, she said, “It’s worse.” I could not think of anything worse and told her so. Finally, she told me to read an article in the current Chatelaine. I went and bought it.
Well! I certainly was in a quandary. I kept insisting that I was male oriented. However as a friend, I cared very deeply for her and did not want to lose that friendship. Besides, I come from a family where hugging and kissing friends was commonplace. So what’s a kiss between two women?
There is an old saying - “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. And that might well be applied to me, when I decided to prove to Evelyn that her confessed love for me was some sort of illusion. From the vantage point of twenty some years I wonder at my own daring, but I have never been sorry for my fearlessness in initiating what I thought would be the ‘Cure.’ I found myself totally aroused and in love – again. This time though I found total fulfillment that has always been missing in my many attempts to have my needs met by men.
That does sound like the fairy tale ending but of course for us it was the beginning. It was three years before we were able to move in together, three years and many illicit outings (Have you ever made love in a church basement) , cheating on our husbands, and finding ways to be together. Those were exciting but also anxious times. In all honesty, though, our marriages were totally on the rocks before we got together so we did not break up each other’s homes. Rather it gave us the impetus to break off intolerable relationships.
Living together brings its own traumas and many adjustments have to be made on both sides to make things work out. Add to that the fact that Evelyn’s son was still home so there was a step- situation that has its own hazards. First of all, we moved in together in a small town, which again was a foolhardy thing to do. Strangely enough, it didn’t affect my business at all I was running my own insurance and licensing office at the time. However I guess the town gossips had a hay-day over it, while we blindly went our own way. The only really noticeable thing was that the community did not throw a farewell function for us, when we moved to Regina. Everyone that left town was usually honored with a farewell party in the church. Evelyn still feels slighted by that. Truthfully, we had both done a great deal of church and community work so in that sense deserved as well as anyone else.
There was a cultural difference in our methods of handling kids. I was the tougher one so now my daughter laughs at how if I wouldn’t allow something she would go to Evelyn, and she would find ways to let her do some of the things I was against.
I feel that every relationship undergoes a lot of stress, particularly in the gay relationships and it takes a lot of give and take to keep things on a more or less even keel. On looking at our lives it seems to me that we have led a life that is certainly indicative of an ordinary family life. That is to say, that there is a lot more to life than sex, which seems to be the connotation the public puts on a gay lifestyle. We have managed much better than we did with our male partners. We have enjoyed two long trips and innumerable short ones. Actually, our lot in life has improved incredibly.
We have been almost entirely free from harassment for our life style Somehow the fact that we were both mothers has lent an acceptance to the fact that we live together. Our relatives realized we were happier than previously so accepted the situation. In ending, suffice it to say that, that I am counting on our relationship to last until death do us part.
