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.

So it may come as no surprise that my “little secret” was no shock to her. And I don’t think it should be a shock to anyone I know — my friends already knew, because I’m pretty open about the company I keep. But I’ve grappled with how to address my queerness publicly. In the onslaught of public attention that has followed my activism work, I’ve wanted to keep some things to myself.

That is, until I couldn’t.

In June 2015, at the height of the Ferguson protests, a publication online named me to a list of “queer activists you need to know” without my permission, and I had a moment. Sitting at my desk, reading my mentions, my normally Twitter-happy fingers went still. It wasn’t right.

Before 2014, I had little experience with queer terminology; in becoming one of the most visible faces during the #FergusonUprising, I quickly began to quickly learn and adapt to expanded notions of identity in ways I never had before.

Through that process, I began to realize that I lacked the proper language to describe the people I already knew and whom I loved dearly — like my friend Juliann, who self-identified as a “complex female with no labels.” Juliann and I connected online; we liked the same type of music, falling in love with Janelle Monáe’s The Audition together. Juliann lived in St. Louis City with family, and we met in person soon after. JuJu, as her friends called her, was a tender and unique soul. Her locs were always freshly done, and if not, we’d all know about it! A true Virgo.

Above all, there was one thing I knew about JuJu: When she was determined about something, she was going to do it. That’s why I got so scared when JuJu stopped responding to my messages or answering my calls one day. A mutual friend told me that she thought something bad was about to happen, and so I sent her a series of texts. I respected her agency, even in that moment, but wanted her to know how much I loved her as a person, and that if we could all sit down to figure out how to be helpful, I was with it. My messages went unanswered. I would later find out that our beautiful JuJu had died by suicide.