GCN and Belong To have teamed up to launch a new series of articles written by Ireland’s LGBTQ+ youth. The first is from 18-year-old Lea Hennessy, who shares the impact that finding queer community has had for them.

Community is of huge importance for queer young people as it gives us a place to belong and feel safe. I know from experience, being pansexual and non-binary, that community makes me feel safe and shows me that my struggles with identity and finding my place are not felt only by me but by many people.

I remember the first time I felt truly part of this community was at Pride 2022, where everyone was smiling and cheering. I felt so free to be myself for the first time, and that was the best feeling in the world.

But it is not just the broader queer community that is important. It is our friends, the people that at the end of the day care about us and support us, that are important.

In my experience as a young person who is pansexual and non-binary, having both the LGBTQ+ community and my local community behind me was huge. It allowed me to learn to not just look at the definitions of sexualities and genders, but that there is so much more to them than the definitions that are set out. Along with all of that, it also taught me to be strong. To be a person who can be so much more than my gender and sexuality, and that I am not alone in my journey—there are thousands of people like me. Community is what brings us closer to ourselves, each other and the world.

I see what we can do to be stronger together. I see it in my local library, which invited our LGBTQ+ youth group to create artwork and origami to be put up in the building for Pride 2024. This felt really special as it showed me that my local library stood behind us. I see it in my friends—a lot of individuals who make me stronger every day. They show me the joys in life and in this community. I am so grateful to have them in my life and for how much joy I feel around them.

Community will make us stronger personally and as a whole. The people around us help us fight isolation as we can talk to them about sexuality and gender, which helps us feel less alone in our experiences and journey
of self-discovery. This is extremely important. Through community, we can find people we relate to and with whom we can talk about our worries and concerns.

For me, it was having both my community in-person but also in online spaces that made me not feel alone and isolated because of who I am. It is not just the people in the LGBTQ+ community that help us, it is also our allies who help us not be alone in everything we do. We see it every year at Pride—allies showing up and showing us how supported we are, which makes me feel so proud and safe.

My advice for anyone who feels alone would be to join local activities or an LGBTQ+ group so that you can find people like you. I joined the Belong To Youth Advisory Panel (YAP), a unique panel full of young LGBTQ+ people from all over Ireland. We are the faces of Belong To, doing many of the media interviews from the point of view of LGBTQ+ young people in Ireland today, as well as getting to work on different resources for young people with an LGBTQ+ lens, which makes me feel very empowered.

I am so lucky to have this amazing group of over 30 young people by my side as we are not just volunteers; we are also friends talking to each other about anything and everything. We also get to hear from other activists and it is extremely inspiring for me to see how far I can go.

Joining the Belong To YAP was the best decision I have made for myself. The group is filled with amazing and hardworking young people working towards the same goal—a real community.

Belong To – LGBTQ+ Youth Ireland is the national organisation for LGBTQ+ young people in Ireland. Belong To offers weekly youth groups in Dublin for all LGBTQ+ young people, as well as advice, information and crisis counselling for LGBTQ+ youth, and supports LGBTQ+ youth groups across Ireland. Find information on all of Belong To’s work at: www.belongto.org.