This page serves as a continuously growing and evolving collection of resources that may help fireflies on their self-actualization journeys and offer empathy, validation, compassion, community, and support. Please feel free to email couragetogrowcounseling@gmail.com with any additional recommendations or feedback about these or other helpful resources for fireflies, catalysts, and partners of fireflies.

***Disclaimer: I have not read/watched/critiqued every single one of these resources myself. The language used in them, the stories that are shared, and the advice offered belongs to the creator of the content alone. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to email me or the creator directly. As always, “take what you like, and leave the rest.”***

Podcast Appearances

Coming Out And Beyond Podcast with Anne-Marie Zanzal

Season 5 Episode 15

Fellow later-in-lifer and Philadelphia-based therapist Mallory Hanfling is our special guest on this episode of CO&B. Her practice, Courage to Grow Counseling, caters to the Queer community, working with individuals and couples, specializing in identity development, coming out, communication skills, and connecting with one's most authentic self. Mallory is a doctoral student at the California Institute for Integral Studies (CIIS) working towards a PhD in Human Sexuality, working on a dissertation about how community mitgates the impact of compulsory heterosexuality on those who come out later-in-life. Mallory coined the inclusive term "Fireflies" for women/ non-binary/trans people to encapsulate a spectrum of identities and experiences reflected in the later-in-life community. Mallory offers a weekly Firefly peer support group where Fireflies at various stages of their journeys can come together to support and empower one another through the highs and lows of their experiences. 

YouTube Link to Podcast Episode

Homeless to Lawyer Podcast Nikki Johnson-Alfano

Episode 18

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

* This podcast episode discusses sexual matters and nontraditional relationship dynamics. Listener discretion is advised. 

Malloy Hanfling is a licensed clinical social worker and Ph.D. Student of Human Sexuality at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She has a private practice called Courage to Grow Counseling, focused on serving LGBTQ2IA+ individuals and couples. Mallory also runs a group for a population she refers to as "fireflies" or currently referred to as "late-in-life lesbians."

This conversation will focus on educating listeners about the meaning of “LGBTQ2SIA+”, why it's important to society to expand our definition of sexuality and gender beyond our traditional understanding, Mallory's own journey as a firefly after being married to a man, and how her TikTok about "fireflies" went viral. We discuss some of the challenges that people within the LGBTQ2SIA+ community struggle with and why creating a more accepting and supportive world benefits all of us. 

Books

Untamed - Glennon Doyle

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD! “Packed with incredible insight about what it means to be a woman today.”—Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club Pick)

In her most revealing and powerful memoir yet, the activist, speaker, bestselling author, and “patron saint of female empowerment” (People) explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet others’ expectations and start trusting the voice deep within us.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • Cosmopolitan • Marie Claire • Bloomberg • Parade • “Untamed will liberate women—emotionally, spiritually, and physically. It is phenomenal.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls and Eat Pray Love

This is how you find yourself.

There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent—even from ourselves.

For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice—the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world’s expectations of her. She quit being good so she could be free. She quit pleasing and started living.

Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member’s ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is.

Untamed shows us how to be brave. As Glennon insists: The braver we are, the luckier we get.

Dear John, I Love Jane - Candace Walsh

Get Dear John, I Love Jane from Harriett’s Bookshop - a Black-owned independent bookshop in Philadelphia

The new buzzword in female sexuality is "sexual fluidity”: the idea that for many women, sexual identity can shift over time, often in the direction of same-sex relationships.

Examples abound in popular culture, from actress Cynthia Nixon, who left her male partner of 15 years to be with a woman, to writer and comedienne Carol Leifer, who divorced her husband for the same reason. In a culture increasingly open to accepting this fluidity, Dear John, I Love Jane is a timely, fiercely candid exploration of female sexuality and personal choice.

The book is comprised of essays written by a broad spectrum of women, including a number of well-known writers and personalities. Their stories are sometimes funny, sometimes painful, but always achingly honest accounts of leaving a man for a woman, and the consequences of making such a choice.

Arousing, inspiring, bawdy, bold, and heartfelt, Dear John, I Love Jane is an engrossing reflection of a new era of female sexuality.

Sexual Fluidity - Lisa Diamond

Get Sexual Fluidity from Harriett’s Bookshop - a Black-owned independent bookshop in Philadelphia

Is love “blind” when it comes to gender? For women, it just might be. This unsettling and original book offers a radical new understanding of the context-dependent nature of female sexuality. Lisa M. Diamond argues that for some women, love and desire are not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual but fluid, changing as women move through the stages of life, various social groups, and, most important, different love relationships. This perspective clashes with traditional views of sexual orientation as a stable and fixed trait. But that view is based on research conducted almost entirely on men. Diamond is the first to study a large group of women over time. She has tracked one hundred women for more than ten years as they have emerged from adolescence into adulthood. She summarizes their experiences and reviews research ranging from the psychology of love to the biology of sex differences. Sexual Fluidity offers moving first-person accounts of women falling in and out of love with men or women at different times in their lives. For some, gender becomes irrelevant: “I fall in love with the person, not the gender,” say some respondents. Sexual Fluidity offers a new understanding of women’s sexuality―and of the central importance of love.

Podcasts

Resources