A longtime lesbian poet and Lambda Literary Award winner will be the lifetime achievement grand marshal in Sunday's LGBT Pride parade.
Bay Area resident Judy Grahn has been recognized for her poetry over the years and she was an early protester for gay rights, picketing outside the White House in 1965. She wrote her first article, "A Lesbian Speaks Her Mind," which was published in Sexology magazine, according to her bio on her website (www.judygrahn.org.)
Grahn, 73, said that she is honored to be the lifetime achievement grand marshal.
"I feel like I represent a whole group of people," she said, adding, "I just want to have fun."
Grahn is also an activist and scholar. She lives in Palo Alto with her spouse, Kris Brandenburger. Grahn and Brandenburger have been together since 1986 and got married in August 2008, during the period of time when it was legal to do so, before the passage of the state's same-sex marriage ban, known as Proposition 8.
Prop 8, of course, was thrown out on a technicality by the U.S. Supreme Court a year ago and same-sex marriage is once again legal in California.
In a recent telephone interview, Grahn said that she loves being married and being able "to see someone all the way through" her life.
In her 2012 memoir, A Simple Revolution: The Making of an Activist Poet, Grahn described herself as "a lesbian, a dyke, and a lifetime homosexual."
"It seems to me I was always gay, even in the womb, where my mother said 'you kicked like a boy,'" Grahn wrote.
She also described how her sexuality first revealed itself.
"As puberty set in, I was beginning to manifest a transgender sensibility and a lesbian sexual orientation that went beyond being a tomboy," she wrote.
She "prayed to be turned into a boy." That desire eventually faded, but that sensibility stayed with her. Though "nature turned out to be right, I really do swing between the genders," she wrote.
Grahn is a professor and member of the executive core faculty in the women's spirituality master's program at Sofia University in Palo Alto. Working there is "a perfect fit" for her, she said.
"It's been marvelous. It's been such a privilege," she said.
She appreciates the school's unique teaching style, which involves "approaching a student as a whole being – not just a mind but mind, body, and soul," Grahn said.
She first entered academia in 1975. "Four generous women set me on the lifesaving path of teaching," she wrote. She received her Ph. D. in integral studies with a concentration in women's spirituality from the California Institute of Integral Studies.
A challenging childhood
Grahn faced a number of challenges while she was growing up. Her parents' troubles included her father's alcoholism and her mother's schizophrenia.
"My parents were difficult," Grahn said. "I couldn't wait to grow up."
Despite their problems, she is grateful to her parents for helping shape the person she became.
"They gave me everything I needed," she said. Grahn added that she "wouldn't have traded them for any other set of parents."
She also believes that her upbringing helped her as a writer. She said, "Creativity comes from [all sorts] of places."
Grahn was frequently ill as a child because of malnutrition. At the age of 16, she contracted tuberculosis.
"I was deeply afraid I would not live to grow up," Grahn wrote in her memoir.
Her health problems continued into her adulthood. In 1966, she was diagnosed with encephalitis after suffering balance issues, seizures, and a coma that lasted three days. She described both positive and negative effects she felt after waking up in A Simple Revolution .
"I had lost memory and vocabulary, didn't recognize anyone at first, and had an enormous headache," she wrote. In spite of this, Grahn awakened "with a ferocious courage." It made her a new person.
She referred to 1966 as "that momentous year in which I had died as a good girl, and had been reborn as an artist, lover, and rebel."
Political activism has long been important to Grahn. She was part of the lesbian-feminist movement. For her, being an activist is a serious commitment.
"Political activation is a lifelong undertaking ..." she said.
She believes progress has been made for LGBT people but there is still further to go.
"So many younger people think, "What's the big deal?' and that's lovely, but there are so many people for who it is a big deal," Grahn said.
She continues her activism through her work these days.
"My work is women-centered ... but it's for everybody," she said.
She said that "there are so many ways to be an activist." Right now she is "writing and speaking ... to affirm what people already know ... maybe once in a while say something new."
The cause she considers most important is ecology. All else is irrelevant, she said, if that is not properly addressed.
"We need to slow down," she said.
Grahn has a "real interest in the mind of nature," she said. "I was really always paying attention to what nature was saying."
She is currently working on a book of stories about encounters with the mind of nature. She said it will include fictional accounts, her own ruminations and experiences she remembers about "encounters with creatures."
Grahn is also working on two book-length poems about Helen of Troy.
"That is pushing me, once more, to invent my sense of poetry and re-encompass ... [my] theology of the feminine," she said.
She considers her poetry a gift.
"The poetry comes to me, so if it's not ready, I don't get to have it," Grahn said.
For fun, she enjoys golf, and watching movies, and the occasional beer, among other activities.
"In my free time, I love to sit in the garden and watch birds," she added.