The Church Lady I Became to Survive Being Queer

How I learned to hide in plain sight by becoming the most devoted volunteer at my Filipino Catholic parish

Charlene Trino no longer hides the fact that she’s queer

I was 23 the first time I showed up at 5 a.m. Mass wearing a lace mantilla veil, ready to serve as an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion. My girlfriend was still asleep in my bed across town, her hair spread across my pillow like a dark halo. By the time she woke up, I would have already placed the body of Christ on thirty tongues, genuflected before the tabernacle six times, and helped Father clean the chalices in the sacristy. By the time she texted me “good morning baby,” I would have transformed back into the girl she knew—the one who made dirty jokes, who rolled her eyes at organized religion, who kissed her hard against bathroom stalls in gay bars.

But Sunday mornings were Church Lady time for me. For three years, I honed her character.

Being a queer Filipino woman means you’re already good at code switching by age twelve. You know which version of yourself to show at family gatherings—the one who smiles when Tita asks about your boyfriend, the one who doesn’t react when your uncles joke about tomboys. You’ve learned how to give vague answers, change the topic, and take well-timed bathroom breaks. So when I chose to get almost forcefully involved in my parents’ parish, it wasn’t a big stretch. It was just another act.

This one, though, came with props.

I bought a small collection of prayer books—the ones with soft-colored covers and names like Whispers of the Sacred Heart. I started wearing skirts that reached below the knee. I learned to cook bibingka and puto for church gatherings. I signed up for everything: reader singer, communion helper, teen group guide, festival team member. In half a year, the elderly women at church—those who had known my parents for years—began calling me “such a good girl.” My mother beamed with joy whenever someone praised her “faithful daughter” after church.

What they didn’t realize was that I’d begun this whole act because I was scared out of my mind.

It all started the summer my cousin Angela told her family she was gay. At 25, she had beauty, success, and a nursing career. She even owned her condo. Angela thought her self-reliance might protect her when she revealed she had a girlfriend. She was wrong. Her mom quit talking to her. Her dad said she’d end up in hell. At our next family get-together, my aunts and uncles whispered about her with shock and dismay. You’d think she had some awful disease. “It’s just terrible,” they said. “She used to be such a nice girl.”

I watched this unfold while sitting next to my girlfriend at the time, Laura, who I’d presented to my family as my “roommate.” We held hands under the table during dessert, our fingers laced together while my relatives picked apart Angela’s life like a warning story. Laura squeezed my hand three times, our secret signal for “I love you.” I squeezed back, but inside, something had hardened. I thought: This will never be me. I will never let them talk about me this way.

So I built a wall of respectability.

My reasoning was straightforward: If I turned into the most noticeable, the most committed, the most ideal Catholic girl, nobody would ever guess. Homosexuals were those individuals—the ones who’d wandered from their beliefs, who’d been tainted by Western society, who didn’t love God enough. But me? I attended every single Mass. I had memorized all the prayers. I made treats for fundraisers and supervised retreats. Someone like me couldn’t be gay.

It had a greater effect than I’d expected.

The more I participated, the less visible my queerness became. When kind-hearted aunties asked about my dating life, I’d chuckle and mention how church activities kept me too busy. When my mom expressed concern that I didn’t show interest in men, I’d change the subject to the upcoming parish fundraiser. The Church Lady image served as my protection, my disguise, my way to survive.

But it was also destroying me from within.

On certain Sundays, I stood at the altar with the ciborium in my hands. I watched people walk up to receive Communion. A thought crossed my mind: Each person here would turn away from me if they knew the truth. The kind woman who always greeted me with a smile and said I looked like her daughter? She’d pray for my soul. The priest who spoke of my commitment? He’d tell me to stay celibate and try conversion therapy. These folks made me feel welcome, important, and understood—but they only saw the version of myself I ‘d created. They had no clue about my true identity.

The difference between my thoughts and actions shocked me. Saturday nights found me in city gay bars dancing with women and kissing my girlfriend in dark corners. I felt alive in those moments. But come Sunday morning, I’d wake at 4:30 a.m., wash away any signs of the night before, and drive 45 minutes to give out Communion wafers at my parents’ church. I lived two separate lives, and the line between them kept growing thinner.

A Lenten reconciliation service brought everything to a head.

I hit 26 still juggling my double life with tiring exactness. Laura and I had just split—our third go-round of breaking up and getting back together—because she’d had enough of being my hidden girlfriend. “I love you,” she told me when I last saw her, “but I can’t keep being your Sunday morning regret.” Her words felt like a slap. Was that what I was doing? Did I feel shame?

At the reconciliation service, I knelt in the pew after it ended holding my rosary, as the priest spoke about being genuine before God. “The Lord sees into your heart,” he said. “You can’t hide from Him. To live a lie means you’re pushing away God’s love for who you are.”

I burst out laughing. Real laughter echoed through the quiet church, with tears running down my cheeks. The absurdity struck me hard. There I sat, the perfect example of Catholic dedication, after spending three years crafting an intricate deception. I had turned the Church into a weapon against my own queer identity using its customs and rules as a shield. But this strategy had also trapped me.

The elderly lady beside me put her hand on my shoulder, clearly worried. “Are you okay, anak?” she asked, using the Tagalog word for child.

“I’m not sure,” I replied marking the first truthful statement I’d made in that building in years.

I didn’t quit church all at once. It happened bit by bit. I began skipping some early Masses. Then I left a few committees, blaming work duties. I quit being a eucharistic minister. My mom saw the change, of course. “Are you alright?” she asked, her face lined with concern. “You look different.”

“I’m just beat, Mom,” I said, which was honest. I felt drained from acting, from shifting my speech, from existing between my true self and the person everyone expected me to be.

The toughest challenge was accepting that parts of it were genuine. I’d built real friendships in that parish. Some rituals brought me peace—the stillness of dawn Mass, incense’s aroma, and the cadence of prayers I’d known since I was little. My faith was always complex, a jumble of true belief, cultural duty, pain, and beauty. Becoming the Church Lady wasn’t cynical. A part of me wished that if I acted devoted enough, I might turn into the person I was faking. That perhaps my queerness would melt away in holy water.

But it didn’t happen like that.

I’m 30 now. I haven’t gone to Mass in three years. My mother still asks if I’m going to church, with hidden disappointment. I say no. Angela, my cousin who the family shunned seven years ago? She’s married now, to a woman she loves. Most of the family showed up at the wedding, including some of the same aunts and uncles who’d talked behind her back. Time and getting to know her better had smoothed their rough edges.

I think about the Church Lady version of myself from time to time—the one wearing the mantilla veil, the one who knew every prayer, the one who made the aunties smile. She wasn’t made up. She was a version of me trying hard to survive in a community that couldn’t accept all of who I was. She was a girl scared of being turned away, using the master’s tools to avoid being thrown out of the master’s house.

I don’t feel sorry for her, but I don’t long for her either.

These days, I figure out how to live without armor. I realize that hiding in plain sight—even when you excel at it—still means hiding. I understand that people who love you won’t expect you to prove your devotion to earn your place. I see that faith and queerness can coexist even if the institution hasn’t worked that out yet.

Now on Sunday mornings, I sleep in. Sometimes a woman lies next to me, her hair spread across my pillow. When I wake up, I don’t need to become someone else. I just get to be Charlene, in all her complex, conflicting, queer, and yes, still somehow Catholic, glory.

The Church Lady has left. And I remain here.

Charlene Trino is a Filipino-American writer based in Northern California. Her work explores the intersections of queerness, faith, and cultural identity. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction and is currently working on a memoir about growing up Catholic and gay in a Filipino immigrant family. When she’s not writing, she’s probably trying a new recipe or arguing about theology with her friends.