IN A LOCAL newspaper interview published this week, the leader of the Open Table Warrington community has shared how, after years of ‘self-loathing’, she has learned to accept herself.

It’s a powerful and inspiring story of a mum who came out as gay after waking up from a major operation she didn’t think she would survive.

Gail Yorke, 53, lived for most of her life suppressing her sexuality, as she believed she couldn't be both gay and Christian.

Speaking about how her life turned around as she recovered from surgery, she said:

‘I was just throwing all of myself into my faith and at times felt self-loathing. If I ever got any feelings or thoughts about women, I loathed myself, I would come home and cry a lot and self-harmed for years, all because of how I felt about myself.’

Gail is now an elder at St John’s United Reformed Church in Warrington, where the second Open Table community began in July 2015. She told the Liverpool Echo:

I never thought in a million years I would be in a leadership role in church when people found out who I was so to be able to do this gives me a real sense of freedom. I finally realised I didn’t have to change and my problem wasn’t with church but my problem was with those people within the church who were against me as a gay woman, and now I can look in the mirror and say “I don’t hate you anymore”.’

READ THE FULL STORY on the Liverpool Echo website.

• Gail has previously shared her story at Open Table community events. She wrote this reflection and poem for an event called Stories Around An Open Table in March 2019.

• In 2021 she told a researcher exploring the impact of Open Table communities, that:

‘Open Table means everything to me, it has truly saved me’.

THANK YOU to Gail for her courage and commitment to creating a space for other LGBTQIA+ Christians, so they don’t have to endure what she experienced.