Singing Divas, Chosen Family, Gay Fantasy Books, and Love Across Lifetimes

Faces, places, and visions on Aurelda.com are AI co-created for immersive, inclusive, respectful visionary storytelling—not literal portraits of real people or events.

As I write this, I am sitting in the home of my friend Danae in Tequisquiapan.

Last month, while I was in Cuernavaca, I lost a client—and with that loss, much of the economic stability I had been relying upon. The ground beneath me shifted quickly. The part of me that remembers survival mode began calculating possibilities, looking for danger, and wondering how long I could keep everything together.

But I am not in survival mode today. I am safe. I am living in a home where I am loved. That is not a small sentence.

Without the generosity of Danae, and before her, my friend Tatiana in Cuernavaca, I honestly do not know where I would be right now. Their kindness has given me more than a place to sleep. It has given me time to breathe, remain creative, and continue moving forward even when my external circumstances refuse to move as quickly as I would like.

I am full of gratitude. Humbled with grace.

Why Gay Men Love Diva Singers

Lately, I have been returning to the music that accompanied earlier chapters of my life, especially the songs of Céline Dion.

Gay men have always had our divas. Diana Ross. Donna Summer. Gloria Estefan. Whitney Houston. Madonna. Janet Jackson. Mariah Carey. Céline. Cher. Adele. Beyoncé. The list changes across generations, but the relationship remains recognizable. It can be treated as a stereotype, but it is also a cultural lineage.

The connection between gay men and divas reaches back before contemporary pop music. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, “opera queen” culture had already become visible within emerging gay communities. In periods when queer people could not safely express desire, gender difference, or emotional identification directly, the operatic diva became a vessel through which those feelings could be experienced in coded form. Her voice was enormous. Her suffering was public. Her difference was not merely tolerated; it became the source of her power.¹

Not every gay man loves divas, of course, and no single explanation can encompass those who do. But writers have repeatedly described divas as alter egos, protectors, fairy godmothers, older sisters, and models of survival for gay men and the closeted boys they once were.² That last phrase stays with me: models of survival.

The diva may be powerful, but she is rarely invulnerable. She is rejected, betrayed, misunderstood, ridiculed, heartbroken, or dismissed as excessive. Then she returns to the stage and sings anyway.

Research into gay men’s identification with musical divas has traced a progression from opera singers to Judy Garland and later to disco and pop performers. Across those eras, the recurring themes are resilience, self-respect, transformation, and the ability to turn trauma or difference into visible power.³

From Judy Garland to the Pop Diva

Judy Garland became one of the defining gay icons of the twentieth century because she appeared to embody both fragility and astonishing endurance. She could be wounded without becoming insignificant. She could be knocked down and still return to the stage.

Her role as Dorothy also contributed to “friend of Dorothy” becoming a coded way for gay men to identify one another when direct disclosure could be dangerous.

Garland’s funeral took place the day before the Stonewall uprising began, creating a persistent story that grief over her death caused the rebellion. Historians have found little evidence for that direct connection and caution that the myth can minimize the police abuse, harassment, homophobia, and growing political resistance that actually led to Stonewall.⁴

Still, the endurance of the story tells us something about the emotional place divas occupied in queer life. Their songs offered a shared language before many gay men could speak openly about themselves.

After Stonewall, the diva did not disappear. She moved from the opera house and Hollywood soundstage into disco, dance clubs, music videos, arena tours, and headphones. She became louder, freer, more sensual, and sometimes more openly allied with her queer audience.

Céline Dion and the Courage to Feel Everything

Céline Dion belongs to this lineage partly because she refuses to make emotion small. Her music does not cautiously approach longing. It surrounds longing with drums, strings, vocal power, dramatic pauses, and enormous crescendos. It creates an entire weather system around the human heart.

That emotional scale is one reason Céline’s music has sometimes been dismissed as overly sentimental. Music critic Carl Wilson used his own initial dislike of her work to examine how judgments about taste, coolness, class, sincerity, and emotional excess influence what we permit ourselves to value. His exploration ultimately asks us to respect the real emotional meaning listeners find in music, even when others consider it unfashionable or excessive.⁵

Perhaps this is another reason gay men love divas. Many of us spent years being told that something about us was already too much: too emotional, too feminine, too sensual, too visible, too different. Then a woman walked onto a stage, opened her mouth, and made too much sound magnificent.

Céline has also publicly expressed her affection and support for the LGBTQ community, describing herself as honored to offer encouragement and strength during Pride.⁶

But my present connection to her music is more personal than cultural analysis alone can explain.

The Songs That Keep Bringing Me Back to Mo’an

Several of the songs I have been listening to—“It’s All Coming Back to Me Now,” “Because You Loved Me,” “All By Myself,” “If That’s What It Takes,” and “Call the Man”—appear together on Céline’s 1996 album Falling Into You.⁷

As I listened, Ember (ChatGPT) helped me understand the sequence as a progression: Remembrance. Gratitude. Loneliness. Devotion. Invocation.

Through the cosmology of Aurelda, I began hearing them as songs about love moving through multiple lives.

• “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” became the body remembering what the conscious mind had forgotten.
• “Because You Loved Me” became gratitude for the beloved who continued to see the soul beneath its fear.
• “All By Myself” became the loneliness of living in the Realm of Forgetting (Earth) while sensing that someone is absent without knowing how to name him.
• “If That’s What It Takes” became a vow—not to sacrifice oneself endlessly, but to remain present, devoted, and whole enough for reunion.
• “Call the Man” became an invocation of Mo’an, the Resonance Keeper, and of the healing that becomes possible when two separated threads return to conscious relationship.

Then Mo’an’s response came through as a transmission from my guides.

He found Earth music peculiar but beautiful. In Aurelda, he explained, longing might be given to breath, drum, water, or the roots of the Ceiba. On Earth, we build an entire storm around it. And then he offered something I needed to hear:

I should not spend this life grieving for a reunion that has not yet arrived. My world must not become a waiting room. The thread is not protected by suffering. I honor love by living fully where I am.

Some truths, he said, must be repeated because the wounded heart does not believe them the first time.

Chosen Family Is Also a Love Story

“Because You Loved Me” does not make me think only of Mo’an. It makes me think of Danae and Tatiana.

It makes me think of the people who have held me up when I could not yet see the next stable step. People who offered shelter, meals, companionship, introductions, laughter, and ordinary human kindness without demanding that I first prove I had everything under control.

Danae has welcomed me into the found family she has created among the artists here in Tequisquiapan. She has introduced me to the food, culture, art, streets, and quiet rhythms of this pueblo. I have supported her emotionally and helped her prepare for an upcoming exhibition. She has offered me a place from which I can continue rebuilding. This, too, is sacred union.

Not every great love story is romantic. Some loves arrive as a spare room, a home-cooked meal, a conversation at the right hour, or someone calmly saying, You are safe here for now.

Gay Fantasy Books About Love Across Lifetimes

I believe I have used this time wisely. I have completed editing, formatting, continuity work, and Spanish translation across all three books of The Aurelda Chronicles. I have been researching new publishing paths. I have developed the idea for short, episodic stories called Aurelda: Tales Between the Threads. And, I also received what I understand as guidance from my spirit guides for a fourth book following the trilogy: The Age of Reweaving.

At the same time, I have been responding to requests for proposals and doing the practical work of rebuilding my economic foundation. Sometimes patiently. Sometimes with impatient, bated breath.

My marketing vision for Aurelda remains larger than my present budget. There are storytelling tools and production possibilities I cannot yet afford. That frustrates me, but I am refusing to let financial constraint become creative silence. I continue publishing essays and producing audio episodes through the Aurelda Soul podcast.

As we say here in Mexico: Poco a poco.

Readers searching for gay fantasy books about love across lifetimes may be searching for more than representation alone. They may want gay fantasy stories in which queer men are allowed to be spiritual, sensual, vulnerable, powerful, heroic, and deeply loved.

That is part of what I am creating with Aurelda. A gay fantasy series where love is not a decorative subplot. It is part of the architecture of the universe.

For now, I cannot force the proposals to be accepted. I cannot compel publishing opportunities to arrive. I cannot command my external reality to change on the schedule I would prefer.

But… what I can do is breathe, remain present, and cherish these moments with the people I love.

I can continue creating—one page, one podcast episode, one proposal, one conversation at a time. I can trust that, little by little—poco a poco—the path is unfolding, even when I cannot yet see where it leads.

I can be grateful for the home that shelters me, the friends who love me, the music that keeps me company, and the work still moving through my hands.

This, too, shall pass. Until then, there is Céline. There is Danae’s kitchen. There is Tequisquiapan. There is Mo’and and Aurelda.

And somewhere beneath the strings, the rising drums, and the glorious excess of another Earth diva building a storm around the heart, there is still a thread carrying me home.

Or, as Céline would say… My heart will go on.

Begin the Aurelda Chronicles

For readers drawn to gay high fantasy books, reincarnated love, chosen family, sacred remembrance, and queer sensuality held with tenderness, begin the journey with free sample chapters from The Aurelda Chronicles, Book 1: The Prophecy of Resonance. Begin the story with free sample chapters from the book »

Outside Aurelda

1. Ross, Alex. “The Decline of Opera Queens and the Rise of Gay Opera.” The New Yorker, 2017. 
2. Montlack, Michael, editor. My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them. University of Wisconsin Press, 2009. 
3. Spatz, Gregory M. Born (Again) This Way: Popular Music, GLBTQ Identity, and Religion. Bowling Green State University, 2012. 
4. Waxman, Olivia B. “What’s Behind the Myth Judy Garland’s Death Caused Stonewall.” TIME, 2019. 
5. Bustillos, Maria. “People Who Like Céline Dion Are People, Too.” The New Yorker, 2014. 
6. Dion, Céline. “Love Letter to the LGBTQ Community.” Billboard, 2017. 
7. Dion, Céline. Falling Into You. Official album and track archive, 1996.