Adele Poynor

Having grown up in a small fundamentalist Christian town, Prof. Poyner was raised in an environment where women were seen as secondary to men. Even from a young age the idea that they’d find a man who would be a good provider, marry him, have kids, and be a caregiver was repeatedly reinforced. Their needs and wants would always be second to those of everyone else in their lives, especially the men. These ideologies would follow Poyner for quite some time, even during their first 15 years at Allegheny College their focus was still on the needs and wants of their colleagues, their students, their husband, everyone, but never themselves. And things may have stayed that way, but in 2018 she got into a car crash that would put her into a coma. Poyner would eventually wake up, but still be left learning how to sit up and walk again. Going from helping everybody but themselves, to not even being able to help themself made Poyner reevaluate their life. They’d realize they had no idea who they were. Spending so much time focusing on others left them realizing they had no idea what they liked, what they wanted, what they needed. They couldn’t even tell you what they liked on their pizza. So Poyner would go on to take the next several months trying to figure out who they are, and in the first week of March 2020 they would feel ready to face the world as their true self. Covid-19 quarantine would start a week later. A now single mom working at Allegheny full time, with a 5 and 10 year old kid, a cat, and all during quarantine would push her to the brink of exhaustion. So she took a sabbatical. During this time she used social sites such as Facebook, Reddit, and Discord to find connections. It’s from a Facebook group for Pennsylvanian Lesbians that Poyner would manage to find the only other one from Crawford county in the group. That same woman is now her wife and to spite anyone that may have any arguments about their relationship, and to spite the fundamentalist values she was raised with, she would pay the Meadville Tribune Fee to have their marriage publicly posted in the newspaper for everyone to see. Poyner’s story proves that
self-discovery can start at any point in life, it’s a journey that never ends.