About The Initiative

What began as a platform for telling our stories has grown into an organization working to change the systems behind them.

The Normal Anomaly Initiative began in 2016 as a grassroots movement rooted in digital storytelling. At a time when the experiences of Black LGBTQ+ people were too often overlooked, misunderstood, or told by others, we created space for community members to tell their own stories, challenge harmful narratives, and make visible the realities shaping their lives.

In 2018, that movement took its next step when Normal Anomaly became a nonprofit incubated at The Montrose Center in Houston, Texas. As we listened more deeply to the community, our work expanded beyond changing narratives to addressing the barriers those narratives revealed. Storytelling led us to services. Services led us to navigation. Navigation led us to questions about why people were encountering the same barriers again and again.

Over the years, Normal Anomaly has responded by building programs and partnerships that address health and well-being from multiple directions. Through initiatives like Project Liberate, we have invested in leadership, advocacy, education, and community-driven solutions. Our research, evaluation, and storytelling work has continued to document community experience and transform what we learn into knowledge that can strengthen programs and systems.

Along the way, our work has reached thousands of people through direct services, capacity building, research, technical assistance, advocacy, and community partnerships. We have supported emerging leaders, helped launch Black and LGBTQ+ businesses, collaborated with academic and public-health institutions, and brought community perspectives into spaces where decisions about our health and futures are made.

Today, Normal Anomaly is entering its next chapter as a community health infrastructure organization.

We recognize that healthier communities cannot be built through isolated programs alone. They require people with the power to lead, pathways that help individuals navigate resources and care, organizations that are connected rather than siloed, and systems that can learn from the communities they are intended to serve.

That is the infrastructure we are working to build.

And in many ways, it brings us back to where we started: listening to community. The difference is that today, we are using what we hear not only to change the narrative—but to help change the conditions, connections, and systems that shape people’s lives.