‘Same Love’ singer Mary Lambert to perform benefit for Thurston County’s Pizza Klatch

Singer-songwriter Mary Lambert — nominated for two Grammys for her work on Macklemore’s “Same Love” — wants to change lives with her music.

“Performing for me is about healing, about facilitating catharsis,” Lambert of Seattle said in a phone interview. “I have a difficult time being on stage and having it be about vanity. … I’m looking to facilitate something greater.”

She will perform Saturday in Olympia in perfect alignment with that mission: She’ll headline Pizza Klatch’s annual Gayla, a fundraiser for the nonprofit that organizes lunchtime support groups where LGBTQ+ students and their allies can meet, talk, support one another — and, of course, eat pizza.

The aim is to create community and thus combat bullying and decrease rates of suicide among LGBTQ+ youth. Queer youth are five times more likely than heterosexual youth to attempt suicide, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control.

“I was 17 when I attempted suicide, and that was the year that I came out,” Lambert said. “I wonder how much heartache and how much self punishment could have been avoided if there were an organization like that where I lived.

“I had a supportive family, but there’s something about being in community with other kids like you — with other people who are experiencing the same thing as you.”

The singer, poet and activist also has survived multiple sexual assaults and years of drug and alcohol use to manage her then-undiagnosed bipolar disorder.

She sings and performs poetry about all of that, her struggles with self acceptance and more.

“My strength is in the storytelling and the emotion,” she said. “When I’m performing, the room is filled with people who have a desire to connect and to heal. There’s tenderness, but there’s also so much joy and celebration.

“It got better for me,” she said. “It’s a clichéd thing, but it does get better.”

The Gayla, too, is about celebration as well as raising money to support Pizza Klatch’s work.

The organization serves 200-250 students each week in its volunteer-facilitated support groups in a dozen Thurston County high schools, including Olympia Regional Learning Academy, which also serves middle-school students. This year, there are plans to serve more middle-school students, said Lynn Grotsky, a spokesperson for the group.

And further expansion might be on the horizon. “We were awarded a grant to begin exploring how we could replicate Pizza Klatch on a statewide or national level,” Grotsky said in an email interview.

In a video produced by the group, students talk about how Pizza Klatch has enabled them to find community.

“That’s a basic necessity for survival — community and safe space,” Lambert said.

This story was originally published February 1, 2018 at 7:00 AM with the headline "‘Same Love’ singer Mary Lambert to perform benefit for Thurston County’s Pizza Klatch."