Keke Palmer is a "free spirit" when it comes to her sexuality — but it wasn't always like that for her.
Looking back, Keke admits there were moments in her life when she questioned if she could truly be herself.
"The moment where you kind of overthink shit. It's like, that’s not even me, why am I overthinking this?" Keke said during an appearance on The Best Podcast Ever with Raven-Symoné and her wife Miranda.
Keke says her journey with her sexuality began when she was just a kid, having thoughts and questions about who she loved when she was "very young."
Then, as a teenager, those feelings came to the surface — but she decided to push them aside.
"I think at, like, 12 or 13, they started coming back. As a teenager, when you really start getting into your groove, I was kind of like, 'Well, no, I'll push it to the side,'" Keke shared.
While Keke grew up in a religious household, she says her parents never condemned people for being gay, but felt there was an unspoken atmosphere surrounding the subject.
"In my household, my parents were never like, 'You go to hell for being gay.' They weren't actually like that at all. But there is, like, an unsaid thing that can make you feel…you know what I mean?" Keke explained.
She continued, "And because I liked guys, too, I was kinda like, 'Well, we don’t have to talk about it.' It was like, that’s another extra thing that no one really has to know about. I don't have to live out."
But by the time Keke was 17 or 18, she says she began to feel that she wanted to stop pushing her feelings away and explore her sexuality.
"I was kinda like, 'I wanna explore my life. I want to stop judging, overthinking my thoughts or feeling like this isn't something I can explore,'" she said.
Although Keke admits she doesn't know exactly what changed for her, she says it probably had to do with just wanting love.
"I guess it was me getting to a place of wanting love, really, and realizing that I really wanted to be open to it, and I didn't want anything to hold me back from it," Keke shared.
She continued, "I ultimately just feel like, the acceptance of that part of myself, in general, was a part of my process of being able to actually have love in my life. Accepting and loving all parts of me."
