Bliss Sundays Builds Community for Houston’s Queer Women

When Bliss Mayon (she/they) and Kaamil Al-Hassan (she/her) talk about community, they speak less about parties and more about infrastructure.

For Al-Hassan, whose background spans higher education, tech, and biotech, the throughline has always been people. “All things were people-related—building communities, building strategies to better connect people,” she explains. As a former senior DEI business partner responsible for internal communications, programs, and events, she worked at the intersection of corporate strategy and human connection. Years earlier, she had founded a nonprofit brunch series for Black women. “I’ve always had both a knack for building communities and then working with people and developing programs,” she says.

Mayon’s path began in hospitality, including working as a hostess, bartender, server, and general manager before pivoting into tech recruiting. When the pandemic pushed her new role fully remote, isolation hit. “I felt a little lonely, so I founded and led our Black Employee Network at that particular company,” she recalls. As a Black queer woman, she says, “It was always really important to me to have that sense of belonging.”

Hosting, it turns out, was their shared love language. “We are the hosting friends,” Mayon reveals. Their first event together was Al-Hassan’s birthday, which was a merging of their circles of friends.

After meeting and living in Oakland—where, as Al-Hassan describes, there were “so many dedicated queer spaces”—the couple relocated to Houston, Mayon’s hometown. What they found here offered little variety. “Queer nightlife was pretty much the main thing that we saw,” Al-Hassan says. So they decided to build what was missing.

That first offering was a monthly 4:00 to 9 p.m. Sunday party. It was intentional, elevated, and finished in time for attendees to be ready for Monday morning. But what began as a single recurring event quickly expanded. “We actually transitioned from the monthly day party into it being this queer ecosystem that is now offering social experiences,” Al-Hassan says. Bliss Sundays offers “professional networking, coworking, and also wellness-centered activities.”

The name stuck, even as the programming evolved. “Bliss Sundays is really an energy and a feeling,” Al-Hassan explains.

For Mayon, the goal is simple: “We want people to leave feeling grounded, full, and safe.”

Centering queer women, lesbians, and sapphics 25 and older was intentional. “After a certain age, they tend to nest. You never see them again,” Al-Hassan admits. Rather than lament the loss of lesbian bars, the founders asked how to serve women navigating careers, partnerships, children, pets, entrepreneurship, and shifting priorities. “It’s just a certain energy that exists when you get a little bit older; you have other priorities,” Al-Hassan notes.

Mayon explains that Houston has never lacked Black lesbians and sapphics, only consistency. “There was a lack of infrastructure and consistent spaces for them to be in. That’s where the ecosystem comes in.”

“It’s not just a one-off experience,” Bliss emphasizes. “The goal isn’t attendance, it’s familiarity. Because real community is something that consistently happens.”

That consistency has yielded trust. “One of the biggest things is that our community trusts us,” Mayon says. They’ve hosted more than 50 activities in nearly three years and partnered with more than 30 local venues, circulating dollars intentionally among queer, women-owned, and POC-owned businesses.

“The impact is seen from the numbers,” Al-Hassan adds, “but I think the main piece is that our community trusts us.”

Some of their proudest moments were surprisingly simple. Al-Hassan recalls a field day they expected would draw 50 people; 250 showed up. “It was all of these lesbians playing kickball, playing tug-of-war, and just genuinely letting loose for the day to activate their inner child,” she beams.

Mayon remembers looking around at an event and thinking, “Wow, so it worked!”

As founders, their definitions of power are telling. “Power means audacity,” Al-Hassan says. “The courage, boldness, and audacity to execute a vision despite the doubts.”

In Mayon’s view, power is “the ability to create meaningful and lasting positive influence, including creating long-lasting core memories.”

Soon to celebrate the third anniversary of Bliss Sundays, the entrepreneurs look forward to going deeper. A membership model is expected to launch in March, unlocking new benefits. “We’re excited this year to launch that membership model and give our members the opportunity to unlock different things like group travel,” Al-Hassan says.

In a city as vast as Houston, Bliss Mayon and Kaamil Al-Hassan are proving that visibility isn’t just about being seen. It’s about being known, again and again, inside a space that the community trusts.

Follow Bliss Sundays on Instagram and TikTok @blissxsundays.