World of Possibility with Valerie, Soper, and Whit

Over the years we’ve heard LGBTQ people say that they didn’t know what life might look like for them as an adult. Many haven’t had LGBTQ role models that provide examples of a potential future, and a lot of fear that parents of LGBTQ children experience comes from the unknown as well. We thought it might be helpful for parents to get to know some of the amazing members of the LGBTQ community, just a few at a time, so that they can provide a realistic view of what life could look like for our children. Today, Jen joins guests Melissa Soper, Whittney Chilcote, and Valerie Green in this episode of World of Possibility. 

Special Guests: 

Melissa Soper (she/her) is a mom to four wonderful kids. She has an amazingly awesome wife, Whitt, who she is excited to adventure with together in life. Soper loves the mountains and trail running. She loves to take on a challenge and has completed multiple ultra-marathons. Soper currently works with adolescents and young adults at a residential treatment center and is venturing to earn her Masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with the prospects of being a therapist for LGBTQ teens.

Whittney Chilcote (she/her) is a mom to three incredible souls that she got lucky to have as kids. She recently got married to her crazy beautiful, adventure seeking wife Soper, and she cannot imagine all the crazy and amazing things she is going to have them do together. Whitt has always loved traveling and seeing all that this crazy world has to offer. Born and raised in Utah, she absolutely loves the mountains and lakes and all the seasons they get every year! Whitt has spent the last 8 years of her life working with youth in West Valley, where she has learned so much about trauma, resilience, and what unconditional love means. 

Valerie Green (she/her) is a transgender woman who is active in her ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Missouri. Before transitioning, she was married for 34 years and is now widowed. She is a parent to five children and grandparent to six grandchildren. After five decades of waiting, she has been fully socially transitioned since January 1, 2019. She loves tennis and pickles (and her family when they're behaving).

Links From the Show:

• Join Mama Dragons at www.mamadragons.org 

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Transcript

JEN: Hello and welcome. You are listening to In the Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created out of our desire to walk and talk with you through this journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. We are so happy that you’re here with us.

Sometimes when we learn that our child is LGBTQ we have questions about what their future might look like.  This is true if they are 3, or 30, or 50 years old.  Good parents want their children to have a quality life and we sometimes base that definition around our own experiences in the world.  So, exposing ourselves to the full spectrum of life’s experiences and potential can help to ease our fears when it comes to our children.

Today we continue with our World of Possibilities series, where we introduce you to a few amazing people in the LGBTQ community – just bite size pieces –  to help provide a realistic view of the limitless possibilities available to our children. I have three amazing people to introduce in order to start expanding our understanding and our vision of what is possible.

Welcome to Valerie, Whit, and Soper. Can we start off by taking a couple of minutes and have each of you give us a little bit of an intro to give people get a general idea of who they are listening to?  I’m especially hoping that you will highlight some of the intersections in your life that inform your perspective. Valerie, let’s start with you. 

VALERIE: OK. Um, first, I will apologize for speaking through my braces. So sometimes I can sound a little strange. Um, I am a transgender woman. I have been transitioned for four years now. I was a late-in-life transitioner. I am a parent of five children and I have six grandchildren. I was married for 34 years and widowed in 2016. My wife knew about this for the last 20 years of our marriage, but transition wasn’t going to happen until after  – I didn’t think it would ever happen. And then after a few years after she’d gone, it was like, “I’m done with this. I need to go with what I’ve known my entire life since I was four years old.” I’m a member of the Emmaus LGBTQ Ministry Board where we work with the church, the LDS church, to help people work with their local leaders to create better spaces for LGBTQ members who wish to maintain affiliation with the church. I’m an active tennis player and busy. I’m a systems analyst, computer programmer, whatever we’re calling it on a particular day. I’ve been doing that just short of 40 years. 

JEN: I learned things about you that I didn’t know. I’m so excited about this conversation. OK, Whit, how about you? 

WHIT: Hi, I’m Whit. And I was born and raised here in Salt Lake. Born in a religious community, grew up with five brothers and sisters. And I now have three children of my own and partially, I’m a late-in-life lesbian where I didn’t realize it until later in life. Because, just growing up the way that I did, it just wasn’t even an option. I just thought that was completely wrong, something that shouldn’t even cross my mind. So I fought against it my whole life, but didn’t quite know that was what I was fighting against. I just thought, if you entertained it, then you were gay. Like, everybody could be gay and it’s just a matter of if you choose not to or to be. And then after just kind of going on my journey, realizing that that’s not how the world works and coming into my own. The last eight years, I’ve worked at a charter school in West Valley for kids who come from risky environments or just struggle in the mainstream schools. And that’s been an amazing opportunity to be able to be around lots of different kinds of students and to learn from them and to be more open and empathetic about all the different lives there are. 

JEN: Perfect.How about you, Soper? 

SOPER: Alright. It’s me. I grew up, too, in a conservative Christian community and was in that community for most of my life, actually. I grew up in a big family. I was one of eight. Let’s see, I was in a mixed orientation for 22 years. For the longest time, you know, I just thought I was a person that had thoughts that I was not supposed to have and feelings that I was not supposed to have. And if I was good enough, faithful enough, relied on Christ enough, that I would be healed and cured and that that piece was not a good piece of me. I soon realized, and was honest with myself, that I am gay and had a real big battle with faith and a lot of things, a lot of battles. And kind of found some self love and some direction in my life. My ex-husband is very supportive in that process as well. And I’m engaged to the most beautiful person, Whit. I currently work at a residential treatment center for youth. I am an EF coordinator. I help students with EF deficits. And I’m going to grad school this fall and I want to be an adolescent therapist. So I’m going to go in and get my CMHC. So I’m excited about that. 

JEN: Tell us, Soper, for anybody who’s listening who doesn’t know, what is a mixed-orientation marriage? 

SOPER: A mixed orientation marriage is when one of the individuals is heterosexual and the other person is of a different sexuality. So I would be the gay one, my ex-husband was the straight one. I mean, and they can be any mixture of different. But, in my case, that’s what that was. 

JEN: Perfect. Thank you so much. I’m excited to learn more. So, my first question for you is, when did you figure out that you weren’t cisgender and/or heterosexual and what did it mean for you at the time? Whit kind of touched on that a little bit, but let’s actually start with you Whit and we’ll dive a little bit deeper. 

WHIT: OK. For me, I started asking my friends lots of questions after I got married. I got married at 18 and he was my best friend. I just absolutely felt comfortable around him and everything. And he would honestly do anything that I would want. Like he was very respectful of my boundaries, anything like that. But I always struggled in that box, sexually. And being gay is not all sexual, I do want to clarify that, like, there’s so much more to it. So, I started talking to friends. I always thought growing up I am, like, super good. I am very moral. I turned away from kissing lots of boys. It didn’t even cross my mind that there was a reason I didn’t want to kiss them other than that I was just super moral. 

But, anyway, I started realizing certain things weren’t working for me and I was very closed off in a lot of areas. And, then,  in just, kind of, exploring with some of those and actually, like, letting myself go there and ask why are these walls here, what is happening and being able to figure that out through that journey. And he was very supportive at that juncture in the relationship. Like, “Hey, you are who you are and you can love whoever you want and that doesn’t make you a bad person.” So we kind of were figuring that out together. 

JEN: I love that you just feel like you’re really killin’ it in the purity culture. I like that. You’re like, “I’m not even tempted. I’m so holy.” 

WHIT: Why is it so hard for other people? 

JEN: I love that. How about you Soper? When did you learn, figure it out, and what did that mean at that time? 

SOPER: Well, it’s crazy because as a teenager I knew I was different. You know, I just had those attractions but I thought I was just a bad person and having these evil thoughts. And so I’m like, “OK, I’ll get a boyfriend and those thoughts will go away.” And they didn’t. And then I got married to the guy I was married to for 22 years. And I was like, “OK. If I’m faithful and I do the things, and I isolate myself from women, and have this self control, then this will change me. If I rely on my faith and stuff, this will change me.” And very, very months of a lot of despair when that didn’t happen and feeling like I was a failure that that never came. And a lot of depression. 

And, again, I had no friends that were close that were girls at all because I was just trying to be so good. And finally, one day, my husband at the time said, “Why don’t you have any close friends?” And I’m like, “I don’t know. I’m just good.” And eventually, this one girl contacted me and she was training for a marathon. I love to run, by the way, I forgot to mention that. I love to run. I run ultramarathons and stuff. But this girl was like, “Hey, will you train for a marathon with me?” and I said yeah, I would. And she’s straight, but I developed feelings for her, like, emotional, physical, all the things. And finally, for the first time, I was honest with myself like, “I’m gay. I haven’t felt this way towards anyone.” and I knew that I was so good at blocking those feelings for so long but I just didn’t understand why the feelings didn’t come for my husband. And I was like, “I’m gay.” 

And so we had a conversation when we had gotten married that if we ever had feelings outside of our marriage that we’d be honest with each other. And I had that. Actually, we moved. I had to move. I was totally, I was like, “I’m gay. I’m going to Hell.” It was a hard thing for me to grasp. I had to separate myself. I didn’t want to be around her. I was like, “I’m failing at all this.” And I sat down with my husband at the time and I said I have feelings for someone. And he’s like, “OK. Who?” And I said this person’s name and he’s like, “What?” I’m like, “Yeah. I’m gay.” And just a very kind, kind response and we tried to work through things for a while, but he would always say, if you want to be with a woman, I fully support you.  He’s like, you’ve given me your all your entire life. It’s time for you, you deserve that love that you so freely give. And it took me a while because I have a lot of barriers. It took me a while to be okay with that, okay with me. But there’s a lot of peace now in the direction that I’m going that I’ve never had before in my life. And sometimes I kick myself that it took me so long to figure out, but it’s where the peace has been, it's an amazing space to be. 

JEN: That’s so hard. I tend to think that women need women. And so to be battling inside of yourself and then also isolating yourself from that support seems really challenging. I’m glad that it was temporary, that you moved past that. How about you, Valerie? 

VALERIE: My earliest memories are around four years old where I had these impressions that I didn’t know how to express. You don’t have the words for it. You don't have the infrastructure. You don’t have the vocabulary to express what’s going on. You just know that you’re more comfortable with girls than you are with boys. I always had one or two token male friends, but they were just the token male friends. And we had some fun times together but I would always prefer to be with the girls. And I got caught in my – my mother was a single mother raising what she thought were two little boys at the time. And I was always being caught in her clothing. 

And I would get lectured too. She bought books about what to do about this. I had no idea why she was buying them. I look back at it now and I’m like, “This is so obvious.” And many conversations where I was reminded that my behavior was not the correct behavior. But I can tell that, when I was ten or eleven, I found this news article about Dr. Renae Richards. And she was the first, and as far as I know, only transgender professional tennis player we’ve ever had. And I read this article about her transition. And that was the first time that I learned that you could actually transition. And I knew at that moment this was what I wanted for my life. But I also was in a position where I was never going to get it. 

 I recently learned that I lived at the time in the second-most conservative city in the United States. Lubbock, Texas is second only to Provo, Utah. So, looking back on it, I’m like, “Well, now it’s obvious why things didn’t happen.” But I do remember all the things that I worked with with my mother to try to figure out what to do as a single mother bringing men into our lives in the form of Big Brother/Big Sister programs, which was horrible for me because my big brother informed us that I was too mature and did not need him and he needed someone who was more needy. I’m like, “Fine. I reject you too.” 

So I’ve known all of my life. But learning that there was a community was eye opening. When I got about four or five years into our marriage, finding a community online which, again, I was born in  64. So my teenage years were still all pre-internet. And so you only learned what you could learn from a library or something like that. The internet opened up so many things. I mean, 25 years ago, I started a Yahoo Group called Mormon Cross Dressers, just to find out if there's anyone else out in the world that was feeling the same way. And didn’t get a lot of traction but I got more than I expected. And almost everyone who found it was surprised to find other people themselves because it felt so unusual, especially within the religious community that we were in. And most of them coming from conservative social communities as well. 

So I’ve known all my life. The question just came down to when I told somebody, telling another human being about this. The first time I voluntarily did that was in the late 90’s to a therapist of mine. That’s a long story. Shortly after that, I told my wife. I’m like, “OK. Now that I’ve revealed this to another human being, I have to tell my spouse.” Which did not necessarily go over well. It led to a lot of compromise and I thought I’d live a dual life for my entire life. And then, after she passed away, a couple of years after that, I started going out to cultural events and female mode. I used to refer to it as female mode.  And living the rest of my life in male mode.I told my children at that time. I said, “OK. I’m done with this at my house so this is who I am at home. The rest of it’s all fake.” And then I was at one of these events one night and I remember looking around and I said, “I’m sick of this. I’m tired of switching. It’s time.” I thought I would never fully transition because like most transgender people, especially those who transition later in life, they’re scared about losing your community, your church community, your job, your family. You’re afraid of losing all of this stuff. And at some point, for me, I just said I”m going to have to risk it all and see what happens because it’s more important to be me than it is to try to maintain all of that. And I’m in a super privileged position. Everything’s worked out for me. It doesn’t for everybody but those fears are there for everyone. That was the point in which I said, “OK. Transition time.” I started all the processes. Now, here we are today. 

JEN: I love that. And all three of you, actually, were brought together because of that kind of shared element where you didn’t come out when you were super young and didn’t start expressing those things publicly when you were super young. And I think it’s important for people to understand why. Like, why sometimes things happen later in life and I appreciate you guys being willing to share that. I’m hoping we can talk about when you came out and how your parents and families (and in a couple cases we have spouses), and you guys have touched on this. But, what could your family have maybe done better, even now across time, and what do you think they nailed that we should all just copy and emulate? Let’s start with you, Soper, on this one. 

SOPER: Well, first, when I came out, I came out to my husband at the time and to my close friend, to let her know. And both of them, good responses. I was so afraid of me, and this. And when I came out to my one friend who was straight, I said, “Obviously, I have these feelings, this and that. I know you’re straight. There’s no intentions or expectations. I just have these feelings.” And she just expressed her love for me and nothing changed for her. We were still good friends. She was like, “You’re still Soper. I still see you as Soper. Now I just know this different piece about you.” And I think that was probably the most affirming thing is that she just loved me for who I was and nothing changed. I was still the same person. And so, at that point, I came out to my ex-husband, her, and a couple of other close friends, and I’m like, I’m not coming out to anyone else. That’s it. But I did get the impression that I should share my story because if I shared my story, I could help other people. 

JEN: Wait, I’m going to interrupt you because I’m curious. Did you come out, at this point, with the intention of absolutely just staying in a mixed orientation marriage and you were going to tell people you were gay, but you weren’t going to act gay, for lack of better phrasing? 

SOPER: YES. Still going to be part of my religious community, still be a part of my marriage. But, again, I got the impression to share my story. And the impression was like, if you can help one other person feel less alone – because at the time, I thought I am the only gay person in a marriage to a man in this religious community. I felt so by myself. And I thought if I could make someone else feel less alone, I would. Well, with my family, as far as my parents (my parents are divorced) and my siblings, we were not a family that really shares a lot of emotional stuff like that. And I  knew it would be especially hard for my mom to hear. 

And so I wrote an email to my family and I only had two siblings respond. And both of them were positive. And then silence from my mom. My dad did respond and he just said he was proud of me and that he loved me. And, again, my intention was to stay where I was at and stuff. But my mom had a really hard time and I knew she would. And I had to give her time and space. My first initial conversations and for years it wasn’t good. I had to meet with her at a park and not her house to have that initial conversation with her. 

And, again, I had to try to look at it from her lens where she thought she had to save my soul, you know. So the things that she was saying, even though they were extremely hurtful, that in her heart she thought she was doing good. Or that some of the things that she said like I wasn’t faithful enough, I didn’t pray enough, I didn’t try hard enough. She also, even, referred to – I was serving with the youth group, and if I didn’t keep myself in check then I would have feelings for some of my youth. So she referred to that. And, again, I think she was just trying to say anything as a shock factor to, like, set me straight. But it was hard because I knew her intentions, she thought she was doing good. But I really didn’t kept my cool and she had a hard time listening. And she said, “Hey. I’m your mom. I’m here to protect and teach you.” And, at that point, I said, “Sometimes we have kids in our lives to teach us something.” And she got up and left. But it’s been years with her and a lot of hard, hard conversations. But, for some reason, I think my sister’s been working on her. She’s had this change of heart where I can actually be in her home again. Whitney has come with me to her house and . . . 

JEN: That’s positive. 

SOPER: Yeah. It’s been a huge change of heart from her. And do I think she fully embraces and accepts us? NO. But that’s ok. That’s ok. She’s kind to us when we’re around and I do truly feel like she loves me and that’s ok. I’ll take what I get because – I love her for trying to understand where she comes from, I love her for who she is, too. But, yeah. I’m sorry. 

JEN: Now you’ve got me all teary. 

WHIT: I know. 

JEN: How about you Valerie? How did your parents and family, what did they get right and where did they mess up? 

VALERIE: So my mother was a single mom. And so, for most of my childhood there was no dad involved. She spent many years telling me that my behavior was wrong. And all she knew was that I kept wearing her clothing. And so she didn’t know what to do. There was no Mama Dragons at that time. And even if there had been, I don’t know if it would’ve made it to her. So she was just trying to figure out what was the best thing to do based on what she’d been told. So I have no animosity towards my mother. 

Years later, she asked me and my two brothers, because I think she always felt like she was a failure as a mom that she hadn’t provided enough for us. And she asked if there was anything she could’ve done better. And, at the time, we were like, we were happy, we didn’t think there was anything wrong. I go back and look at my life and I’m like, “Oh, my God, we were dirt poor.” We were living a life that I did not have a vision of what it was at the time as I do looking back at it now. So, years later, I’d taken a job. My family had moved to Saipan. We were leaving that job, another long story, and as we were coming back, I talked to her just before we came back. And I said, “Remember a couple of years ago when you asked me that questions?” and she goes, “Yeah.” And I said, “There’s one thing I’d like to change. I wish that, if you had known, if you’d had a better understanding of who I was as a child, that you would’ve been more supportive of the fact that I was transgender.” (of course a term that I didn’t know at the time) 

So that kind of set her off a little bit rocky section. And, for instance, she actually moved back to Lubbock, Texas. She was living with us in Saipan, that might make an important part of the story. She moved back to Texas, we moved back to St. Louis, Missouri. And, at one point, she called me and she goes, “Yeah. I talked to my bishop about you.” I’m like, “What? You talked to your bishop about me?” She was trying to understand things. And she sent me a letter. I sent her a couple of letters. And, eventually, it came down to I sent her one that said, “Look. If this is something that you can’t deal with, then we will just never talk about this subject again.” I would never cut her out of everything and that’s just the way we’ll leave it. And, not long after that, she sent me a letter that said, “I can still see that you’re the good person that you are. You still have all the roles in your family and I can deal with this.” So she knew about that and she had some level of acceptance. 

But I transitioned the year after she passed away. And I had already made the decision and I was planning to tell her and she died. And so I never actually had that conversation with her so I don’t know how she would’ve responded to being informed that I was transitioning. The rest of my family has been really good. My aunts have been good. All my cousins, I told my immediate family, I told my kids, and my grandkids over various different times. But all of that, in the moment, was good. And then I sent a letter to my extended family, letting them know what was going to be happening. And I got nothing but positive responses which shocked me to no end, especially with most of my family living in Texas and a very conservative environment. So I was quite surprised. 

And, of course, I have the one aunt who like, “Well, I always knew.” and I’m like, “Yeah. You always knew everything.” I’ve had very positive experiences with all of my family members. My children have been very good. I told my children they have the option to continue to refer to me as either as Dad or they could use Mom. And some have switched to mom. Some retain Dad and some of it’s just habit. I think I've got one kid that just does it because it’s unique so he likes to hang onto it. But my entire family has actually been pretty good which is surprising to a lot of people. I think that is not everybody’s experience whatsoever. And a lot of this discussion is relative, no pun intended. But I look at my life and everything has been easy for me. And then someone looks at me and goes, “I’ve listened to your story and not one bit of that sounds easy.” And I’m like, “Yeah. To me t’s felt easy but it may be my personality that just lets it feel easy because you, like, push away the painful parts and hide them. But an objective analysis would say that yes, my family has been really good. 

JEN: And objective analysis, maybe you’re just a little tougher than the rest of us. As far as I know, nobody’s super attacking lesbians who play girl sports. So I’m going to target this only to Valeria. As a trans woman who is an athlete, I love reading and watching all your tennis stories online. What are your thoughts about the conversations and wars and battles about transgender athletes as compared to your own lived experience. 

VALERIE: Oh, good questions. I was recently asked if I felt like my body – I’ve been on hormone replacement therapy for over four years. And all of my stuff is in normal female ranges and has been for quite some time. I did play Women’s USTA Tennis. Someone asked me if my body had changed. I can tell my body has definitely changed quite a bit. But oddly, I was never what I would call athletic before. I hated team sports. I refused to go to team sports. Mostly I think, I look back on it because it was a bunch of guys, who wanted to do that? So I never really was involved in organized sports on a team that I enjoyed doing that I wanted to be there until I started to play USTA Tennis in 2019. 

So that was an eye opening experience for me. I went and called USTA and said, because I played tennis all of my life. I love playing tennis. I have a former bishop that we played every Saturday morning for the last 25 years. And I wanted to continue to play. And this was something I would lose. I would never get to play tennis again because who would want to play tennis with this transgender woman. I spoke to someone who runs a small league that she just runs some various leagues. And I say, “Is there room for me on your women’s team.” She said, “Actually, they’re typically full” But she said, “Your best bet is USTA because USTA has excellent transgender policy.” 

And my first thought was, how do you know about their transgender policy? Apparently it’s come up before. And this is a woman who’s really good. She won things everywhere. And she actually spent her college years playing on the men’s teams because there were no women’s teams to play on. So she’s involved in this cross-gender intersection for sports. And she reminded me of a couple of things. So I had her evaluate me so I figured out where to go into USTA. I called USTA and I said, “I’m a transgender woman. I’m looking to play. What do you have for me?” And their only question was, “Do you prefer singles or doubles?” 

I’m like singles all the way because I hate this team stuff. I don’t want anybody relying on me and it’s doubles is weird, weird. I now play it because I have to because once you get over 55 all the leagues are doubles leagues only so I have to learn to play doubles. So I did this. So I joined for that. And so then it was like, ok. So now I’ve got to be on a team so this experience is going to be interesting. They put me in touch with the captain. I explained what was going on. And I chatted back and forth with her a little bit. And I’m, like, going to be worried about perceived advantages and how it's going to be taken. 

And she sent me an email. She said, “You will never have to defend your position on my team.” And that felt amazing to get. And I joined that team. And it’s one of the best experiences I’ve had. About two weeks in, we were finishing a singles match. And one of my teammates came over after she had finished, and I had finished. We were the singles players that week. The team normally plays three courts of doubles and two courts of singles. We were finished. We were watching the doubles match. And she walked up to me and she goes, “How open are you about discussing stuff.” And I said, “Fine. I’ll talk about anything.” And she goes, “I wanted to thank you. I have a transgender sibling back home and I can go to them and say I have a  transgender player on my team who’s out living life, who’s just doing what they love to do, who is just out and open. And it’s an inspiration for them. And it’s an inspiration for me.” 

It wasn’t my goal. I wasn’t there to inspire anyone. I was just there because I love to play tennis. And I had the opportunity to do that. Before I transitioned, I told this bishop that I’d been playing with for 25 years. I said, “This is what’s happening, would you still want to play tennis?” And I thought he might not. And he was like, “We’re just playing tennis. We’re good to go. So we’ve continued to play tennis since 2019. So we did 20 years of tennis and then I transitioned and we’ve just continued living along, live my experience in sports. 

I hated sports as a child because, in fact, I gravitated towards tennis because it’s an individual sport. I hated team sports. And I have no desire and I can’t imagine any transgender girl wanting to play on a boys team. So, from the perspective of the transgender person themselves, the thought of playing on the other team is horrible. And I’ve told people, there’s this mantra that people are transitioning to win at sports because they can’t win in their original gender. And I’m like, “No. No. People are transitioning because that’s who they are and they just play sports because that’s what they love to do. It’s definitely the other way around.” 

JEN: So are you trying to tell us, like, straight out, you did not transition in order to be able to play Serena Williams and dominate the world of tennis. 

VALERIE: Well, first of all, Serena Williams would crush me to the ground. Like, one of the things I like about USTA is it’s all rated. So I started as a 3.5 level player. And after the first year I got bumped up to 4.0 and I’m a straight up, middle of the road, 4.0 player. I have a 63% win rate since I’ve been 4.0. There is nothing special or unique. My skill level is my skill level. And I will say that I’m hauling a lot more weight on that court than most of my opponents and then I’ve been on hormones for four years and people have looked at me and said they can see differences in my body. And I feel those differences in my body. 

There’s some things that still feel the same way, but I have recognized, my strength has gone down quite a bit. Yeah, there are lots of change that are occurring with me. But, for the most part, it’s all about doing what they love to do. It’s definitely not about trying to gain advantages or succeed at something they couldn’t succeed at before. And there’s lots of conversations to be had about that, some of which I fought in social media and sometimes I just back away. And go, “There’s nothing I can do about the way these people think about certain things.” 

JEN: We should probably have an entire episode about transgender sports and how can people conceptualize that when they’re talking to their friends and neighbors. I’m going to jump back to the group and ask, how has your life changed by, not just coming out because for some of you there was like a coming out of decades or coming out process. But how has your life changed by coming out and attempting to live authentically, for lack of a better terminology? Why don’t you start us off on this on Soper. 

SOPER: Well, how’s it changed? It’s changed a lot. There’s so many amazing, awesome, incredible things. But I’ll be honest, there’s still mountains to climb. I wouldn’t change it for the world, the direction I’m headed, but it’s not an easy path by any means. But the inner peace is completely worth it. We feel it. Whit and I feel it every time we go out, every time I hold her hand in public, every time we’re in certain circumstances, you feel the weight. Always. It’s not an easy mountain to climb by any means. But it’s, for me, it’s a mountain of something I can be honest with myself and integrity and I can live and be me. And, again, that’s that, the best word, honesty. I’m honest with myself. This is who I am and going in the direction of loving who  I am. And, again, it’s peaceful but there are definitely mountains to climb. 

JEN: How about you, Whit? 

WHIT: I think for me, it’s been a crazy journey because there are so many times when I can just get lost and I can be with Lis and just be out in public and get lost and not even think about it because it’s so natural, it’s so easy, it’s so everything. When I first started dating after I got divorced and was out in public, I definitely felt so much shame and I was just, “No. Don’t touch me.” And not necessarily with Lis, by then, I got a little bit better at it. It was hard for me to be out in public for a little bit, worried that my neighbors would judge me, worried that my kids would be embarrassed of me, just shame, lots of shame which is too bad. But the more that I’ve been in a relationship and been, like, I’m proud of who I am and I can get lost in it. 

I get in my head too much. There’s too many people’s – like, I know what people say because they’ve said it to me many times. “Like all gay people want to do is be in your face, be in your face.” I’m like, I don’t want to be that person, but I also just want to be me. I want to just show you that I just want to be me and also I want other people who are in our situations to be able to see two lesbians out and be ok because I didn’t see a lot of that. There was a lot of shame around it with me growing up. And the lesbian, I would, I would seek out and be, “Oh, my gosh, that couple, they’re so cute.” And I'd find them and I’d be like, ok. That is possible for me. That is possible out there and I’m not alone in this. 

JEN: Representation matters for everybody. I talked about how parents need to see it, but obviously the individuals themselves need to see that also. How has your life changed, Valerie, since you decided to live authentically? 

VALERIE: I’m infinitely happier about my life. People have asked if I would ever go back and I’m like, “Not on your life. I would never go back.” Again, as I said, it is not easy. I hate being misgendered. And I call it testosterone poisoning, I went through it for five decades. So it’s changed my body in ways that I would prefer never had to change. I’m so jealous of transgender men because they can take hormones that will change some physical characteristics. But those same characteristics they can achieve, I already got and you can’t get rid of them, at least not without a lot of money that I’m not willing to spend. I think some of that is just you hope for certain things but some things you’re just kind of stuck with. But, no. I’m infinitely happier. 

One aspect of my life is that I had to steel myself to be prepared for whatever was going to happen. I don’t get to come out to one person at a time. I was like, “Poof.” And I showed up at church, I didn’t tell anybody at church. I told the bishop, the ward counsel, this is what’s happening, there’s long stories about that. But I just showed up at church one week and I've had conversations with people who say that happen and were totally confused, including thinking that I had a sister they never knew about that was visiting or something, lots of interesting conversations. 

JEN: So when you say you showed up at church, you mean like you showed up in, like, a dress? 

VALERIE: Yeah. It was transition day and I told the bishop, this is the point at which I transition at church. It actually occurred four months ahead of schedule for reasons that involve a long story. But I’m just showing up. And the only people that had been told were the ward counsel, so every member of the ward counsel came over and offered their support, which surprised me. I think it has something to do with the way I approached it. I didn’t go in and talk to anybody about it, I didn’t go to confess anything or to ask for absolution about anything or get counseling. 

I just walked in and said, “Look, this is what’s happening. This is when it’s happening. And all I want to know is am I still welcome here? The ball is entirely in your court. This is what’s happening. It’s happening in your life. It’s happening in my life. It’s happening in everyone’s life in the ward. What are you going to do about it?” So, anyway, nothing I would  go back and change. I would never go back. There have been some painful moments. For that first year I was not allowed to go to any second hour meetings, well, what now we call second hour meetings. I couldn’t go to Relief Society or Priesthood. I was banned from both of them. That’s changed since 2020. I only lived that reality of being out, open, and transitioned socially for like a year and a half. 

There are so many people who live with that for decades. I came out at just about the right time. There are other things that are brewing that we’ve been told about, so we’re waiting to see how things go and how things might change again. So there have been some painful moments at church. I wrote about them on Facebook. They’re out there publically for anyone to read. There’s also been some really good. I have lots of really good people in my ward. I think it helps that I’m not in the Mormon Happy Valley area. I’m out in what would be called “The Mission Field.” 

In fact, I’ve spoken to other members of my ward and they’ve been told my members who are back in Idaho, Utah region that they’ve been brainwashed by coming out to the midwest and turned liberal. But, for the most part, my ward has been really, really good. I’ve had conversations with my bishop. I’ve had conversations with my stake president and I wouldn’t change many things in my life. I wouldn’t say I wouldn’t change anything. That’s not true. There are definitely things I would change. But it’s been a measurable better life for me than before transition. 

JEN: I’m going to have to tell my family, we lived in the midwest for about 15 years. I’ll have to tell them that’s what happened to me.  All my years in Ohio, Missouri, and Iowa turned me liberal. When you guys think back on your lives, are there ways that being closet held you back in life through your youth and early adulthood. Whit, let’s go with you first.

WHIT: Yeah, for sure. I think that there’s a couple of things that came to mind when you said that because, when I first came out, I know that it confused some of my really close friends and my mom or sister because they were like, “You had boyfriends. You got married super young.” And I think, for me, I was just trying so hard to live the life that I was told to live and what was supposed to bring me this eternal happiness and stuff. And I think, in not being authentic and being closeted, that shut me off from being even better than I could’ve been at that time. Like being more open, being less judgemental, like really going on my path. I think it took me back from my path for a long time and being my authentic self. 

I think one of the things that really has affected me and my life was not coming out to my kids sooner.  I was so worried about what they would think of me that I built some walls there with my kids that I wish I could go back and take down. When I did come out, that was one of the things that I had a lot of work around with my kids and stuff. They were awesome when I came out and they were super loving. But they did have some hurt. Like, “I can’t believe you wouldn’t trust me with this.” And this doesn’t change anything for me and I think I spent too many years putting up that wall, like, they’re going to hate me. They’re going to think I’m the worst person in the world, so I’m going to shield them from this. So, I think those relationships were affected. I love my kids to death and we have a great relationship, I feel like, now. And so being able to take some of them to fully know me and know who I am has changed my life for the better for sure. 

JEN: I hear that from a lot of people, that being closeted, when you’re shielding parts of yourself, makes it so that you kind of go through life never feeling totally known and seen. That makes a lot of sense to me. How about you, Valerie? You were closeted publically for most of your life. Did it hold you back in any way? 

VALERIE: Oh, yes. I blame it on other circumstances, but I was a complete loner for my entire childhood. We moved a lot, so I attended 13 schools by the time I made it through high school. And so I used to attribute it to the fact that I was just always moving. But I also know that whenever I came into a new environment, I didn’t not want to associate with boys and it was difficult to associate with girls because it was painful to do that. And so I always just tended to form my own group. Like, I would gather the strays around me and make my own group. And so I spent my entire time being unique or weird and kind of embracing that. So, to some degree, it shaped my personality. But, yeah, now I’m still comfortable being alone because I’ve felt alone almost my entire life. 

And I think a good part of that was because I was afraid to create attachments. You mentioned earlier that women need women. And one of the things that I always craved and I look back and see it even clearer now. I have always seen what I called platonic intimacy between girls and women and I can look at photographs and see the way people stand and the way they address each other and the way they just congregate around each other, the way they express themselves to each other, their love and their friendship that exists as I’ve always perceived it with women that doesn’t not happen with men. And I craved that. And I knew where it was, but I couldn’t go get it. 

There were circumstances that I kind of manifested it. I was a cheerleader my senior year of high school. The only male cheerleader they ever had. It was me and it was a squad of me and nine other girls, although we didn’t know they were other girls at the time. And I loved being in that environment because I was just part of that team. And I was part of the closeness of that group. It still was difficult to believe that I was there. And so I was still even holding back in that environment because I didn’t fit in anywhere. And since you didn’t fit in anywhere, you found ways to – or I did – I found ways to embrace the uniqueness of my situation. So I could be the class clown. 

I was usually considered the smartest person in the room a lot of times. And I’m like, well, hang onto that because you’ve got one thing going for you. I was definitely not always the smartest person in the room, just sometimes I think the way I had been raised and the degree of confidence that I had to develop in myself because I wasn’t going to get it from society around me, I just would build that up in my own head and then kind of manifest it around everyone else. Um, definitely in developing friendships. So I did my loner thing a lot. I did develop a pretty good relationship with some girls. But it was always a small group because it couldn't be the whole group. And I did not develop any long term relationships with males. 

JEN: How about you, Soper. Did being closeted for a long time hold you back in any way in life? 

SOPER: Yeah. In lots of ways. I think friendships with women. I was so scared to death of it. And I have some of my greatest friendships are with women. You know, and I can’t believe that I didn’t have those connections before. I also think that being closeted, my mental health suffered so bad. Like, I was in the trenches more than I ever should have had to be. And suicidal ideation, like, I was stuck in this darkness and it didn’t matter how hard I tried to climb, I always fell back down in the hole and over and over and over and over again. And coming back to, I always felt like I’m living my life for all these other people and never living my life for me. I’m living my life to fit and to work towards something and pretend because I didn’t want to disclose anything. I wanted to be so much this. And so much time, again, living for other people’s expectations, other things, and not living true to me and that’s probably held me back the most. 

JEN: OK. I’m going to ask just one quick question. If you look back across your life, think about one thing that you would do differently now that you have the hindsight. I’m not going to guess how old any of you are. The hindsight of some age behind you. Is there one thing that you would do differently? 

VALERIE: Well, I already told you I was born in ‘64, so you all know how old I am. One thing I would do differently, if I had known transition was possible, I might have advocated for it for myself stronger. I would love to have had community that would’ve allowed me to do that. I think society in the last eight years, six of the last eight years were actually really highly conducive to that which is why we see an explosion of transgender people because it suddenly felt safe to come out. Things have kind of reversed for a little bit. 

But if I had, looking back on that at a younger age, if I’d had the knowledge and any kind of support system to do it, I would have advocated for transition, especially before puberty. I hate what happened to me through puberty. And I would’ve been more open. I was not an ally to the LGBTQ community because I could not do it. I could not associate with it because it was too painful to be even involved in any way. So I would’ve been far more open about a lot of things. I would’ve been a  far less conservative person. 

WHIT: I think the thing that I look at that I wish I would’ve done that a little bit different is have a little bit more confidence and not focus so much on what I think other people are thinking or what the religion I grew up in thought of me. And really just have confidence in who I am and focus on who I am. And I’m like Valerie, where I wish I would've advocated more back then and been more of an ally even for myself. I felt like, it’s interesting, because I remember being in some of those discussions and feeling like I couldn’t advocate because I was gay. And so I was like I can’t. I have a biased opinion, almost, is what it felt like. I am what they’re talking about so my opinion doesn’t matter. So I think I would’ve just been more confident in myself and in who I am and come out early for sure. 

JEN: How about you, Soper? 

SOPER: I think the same lines. Again, there’s things that life has given me and I don’t regret a lot of things. But I think one thing I wish I would’ve done sooner is to find that self-love, to love myself. And I would’ve been in the space where I’m at sooner if I could’ve accepted and loved those pieces of me at a sooner time. 

JEN: We are, unfortunately, out of time. But I do want to express deep gratitude for each of you for sharing a little bit of your life and your hearts with us today. These conversations are always a little bit emotional because these are vulnerable things that carry a lot of weight in our lives. But I’m convinced that the more people get to know LGBTQ people, the more that fear will decrease and love will multiply. So, thank you to each of you for participating with me this morning.

VALERIE: Thank you. 

WHIT: Thank you.

SOPER: Thank you. 

JEN: Thanks so much for joining us here in the den. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. We’d also love it if you could take a minute to leave us a positive rating and review on whatever platform you’re listening to us on. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. But, review or not, we’re glad you’re here. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can visit our website at mamdragons.org or follow us on Instagram or Facebook. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes.