Moving from Tolerance to Celebration

Finding out your child is LGBTQ can bring up different emotions for different parents. For many, expectations have to change, beliefs may be challenged, and what you thought you knew about your child may have to evolve. In this week’s episode of In the Den, Jen visits with therapist Liz Landry about some of the challenges of parenting and how to move from tolerating to celebrating your LGBTQ child. 

Special Guest:

Liz Landry has a master's degree in clinical social work and a bachelor's degree in biochemistry. She worked in community mental health for six years, and she now works in private practice psychotherapy. Liz believes everyone is deserving of a fulfilling life through mental and emotional freedom. As part of the LGBTQ+ community, she is committed to creating a space that is safe and affirming to help dismantle beliefs that have caused shame, anxiety, guilt, or distress. She grew up in the “Bible Belt” of the South, and she has multiple family members still active in the LDS church. Liz knows firsthand how damaging and stifling oppressive systems can be. Therefore, she is also committed to dismantling white supremacy, misogyny, misogynoir, and hetero-normative culture, both in her therapeutic work and her personal activism.

Links from the Show:

Episode on Ring Theory and finding parental support: https://inthedenwithmamadragons.buzzsprout.com/2082774/12088608-ring-theory-and-finding-parental-support

Find Liz here: https://optimismcounseling.com/liz-landry 

Join MamaDragons today at www.mamadragons.org 

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you.

Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at mamadragons.org.

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.

I’ve been asked in the past why parents need a place of support and education when they have a child who is LGBTQ. Basically, why does our group exist? After all, it isn’t like these people are LGBTQ. It isn’t like they’re facing oppression. Those are the people who need support, right, our queer loved ones. And when people ask this question, they’re not wrong. The center of the situation, the voice and experience that needs to be center is absolutely the queer individual. But relationships matter and parents have a unique ability to make life easier or more difficult for their children and it doesn’t matter how old that child is. Today, we’re going to talk about the journey for parents. What does it look like? What are all these crazy emotions that come up and maybe feel irrational? We’re going to be talking about these things with Liz Landry.

Liz has a master's degree in clinical social work and a bachelor's degree in biochemistry. She has worked in community mental health for six years, and is now in private practice focusing on the LGBTQ community. As a  part  of the LGBTQ+ community herself, she is committed to creating safe and affirming spaces to help people dismantle the beliefs that have caused shame, anxiety, guilt, or distress.Welcome, Liz, to In The Den. 

LIZ: Thank you so much for having me. I’m glad to be here and honored to share the space with you all. 

JEN: So framing ideas for what to talk about for this conversation was super easy for me because it’s based on so many common ideas from inside our parenting group. But thinking of actual questions was a little bit trickier because sometimes these thoughts and feelings that parents are having could potentially be offensive to the LGBTQ people themselves who might potentially be listening. And I just want to highlight before we start that I recognize that some of these questions might be coming from a place of ignorance and so they might sound offensive. Our goal is to remember Maya Angelou, right, “When we know better, we do better.” And we want to offer some steps to help us know better so that we can do better. 

So, to start us off, Liz, talk to us about the difference between tolerance and acceptance and celebration, those ideas when something new comes up. 

LIZ: Yeah. These are used interchangeably often, especially in many contexts around LGBTQ individuals like, “I love the person not the sin. I love you even though I don’t support your life choices.” and. “I’m  celebrating you because you’re still in my life still.” And they’re actually quite different when we look at what tolerance, acceptance, and celebration feel like for the individual, like what they actually look like for the queer kid or the individual in the family. 

If you’re thinking about tolerance and you’re thinking about tolerating something you don’t like, right, like the vegetable you’re eating or dinner. You’ll eat it because you know it’s good for you, but you don’t really love it and you’re not going to pick it. Imagine if your kid is that vegetable. That doesn’t feel great to think about when you frame it that way. They’re not like this chocolate pie that you’re super excited to know. And it also changes how we’re going to interact with people because if we’re just tolerating them, then we’re not really going to be inquisitive. We’re not going to ask questions to learn about their life, to learn more, to move from a place of ignorance to this place of knowledge. We’re just going to allow them to exist beside us and be, essentially, ambivalent about their existence in our lives. 

And that’s not what anyone wants to feel in relationships, especially with the person that’s half their DNA, who is really important to them, presumably. And so moving from tolerance to acceptance to celebration is moving through this trajectory of inquisitiveness. It’s trajectory of being excited about your kid, wanting to learn more, really wanting to engage with them and being, not only accepting, not only being willing to face whatever your kid is and being willing to  let them exist beside you, but being excited for who they are, being excited for where they’re going, being excited for where they’ve been and really getting involved in their life and looking past whatever differences or grief you might have in their life and really getting to a point where you can be together and look at the beauty of everything that is regardless of whether that matches what you expected or not. 

JEN: When I think of the word tolerance, I always think of flies at a picnic. Like, we’re tolerating the flies at the picnic, but we wish they weren’t here. 

LIZ: Yeah. 

JEN: So, as a therapist and an LGBTQ person yourself, how does the language matter as compared to the action? Once I heard a mom say, I totally have accepted that he’s gay and has a partner. We even let his partner come to our house.” How does that impact, like, interact with the words and the language that’s used? And how does that impact the relationship with the person who’s saying those sorts of things?

LIZ: Absolutely. That’s a really great question. So I’m primarily a psychodynamic therapist which means that I read between the lines. And I pull out implicit things for other people to recognize. And our language is a really incredible window into our implicit minds and into our implicit biases. And hearing someone say, “Well, we let them come over,” is putting yourself in a position of power. And saying, “I’m in a position of power with my gay son and I let their boyfriend come over. How generous of me. How wonderful of me to let them, to tolerate them” Right. 

And, although the action is kind, and the action is at best neutral, letting someone's partner come over, right, if you frame it in the terms of these power dynamics and like, “I am the parent. You want my approval.  I’m going to let your boyfriend come over. Look at how great I am.” That the actions don’t match the words there, right? But what you want to say there is, “I’m celebrating my child because I let their partner come over, how wonderful.” But you actually said is, “I’m tolerating this person. I let them celebrate me. Look how good I’m going.” and that makes sense, right? We want to be celebrated. That’s probably a step for you that you’ve taken to have this person in your house. That’s probably a good bit of emotional work you’ve done to get there. 

But your language isn’t matching. So when we look at the dissonance between language and action, one of the things to highlight there is, is my internal state, actually reflecting my actions, or is my action more of a tolerance.” And often language is a bridge to recognize that. And so, if you’re noticing that your language doesn’t really match your actions, your actions don’t really match your language, that’s a really good tool to introspect and say, “Hey, maybe I’m actually not as progressive as I thought. Maybe I’m not as accepting as I thought. Why could I be framing things in this way? Why would I be thinking in this way? And is there something more that I could do to grow here?” 

JEN: I probably will cycle back to this concept of tolerance because there's so much there. But I want to jump for a minute and talk about the feelings of grief that parents sometimes express. Sometimes they tell us they don’t even understand. They’re like, “I’ve been an LGBTQ Ally and marched in pride for years. I totally love my kid. I totally support my kid. But I’ve been crying for a week and I can’t figure it out.” Talk to me about that grief, like, what is it? 

LIZ: Yeah, grief is so many things. We often think of grief as mourning someone who has passed away, you know, mourning something that no longer exists, if you will. And, in a lot of ways, that is something we have to do every day. We have to mourn so many things in our lives because we have expectations for so many things in our lives. I’m not a parent myself. I don’t ever plan to be. But I know that parents have a really incredible investment in their child in a way that no one else does. I’ve worked really closely with parents, really closely with queer folks for many years, being someone myself, right. I see the investment that parents have in kids because that is a very specific relationship. You cultivate this entire human for 18+ years, you’re going to have expectations of them.

 And when we have expectations of anyone, and it doesn’t match with the reality, we have to grieve. Like that space is grief. And often, even if a parent is really supportive of the queer kid, a parent has marched as an ally, they’ve really been a great advocate, that is not what they expected for their child. And so, seeing someone be so starkly different, someone that you care about more than anyone else in the world, being so starkly different than what you expected them to be is grief, right? That doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t support them. That doesn’t mean that you’re a terrible ally now. That just means that your kid isn’t who you thought they were and that is going to be hard. 

And there’s also this level of, especially if you’re a strong ally and have been for years, knowing from the outside some of the struggles of queer people, right? Especially with our political climate right now. The world is not a hospitable place, I should say America is not a super hospitable place for queer people. And seeing the person you care about most in the world telling you that they have to now face that, is somber. We want to protect people, especially our children, from the world, from anything that can hurt them. That is kind of the essence of parental love is protecting them and being this nurturing space. And they’re essentially telling you, “I am going into a really hard thing in life now and this is going to be what I’m experiencing.” And when you hear someone tell you that, it is shocking and it hurts and it’s sad. And there’s this empathetic connection. There’s this grief. There’s so much there to grieve with learning that your kid is queer, even if you’ve been a really good ally.

JEN: I like how you mentioned the expectations because one thing I have noticed is that parents who suspect – and that’s a horrible word to use. I just don’t have a different word available right now – who suspect or guess, maybe, when they’re child is really young, like we sort of already assumed that this coming out process would happen at some point from the time you were three or four. They seem to adjust a little bit quicker to embrace this new reality and celebrate this new reality than those of us who were so unprepared and surprised to hear the information. And just as an example of what you said, when we have certain expectations, if you’re building and creating those expectations across fifteen years, really seeing your kid in a different way then if you’ve actually been missing some things, some information when you’re forming those expectations. 

LIZ: Yeah. 

JEN: So, if I, as a parent, am struggling to control my tears and my emotions at first, and we see this a lot, if I’m literally grieving the coming-out process, what sort of advice would you have for me as a parent? 

LIZ: So I think that, first of all, I would say that you’re allowed to have those emotions. Any emotion, all emotions, they are welcome and celebrated, right? This idea of tolerance and celebration again, they are celebrated. They are here. They are welcome. This is a normal reaction to something that you are sad about and recognizing that. Because it’s hard to feel the grief anyways, it’s even harder if you’re judging yourself for feeling grief. So if you can remove that judgment or work to remove that judgment and allow yourself to exist in the space of grief and sadness and tears. Make some time for yourself. Carve out time in your day or in your week or whatever you can to just sit with it and be sad and cry. And allow yourself time to be ok experiencing that grief. 

And get familiar with it because it will probably come up for you again. And, when we suppress emotions, they don’t go away. They just come up in less ideal ways later. So, give yourself time to process it. Give yourself a non-judgmental space as much as you can. And then, also, recognize that your child may not want to hear this. It’s an emotional burden you’re putting on your child and they might not want to hold that. They’ve already done a big emotional labor in letting you into this really vulnerable space in their life. They’ve already done a big emotional labor in figuring out who they are in the queer space in the world right now. That’s really hard. 

It’s your job to not put that on them. Even if they’re an adult, even if they’re a teenager or older, they are still your child and you are still the parent and your job is to protect them when you can, including from your own emotions. Like, you may be sad because of what they said, but it is not their job to fix that for you, right? It’s not their job to apologize. It’s not their job to hold space for you. And if they want to, that’s wonderful. If not, that’s also wonderful. So be really clear about how much of this grief that you share with them. And check in. Ask them if that’s ok. Ask them if they have space for it. Ask them how they’re feeling about it. And respect that boundary, especially in the beginning stages of feeling the grief, feeling all of this, all of the feels for anyone who has come out. This is going to set the foundation for how your child is able to talk to you in the future. 

So be mindful of where you’re putting this energy and putting this grief. And then, I would say, find a community that you can share it with, like, Mama Dragons, like something in your local community. Maybe a friend that’s had a similar experience because those people are going to be the people that you’re going to want to go to for support. Those people are going to be the people who are going to understand and who are going to have the emotional capacity if not your child.  And it’s not another queer person, either. Like, your friend’s kid’s, gay friend. Like, it’s someone who is on the same plane who has agreed to take on this emotional burden because you also have to be able to take on that yourself and give space for it. 

JEN: I really like that. We actually did an entire episode on learning where to place your emotions and centering and dumping out and those sorts of things. So if people are curious, like how do I find space or whatever, there is an earlier episode on that that people can go to. I think it’s so important, especially if your child is still closeted. Even if they’re 30 years old  but they're still closeted and you, as a parent, feel like you need to process, you need to have someone to talk to. But there’s no one to talk to because you can’t “out” your kid. That’s not your job or your responsibility. And that’s why we have lovely people like Liz, who are professionals that we can go to who will hold confidences and help us process some of those things. 

Just the basic, when it comes to bigger issues like transition, like maybe your child is going to transition and depending on age, all the sudden, you have to become a medical expert on a specific topic. Those things are hard and it’s nice to have people you can talk to about that without burdening your child. They’re already working on their own stuff. They don’t need your process also. 

LIZ: Yeah. 

JEN: So one thing we hear parents say a lot is the idea, like a fear. That comes up over and over. “I’m so afraid. I’m so scared. I wasn’t prepared for this and I’m just stuck in anxiety all the time.” Talk to us about what sorts of things they’re fearing. You, kind of, touched on it a little bit before. But talk about this and how can we move past that. Because you can’t really celebrate something that you’re afraid of. 

LIZ: Yeah. Absolutely. Fear is a natural emotion to something that is unknown. We fear so many things that are unknown all the time, right? The dark, and illness, the election. Any of those things we’re going to fear because we don’t know, right? So the first step is, figure out what you don’t know and go towards it. It seems so simple, right. But if you’re afraid because you don’t know what it means for your child to be transgender, you don’t know what it means for your child to be aromantic, you don’t know what it means for your child to be bisexual, go find literature on it. Go research it. Go figure out the questions that you have and look for answers. 

You are a capable adult who can do that. There’s so much information online and books and things like that. And it’s natural to have that fear. And the best way to eliminate that fear is to figure out what you’re scared of and learn that it isn’t as scary after all, right? And similar to what we talked about with the grief, make space for it. Make space for the fear. Look at it. See what it’s trying to tell you. Fear is often an emotion that is covering up something deeper, right? Like you’re afraid that your child will – going back to the 80’s – get HIV, right? Like you’re afraid that your child will have all of these challenging intersectionalities in the world. They’ll be discriminated against. You’re afraid of all of these things. 

And if we take that one level deeper, you’re afraid your child is going to get hurt. You’re afraid your child is going into something that you can’t protect them from. That is true whether or not you acknowledge it, right? Looking at it, being afraid of it, does not make it more true. It just makes it feel more real to you. So kind of removing yourself from the situation and saying, “OK. I am afraid of this. This is what my child is doing? I must accept this fear. This is going to exist in the world regardless of whether I’m afraid of it or not. What is my fear doing?” Often our fear is telling us that we care a lot about our children. Our fear is telling us that we love this person, that we want to protect them. 

Those are great things to celebrate. Those are great things that I’m sure any parent wants to cultivate within themselves. Fear, not necessarily the avenue to do that, right? So recognizing the deeper levels of what your fear is telling you and what that means for you and how you can cultivate that deeper meaning in a more healthy way or a more helpful way. And then, allowing yourself the space to research it, figuring out what that looks like, figuring out what you’re afraid of. And finding people who have been through it. Because, often, the fear is, “I am so unaware of the language, the terminology. This wasn't around in my generation. I don’t really know  what I’m doing. I’m going to offend someone.” Yeah. You probably will, that’s ok, right? 

I think, in a lot of ways, the media has been presented as these people who are ready to jump on you when you miss-pronoun someone, and that’s not the case, right? Most of us are gentle and kind and understand. And if you’re genuinely coming from a place of concern and a place of introspection, a place of curiosity, then we’re going to be receptive to that. We’re human and so is your child, right? And so allowing that fear of saying the wrong thing, saying the wrong pronoun, saying the wrong anything, allowing that to be part of the process and accepting that that probably will happen and you are a human and you probably will make those mistakes and it’s OK. and accepting all of the ways that you’re probably going to fail, being ok with that, accepting that your child will probably still accept you for that. Or allowing them the space for, at least, decide whether they want to or not, right? And accepting that you now have a challenge in front of you and that is unavoidable and the fear is going to – the challenge is going to be there whether or not you fear it. 

JEN: It’s interesting how many of these things really are normal. And I mentioned before how sometimes these things are quite offensive to the LGBTQ person who’s decided to allow you in. And It’s obvious if I tell someone that I am pregnant and they start to cry or whatever, that’s going to hurt me. And if I tell somebody that I’m nonbinary or asexual and they start to cry, that’s going to impact me, right, that first response. And I try all the time when I’m working with teens to remember to remind them that somebody's first response isn’t probably their permanent response. That first impression sometimes sticks with us for a long time because we have so much invested in just the telling of it, and then it goes badly. 

But, like when my son came out, I know I did four million things wrong. And he was able to be really gentle and gracious with me. Simultaneously, we hear stories all the time where these things hurt people so deeply that they’re not really able to hold that space for the parent who responded badly. The parent has come around, done a bunch of research, and learned a ton of things and is ready to celebrate. But the individual who first talked to them and came out isn’t able to yet let go of those first impressions. Can you talk to us overall about this, like how somebody’s individual upbringing and expectations, our goal, right, would be for all of us to respond well. That would be the goal, but that’s not necessarily the reality. So talk to me a little bit about that for people who, maybe, did it wrong and what their options are for growth at this point. 

LIZ: That’s funny that you bring that up because even this morning as I was preparing for this, I figured this question would come up. This is something that I talk to queer people and queer parent's, or parents of queer people, about so often. Those first impressions do matter, especially when someone is so scared to share that vulnerability from them to you. And if it doesn’t go well, that can be really hurtful. I think, first and foremost, check in with your queer kid about where they want to go, what it looks like for them, and respect that boundary. This is your emotional process that you’re having, but really this is their experience and you’re just kind of along for the ride, right? And so check in with them on how much it hurt them, what they’re willing to do, how vulnerable they want to be, like what that looks like for them. 

And put the ball in their court because so much autonomy has already been taken from them. If they’ve come out to you and then you started crying, right? Or you said like, “Oh, my God, don’t tell me that.” Right? You said something that you didn’t necessarily mean, but that was your first response. Youv’e already taken quite a bit of autonomy, taken quite a bit of safety and that’s an unfortunate reality that we have to face, right? So put the ball in their court. Say like, “Hey, I’m so sorry. It’s not excusing my actions. It’s in your hands. Let me know where you want to move forward.”

 And then work internally to process the fact that you hurt someone. Allow yourself to accept that part of yourself. Often, again with the expectations of ourselves, we always think, “If my kid comes out to me, I’m going to react wonderfully.” Probably most people here are hopeful that they would celebrate their kid and that’s just sometimes not the response that we have. And so cultivate some self compassion there for like, “OK. I didn’t expect this. This is was something that was very new to me. I was raised in a time when we didn’t talk about these things, when gay was synonymous with HIV, when there wasn’t anything that I could do to protect these people and there was a lot of fearmongering around LGBTQ issues, especially even now as the revitalization in politics has cultivated all this new fear around queer issues.” And allow yourself to recognize where it came from and recognize that that’s not an excuse, right? That is a reason and still you hurt someone. 

And that’s called a dialectic, holding two opposing ideas and being in the middle of them. It’s a really challenging space to be when you’ve hurt someone that you care so deeply about. You have to recognize a part of yourself that you don’t love. We all have parts of ourselves that we wish we could just hide in the shadows forever. And, maybe, this first response is that part for you. And that’s ok, right? We all have those actions, we have those reactions. Put the ball in your kids' court. Figure out internally how you want to process that. And, based on your child’s response, figure out where you’re going to move forward, right? If they need space, give them space. If they don’t want to talk to you about any of their queerness anymore, that’s ok. And just be what they need you to be and then process internally why you had that response.

 Are there implicit biases at play? Did you grow up in a religious environment that told you that your kid is now going to Hell and you’re really scared? Did you grow up in an environment where you’re afraid that your kid is going to be ostracized from a job now? Where do you live in the world and the country? Is that at play as well? And introspect where these ideas came from and then challenge them because, again, this is like a window into your subconscious, a window into your implicit biases. And it’s unfortunate that it had to come out in your child, like in this instance. But this is an opportunity to grow. And if you grieve it and you’re sad about it, and then you learn from it, that’s how you make progress. 

JEN: We talk often in this space and in the Mama Dragons spaces about how queerness is one of the very few marginalized identities people are not choosing by any stretch. But your family doesn’t necessarily belong to that same marginalized community. If you are a part of a racial minority, it’s pretty likely that at least one of your parents also has experienced similar marginalization in that race. But for LGBTQ people, sometimes there’s nobody in the family that’s ever experienced this marginalization. And so I look at what I see as the brilliance of the black mother who is so adept and talented at talking to her children about how to move safely through the world and how to navigate the experiences that they likely will face and experience. And they’re so good at it.

 And I wanted to be able to do that so desperately for my queer child when I was afraid of how the world might treat either of them. But I didn’t know. I hadn’t moved through those spaces. And so it’s kind of a different sort of marginalization, where you don’t know as the parent. You don’t know. So it’s like this big cloudy fog of danger. And especially for the trans community, the more you learn at the very beginning, the more scared you get because those statistics are quite daunting. 

And when you come from places of lots of privilege, I think you sometimes are oblivious to how dangerous and scary the world can be at large. So these things are new and I try to talk to people all the time and be like, “It’s not that your fear’s irrational. It’s just that it’s new. It’s new to you. You haven’t had to learn how to process it.” You’ve mentioned the word expectations several times. Talk to me about what sorts of things parents expect. I remember when my own son came out, realizing that I had expectations that I didn’t even know that I had. What sorts of things do parents tend to just assume will happen with their kids and then when they come face to face with this idea of queerness they have to question those expectations? 

LIZ: So I think I kind of want to front load this with I am a middle class, white, cis, woman. And that was my upbringing. And so this is the lens of expectation there. I understand it’s very different for people of other intersectionalities. I typically work with people who are like me. And I think, often, expectations, you think about when you’re first pregnant and you think, “Oh My God, what is their name going to be? What is there room going to look like? What is their first day of school going to be like?” And really that saying like, “OK. So, how am I going to give this child fun? How am I going to give them a space? How am I going to give them these experiences in life?” And from the very beginning we have expectations based on gender, based on family of origin, based on what job you think they might have, right? 

Like if you come from a lineage of physicians, you’re going to, in part, expect that your kid is a physician or expect that that is at least a likely probability for your child. Often parents expect that their kids will grow up, get married, have grandchildren. Like that is just a very general thing that I see parents expecting often from children. And I think that’s part of this really huge cultural shift we’ve had in the generation above me, me, and the generation below me. I’m 26, so, there’s been such a big shift from all of those three generations. And I think the generation before me, parents, my parents, often have this expectation that that is the American dream. You get up, you buy a house, you get married, you have a kid, you have a career, right?

 And those are such implicit expectations for most of us and that is the expectation of success. That’s the expectation of love. That’s the expectation of happiness, or at least the hope of those things. I think parents also expect children to be able to be equipped to move through the world and be safe and be like generally OK in the world and the world to treat them generally well.  Most people have fears of if they don’t find a job, what if they have this degree that I don’t feel is marketable? What if they have x, y, z that typically we expect that there is going to be some type of family, they will continue on a lineage or a happy life of their own and they’ll have a job and these experiences in life that are kind of heteronormative. 

JEN: I like how you said the expectation of happiness, right? Like when we have kids, we expect that they’re going to be happy because we’re going to do such a great job as parents of making them happy. I know in my own experience, I knew what made me happy. And so those were the things I wanted for my kids, right? Because I wanted them to be happy and clearly this is the path to happiness. I  already lived it. 

LIZ: Yeah. 

JEN: But those assumptions that we make can be really tricky to navigate. My oldest is a boy. When we had him, I absolutely just assumed he would play sports because in my head on some level some sort of bias I had adopted over time that boys, happy boys, played sports. So half of his little rattles looked like baseballs and basketballs. And his room was decorated up with sports stuff. I don’t even like sports. I was just trying to support him in this world of sports which obviously all men needed in order to be happy. And we kind of worked through every sport. 

By the time he was ten he was trying swimming, competitive swimming and stuff. And finally, by the time he was about 12, I was like, oh, sports don’t make him happy. We have to figure out what actually it is that makes him happy. And he started participating in some musical theater and doing some singing lessons and he was great at the piano. And I was like, Oh, wait. I was just wrong all along. Being a happy boy with friends isn't synonymous with the idea of playing sports. But we really tried for like a decade to get this kid – We just hadn’t found the right sport yet. 

LIZ: I think that’s such a good point on social expectation and social expectations of happiness, right? You said sports and being this pro football player with a cheerleader girlfriend, is happiness for a man. And that is such a social expectation of boy, of man. And we have social expectations of like girl, female, too, right? Like we’ll give her the doll. She’ll be really good at cooking. She must really love to sew or do ballet or whatever. And I think that we want our kids to be happy. That is one of the primary goals, safe, happy, loved. And so we’re going to put them in the situations that we think are going to make them happy whether that’s sports for a decade or like dancing or whatever that looks like. 

And our expectation of happiness is based on a social expectation. It’s based on socialization of gender roles, socialization of a heteronormative culture. And often when the child breaks that, the child breaks whatever the expectation is, like they don’t like sports, they’re queer. They want to do something else. Or like this isn’t what I thought happiness was, what if you're not happy? This wasn’t my plan. I feel like I don’t know how to make you happy anymore because you’re not aligned with this linear fashion of happiness that I have for you. And that’s nerve wracking, right? Especially if you don’t know anything about it. Like maybe you’re a man and you want your kid to play the sport that you played because you know about it and you’ll bond. But then your kid wants to do ballet instead and you’re like, “Well, that wouldn’t make me happy. So surely that can’t make them happy.” 

JEN: Yeah. I think sometimes the best skill we can teach new parents that nobody taught me, was that basic concept of “It’s not my life.” 

LIZ; Yeah. 

JEN: We have these kids and we have all these expectations. And most of us are probably a little bit too young and a little bit naive going into it, right? We see TV shows about what parenting might be like. We have this child who is our most valuable investment of our time and our hope and our financial resources. And we feel like, as a mom, – I’m going to tell you straight out – we feel like we know that kid better than they know themselves for years as they’re growing because you remember what they did when they were two and when they were four and how they talked when they were six. And so I think sometimes we get trapped in this idea of, “I know who you are.” And we have to have a pretty serious brain adjustment to actually see who they really are, who they’ve really become when they’re trying to tell us who they are. 

`And I hear moms say this all the time, especially when it comes to gender. “My child has just told me that they’re actually female, but they’ve always loved bugs and they've always loved dinosaurs and they’ve always loved dirt.” Or the opposite, right? My child’s telling me that they’re actually a boy, but they love the color pink and they love dresses. And we’re trying, almost, as parents impose on our children like, “You don’t really know yourself. I’m the one who knows you.” How can we switch, even if they’re 12, how do we switch to actually getting to know the child that exists in front of us who wants us to know them as opposed to the opposite? 

LIZ: Absolutely. So I think, first and foremost, I would say look at this through a developmental lens. Like, do you expect your kid to be the same kid when they’re two and when they’re ten? I hope they’re not. Right? I think, if they are, that's sad in a different way, right? They’re not the same person. They’re growing so fast. They’re developing so fast. And that is an expectation that doesn’t make any logical sense when you break it down that way. They’re brain is forming so fast. They’re having so many new experiences. 

And so then I would inquire, what else is the expectation? If it doesn’t make sense that you would expect your kid to be the same at two and ten, then what is the expectation? Well, the expectation, likely, is that they are half of you. You grew them, for the one with the uterus inside of you, for someone without, you watched that experience. You watched them from conception, right? You have known this person longer than they’ve known themselves, essentially, right? And I think we all, also, expect that children will be similar to us. Where, they’re half of me, so they have to be me. And I think part of that expectation is you have a little you running around to a degree. And then, if someone is not that, then it’s really hard to accept that or accept that there will be this chasm between you and your child because they are their own person. 

If you do your job well in therapy and in parenting, the person leaves. The goal is not to keep them bound to you forever. The goal is to make them into someone who makes them happy. Someone who makes themselves who they want to be and then release them into the world, right? And if we look at it through that goal and that expectation, then if you say, “I know you. I know what makes you happy. I know what this looks like,” Right? And they’re telling you, you don’t. This is actually not who I am. This is not my experience. Then, you can say, “Oh. OK. Well, I thought I knew. And that’s kind of sad that I didn’t because I feel like now you’re distant from me and I don’t have as much to relate to you on if I thought that I knew you and I thought that we had this really strong bond. And you’re telling me that you, your own person and you’re telling me that you’re so different from me. And, now, what if we’re not as connected as I thought? What if we’re not as the same as I thought? What is left then of our connection, of our special bond we have as parent and child?” 

And that’s a valid fear. That’s a very sad thought to have. But that’s also the reality that you’re growing an entirely different person. And if what you do want, ultimately, is to have a relationship. You can nurture a relationship that feels healing and healthy and whole, then you’ll listen to them. And you’ll listen to what they’re telling you because, although you’ve seen them grow, they have been in their own experience. They have been in their mind. They’ve been in their body. They’ve been internally processing for 12 years here, right? They have had their experiences and as much as you have looked at it front row, from the outside, you’re not inside of them. 

And you have to trust that you’ve done a good enough job at preparing them for who they’re going to be. That they feel, number one, safe enough to tell you this which is already a win. And, number two, that your job shifts now from being really close and this mini-me version of yourself or whatever you expect, to being supportive of who they are and giving them the reins. And maybe that happens sooner than you’d like. Maybe that happens sooner than you’re ready for. But you don’t get to decide that, unfortunately. 

JEN: It’s so interesting because, if we do parenting well, our children at some point just don’t need us in the same ways. And the goal, I think, is to become a relationship of equals and simultaneously it can’t ever be true equals. So you have to, as the parent, I think it’s your job to figure out how to maintain a space where your kid wants to be with you. I didn’t realize until my kids entered adulthood, I don’t think, how much my opinion would continue to matter to them as a parent. And so as we’re exiting ourselves from the parenting role and trying to become these self-sufficient equals that we’re in a relationship with, we have to continue to be mindful. It’s no wonder we make so many mistakes. The whole situation is so fraught with emotion and entanglement and all sorts of things. 

LIZ: I think this is also an expectation of yourself, right? I am a good parent. I love them. It is great. I am so supportive. I am fantastic. Yes, in a perfect world. We don’t live in a perfect world, right? And releasing yourself of the judgments when you fail to meet those expectations because, like you said, you will fail to meet those expectations. And your child, if you’ve done your job well, then they will be gracious. They will have compassion for that. If they see you’re coming from a place of celebrations, there will be space for that. And releasing yourself from your own expectations too. 

JEN: I’ve been super lucky, so far, that my kids have been able to laugh with me, starting early, like when they’re six or seven. I like, “Some of this you’re going to just have to work out with your therapist later and feel free to blame me. But just keep in mind, I tried really hard and then didn’t do it right.” 

LIZ: Yea. I always say parents keep me in business. 

JEN: Yeah. That’s the reality of it, right? And controlling the way that we allow ourselves to feel wounded by not being perfect is sometimes hard for different parents. I’m going to do another big flip. I keep jumping between huge topics because there are so many things I want to cover. 

LIZ: No worries. 

JEN: Talk to me about, I want to focus on bisexuality and this idea we hear parents often say, “Whew, at least he’s only bi. So we’re still hoping that he’ll find a nice girl to marry so that they can have children.” And I actually hear people who are lesbian or bi say, “I told my parents at first that I was bi so that they could have a little bit of an adjustment period.” And so it ends up with this weird bi-erasure where so many people think it’s like a halfway point or like a hopeful place or a starting point. All of those things, which, I know everything that just came out of my mouth is horribly offensive. But those, I just want to address that those concepts exist and I’m hoping you’ll dissect some of those ideas for us a little bit. 

LIZ: Yeah. So, I identify as bisexual and did not come out to my family. Although they’re supportive. They are naive. They live in the south. And I’ve said that directly to them, so I’m sure they would not be surprised to hear me say that now. But it is interesting because I have heard things in my own life and in my professional life where they say, “But you’ve only dated this gender? But you’ve only been this? But I only knew you to be that?” Right? And yes, that’s true. But in my experience, I moved the furthest place I could across the country when I was 20. So I lived here for years now, and I’ve had this whole experience that my family didn’t know, right? 

So I’m giving them this part that I think is palatable to them. And saying like, “Here’s this part of my life. You see the men I’ve dated and that’s all I’m going to give you because the rest of it is mine to keep for now, right?” And recognizing there is some that I had kept and there is some that I had kept for myself because it wasn’t something I wanted to share, something that I wasn’t required to share, that it was too vulnerable to share. There was too much there. And that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t genuine or that I was lying or that in some way my sexuality wasn’t real. It just means that I chose to keep that part away. 

And that is a choice that I can make as an adult and a choice that is hard to recognize as a parent that is valid. Because I talked to my dad often, and it’s hard to think that there’s so much of your child that you didn’t know, right? Like this whole side of your child that you didn’t know. And I think bisexuality as a concept in general is interesting in bi-eraser in the whole. Because, even if we think about someone that we knew in our life who was maybe married to the opposite gender and now they’re in a relationship with the same gender after their divorce. We say, “Well, they were gay the whole time. They obviously have – they’re gay and they found their perfect life.” Which maybe is true, but maybe they’re just also bisexual, but we never phrase it that way, right? Because we think that bisexual is this in between. 

And there’s also this hypersexualization of bisexuality in general that we all kind of have to face. And especially like older generations have to face and I think when your child comes out as bi, often the first thing, and this is bad, but often the first thing that comes to mind is, “Oh My God, that’s only for free fountains,” And that is not something you want to associate with a kid, right? Like, that is an icky thing to think. None of us want to go there. But that’s often so much of what we’ve been socialized to think. So it’s easier to just 

say like, “This is a phase. This is not something that is real. I don’t actually have to address all of these internal biases and the shame and these weird concepts of intertwined sexuality here.” And I think there's also some part of us that wants to protect our expectations again, like protect ourself from that grief because grief is something that is prolific and challenging to deal with. And if we can protect ourselves from grief, we almost always will. If there is a route of least resistance in grief, we will go down it. And sometimes that looks like telling ourselves or our family or even our children that bisexuality is a phase and they’ll just find a heteronormative relationship and they can just ignore it and sweep it under the rug. And that, again, comes in tolerating and celebrating, right? If you’re tolerating someone’s bisexuality, you’ll say, “Oh, that’s fine. But I think you’re going to be ok. We’ll get a fly candle and it will go away, right? We’ll get something and you’ll be able to be normal.” 

JEN: “You just need to meet the right man.”

LIZ” Right. Exactly. Like you’ll be “normal” eventually. And so I think acknowledging that this is part of their life regardless of who they are in a relationship with, regardless of who they’re with, they are still bisexual. And in being attracted to any gender, there’s multiple genders, there’s some essence of this intersectionality and some essence of queerness, this internalized chain, this homophobia you face from the world that is something that they’re going to experience even if, not outwardly because they’re in a straight passing relationship. That will still be something that they have to internally deal with. And you telling them that that is not valid, doesn’t not make it go away. That just makes them feel less safe to bring it to you. And it really makes you an adversary for them in the world. They have so many people already telling them that they’re not valid. They don’t need you to tell them that, too. 

JEN: It hadn’t considered, but I like how you touched on the ways that sometimes we protect ourselves. We try to save ourselves from – introspection is hard work, right? Like examining our own biases and being like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve always been wrong.” That’s a really hard thing to do. And grief is even worse than that. So I like, you kind of just touched on it, but I think sometimes we just lie to ourselves as parents. And you used the phrase, “It’s just a phase.” And sometimes that will come up. Like, we’re supporting him but in the long run we think he’ll probably just marry a girl and be fine. Or we’re using the right pronouns, but we’re pretty sure that at some point, she’s going to go back to dresses again. So we don’t really have to inspect ourselves. We can just temporarily fake it. Until we can go back to that comfort zone.” 

LIZ: Absolutely. And if you think about the stages of grief, we’re going from denial to this part of anger and sadness and depression before we’re getting to acceptance. And denial is the control we feel like we have over the situation is often in denying it. Like, “OK. This is scary and it’s really big and I want to not feel those things. I want to not feel this big impending thing that I’m going to have to introspect on. So I just simply won’t.” And while that does protect you, it doesn’t protect your child, right? 

And, again, if you’re a parent, your job is not to protect yourself in these ways. It’s to protect your child who is vulnerable, especially if they’re younger. And it is hard introspective work, but you are more able to do that. You have more tools to do that than this child. And placing that burden on them doesn’t make sense. It’s not fair to place the burden on them. It’s normal that we want to protect ourselves from any negative thing in the world. But protecting yourself also means putting someone else at risk. And you have to look at the whole picture. 

JEN: When my son first came out, one of the people he told directly, it was like a response of panic. But started saying, “No. No. No. Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me.” And he was amused, actually, which is great. But he was like, “OK. I already did tell you.” “No. No. No. Don’t tell me.” “I already told you.” And that’s kind of what it sounds like you’re saying, right, like as long as I don’t know we  can all just stay in this happy place. But we have to remember that the person who just told us is not in a happy place. They told us because they needed something to be different. They needed to be seen and known. 

LIZ: Yeah. 

JEN: I want to ask you one more question. Talk to us about the members of the community that move through different labels as they search for self-identity. Why does this happen? Why do they do it? And what is the parent’s responsibility throughout that process? 

LIZ: Yeah. That’s a great question. So I think you kind of touched on this with the bisexuality, some people will intentionally say, “I’m bi.” Let’s see how you react to this. And, often, for people in general, I even recommend this in therapy. If you’re not sure how someone is going to react, don’t give them this 10 out of 10 vulnerability first. Give them small doses. See how they’re going to react. See if they’re safe because really it’s going to do more harm if you say, “I am all of these things. Here is my whole safe. Are you going to accept me?” And then someone says, “Ah, no.” 

So it could be that they’re moving through intentionally to test and see if you’re safe. To kind of litmus test the waters and see if they can actually trust you with all of these things because maybe you, for whatever reason, have said these homophobic things. Maybe you threw them in a religion that didn’t appreciate gay people, that didn’t tolerate gay people even or queer people of any sort. And they need to know that you’re safe. And so it could be them testing the waters, right, which they absolutely have the ability to do. 

It could also be that people change. That is something that’s very normal in life in general, right? You’re not going to tell your kid that they were lying when they were four because they said their favorite color is blue and now it’s turquoise. That’s because we got more language about what blue means. We liked blue but we didn’t know that we liked turquoise because we didn’t have the word “turquoise” yet. We didn’t have the ability to look at turquoise. We didn't have the ability to see the depth of blue that there could be, right? And so as people grow, and as people change, change is good. Change means they’re introspecting. Change means that you’re doing the hard work to figure out who you are. 

And if your child is moving through labels, if they’re changing labels, then your job as a parent is to support them and be curious about what that means for them. Most people don’t wake up one day and be like, “Today I think I’m going to be Aro. Tomorrow I think I’m going to be bi.” Most people don’t just wake up and flippantly make these decisions. Chances are, if they’re letting you in on the labels that they’re moving through, it’s because they trust you. And because they trust you to hold space for their development. And it’s also likely because they’re finding new language to describe who they are. They’re finding new social outlets to describe who they are. 

Like, for me personally, being grown in the south, I did not have – I had some inclination, right? I always knew to a degree that I was queer, but I didn’t have the vernacular for it. I didn’t have the safe space for it. I didn’t have much of the ability to experience that because it just wasn’t safe, right? And so moving into who I was as a queer adult, it looked like I was switching teams or going through a phase or whatever. But if we look at the bigger picture of where I was, where the safety was in my community and my life and geographically the legal protections I had in both cases. It makes more sense that I would feel safer to come out here, that I would feel safer to be myself here. And often that’s the case with other people. 

 I think this also touches a bit on detransitioning, too. Which I know there’s been a lot of hype about in the media, right? And there’s many, many reasons why someone might want to detransition, right? And your job is not to tell them whether those reasons are valid or not. Your job is to support them and say like, “Wow.All of this sounds like a shift for you. What can I do to be here for you?” And then process your own emotions or your own responses to that internally, away from that person. And remove your emotions from that situation and support them because they are the one going through it. They are the one going through any of these label switches that are likely really challenging. And it’s understandable that you’d have emotions, and feelings, and questions, and find positive outlets to ask those questions and positive support to be able to get those questions answered that is not putting an emotional burden on your queer child.  

JEN: I was going to bring up transitioning in this realm because I think sometimes for parents, you try to jump on board. “OK. My child has told me that he is a he. And we are doing the testosterone, and we are doing the he thing. And all of a sudden, he’s saying he doesn’t want testosterone anymore and he wants to be called "they/them.” and it can feel from the outside world that people are jumping back and forth, that they’re changing their minds, that they have regrets, or that they did it wrong or all of those sort of really judgy situations. 

But when I talk to the queer individuals themselves and hear their story and their journey, it’s always just a forward journey. They’re not jumping back and forth. They’re not really switching labels or changing their mind. They're just getting more clarity and moving forward. And maybe testosterone was what they needed for a little bit, and now they’re done and they didn’t need it. Or maybe they needed to experiment with it and then it didn’t calm some of the feelings that they were having. It wasn’t the solution that they were hoping it would be. But all of it really is a journey forward, not really the back and forth and craziness that it might feel from the outside. The inside person is moving forward the whole time if we let them and can support them. And I think that’s a beautiful thing. I’m super happy that you touched on transition and that because I think gender is kind of the hot-button topic in the country right now. 

LIZ: Like moving through and moving forward, if you conceptualize this forward trajectory of  your child, right? They’re learning who they are? They’re experimenting with different things. And who they are in the moment is true. Whoever we are today is who we are and that is reality. And maybe something shifts and we’re someone different tomorrow. Like we are moving forwarding into who we’re becoming. And for queer people, number one, that’s really polarized right now moving through any identity. But it’s also, there are more factors. Like, it’s not moving into like, “Who am I as a little girl? Who am I as a college student? Who am I as a wife? Who am I as a mom?” right. 

It’s, “OK. Who am I as bigender? Who am I as bisexuality? Who am I as like these really big existential questions for a kid to be dealing with, right? And they’re able to deal with those. They have the ability to introspect often and know who they are. And, like you mentioned, every step of the way gives them something that they didn’t have before. Even if that’s not leading them to the end goal that you thought that it was, it’s leading them to who they need to be and who they want to become. And that is still to be celebrated. 

JEN: You’re right ‘cause these are big questions, right? We don’t look at someone who’s eating green beans and say, “Oh. You liar. You told me you hated green beans and now you’re eating them.” We don’t do that with little things, but actual human identity, sometimes we almost feel like we deserve the end of the story. We deserve this “truth” from the beginning. And so if the narrative changes it feels like we’ve been lied to or tricked. But really, it’s just life is confusing and long and hard. And we all have to sort it out as we go, right? 

LIZ: Yeah. Yeah. 

JEN: I want to thank you for joining us in the den today. I’m hopeful that your optimism and your empathetic approach will help some of our listeners. Like I mentioned, sometimes if you’ve never been a parent, it’s hard to empathize with why parents are crazy. And you do that beautifully. I love that. And I’m hoping that some of our listeners will decide or want to be a little bit more intentional with their processing of all of this. You’re an amazing person. I have loved getting to know you. I’m hoping we can take advantage of you again in future episodes. Don’t be surprised to see an email from me show up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

LIZ: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been wonderful to have these conversations and have an audience who wants to learn. I really think that’s all you need to have for growth. And I appreciate being able to share this space with you and your candid questions. It’s vulnerable to come here and talk about all of these things. And I appreciate that you are making that space and leading by example. 

JEN: You’re awesome. Thank you, Liz. 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.