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 Sean Childers-Gray, Guy Berryessa, and Emily English in this episode of World of Possibility.
Special Guest: Guy Berryessa
Guy grew up mostly in conservative Provo, Utah, the fourth of four boys, and attended schools in Provo and briefly in Bangkok, Thailand, before attending college at BYU. He came out at 26 to his father and a year later, after a year of volunteer service in Nigeria, to his mother (who immediately threw up!) and almost everyone else. His parents eventually became great, supportive allies. Guy and Trey, his husband of 26 years, moved to San Francisco in 1997. They adopted their first child in Germany in 2002 and a second in San Francisco in 2010. They currently live primarily in Hawaii, but are often back to their San Francisco home, as their elder daughter attends Sonoma State.
Special Guest: Sean Childers-Gray
Sean Childers-Gray is a transgender man who grew up in Kearns, Utah, and co-founded a charity drag troupe called the Salt City Kings. He has a BA in graphic arts from Stevens-Henager and holds an MFA in media design. He has served as the President of Ogden Pride since 2020. In October 2021, he was honored with the Equality Utah Impact Award for Advancing Transgender Equality. Sean is a graphic designer and writer. He and his wife Sara are raising two queer teenagers, two huskies, and a cat named Todd. As an Educator in Higher Ed for over 15 years, Sean finds advocating for his students at Davis Tech College a priority as he continues his work for the LGBTQ+ community at large.
Special Guest: Emily English
Emily is a writer, teacher, and grant program specialist who lives in Bellingham, Washington. She is passionate about the rights and lives of young queer people. She adores her 5 boys and considers being their mother to be one of the great joys of her life. In her free time, she journals, writes, reads, and loves to go on adventures to odd and obscure places.
Links from the Show:
In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you.
Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org.
Connect with Mama Dragons:
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Donate to this podcast
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 Sean Childers-Gray, Guy Berryessa, and Emily English in this episode of World of Possibility.
Special Guest: Guy Berryessa
Guy grew up mostly in conservative Provo, Utah, the fourth of four boys, and attended schools in Provo and briefly in Bangkok, Thailand, before attending college at BYU. He came out at 26 to his father and a year later, after a year of volunteer service in Nigeria, to his mother (who immediately threw up!) and almost everyone else. His parents eventually became great, supportive allies. Guy and Trey, his husband of 26 years, moved to San Francisco in 1997. They adopted their first child in Germany in 2002 and a second in San Francisco in 2010. They currently live primarily in Hawaii, but are often back to their San Francisco home, as their elder daughter attends Sonoma State.
Special Guest: Sean Childers-Gray
Sean Childers-Gray is a transgender man who grew up in Kearns, Utah, and co-founded a charity drag troupe called the Salt City Kings. He has a BA in graphic arts from Stevens-Henager and holds an MFA in media design. He has served as the President of Ogden Pride since 2020. In October 2021, he was honored with the Equality Utah Impact Award for Advancing Transgender Equality. Sean is a graphic designer and writer. He and his wife Sara are raising two queer teenagers, two huskies, and a cat named Todd. As an Educator in Higher Ed for over 15 years, Sean finds advocating for his students at Davis Tech College a priority as he continues his work for the LGBTQ+ community at large.
Special Guest: Emily English
Emily is a writer, teacher, and grant program specialist who lives in Bellingham, Washington. She is passionate about the rights and lives of young queer people. She adores her 5 boys and considers being their mother to be one of the great joys of her life. In her free time, she journals, writes, reads, and loves to go on adventures to odd and obscure places.
Links from the Show:
In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you.
Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org.
Connect with Mama Dragons:
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Donate to this podcast
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.
When my oldest came out, he told us he couldn’t imagine his future. And to be honest, I couldn’t imagine it either. We didn’t have any LGBTQ role models in our lives. And representation is important. It helps us see potential. This is a pretty common thing for those who have limited exposure to the beautiful, and normal, and occasionally boring, LGBTQ people that exist in our world.
So today we’re continuing with our World of Possibility series where we introduce you to a few more amazing people in the LGBTQ community, helping us all to understand that our kids have the same limitless opportunities that we always had imagined for them. I have three people today to introduce in order to continue expanding our understanding of what life looks like for a queer adult. So welcome, welcome, welcome, in the den. Today we have Sean Childers-Gray, Guy Berryessa, and a dear friend of mine, Emily English.
Can we start by taking a couple minutes and have each of you give us a little bit of an intro so people kind of have a general idea of who they’re listening to. Sean, you’re up first?
SEAN: I was going to say, my mom raised a gentleman without realizing she raised a gentleman. But, if no one else wants to go, I’ll take the lead there. My name is Sean. I grew up and was raised in Utah in a little, not so little, town of Kearns, Utah. And I graduated from Granger High. But prior to that my life was much, much more difficult than just going through school and graduating. I guess that’s a little bit more deeper dive. Let’s see, born in 1980. So I’ll age myself right there.
I came out twice in my life. And the first time was a lot harder as I grew up LDS and trying to figure out and navigate the world of what being a lesbian meant. It took a lot out of me. And my second time coming out as a transgender male was even more difficult for my family. After high school, I went through a lot. And then I discovered school and started college in 2007. My background is as a graphic designer. And I work in higher education and it’s a lot of fun. I also am an advocate for the LGBTQ community through standing and being loud and screaming. And I also am president of Ogden Pride and have been for the last three years. It’s been a great ride.
JEN: Awesome.
GUY: So I appreciated hearing Sean’s background too. I can relate to some of it. I grew up also in Utah, in Provo. And it took me a long time to come out or to recognize that it was even remotely possible. It was just unthinkable to me that I could be myself and be comfortable with being gay. And so growing up in Provo, my dad was a professor at BYU, my family very active [in the LDS/Mormon church]. And I threw myself into church and volunteer work and school and served a mission in Sweden. Came back, taught at the MTC. Was still just repressing.
Funny, I just now remembered this. I hadn’t thought of this earlier this week. But I think one of the key things was I heard on the – I think it was KUER, some alternative radio station out of Salt Lake – about a Utah men’s gathering, and I went to that because some of the questions and things they posted on the radio were of interest to me, like, different men’s issue or whatever. And so I went to it. And over the course of the weekend learned to really respect and admire, particularly, a couple of people that were in the group. And the last session the last day, they had three topics you could choose from. And they merged them. Some presenters couldn’t come or something.
So one of the three topics happened to be, “Gay or Straight, No Big Deal Unless You Make It So.” And I would not have attended because I was scared to death to even broach the subject. But, because they were merged, everybody was in that session. And I noticed that one, who was a med student at the U, talked about his coming out and how grateful he was that people were able to accept him and so forth. And it blew my mind. One, I never imagined that he was gay. And then the other one I learned to respect a lot, reached over and kind of, I realized, Oh, my gosh. They’re both gay.
And my perception of what a gay person was – I never met one that I knew of – was some crazy wild person that contributed nothing to the world or whatever. That was all I’d ever heard. And so I think that was kind of a turning point that, “Wow. It’s possible to be gay and a productive citizen and be a good person and have a happy life and have friends and so forth.” So that was kind of a key thing. And then I eventually couldn’t hold it in any longer, met the first gay person I’d ever met other than this situation who became my partner off and on for nearly ten years. and at that point, I just broke down. I realized I hadn’t been emotional. I hadn’t allowed myself to feel. I was just numb. And then this well of emotion finally broke. And I came out just as I was leaving for a year, volunteer service in Nigeria.
And so that was a year of just kind of trying to figure out “What am I going to do? What direction am I going to take? I have to make a decision when I get back.” And, maybe Providence, insight, or no, I was traveling on my way back and ended up in Amsterdam and the hotel the airline put me up in was on a gay street in a gay neighborhood. I went to three movies. I hadn't seen a movie in a year. And all three movies coincidentally had some gay theme. My beautiful Launderete or something. Maybe this is a sign. I don’t know.
So when I got back, the guy I had met before I left was waiting for me. And we immediately got into a relationship. And I came out to my folks and felt like I needed to give back something to the world because I had gone through all my years at BYU not knowing anyone was LGBTQ and feeling entirely alone. So started with a couple friends, a gay men’s support group. And have tried to give back to the community in whatever ways I can since then because people need to know that as lonely as it may be as a kid and how hard it is, especially as a good Mormon boy or girl, that there’s hope. And now I have a family. I have a wonderful husband of nearly 27 years. And really grateful that I was finally able to break through.
JEN: It sounds like your young experience mirrors that of my son where you’re like, “Well, there’s no gay people so you can’t be productive and gay or else we’d see them somewhere.” Trying to envision your own future is really hard and we talk all the time here about representation. But I am going to hammer it home forever. Sometimes we need to see something in order to believe it’s possible. How about you, Em? Introduce yourself to us?
EMILY: I first of all wanted to say that Sean and Guy, I really identify with some of what you’re saying. It was really a long time before I was ever able to see LGBTQ as wholesome. And that was a real eye-opener for me when I looked at a situation for the first time and went, “This is one of the most wholesome things I’ve ever seen, and it’s queer.” So I appreciate some of what’s been said. My name’s Emily. I’m the youngest of 10 kids. I grew up in a large orthodox Mormon family. Like Sean and Guy, I grew up in Utah, Sandy. Four older brothers, five older sisters. And I was lucky. I had parents who I knew loved me in all of the chaos.
I spent most of my life as a pretty devout Mormon priesthood leader, and dedicated to parenting my five boys. Being their mother is the single greatest joy of my life. I don’t know how else to say that more effectively. I was married for 24 years. I spent many, many years fighting depression and anxiety. And I took various medications, all kinds of things to try and get through my days. To picture the scene at 44 years old, I was sitting in a graduate level English class when I learned the difference between gender identity and sexual identity. And I looked around and went, “Huh?”
JEN: Wait a minute.
EMILY: My life – suddenly my default went from this to 8 degrees left. And I could see all these things and things started to connect in a way that I didn’t understand before that. And everything started to flux. In order to survive, I came out to my family. I came out to my friends. I came out at work. I came out to the community and kind of everything changed. Five years ago – give or take, give a little more than five years ago – I started hormone replacement therapy. I’m a writer, a teacher, a grant program specialist. That’s kind of what I do. I’ve worked as a financial advisor. I’ve worked as a specialist in the court system and I’ve worked both secondary and post-secondary education. I currently work at Western Washington University and live about 20 minutes outside of Bellingham Washington in a little tree house in the woods that brings me all kinds of happy.
JEN: It’s so fun to see the little pictures of your cabin, too, online.
EMILY: It really does make me joyously happy even though it’s tiny because what can I really afford in Bellingham Washington. But it is up in the trees and it is all kinds of peaceful and nice for me.
JEN: It is beautiful. Guy, tell me where you live now, because I know you don’t live in Utah still.
GUY: Yeah. I live on the big island in Hawaii.
JEN: And how long have you been there?
GUY: I bought the place in 2004. But we had only a few weeks in the summer. So we came in January ’21 for an online pandemic semester. And our younger daughter was supposed to start high school. She auditioned and got into dance at an arts school that fall. And after a couple of months, she said, “I’m not leaving. I am never leaving.”
JEN: And you’re like, “I guess we better all stay, then”
GUY: I have to live in Hawaii. But we also kind of, San Francisco was getting a little expensive for us as we lost money in the Pandemic and so forth. So Hawaii is actually cheaper. I love it. It’s beautiful. We live on a stream. There’s three waterfalls and a swim area behind the house. And it’s a wonderful balance, partly because I made – specifically me – have to travel to San Francisco every month or so or more often. So I get my city fix, which I need for culture as well as the beauty and peacefulness of living here.
JEN: Okay. Well, you’ve convinced me. I’ll be coming to visit.
GUY: Good.
JEN: Get the guest room ready. I want to start with all three of you about – because I think there’s a pretty big difference – we’ll see. I’m hoping you guys will tell us when you kind of started to dawn on you that maybe you weren’t cisgender and heterosexual and what did that mean for you at the time when these ideas first started popping into your head? How old are you and how much comfort did it bring as opposed to how much panic, those kind of things? So can we each hear about just that starting of “Uh-Oh” or “Hey, Yay. I’m going to be different.” Sort of situation.
SEAN: When I felt different, I was probably 5, honestly. I just felt different. I didn’t feel like the other girls. I didn’t feel I had more boy friends than I had girl friends. And I would run around without a shirt on. And my mom would yell at me. She’d always just say, “Girls don’t run around without shirts on. It’s not appropriate.” And that just didn’t sync. It was like, “What are you talking about? The other guys are doing it too.” But it was not until after high school and almost 20 when I finally came out the first time. And then it wasn’t even until years later on that to come out as trans. The first time I’d met a trans person wasn’t until I was 20, just after I came out.
JEN: When you came out as lesbian, did you know that you were trans?
SEAN: No. I had no idea.
JEN: OK. So you hadn’t figured that part out yet.
SEAN: Yeah. It took a lot to figure that out, as far as it just wasn’t sinking in or anything like that. It wasn’t like there wasn’t a lightbulb switch for me. And I kind of denied a lot of that, like I feel better this way and I feel better that way. It took me doing drag and starting a drag troop to figure out that I was more comfortable in the pants than the skirt. So, I mean, I didn’t really wear a skirt before that. But to make it plain, and a lot of it was, like the dysphoria wasn’t prevalent until doing drag for a whole weekend and doing a drag show for a whole weekend.
There were times when I was just, like, so overwhelmed with those feelings that I was really scared. I feel more comfortable putting this beard on. I feel more comfortable being dressed this way. I feel more comfortable this way. And so for weeks after a drag show, I would wear everything super girly and even scare people at how feminine I would dress just to hide those feelings. Even being in the LGBTQ community at that time, I just still had fear. I was even scared of myself at that point.
JEN: So at that point, it sounds like you were a little bit more chasing euphoria than trying to run away from dysphoria?
SEAN: Yeah. Chasing euphoria. That’s a good term.
GUY: Also a great band name.
JEN: A great band name.
SEAN: A great band name.
GUY: Just saying.
JEN: That’s awesome. How about you, Em?
EMILY I mean, there really wasn’t vocabulary. Like my first memories and experiences that I’ve kind of come to were somewhere around the age of 5. But in the late 70’s nobody had words for any of this stuff. And, I mean, my first memory is pretty simple: my mom was sewing skirts because there were ten kids and you couldn’t buy them all clothes. And I asked for one of the skirts. And she gave me a skirt and I wore it for two days and I ran around making airplane noises in a skirt. And then someone took it away and no one would tell me what happened. And so that’s really my first memory. I find it interesting, first of all, that my mother gave it to me at all. But that’s a separate set of stories.
I knew I always wanted to be friends with the girls in contrast to Sean. And I wanted to be close to my sisters. I often begged to sleep in my sister, Paula’s, room, and in my friend’s rooms, simply because I felt more comfortable there and I didn’t understand why. I always wanted to go with my mother to get her hair done because she was one of those people that went to ZCMI every Saturday and got her hair done. And I would sit in the beauty salon happily and enjoy my time with her.
And it’s interesting to me, I often struggled to relate to my brothers. And there’s so many experiences throughout most of my life. But, realistically, until I really understood, 44/45 years old, I did my best to not think about it and hide as I had been told to. And so there was a lot behind that. When I came out, more before I came out, I believed I was about to lose everything. When I understood this, it was my wife, my kids, my church, my job, my community, my friends, my siblings, they all saw me very, very differently at that point.
I was forced really, really quickly when I was at that point, when I understood that I was transgender and I understood that I was a woman and not a man, I made a list and had to decide. Do I stay or do I go? Do I, and I don’t mean to get dark real fast, but you have to ask yourself, “Is it easier if I’m alive or if I’m not? Which is the better choice?” Ultimately, two things: working in the court system, I knew what suicide in a family can do to a family. And it’s painful and it’s difficult. And I couldn’t do it to my kids or to my ex-wife.
And then there was this little kernel of hope that one was permanent and one was not. This little idea that maybe, just maybe, at least some pieces of it would actually get better. That someone might actually still love me. And I held real tight to that. And that was kind of what got me through what was a real hard time. I don’t know how much is tied to mid-life crisis. But I swear everybody just thought I was having a mid-life crisis and needed to grow up and sit down and maybe just get a sports car.
JEN: This isn't what a mid-life crisis looks like for most of us.
EMILY No, it’s not. But that’s what the initial impression was from the people around me. But it was an interesting time. And I was a 45 year old that looked in the mirror and had panic attacks when I had to shave my face. And I would throw up, and shave my face, and then get ready for the day. And it got worse and worse. And then you have to do something and you have to survive. And here we are five years later.
JEN: How aware were you that, for those decades before you were 45, like when you were 25 and 30, and you know something was a little different. Were you at all in the space of like, “This is probably about how everyone feels a little bit?”
EMILY: Yes.
JEN: Or were you like, “I gotta just keep it secret because no one else feels like this?”
EMILY: I honestly had two influences going on. One is I had shared this with religious leaders for years since about age 11. That there was this thing. I didn’t know how to hold onto it. I didn’t know what it was. But it was over here and I was told to not think about it. I was told to avoid it, to not have anything to do with this thing over here. And so there was that going on where I was trying to hide or even like I was trying to get myself to not look into the corner over here, so you keep your head turned this way all the time.
And then I thought it was normal that everybody wondered what they would’ve looked like if they’d been born a girl. I wonder, I thought every man looked at women’s clothes and thought they looked nicer. And I thought, I suspect everybody would want to know how beautiful they would look with good makeup done. And it just is not the case. And I didn’t understand. But for many, many years I thought everybody just suffers like that. A lot of people hate how they look.
And dysphoria and dysmorphia are weird animals. And so the world thinks that you’re just unhappy with your body because maybe you’re overweight or maybe you don’t have enough or too much hair. Whatever that happens to be, but for me there was this process of realizing this was something more than just me not being content with how my body looked. I thought I was maybe just that.
JEN: I can see how easily all the messages that we hear – we talked about this a lot when we did our episode on asexuality – we hear things. We hear people talk and it’s really easy to be like, “Yep. That’s what I feel also.” Like somebody complains, “Why don’t girls' clothes have better pockets?” You’re like, “Yep, we all wish we could wear boy pants.” Those kinds of things and you normalize it in your head. It just makes perfect sense to me. All right, Guy, tell us about you? When did you start figuring it out?
GUY: Well, my story’s obviously different. By the way, I’m incredibly moved by your stories. Thanks, Sean and Emily, for sharing those. Looking back, and like you said, a lot of it was just denial. I couldn’t imagine what I was going to do with it. But I remember, in fact, a former next door neighbor contacted me a few years ago on Facebook and he hadn’t known that I was gay. And he said, “It kind of makes sense. I had an idea. I remember seeing you write in charcoal, Guy + Kyle on the wall when you were a kid.” Yeah. I don’t I think I ever wrote Guy + a girl’s name anywhere. No one in my family commented on it. I’m sure my three older brothers were probably horrified, but nobody said anything. For all I know it’s still there in that house in that garage. I don't know.
JEN: I hope it is.
GUY: Anyway. So I think, obviously, when puberty hit, you know 12ish or so, I had those feelings. And I had one sort of experience at 14. We were preparing to leave to move back to Thailand where I’d lived as a kid from 2 to kindergarten and went back for a year of high school. And someone else in my dad’s department’s son was hanging out with me that week. We were building a little walk, foundation at the cabin we were building. And he kept pushing and pushing and pushing me to experiment with something.
And, clearly, I felt that that was my only experience prior to 26 or 7 was that brief experience with this boy one night. And so I think I knew very well then, that’s where my interests and desires were. But I just, again, just repressed it for so long. So, certainly by puberty, but there were signs earlier. Also, my three older brothers were much into sports and I wasn’t. Partly because I just couldn’t compete and didn’t want to try. And my parents were relieved after three boys to not have to coach little league again. They never pushed it. So then, jump ahead, I was 26 before I came out. But I knew, I just couldn’t imagine what I was going to do with it. I was just going to toe the line. I was such a good little Mormon boy which is so often the case, right? We overcompensate and do anything we can to try to fix it.
JEN: It’s so sad to me that the queer individuals themselves aren’t fighting the lies and misconceptions. But as you’re figuring it out, you’re absorbing some of those lies and misconceptions. And you have to kind of dig through that. There’s a poem that I love. One time I’ll read it on the podcast. But basically, this lesbian girl growing up and she’s like, “But I’m not like that.” So she can’t find herself because she isn’t like all these stereotypes she keeps hearing. Anyway, so let’s talk about right when you came out. I want to hear what your families did right and what they maybe could’ve done better. And I want to hear, in your cases because, Sean, you have two ages, but for you guys, I want to hear how much you think age played into it with your families. Why don’t you start us off this time, Guy? You haven’t gone first yet.
GUY: Yeah. My story’s kind of funny, funny/tragic. So I came out to my father on father’s day as I was waiting for my VISA to go to this year in Nigeria. And people think, how could you do that to your dad on father’s day? But it exactly made sense to me because my father was amazing. He’s probably the most Christlike, truly Christian, man I’ve ever known and super sweet. And I felt terrible that I had hidden this part of me from him my entire life at that point. And so I said, “Dad, can we go for a walk?” And so we were walking around the block.
The irony was my first gay man I’d ever met then, my new boyfriend, was sitting on the steps of the only other gay person I knew of but had always been afraid to even wave to, was the neighbor at the entrance to my parent’s neighborhood that everybody knew was gay. And they happened to be friends, my boyfriend and this neighbor. So they sat on his front steps watching me walk around the block as I came out to my dad. And my dad was just sweet and somewhat naïve. He was acting, again, as a bishop on campus. He was in temple mission presidencies and the church correlation committee, very active. But he just said, “Gee, Buddy, I guess that’s your cross to bear.”
And he was head of elementary ed at BYU so he said, “I know so many older spinster teachers that never marry and in the next life, you too, will have the chance to marry,” or whatever. And just didn’t imagine that I would ever actually act on it. And when I arrived in Nigeria, I opened my suitcase and there was a sheet of paper from the bishop’s handbook that he’d copied for me. Part of the page was on homosexuality and part masturbation. I wasn’t sure which he was directing towards me, but probably both. And didn’t say a word about it. Didn’t say anything more after that talk that day, didn’t say anything to my mother.
JEN: Did that idea that you could just be a spinster and get fixed in the next life, was that comforting to hear from him?
GUY: I think I just thought, “You don’t get it, Dad. I can’t live that way.”
JEN: So you understood by then.
GUY: Yeah. And I don’t believe that is going to be fixed in the next life. We were taught, right, that whatever what we leave with we come with in the next life, basically. I just couldn’t imagine that was going to be changed because it wouldn’t be me. Something entirely different. So that was my Dad. Super sweet, but just didn't give it another thought, apparently because he thought Guy will just deal with it. He’ll handle everything in his life, he can handle this. And so he didn’t tell my mother.
I came back a year later, this boyfriend was waiting for me, we got more involved and one day we were up at Aspen Grove up Provo Canyon and we called his parents and my parents to come up and join us. And my parents said, “No. We have a fireside tonight and we’ve got church meetings.” Of course, they couldn’t come. His parents did. So a few days later, I mentioned to my mom, “Oh, I wish you would’ve been able to come up the other day, the canyon was really nice.” And she said, it was Sunday, right, “Isn’t Greg active in the church?” or something like that. And I said, “No.” And she said, “Well, why not?” And I said, “Well, because he’s gay.” And she said, “Are you trying to tell me something?” And I said, “Yes, Mom. I’ve always had these feelings.” And she threw up.
JEN: Oh, no.
GUY: She just, it was her immediate, literal, gut reaction was to throw up, audibly.
JEN: That hurts my heart.
GUY: I was so devastating for her. So that was the initial reaction of both my parents. She had no idea and then we started talking about it, right? Dad got out the Mormon Doctrine and Miracle of Forgiveness. My situation was a little different because I was already in a relationship. I wasn’t just coming out and looking.
JEN: And you had already made some decisions about what you were doing, right? You weren’t really looking for this extra wisdom.
GUY: Right. My first experience, sexually, was with this boyfriend but months into our relationship. And I have to describe it as a spiritual experience. It probably would’ve been different if it was just a hook up for something. I probably would’ve felt tremendous guilt. But I didn’t. It was like the heavens opened and said, “This is something beautiful that you were meant to experience with someone that you love, to give yourself fully to someone and be able to give to them.” That’s honestly how I felt. And it was that moment that I realized, “Wow, what I was taught about this is not true.” And maybe I needed to question everything else I’d been taught.
So that was a real turning point for me in my life. And one of those moments where you have to decide which road are you going to take. And I realized I had to pursue that at whatever cost. My parents, to get back to your question, my parents, to their credit, were great. This was right, I came out, God Bless her, Carol Lynn Pearson. This was when, “Goodbye, I love you.” came out, literally within a week ro so when I got back from Nigeria, came out to my parents, and her book came out. And it was honestly the first time I remember in the Mormon community, at least the Utah community, hearing about homosexuality other than the sin next to murder, right? That’s all I had ever heard was negative stuff from church. And here, finally, were people talking about it with some humanity and Christian love.
And so I attended her session at Sunstone. And, at that session, was a woman, Geri Johnston who then organized the first parent’s support group. Her son, gay son was living in Ottawa. She organized this group, People Who Care, I think was the name of it. And my parents got involved immediately and my mother, who I always perceived as being very socially conscious, said, “What will the neighbors think?” I’m sure she was horrified that I was a friend, my boyfriend was a friend of this neighbor, for example. Bless her heart, she got in and started doing their correspondence for the group. They went to conferences. They flew to LA to talk to Evelyn Hooker and to New York to talk to Mathilde Krim. And they went to talk to everybody they could, and read, and quickly became allies. So they were involved with Family Fellowship for years, on the board, and marched in many pride parades. And that was a huge blessing in my life. They love our kids. And they’re both passed now, but parents, nothing better you can do than to support your kids. It’ll make the difference in their lives and often whether they survive.
JEN: Bless Carol Lynn Pearson. That book was one of the first things I stumbled upon that kind of started leading me in the right direction, also. I wonder if she knows how many of us are, literally, saved by that new understanding. I love that. How about you, Sean?
SEAN: Well, we’re still working on that. When I came out the first time, my mom was really supportive. She was Deb from Queer As Folk, the flashy, supportive mom who was in your face about it. She went to every single Drag show. If she found something rainbow, she’d buy it. She gave it to me. She was really supportive. And I know she was going through her own faith crisis or whatever it may be. I’m the product of several divorces and lots of step family and step parenting and all within the LDS church. And so a lot of different ebbs and flows of things.
When I came out, I’d actually emancipated. I’d moved out of the house when I was much younger just dealing with mental health from my mom and knowing that I needed to take care of myself rather than continue to take care of her. And so I wasn’t living at home and just grew up very quickly. So I tried to have a relationship with my parents. Unfortunately, when I came out to my biological father, his reaction was to assault me. And I, to this day, am still dealing with that and still coming to terms with why and what and how and learning a lot more. And so I wanted to have a relationship still with a person that I didn’t know. I didn’t know enough. My parents were divorced when I was four. And he wasn’t around a lot. So that was hard.
My dad who raised me, my mom’s second husband, that’s my dad. And he’s amazing, amazing to this day. When I first came out to him, introduced him to my ex-wife, we’d honeymooned in Disneyland and we stayed at his house in Barstow. And he was so supportive. And he was the guy that kind of knew the whole time. When I was a kid, he’s the one who took me fishing. He taught me how to work on the car. I have an older brother I looked up to and I wanted to be just like. And a younger sister who I couldn’t stand. And she was just annoying because she got everything. But my time with my dad, he’s still there. He has a wonderful girlfriend now who also has a trans son. And so they’re just these two older people who are just like, “Our trans kids are awesome.” And I didn’t always have that support.
My parents, they divorced when I was in my teens. And so he wasn’t always around just because of the dynamics of divorce and being a step parent. After my biological father assaulted me, a lot was shed in light about him and the abuse that we went through as kids. And he got away with a lot. We’ll just say that. And during that process, during the court case and everything, two gentlemen who are near and dear to my heart, they basically adopted me and took me under their wings and they were there for every step of the process and became my two gay dads. And they’re not together anymore. They were together for many, many years. They’re not together, but they still are roommates and still best friends. And that’s where the Childers-Grey comes from. And everyone’s like, “How did you pick your name?” Well, I adopted my dad’s. So I’ve got a lot of chosen family that is very supportive. But I’m still dealing with the biological side of that family.
After I came out as trans it was much more difficult for my mom. And still is. We haven’t spoken in almost three years now. Politics, religion, and [inaudible] whatever that means has gotten in the way of the true relationship we can have. And so I had to make the decision to remove toxicity from my life. And so it's hard, but making that decision to let her just be her person and let me be mine in our different areas of life, it was important for me and my mental health and my family.
JEN: This is brutal stuff. Em, how about you? How did your family do?
EMILY: Well, first of all, I should’ve brought tissues. And second, I really do wish we were sitting having a coffee in a room or something somewhere because I just want some hugs at this point. And I don’t know when I became a hugger. That’s been part of this whole process. It is really hard for me to pinpoint exactly when I came out. It seemed like I was coming out every couple of days, and it seemed like still sometimes, seems like it hasn’t ended. But my parents, my dad died when I was 16 years old. And my mom died many, many years before I ever understood what this was.
And so I was left in this situation where I have no idea exactly what they would’ve thought. Maybe the most cathartic moment of all of that was the night before I had a surgery, I stood in the cemetery in a pair of wet chucks, in a snowy, slushy day in Sandy, Utah and had a little conversation with my parents at their headstone. I don’t know. I don't know what I believe. I don't know if I believe they heard it. I don't know. But I believe I needed to say it. And so I do think there is something important in that very act.
JEN: In your case, when you were coming out, your family system was more focused on your kids and your wife. And, obviously, we always want to be careful when we’re talking about our kids to not share beyond what belongs to us. But your coming out’s a little bit different because of that. Is there anything in that realm that you feel comfortable talking about?
EMILY: Yeah. I was honest, at least as honest as I could be. I always tried to be as honest through the whole process of figuring it out with my ex-wife. And she’s a wonderful person. And I would never want to say anything negative there. I relied so very heavily on her through a lot of very, very difficult things. But she knew about my counseling sessions. I went to a counseling session, I went home and told her. I went to a doctor’s appointment, I came home and told her. I went to see a bishop, I came home and told her. And I mention that English class. She got a phone call about 30 minutes after that English class ended as I drove from Pocatello to Twin Falls and we talked about it. It was pretty shocking. And, as I understood, it became more and more challenging. Interestingly enough, we were together for three and a half years of my transition. And it was just a difficult situation. I came out to a class of college freshmen before I told my own kids.
JEN: Wait, were you the professor?
EMILY: I was. I was teaching an English class to college freshmen and we were having a lesson on gender roles and gender identity. And they were doing what I taught them to do, which was call out something they thought wasn’t true. And one of them said, “I believe this is all nonsense. I don’t know anybody. I’ll never know anybody. And I think it’s not worth talking about.” And I was three weeks into estrogen at that point in my life. And I turned around and cried and then turned back around and raised my hand and told my class, more because, as a teacher, I couldn’t let that pass without correcting it in my own classroom without thinking of ramifications.
I was promptly outed to all of the college’s leadership in an administrative deans meeting. And then there was no holding it back. One Sunday, after a sacrament meeting, I said in the car to my ex, “It’s time to tell the kids.” And my one son was on a mission in Canada. And really didn’t know all the details of what was happening. And I sat them down and we had a conversation. And I explained what I knew. I explained the doctor visits, the counseling. But I didn’t fully understand what all of it was yet. And my kids' response was different than I expected. The two younger kids didn’t care. They wanted to know if I was dying or not. And when I was not dying, they wanted to go get some food because they’d been fasting. The older kids, my son who’d been very involved in theater and drama, and God bless the theater and drama kids because they prepped my son before I ever got there.
JEN: We love the theater kids.
EMILY Man, they made my life easier at that point. And he handled it very well. And then my other son started doing some furious google searching and didn’t talk to me for quite a while. And it’s an amazing thing when your child stands up for you among their friends without you knowing you can hear. And it’s allowed a couple of my own kids to have their own little queer journey which is not my story to tell. But there’s a story to tell for a couple of them that I’m forever grateful to. I wrote an email to my siblings and I explained what was happening.
A few months later, I was 45 years old, and it just seemed like it wouldn’t end. My sisters responded very quickly. They’ve been my tie to my extended family. Several members of my family never responded. I emailed them, I sent them a letter. I texted them. I called them. And they simply never responded. And I still have never heard from them. You’ve got to respond. You’ve got to answer. You’ve got to step up and at least say something.
JEN: I used to think that silence was kind. If you couldn't say something nice, don’t say anything at all. But it’s not. That silence is mean.
EMILY: It was brutal. That silence was brutal. Some treated me like I was kind of a foolish child.
JEN: You were 45.
EMILY: Yeah. And, in their mind I was still that 11-year-old kid when they moved out of the home, right?
JEN: Right, because you were the baby.
EMILY: I am. I’m the youngest of ten.
JEN: Once the baby, always the baby, I guess?
EMILY: I guess. I got feelings there, so maybe I better not go there. But my sisters, they responded with love.
JEN: Good.
EMILY: And they started to do their homework. Some of them, that was just talking to me. Some of that was asking people that they knew. One of my sisters had a daughter-in-law who was a counselor. And the daughter-in-law told her she better figure this out or she would lose me. Another sister had a coworker who was trans where she worked in Salt Lake City, and she embraced me immediately. My other sister has made the effort to continually just engage with me.
But the others have kind of gone their way and have kind of excluded me from what the family is. And I don’t know how much of that is a function of the family not connecting at all and how much of that is a function of me not being invited to the connection of the family. But my one sister has been kind and loving in ways I never expected. She hugged me and told me that she was so grateful that she had a little sister. She didn’t know she’d had a little sister. And she set aside some things for me that had been given to her by my mother.
JEN: That’s very sweet.
EMILY And she gave me those things and she said, "I think mom would’ve wanted you to have these things, like she gave to each of her daughters.” And I was gifted my mother’s hope chest which was a huge thing in my family. Such a symbol of being considered a female member of the family was to receive a hope chest. And she had filled it with homemade things she had made and with some heirlooms from my mother. That kind of a response was beyond anything I had thought possible. And so the embracing and considering what it would mean to me and to do your homework and some can only hold space for me, some can’t. So I don’t know that I have a concrete answer for how everyone took it. It was different.
JEN: That’s a lot of people between nine siblings and a wife and kids.
EMILY: Yeah.
JEN: I want to hear about your adult, post-transition or post-coming out life and if it looked at all like you imagined when it came to having children or your career. If being queer has damaged any of those things or helped any of those things.
SEAN: I think, well, first off, being in a very creative field, I know I’m not alone among LGBTQ people. I’m still looking for representation in that field. I have mentors and I have people that I’ve looked up to as designers. And we know big names and things like that. And I look to them for their career influence and creativity. But I still seek others who look like me in that field as well. And so I think that’s the biggest part where you talk about it’s important to have representation. And because of that, I wanted to make sure that I’m loud and proud for those students in my field who need to see themselves. I’ve never, once I started my transition, well, even before transition, I was never quiet about being out. I came screaming out of the closet and I never went back. And living in Utah, we know that things across the country are kind of scary and rocky and things like that. But I even tell my campus administration, “I’m sorry. You’re not going to be able to stifle who I am and take my rainbows off because it’s not for me. It’s for those kids.” And, yes, I teach at a college and so kids are kids to me. You could be an older student, you’re still my kid.
And so, I’m 43, I’ve got a long life to live. And I’m not going to let that silence my voice, even in education. And it’s helped with my advocacy to be loud because I don’t have to apologize. And my career exploded and just because of the creativity and connections that I have, but what it does for me on campus is I’ll wear my lanyard. Instead of wearing my work lanyard, I’ve got it on a rainbow lanyard. And just to have kids walk up and say, ‘I love your lanyard.” That’s all they need to say. My radar goes off. My “dar” goes off. Transition has changed my “dar” just a little bit. But with kids are just like, “I love your lanyard.” And my lanyard is full of pins. I became Debbie for those kids with my flare.
And so I’ve got my trans pins. I’ve got my pronoun button and things are changing. Where someone might tell me I can’t do that anymore and I’ve already said I’m not going to take it off. And it’s made my career, working in higher ed was kind of sort of by accident. I always wanted to be a teacher but I didn’t think I’d be a college professor. It really landed in the fact that I was a teaching assistant when I was going through my program and we had, like I worked for my boss while she was on her honeymoon and all the sudden, I was teaching classes because we had teachers quit over the weekend. And I loved it. It was exactly what I needed and it just grew from there. But it brings me joy to be myself fully while I step into work. And I can’t turn “Me” off. In order for me to step on the campus or to go into any job, I promised myself from day one I was never going to do without my whole self. And so, for me, that’s something that’s a quiet voice I can walk around with but still screaming out loud. So I hope that answered or started that conversation where you wanted to go a little bit .
JEN: I actually appreciate that. It kind of is that idea that “If you come out your life will be over. You’ll have no future. Nobody will ever hire you. You’ll be homeless.” And you're like, “Wait, I’m doing okay. I’ve got a nice family and a job that I love.”
EMILY: For me, my whole life, the internal core of who was me was way messier and way more struggling than I thought. But that area around me, the community, the church, all those things, was pretty calm and happy. I was reasonably respected and happy and okay. But I was a mess inside. And I knew I needed to fix the mess inside. And when I did, this world around me went crazy. And I went from having calm around me and core chaos to calm inside of me and chaos around me. And suddenly you’re dealing with all this chaos of not having a place to fit, to not having the same purpose you thought you were going to have in your life. I thought I was going to be forever involved in doing these things through this church that I was involved in. And all of these things, how I was going to raise my children, how I was going to live out my days like it was mapped. And suddenly, it was all chaos and there was question of whether there was a place for me. And I had to find somewhere else to have some purpose. I got really lucky. The GSA at the local college needed an advisor. They came and found me and I’d give anything for them. They’re the ones that are going to fix this. I can believe this is going to be okay and I can believe the world is going to figure it out. But I believe that, if I’m lucky, I’ll get to see it before I die. They’re the ones that are going to see it and they’re the ones who are going to fix it. And if I can make it better for them to get there, what a lovely purpose in my life.
And they needed someone to love them and they needed a place to be safe and happy. And so we started Queer Taco Night. And it started with four college students. The last time it was held, we had 57 students show up. And I can’t do a lot. But if you need someone to make you tacos and give you a hug, I can do that, right? That was something I could do. And I ended up helping with the advising of that group and many of them will be lifelong friends of mine forever. And I realized there were different purposes than I thought. And I realized there was some peace in ways that I didn’t know I could find it.
And then my job, I chose to seek out a situation where my journey wasn’t seen as a challenge, where it was seen as an advantage. And I’ve been lucky to find that where I’m at right now. My situation is seen as an advantage. I suspect I got looked at a little bit longer because my situation was different. And that’s what I wanted. And things are difficult with family, with all of these things. It’s very difficult. It’s hard. But I’m more me than I thought I could ever be. I didn’t know it was possible to be this much me. And with that came, just an inner core, became so calm. And now, in my life, that outer piece is starting to settle and I can feel it slowing down and settling and starting to find peace there too. And then, at that point, maybe I’ll feel solid enough and safe enough and rested enough that I can go out and influence all the rest of what’s out here in a very positive way. But I really needed to do those things.
And authenticity and internal peace, I believe, are tied. If you get one, you get the other. If you seek out internal peace and you find it, guess what, you probably found authenticity. And if you’re more authentic, this weird thing happens. You feel more internal peace. And for me, that’s a core element of what I believe. My belief structure was kind of shot to pieces, but I do believe that. And so what it’s really given me is an internal peace that I didn’t think was possible if that makes sense.
JEN: I love that. How about you, Guy?
GUY: I’m happy to hear those stories. Your students are lucky to have you both. I think it’s interesting that all three of us have been teachers. That says a lot about the sensitivity and sensibility of LGBTQ people. I taught and was never able to come out to my students which makes me really sad and happy to hear your story. I taught in Provo School District back in the 80’s and 90’s, so this different world. In fact, I was thrilled recently to see an elementary school principal in my neighborhood, the openly gay ex-mormon, married and on Survivor and very out. That’s a huge progress. I’m so happy to see that.
But, yeah, I was teaching adult ESL and even in that world, in coordinating some of their programs for refugees and immigrants, I had chosen a text book that had a chapter on families. And it had a little sketch among many others of a gay couple and a short paragraph about those, that type of families among all the others. And then, later, I was teaching a different level and the teacher that was teaching that class that turned out later happened to be gay too, was using the textbook. And a student complained. These are adults, right? It was a student who was sponsored by BYU family. And they complained to the superintendent to try to get this teacher fired and the book banned. That was the environment we were in.
And I was told, don’t you ever, ever come out to your boss. I did, but I did it at lunch. We were on a refugee counsel together with a mental health professional from [inaudible] health who I knew, I figured, would be a perfect mediator. So we were having lunch and I came out there. And the interesting thing about, back to your question about if it helped, once I did that and came out to my boss and to everyone in the office, everyone in our staff, it completely changed the tenor of our work environment. People started talking about their own issues, their doubts about church doctrine or whatever it was. And we became a much more cohesive group. And so that was an example of, wow, it was a really positive thing to come out even though I wasn’t able to come out to students. Although, at one point, I had a fatal attraction student, a married student who pursued me and would come and call and say, “I’m by your house. Come over.”
JEN: Scary.
GUY: Yeah. Really scary. So I finally came out to her just to get her to lay off. I think that was before I’d come out to my boss. And so I was substituting one day a couple months later, thinking it was safe, and the secretary brings this student who had also quit going when I was no longer teaching, and happened to come back the same night to enroll. And the secretary brought her to the door and she said “Do you know where my normal, your usual class would be?” And I said, “No, but they might be outside.” Sometimes the teacher takes them outside like I would do, out under the tree for part of the class or something. And she saw me and she said, “Haven’t you died of AIDS yet?” in front of my class. And luckily they were level one, and they didn’t understand, I think, what she was saying. But it was terrifying to realize that I could lose my job.
I was in a committed monogamous relationship but now progress, thankfully, they have an openly gay married principal. But, at the time, I remember going to meetings and the head of community schools would come and feel to see if I had my garments. That was the environment. So I left teaching as much as I loved it, and even when I moved to San Francisco, they allowed me to come back two weeks a month just to do the teaching portion which was great. Then we moved to Germany for my husband’s post-doc. And I did a little tutoring. And I haven’t taught since. But I’ve been just managing property which has had no effect. I think it’s been actually wonderful at times because at one time I had many BYU student rentals. And there were years when coincidentally, I had gay tenants and it became a house where they could then have their meetings and gatherings and feel supported and not afraid of being reported and kicked out. I’m still friends with some of them today.
And in terms of family, we moved to San Francisco. We first lived briefly in Salt Lake where I was living when my husband and I got together. And we moved to San Francisco because we didn’t feel that Utah in the 90’s would be a great environment for our kids. And so we moved to San Francisco and honestly, oftentimes, I forgot that we were any different.
The kids were enrolled in a progressive private school. And then public school later. And it wasn’t an issue. We had issues when we lived briefly just outside D.C. in Maryland where kids had issues and were teased. And I was told, volunteering in the classroom, by a first grader that we were going to burn in hell. But the kids grew up feeling pretty normal about their family. And that was wonderful to be in an environment where it felt perfectly fine. We have one kid who is dealing with some of these issues as well. And I’m glad that she could come out to us in a text from school at half the age that I was before I felt like I could come out terrified. I think it’s not been a hindrance and I think our kids, in many ways, are much better off because they’ve had that experience. The world's improving and the kids can grow up in a wonderful environment.
JEN: This has been lovely. I ask each of you to leave just a little parting message of wisdom for anybody who might be listening.
GUY: I would just say, love and support your kids. That’ll make a huge difference in their lives. And if they have that, at least part of their family – I have some family who’s never accepted me – but any part of your family, particularly parents, are supportive of their kids, they have much to look forward to. They can create their own wonderful lives. They may not have to follow the rules of their relationships for example that you did. But it opens up tremendous opportunities for them to create whatever life and family and career and fulfillment that’s available for them.
JEN: That’s beautiful.
SEAN: I always try to teach active listening. That’s the biggest thing that I try to get faculty to hear and things like that. But active listening, like the world is such a spectrum. The rainbow is full of so many diverse colors from identity to sexuality to character to everything that we are. And if you can just understand that and as parents, teach patience and love and try to have patience and hold onto love, in the end, the kids will be okay.
JEN: Thank you, Sean, for that.
EMILY: I think, first young people, I would tell them to learn to hear and see themselves and to trust themselves. Trust who you feel you are not who everybody tells you who you are. For the parents, obviously, love your children. But I suspect most of them do or they wouldn’t be listening. But trust them and trust who they know they are. Hear it. Listen to it. See it. See them for who they are. Trust that they know the details of who they are far better than you ever will. And let go that you know better than them about who they are. Do your homework. Listen. Both will pull your family closer together. And there’s more joy and more happiness and more color and more positivity in this than you can probably even imagine yet. And it’s coming. And it’s amazing. If there’s parents out there who this is new to them or this is something happening. Congratulations. It’s going to be amazing. Like, how lucky for you.
JEN: I definitely feel that in our personal lives how lucky for me. I want to express my gratitude to each of you for coming and sharing a little bit of your life and your hearts with us today. It’s so important that everyone get a chance to meet a variety of LGBTQ people. I remain convinced that the more people that we get to know who are LGBTQ, the more fear will decrease just across the board, and the more love will multiply simply from your stories and your example. So thank you so much for coming.
EMILY: Thank you.
GUY: Thank you.
SEAN: 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.