Parenting While Queer

A recurring concern that we hear from parents when their child comes out as LGBTQ+ involves family, and more specifically the fear of losing the possibility of future family. Parents are sometimes worried when they find out they have a queer child, because they feel like they’re losing their chance to be a grandparent, or they just really knew their child would make a great parent, but they don’t think they’ll get to actually experience parenthood as a queer person.  So, in an effort to dispel that myth that LGBTQ+ people don’t have families, our guests today join guest host Shauna Jones to talk about their experiences as queer parents. 

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.

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Transcript

JEN: Hello and welcome to In The Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created to walk and talk with you through the journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. Thanks for listening. We’re glad you’re here. 

SHAUNA: Hello there, In the Den listeners! My name is Shauna and I’m filling in for Jen today. I’m really excited about today’s episode, because I’m going to be visiting with three returning In the Den guests that we met in episode 49. I don’t think the episodes are numbered across all the streaming platforms, so if you are hunting for that episode it’s called World of Possibility with Sean, Guy, and Emily. And if you haven’t listened to that episode yet, I’d encourage you to just hit pause on this one and go back and listen to that one first, because each of these humans have such compelling life stories that I think really set the perfect background for what we’re going to talk about today. So, go listen to Episode 49, and then come back here for the rest of the stories.  

A recurring concern that we hear from parents when their child comes out as LGBTQ+ involves family, and more specifically the fear of losing the possibility of future family. Parents are sometimes worried when they find out they have a queer kid because they feel like they, the parent, are losing their chance to be a grandparent. Or they really just knew their child would make a great parent, but they don’t think they’ll get to actually experience parenthood as a queer person. So, in an effort to dispel the myth that LGBTQ+ people don’t have families, our guests today are going to talk about their experiences as queer parents. There are some unique challenges that come up, and the method of becoming a parent might be unique, but parenthood is all about being resourceful and rising to the challenge, right? And LGBTQ+ parenting is no different. So, without further ado, here’s a quick introduction of today’s guests. 

First up we have Guy Berryessa. Guy and Trey, his husband of 26 years, moved to San Francisco in 1997. They adopted their first child in Germany in 2002 and their second child 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. So, welcome, Guy.

GUY: Thank you.

SHAUNA: Next up we have Sean Childers-Gray. Sean 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. Welcome Sean.

And our final guest is, last but not least, Emily English. Emily is a writer, teacher, and grant program specialist who currently lives in Bellingham, Washington. She has five boys and considers being their mother to be one of the great joys of her life.  

Welcome back to the Den, Sean, Guy, and Emily!

GUY: Thank you.

SEAN: Thanks for having us.

SHAUNA: Okay, let’s dig in! My first question for all of you is: did you always know that you wanted to become a parent? And kind of this history of when you knew you wanted to be a parent. We’ll start with Guy, if that’s okay.

GUY: Sure. Growing up in the culture I did, I assumed always I’d be a parent. In fact, for a long time as a kid, being always interested in different cultures and so forth, I imagined myself having 12 kids from 12 different countries. All adopted, not 12 wives. But then when I came out, I kind of gave up that hope of being a parent. I didn’t know that it would be possible. And, to be honest, my first partner, as I mentioned, I think in the earlier episode, was literally the first gay man I ever met. Not a good idea to marry your first crush. But I couldn’t imagine co-parenting together. So I worked through that and I decided that there are other ways to multiply and replenish the earth by volunteer work and so forth and kind of gave up that idea of being a parent until I met my husband, Trey. And he, at the time, he hadn’t been out long. He came out even later in life than I did. And he was preparing to adopt as a single parent. Really wanted kids. So at one point we had this discussion back and forth. And at one point we had convinced each other of our own position. And eventually we were both on the same page and decided to move forward. But it took a long time. We were living in Germany for four years at the time. And, at that time, 20 something years ago, it was difficult for gay parents, let alone Americans living in Europe, to find an agency that had social workers in Europe that would qualify Americans to do home visits and all that stuff. So finally, it eventually worked.

SHAUNA: I love that. Okay, Sean, do you want to go next?

SEAN: Yeah, I had a moment where I lost a baby. I had a miscarriage prior to transition, prior to coming out. and thought that was it. And that was hard.

SHAUNA: I’m sorry.

SEAN: That was hard. And today, I’m stronger for having faced that and can understand a little bit more about what others go through. And eventually coming out and moving forward from that, I always thought I’d want kids. I definitely had this missing piece. And I filled that, kind of like that void, with drag children and raising drag children and growing in that world and mentoring younger and younger people. And that really helped a lot to fill that space that I had missed. And it wasn’t until much later in life after finally coming out and leaving my previous partner that I had the opportunity to even be a parent and only because I’m a step dad. And so I have, they’re teenagers. And so if you’re a parent going through teenage-hood, aside from all of the queer things that you have to face, you know, when you have queer youth, there’s a lot. They have a lot going on. But teenagers just have a lot going on. And so life’s always busy. Life’s very hectic. But I’m blessed. I’m definitely blessed. I love my children. I love the opportunity to try to be the best I can as a parent. And I’ve been around now since they were 4 and 3, so it's been a long time.

SHAUNA: Thank you. Emily?

EMILY: Mine’s a little bit complicated. But I grew up the youngest of ten children in a very orthodox home. And there were lots of challenges in that for me. But one of the great benefits I had is I knew my parents always loved each other. And to be able to see that in and out was wonderful for me. I admired my mom more than she probably ever knew. And I was remarkably awkward at various points of being a child. I didn’t understand who I was until much later in life. But I wanted to be a parent so badly. And it was what I focused on for most of my life. It’s an interesting thing to realize that maybe you were never a father and you were always a mother. It’s quite a process and quite a journey. But I have my five boys that are some of my favorite people alive. And I adore them. And being their mother is what makes it all go and work and function in my life. I’m extremely, extremely lucky that they can look at me and call me “Mom.”

SHAUNA: I love that. I wanted to ask you all too, if you shared any of the fears that I talked about in the introduction, like were you worried about what your queer identity would mean for your future family or your current family, just how your identity impacted your thoughts around family or the way that you parented, if that makes sense? Does anyone want to go first?

EMILY: I guess I can go.

SHAUNA: Yeah, Em?

EMILY: Me coming out and going through my process was amazingly difficult for the family. I thought for sure that I had broken the family. I thought I had ruined it. I thought that my children would be irreparably damaged. I knew that things would become very difficult very quickly with the person I was married to who I loved dearly. It was really hard for me to get over the fact that I felt like I had broken it. But at some point, there’s this thing that happens when they start to figure out who you are. And you realized you didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, you set an example for them that they could be who they were. And a couple of my children have since come out, too. And I feel like maybe, not only did I not hurt the family, in the end, maybe, I saved a couple of my children. So for me, that’s a very tender and personal process that I saw happen with myself and it makes me grateful for the five years of access to a good therapist.

SHAUNA: Yeah. I’m really a strong believer in modeling to your children authentic, honest, good lives, right? Whatever that looks like for you, that gives them permission to do that in their own lives. And I think that’s important. Guy or Sean?

GUY: You mentioned, you talked about the fears that we had about queer and parents. And that definitely played a role in our decisions in our lives and why we left Utah, for example and moved to San Francisco. And when we actually left San Francisco for a couple of years, moved back to Maryland outside of D.C. and moved back to San Francisco for that same reason. So, in San Francisco, it was an environment that we assumed and proved to be wonderfully welcoming. The kids were accepted at school and in the neighborhood and so forth and it was great. But we did have some difficult experiences in Maryland where our first-grader was told repeatedly that – and I was told working in the classroom once a week – that we would burn in hell, that she would have to be removed from our home and taken away from us by the police. And that marrying a man was evil. So definitely that informed some of our decisions in terms of where we would live and what schools we would seek out for our kids. And for the most part, it worked out well. I’ve forgotten the other part of your question. But I guess, oh yeah. So I think, also our younger daughter came out to us in middle school, a text from school. Half the age that I was when I finally came out.

SHAUNA: I love that.

GUY: It’s amazing. Kids these days. And she had a girlfriend here in Hawaii for a year or so. A nonbinary girlfriend actually. But now she has a boyfriend. So I’m learning that he’s a great guy. We really like him. So she’s also on the LGBTQ spectrum. And I think, like Emily mentioned, that’s been really helpful that she could come out and know that she would be loved and supported no matter what she was or who she was. So I think that’s been a blessing as well.

SHAUNA: I love that. Sean?

SEAN: I had a rough childhood. And my fears were more, “I don’t want to be my parents.” And so whatever I wanted for my kids, I had to be opposite of what I received. And so that wasn’t necessarily the idea of fear and things like that. But it was just more, I don’t want my children to face the things that I faced. I want to stop the generational abuses. And I probably get things wrong. But parenting’s tough, right?

SHAUNA: Like all of us, yeah.

SEAN: And watching them just blossom and become whoever they’re going to be is still a winding road and they’re figuring it out. And I just know that as long as I can show them that there’s good things at the end that when you work hard and you go after the things that you want, no matter who or what or how you identify, you can get there. And I hope that that’s what they take away. We’re kind of in that alien stage of children right now, right? They leave. An older woman explained this to me at the grocery store one time. She said, “Your kids are really great. I hope that lasts, but . . . “ So, you know, we’re right now in the stages of dumping what we can into the shell that’s been left behind and waiting for them to return back down to Earth. And I think this is the most vulnerable part of what I didn’t get as a kid. I emancipated at 15. And so I didn’t have the opportunity to be a teenager. And a lot of people ask, “Don’t you remember this?” I’m like, “I was an adult very young.” And so I never had the opportunities to backtalk my parents. I never had the opportunities to make mistakes that didn’t matter, right? That if I made a mistake at that time, I didn’t have anything to lean back on . And I didn’t want that, I don’t ever want that for my kids. I want them to fail. I want them to be able to fall so that when they get back up they know that we’re here and that eventually when they leave the nest and they get to miss them, they have a place to return. And I never had that.

SHAUNA: Yeah. And it can be difficult creating that out of something that you’ve never experienced.

SEAN: Yeah.

SHAUNA: Good for you. But that’s the hard work of parenthood, right there, is breaking the generational curses and doing things differently when you don’t have a roadmap or an example to model. That takes a lot of courage.

SEAN: Yeah. Thank you.

SHAUNA: Okay. I am interested in anybody who wants to talk about your path to parenthood. I know we’ve all kind of talked a little bit about how we came to be parents. But if you want to talk about anything in particular like stories or challenges. Or, Guy, I think particularly I think of you adopting back in the early 2000’s. That was a whole different challenge than maybe parents would face today. But I’m curious to hear more about that if you’d like to share.

GUY: Sure. Yeah. As I mentioned, it took us three years to successfully adopt. Partly just logistically being in Europe. So we worked with several agencies. We had an adoption facilitator in California and an agency here, eventually an agency in Washington. But we, like I said, had a hard time finding anyone that could do home visits and certify us in Germany as Americans. But I found, it used to be a magazine called Gay Parent magazine. And in that, I found an ad for a gay attorney in Philadelphia who was able to finally facilitate that. He had a social worker living in Belgium. At the time she worked with us she moved from Belgium to France, I think. And so she would come and do the home visits. And one funny thing I remember. She said, “Do you plan on telling your child that she’s – we didn’t know the gender at the time of course – that they’re adopted?” And I said, “I think she’ll know, at least at a certain age. So, yes, we will definitely tell them.” So anyway, we had some ups and downs as often happens with adoption of course. I’d always wanted to do an international adoption as I mentioned. So we were kind of a reverse international adoption. We adopted an African American daughter from the US while we were living in Germany. And first we had a failed adoption. We actually sold a home we had in Maui, just super cheap to tenants just to get the money to pay for the adoption and the $20,000 attorney’s fees or whatever. And never even met the attorney and he never did anything.

SHAUNA: Oh, that’s horrible.

GUY: Yeah. So we were matched through a facilitator in California with a girl in Barstow. And so we flew there, met the mother who thought she had a few months before the birth. The doctor, she hadn’t seen a doctor at all. So we took her in for an exam and he said, “No. You’re due in about three weeks.” And so we drove our truck down to her to have that. Put her up in a hotel, prepaid the hotel, and the birth and everything else. And said we better fly back to [Germany]California and get things in order to come right back to prepare for this. And so I was calling the hotel to check up on her and couldn’t get ahold of her. Couldn’t get ahold of her those first couple of day.s and finally the clerk said, “Oh, yeah. Her son said she had a baby girl.” And I said, “You mean she’s going to have a baby girl.” “No. she had a baby girl.” So I woke Trey up and said, “We’re taking the next train to Frankfurt then the first flight out. She’s born.” And though he’d just been home a couple of days, getting things ready to leave, for him to take leave and so forth. And so we went back and waited, hung around for a month to find out whether we would have this child or not. And apparently neighbors found out, saw us at her home. They had six children. She was a Jewish/Mexican woman with a Black husband and they were divorcing. And he had separated. He had heard from the neighbors that it was gay couple and said, “No way are you giving our child to a gay couple!” and threw her down. She went into labor early and so we waited around for a month. Met her, finally, in a Denny’s in Barstow and she said, “My mother doesn’t want you to have this child either. And if I can get on welfare, I’ll keep her. But if not, if things don’t work out in a year or two, I’d love to have you take her.” We said, “We can’t. This month has been hell not knowing day to day whether we have a child or not. We can’t promise it in two years or so. We’re not going to be able to do that. I’m sorry.” So we went back, you know, broke and empty-handed and the facilitator called and said “There’s a little baby girl born in Silverlake, Washington.” And Washington only has a 48-hour right of relinquishment which means the mother, instead of California at the time they could wait six months and the mother could change her mind. So that sounds really good after this experience. But we don’t have any money. And I said, “Go ahead and submit our profile anyway. They’re not likely to pick a gay couple. So what the heck.” So she calls back the next day and say, “She’s yours if you want her.” So we said “Let’s make it work somehow.” So our parents were kind enough to offer to lend us some money. And luckily she was – this sounds horrible, marketing of adoption is just so sad – but they said because she’s African American, she’s cheaper.” Which is a despicable commentary on our society, I think. But it's mostly white couples adopting who want children to look like themselves. So we didn’t care. And so we said OK. So I flew back. They had taken her, and she was several, like 8 weeks early, she was in the NICU in Tacoma. And I was there with her for a couple of weeks. And Trey came back as soon as he could to join us. But the agency said, “Do not let anyone in the hospital know that you’re a gay couple or they will likely stop the adoption.” And I said, “I can’t. I can’t do that. I can’t adopt under false pretenses which is also why we didn’t do international adoption because at that time you would have to take some opposite gender person with you – your sister or someone and pretend you weren’t a gay couple in Vietnam or China or whatever – and we just didn’t feel comfortable doing that. So I pegged someone that I thought was lesbian, a social worker at the hospital.

SHAUNA: I love that.

GUY: Right? So it worked and she was great and they were supportive. And we stayed in the hospital and they roomed us for a while with Emma. And then took her to California until she was big enough to take home to Germany in a few weeks. That was the start of our journey. The second one was very different. It was, instead of a private adoption, it was a public, or foster, adoption case. And we weren’t interested in that because Trey had seen families where they’ve taken the child hoping to adopt and then they’re taken away. And just knew that would be really, really hard. But we had a good friend, our friend Trevor Salvy’s daughter, Sarah, was working for a foster adoption agency in Berkley. And so she talked to us a few times about that. And we felt more comfortable doing that when we returned from Germany and Emma kept asking for a little sister. So we went that route. And it had been a couple of years and we were matched with a little boy, a Cambodian-African-American boy, whose relatives were all notified when the foster child was put up for adoption. So an aunt and uncle in Boston were notified. They didn’t know he existed. And they wanted him. One worked for the state and one for the school district so we were sure they’d be approved. But we were waiting, it’d been six or eight months and hoping we’d still get this adorable little boy. And we happened to be on vacation in Yucatan. Trey had just flown home and I was still there. And he got a call from San Francisco County saying, “A little girl was just dropped off in our office and the woman who was supposed to adopt her dropped her off and said ‘I can’t take her one more day. Here you go.’” And they said “We know you guys have been really open to just about anything and this may not work out with the boy you’ve been matched with. Could you take her today and adopt her?”

SHAUNA: Oh my word.

GUY: Yeah. And so Trey called and explained the situation and he said, “Well, guys, I just got here and Guy’s still in Yucatan. Let me call him.” So I said, ‘Okay. I’ll come right back.” And so he told them “Yeah, he won’t be back until tomorrow morning? Can you wait?” And they said, “Well, we’ll try to convince the mother to keep her one more night. Otherwise she’ll be in a shelter tonight.”

SHAUNA: Oh.

GUY: Almost four. And so we went in the next morning. Had a brief meeting. Didn’t see photos, no ethnicity, anything. They inspected the house and brought her over. That was 13 years ago, almost exactly. And so we told Emma, when you get back from summer camp today, you may have a little sister [inaudible]. So that’s what happened. So Janessa was, as they said, would have a really good honeymoon period for a bit. And she was. We were traveling a lot that summer. We were in Hawaii and Mexico and P-Town and Utah and lots going on, lots of people, lots of family around, and so forth. And she was a doll. But, literally the day we got back to San Francisco, shit hit the fan. We weren’t sure if we’d survive. It was so difficult. But she’d had a rough life, a lot of PTSD, her mother being in and out of homelessness and rehab and had experienced things she should never have experienced those first few years. So she’s made tremendous progress and is a beautiful, talented 17-year-old now.

SHAUNA: What a roller-coaster.

GUY: Yeah.

SEAN: Right, wow.

SHAUNA: That’s amazing. I love that family is intentional. It’s not just, “Oh, we’re having a baby. Oh, we’re not ready for this.” It’s intentional and it’s heartfelt and you work for it to build your family. And there’s something really beautiful and loving about that thought that you wanted it so bad that you were willing to make all of these sacrifices to make it happen and love the children that maybe in some cases were not being loved elsewhere. And that’s so amazing. I love that story.

EMILY: You know, I got married and to the world we looked like a very lovely young couple. And I had this wonderful partner. I tried so hard to be a dad. I really did. I always liked sports and I thought that would be the gateway to being a great dad. And I tried so many things to make my children be who I thought they could be or should be. And I got some harsh lessons in realizing that I get to cheer them on, not tell them what to do. And I was kind of a mess. And at some point, I wasn’t a great partner. And at some point I was screaming and yelling and angry a lot. And I wasn’t easy to be with for my partner or for them. And I became very distant. And one of the things that I can say when people talk about gender-affirming care, it helped me be an engaged parent again. And it gave my children a parent back that was gone. It wasn’t quite what anyone thought it would be. But suddenly I cared, and suddenly I had time, and suddenly I had the focus and capability to engage in relationships with them. And I’m sad that I missed many parts of their childhood. But I’m ever so grateful to be their mom, especially as they’ve gotten older. This crazy thing happens. You like them as people. I knew I loved them. But you don’t know that you’re going to like them as people. And it’s crazy. And they’re some of the most wonderful people you know. And they give you some time and you feel so grateful of all they could be doing, of all they have happening, they’ve chosen to share some of their time and energy with me. And so I think if you asked my children, they would tell you it was like I was a parent again for the first time in many years. And I know my children miss, I know a couple of my children have said it was hard growing up without a dad. Yeah. It was hard for me to not be able to be the dad that they wanted. But I’m ever so grateful. I have loss and pain that is different. I don’t have a picture of me holding my babies that doesn’t hurt to look at. I look at any picture of me holding my babies when they were little and all I feel is dysphoria and a great deal of pain. So I didn’t get to be the parent that I wanted to be. But I’m grateful that I can be the parent that I am now, if that makes sense.

SHAUNA: Yes. That’s beautiful. Beautifully said. Sean, do you have anything to add?

SEAN: I just want to say that I appreciate the joy, Guy, that you have, like the joy in your face, I know this is audio. But listeners, when you look into someone's eyes as a parent, there’s always a sparkle, right? And I, in Guy’s eyes, it’s tough. And, you’re right like, we intentionally create families. We intentionally select those we are among often. And even so, when they’re our birth children, we still have that option of select families, right? I don’t speak to my mother. And she’s missing a lot as a grandparent. And so that’s hard. That’s the other part of being a queer parent is, you know, how do we connect with our other family and how does that work? But I just love that joy in Guy’s eyes and that sparkle as a parent. I have amazing parents that I’ve selected in my family, you know. And I have my step-dad who raised me, is so supportive. He’s the best man ever. And I’ve seen his eyes and his pride and joy in me as a parent. And I see that in Guy’s eyes. I just want to reiterate that with those who are listening. We are parents because we have so much love to give. And often we have to make our families and make our families work. So I just wanted to say thank you for that joy. And Em, your family, I just love that. I love hearing about them. The moments I get to think about in the future, like watching my children. I love my children all the time. And I can’t wait to see what they’re going to become as adults and want to get to like them again. I just have to reiterate, I love my children all the time. I don’t always like them right now. But I can’t wait for that and the opportunities to be able to see, how did I screw this up, and how did I not screw it up, right? And my coming up of being a parent is because of a love that was way outside of a universal connection. My wife and I, we were unlikely connection. And a very unlikely connection and she’s just given me everything, including family.

SHAUNA: I love that. Okay, let’s talk about our kids for a minute. Any challenges or benefits? Like I like to talk about the super powers as well as the challenges that come with queer parenting or queer identities, right? How have your kids experienced life with LGBTQ parents? What do you think that’s been like for them? Sean, do you want to start?

SEAN: Yeah. I’m thinking about that. My wife and I are so involved in advocacy. We run Ogden Pride and we’ve worked for other non-profit organizations where we’ve just constantly been involved in the community. And sometimes they don’t like it. It’s taken a lot of time. And we’ve tried to – they’ve been involved with us. They were much more involved when they were much younger and they were cute and people gave them everything. You have a million cousins and a million uncles. And now they’re kind of like, “We like what you’re doing. But we’re going to be our teenage selves, over here.” And it’s challenging on that end of things. And Ogden Pride runs a youth program, youth outreach program. And our kids were involved in that for a while. But now they’re like, “I don’t want my parents around when I’m trying to be me.” So it’s like, I see your example, but, you know, our youngest identifies as nonbinary. And this generation has a different outlook on what being queer means and what the fight is. And so we have a lot of fights and debates over old LGBTQ history opposed to what’s going on now and how that works, and labels, and what you can and can’t do. We have a lot of debates in the house because I come from a GenX, I wasn’t quite old enough for Stonewall, but I absolutely have studied my history and appreciate that and take on those same flames of advocacy through so much that I do. And the kids are just like, “Meh.” So those are the challenges. I’m trying to show you how I’ve been part of this community. We model that, right? I model my flame every day. But they don’t want anything to do with it. And I think that might just be parenting. We’re at that point where “I just don’t want anything to do with you, right?”

SHAUNA: Parents become uncool.

SEAN: Yeah. I’m not cool anymore. And I definitely hit the – there’s a moment in aging when you were that cool person for a long time and I don’t even – I can’t even understand what you’re saying. I’ve got to look it up in the Urban dictionary, like, “You should not be using that term! I’m just going to put it away and you just go be yourself because that’s what I want for you. Go be yourself. You’re going to get in trouble, but go be yourself.”

SHAUNA: Okay. Exactly! Emily?

EMILY: There’s a lot of weird things that happened with my children in terms of how they saw it. Initially, one of my children was very involved in theater. And he was kind enough to tell me Thank You, one time. And I said why? And he said, “Because you gave me tremendous street cred in the theater.” And I thought that was a very funny response from one of my children. But this has been mixed across a lot of different things because I’ve been involved in things like Sean was talking about. For a lot of time, I worked with young people, specifically through college GSA groups and high school GSA groups where I lived. And they were constantly in my home. I learned that queer people and tacos are virtually identical population groups. And I learned that you could have a queer taco night and it was amazing how many young people would show up. This presented a problem for some of my children. One of them, I knew all of their friends in a different way than they did. Another one has consistently been frustrated because every time he participates in something related to the queer community, everybody there already knew me. And for him to establish something separate of me within the same community was challenging. Especially when you go to meet somebody and the first thing they say is, “Oh, I know Em.” And it often must’ve felt like I was following them around as they sorted through things. Even as I’ve come here to Bellingham, I started to work with a local queer group called the Bellingham Queer Collective. They’re putting together a queer center, a queer community center. And I was helping and working with them. And my son was so excited to come and tell me about this event that he was going to go to and in the end I ended up speaking at the same event as a panelist. And I felt bad. I feel like his friends just think I follow him around. And some of those things have happened over and over again. But there's something so joyous to see your not-queer kids come to Pride to support your queer family that’s at Pride. And to see them all go to support each other is beyond beautiful. And to see them in the way that siblings do where they mock each other and tease each other and give each other a hard time, and yet show up for each other. One of my boys is the most cisgender, heterosexual dude, guy that I’ve ever really known. And he proudly puts on his Pride hat and marches into the event maybe just so he can get food from the food truck, but he does come every time to support. And it’s beautiful to see the relationships with your children out there in the queer community can be really tricky. Especially if you’re somewhere smaller. My son made a map and it was like a conspiracy theorists board where he drew all the lines of how everyone was connected. And at some point, I think he just said this is kind of brutal because I should just put you as an umbrella. And I thought, “That’s awful!” And at the same time, how lucky have I been to know all of those young people and to have them help me in my life as well. And then to know that they’re there for my kids, what a gift.

SHAUNA: Thank you. Guy?

GUY: It’s great to hear both from Emily and Sean. Thank you for sharing all that. A couple thoughts, things that they’ve said that remind me of things that might be of interest. Emily had mentioned something earlier about the – I can’t remember what it was – but it reminded me of the challenges that we’ve had sometimes as two dads. That people, from the time Emma was born would give us advice like men can’t possibly know what to do with a baby. So from things like, “Oh, you need to give her…” – I remember the first time we flew from Germany to the US with her and the woman in the back of first class told me on my way back, “You need to give her a little whiskey.” To help her sleep on the flight, I guess. We would run into people all the time in Germany that first year and later that would give us advice that was out of the blue, often.

SHAUNA: Unsolicited.

GUY: Absolutely. Yeah. And interesting from different cultures the different advice. Russian friends had told us we should put her outside when it’s freezing cold because that’s what they do. And then bundle them up and just leave them outside for several hours. I think it’s to toughen them up or something. And then experiences in San Francisco where we’d be – transracial adoption’s a whole other layer of challenges. And some are funny. Walking the neighborhood, “What’s a white guy doing with a black girl?” Or the time walking to the park and someone, it was the babysitter, not me, who was asking Emma to be a little quieter because she’s loud and boisterous. And someone yelled out the third story window, “Black kids are supposed to be loud. But by the way you’re doing a great job with her hair.”

SHAUNA: I love it.

GUY: That’s a whole other challenge, right?

SHAUNA: Yeah. Learning how to do a different hair texture, yeah.

GUY: And, anyway, it just reminded me of some of those things and people would just, are sometimes clueless and thoughtless about the things that they say and do. But you just take it in stride. And then Sean had mentioned something – oh, I know, about the challenges of dealing with grandparents – so sad to hear about your mom, Sean. She’s really missing out. But we’re really fortunate. Both Trey’s parents and my parents have loved our kids. My parents have now passed, but they were super. They would come to Grandparents’ day at the school every May and really supported, and often spent Christmas with us. And it was really, really wonderful. Not all the family has been supportive. In fact, one brother, things were great until we had kids. And that was the line that was drawn.

SHAUNA: Really?

GUY: Yeah. We flew from Germany. Planned for weeks in advance to drive down to southern Utah because their kids were the only kids remotely close in age. I’m the youngest and started, obviously, late having children. And so we really wanted to build that bond young. And they refused to come to dinner and later to attend any family reunion we’d be at. He said, “The prophet said this is wrong – the church leader – the church said this is wrong. We can’t condone this. We can’t show any support.” So that’s very painful. This brother has now remarried and I think it’s going to be better. But one can hope. That’s been a couple decades now. So family challenges are something that’s different, I think, for queer and LGBTQ parents.

SEAN: Yeah.

SHAUNA: And we say those family members are missing out on relationships, right, which is absolutely. True. But it’s also a trauma. It’s also very difficult to be rejected by people who should love you.

GUY: Right. Especially…

EMILY: I think it’s difficult on the kids too. Like my children, I don’t currently have the ability to have a relationship with most of my siblings. Both of my parents passed away long before I ever came out. And so they have to go somewhere else to find uncles. They have to go somewhere else to find the role that an uncle or an aunt would fill. And not only does it place a gap in their life and in my life, but it places a gap in my children’s life as well. I’m lucky that my ex wife has quite a bit of family still in her life. And so at least my kids get some of those kinds of relationships with cousins and such through her.

GUY: It’s tough.

SHAUNA: Yeah. It is hard.

GUY: Maybe comment, you were mentioning, Emily, about having our kids growing up surrounded with queer activism and so forth. I think it’s been a positive for our kids for the most part. Especially the last several years in San Francisco, I was very active in – we’ve always marched in Pride and so forth – usually the kids' school would be marching. It was only recently we actually saw a Pride parade because we were always in it and often would have gatherings at our home because we lived nearby, of LGBTQ Mormon, especially, allies. And frequent gatherings at our place. So I think it’s been mostly positive. But, later, you know, kids wouldn’t want to come out of their room if anyone was visiting. And the whole teenage thing. But, yeah, so the opportunity we had, and both alluded to this, of chosen family has been really important for us and our kids to have. It’s one of the things we love about Hawaii is everybody’s an auntie or an uncle. That’s really sweet about the culture here. But I think, in our own lives, wherever we are, we’ve had to intentionally create those families, speaking of intentional family creation, right? To find those aunts and uncles and cousins. And another concern that people had, “Well, how will your daughters learn how to be a woman? What do you do when this happens? How can you possibly be qualified as a man?” Whatever. So, while we do have Grandmothers and aunts and family friends and so forth,, too,, of course. One quick funny story. Emma, our older one, at one point was complaining that she wanted a mother. And Trey, who cooks and knits and gardens and so forth said, “Well, what is it that you think you’re missing that a mother would have or do that I don’t?” And it turns out it was have candy in her purse. That was the thing that she wanted that Grandmas had and so forth.

EMILY: It’s nice to know I qualify.

GUY: Exactly. So, sometimes the things we think are big deals, are really something small.

SHAUNA: I think that’s an important lesson, right? Sometimes we think something’s going to be a big deal and it ends up not being a big deal. I think that’s true for parenthood across the board. But I love that example. 

Okay. This is my favorite question that I want to ask. I want to ask about your queer parenthood joy. I want to ask what is your superpower or superpowers that you have by virtue of being a queer parent that has made parenthood easier for you than it would be otherwise? Who wants to go first?

SEAN: I don’t know if it’s made it easier or harder. As a transgender man, I often joke with friends, “No offense to white women, because I used to be one.” It’s that whole, “I used to be one so I’ve gone through things.” So I’m great about going to get the menstruation products because just tell me what you need. It’s not embarrassing. But it also is bad because they don’t like to listen to the fact that I’ve gone through a lot of things like all of these problems with the parts that I was born with. And they don’t want to listen because they don’t look at me that way. So it’s kind of, they’ve given me the super-passing, “We don’t want to look at our dad like that.” But it’s kind of the funny moments that come up or just the “I have empathy for you.” And they joke a lot around the house, now that I’m with three women in the home and, yes, trans men also sync up to the monthly things. Our big joke right now is, “You need a Midol.” So I know how to go get the chocolate and all those things. What do you need? I’ll go get it. Come back with the brownie-point things, right, without having the embarrassment and things like that. So those are those little wins just like, “I know what you’re going through. You don’t even have to say it.” Try this, try this, and try this. And that’s all we need to say. So those are those little moments that a lot of trans men who have gone through those things with, who have nonbinary, AFAB and female-identified people in the home. So just something a little small. The embarrassing moments that dad knows what you’re going through.

SHAUNA: I absolutely consider that a super power. I have a trans son who is not yet a parent. But I love his perspective on life. I think transgender people have this amazing scope of experience that the rest of us don’t have. And so he has lived his life being perceived as a woman and being toxic masculinity-ed and mansplained to and all of the things. And then he also has this experience of being perceived as a man. And when he's walking late at night and he sees a woman, he knows how she feels. He knows. And he’s just so insightful. I love the way his brain works because he has this breadth of experience moving through society and gender and all of that stuff. So I think that, for sure, is a super power.

SEAN: Super power from the outside perspective. But when your children look at you, they just think you’re a creepy dude.

GUY: Oh, that’s funny.

SHAUNA: Kids are the best.

SEAN: They are. I love them all the time.

SHAUNA: Who wants to go next?

GUY: My immediate response was empathy. And just the fact that there is so much love to give. That can be a blessing and a curse. Being sensitive and empathetic has its downsides too. But I think, you know, I’ve never had the experience of being a woman, but I have experience of being an outsider. Being a minority.

SHAUNA: Being marginalized.

GUY: Right. And so I think that that’s helpful as a parent and just as a person in general to better be able to understand and relate to other people that may be different from themselves.

SHAUNA: That is so true. I’ve learned that as a parent of a queer kid and not being transgender or queer myself. I think that that is often, we’ve talked about this before, how when you live your life not marginalized, it’s hard to teach your children who are marginalized coping strategies. You have no frame of reference for modeling resilience in these spaces that they need resilience. And so I think for sure your experience prepares you to help your children in a lot of different spaces, right, where they might face discrimination or marginalization. And that compassion and that empathy and that, just, understanding because you’ve been in spaces where you have not been welcomed and you’ve not been appreciated gives you that capacity to then teach your children how to respond in situations where they face that same thing.

GUY: Interesting example, obviously having Black and mixed-race kids. One thing I should mention about gender. People often ask, “Why did you choose daughters?” Trey and I both came from families of four boys. Both of our parents have four boys. And I remember asking my mom once, “Mom, did you ever have PMS?” She goes, “No. I never did.” “Why didn’t you warn me about that, tell me about that? I had no idea.” But anyway, bad commentary in society and I wish it had progressed much more than it has in two decades, is, we chose girls partly because of the fear of men adopting boys. That with the whole grooming, groomer thing. It hasn’t changed as much as I had hoped. A sad commentary on society. But that was definitely part of our reason for choosing girls.

SHAUNA: That makes sense, sadly.

EMILY: For me, Shauna, the things that bring me a great deal of joy as a queer parent is to watch my children surround themselves with diversity. And they have learned to embrace difference instead of fight against it. And rather than separate themselves, and they’re like a magnet and they pull really unique people towards them in a way that’s super beautiful. And they’re fearlessly authentic. Queer or not, my children are like, “Oh, you know what? I feel like wearing knee-high stiletto boots to the thrift store.” And I sit there and I say, “Do you have some other shoes?” And they say, “Are you embarrassed of me?” And I say, “No. Your feet are going to hurt. You’re only going to make it about an hour before your feet are going to hurt really bad. But I don’t care what you’re wearing.” And there are things that only a trans mom really understands. Do I know what a monthly cycle’s like? Yeah. I know that too. Did I have to apologize to every woman and every person who experienced a monthly cycle at some point? Yes. Because I didn’t understand, and it’s a brutal process to have to learn. And they’ve all seen pain. And they’ve all had some trauma and some difficulty because of this. And then they watched my pain and then they watched the pain within a family and pain within a marriage and a pain within extended family. And it sounds crazy, but me being queer and them experiencing all of these things and all of these new flavors and colors, it has given us this beautiful opportunity to talk deeply, to speak deeply of the world and the challenges, and to sit on the couch for four and a half hours and talk to them about things that they don’t understand or know or things that they feel like they need to teach me. And that ability to have those deeper conversations that maybe I wouldn’t be capable of under other circumstances, it’s maybe the greatest gift of all of this for me.

SHAUNA: A thousand times, yes. I agree. Learning that diversity is a strength and that uniqueness is a virtue is such a powerful lesson for kids to learn about themselves and to see that reflected in their parents is such a gift. I love that so much. I’m so grateful for all of you for joining us today. Before we go, do you have anything that you want to – any advice or encouragement that you want to pass on to either queer people who are feeling afraid of how they’re going to build their families in the future or parents of queer kids who are worried about the same thing? Any parting advice or words of encouragement?

GUY: Go for it. You can create wonderful families. It’s worth the challenges and can bring a great deal of joy, as in any family.

SHAUNA: Beautiful.

GUY: And trials.

SHAUNA: And trials. The hardest job you’ll ever love. Sean, what about you?

SEAN: You always know what to say when you want to talk to a parent who is just starting. Like a cis-gender parent who is just starting this progress. You know, you’re not alone. But these are the same things we say to queer parents, right? We’re in a club and we all get the fact that my children are aliens right now. And you probably have alien children at some point in your life. And it’s okay. But guess what, that’s part of parenthood. I’m learning that. I’m learning the definition of parenthood and still learning the definition of parenthood. And hopefully, before I leave my mark on this earth, I’ve grasped what that meant for me because it changes every day. But I guess my advice is to don’t let these fears that we see in the world today be something that stops you from having what you want as a family. I think that’s a big thing right now, a generational thing right now. Not just for queer parents or queer people. I think it’s generationally, people are just thinking, “I don’t want to bring a child into this world the way it is.” Our advocacy, and I know the three of us have been through great advocacy just being ourselves on top of the work we’ve done in our communities. That the changes for that, the only way to break that down is to continue to just grasp what you want. To grasp that families looks different and the world is going to remain as it is constantly. And you know that there’s hate and there’s love. And in the end, it doesn’t matter unless it’s part of your love, right? So however you're supporting that, just go for it. Like Guy said, just go for it. It’s challenging and I’m going to survive. And you’re going to survive. And the kids are going to be okay.

SHAUNA: Amen. So true. Okay, Emily?

EMILY: I guess I would say to parents to remember and keep in mind – because I didn’t know how to do this – queerness and queer families, they can be oh, so, wholesome. And they can be oh, so, full of peace. And the world would have you believe that there is no peace and that it’s not wholesome. It is wholesome and beautiful. And I wish that people understood that. And let your kids see that. Let your neighbors see that. Let the world see that wholesomeness of what love looks like, queer or not queer. It never occurred to me that it was a wholesome thing. And that was just how I understood from the world. And queer love, queer parenting, queer families can be so wholesome and full of peace that people can’t imagine.

SHAUNA: That is the perfect ending to today's episode. I want to thank you three for coming back and joining us and sharing your wisdom and your insights into parenthood. And thank you for being here with us.

GUY: Thank you.

EMILY: Thank you.

JEN: Thanks for joining us here In the Den. While we have you, we want to let you know about the inaugural LUV Conference coming up this October 18th and 19th in Salt Lake City, Utah. The conference is all about learning and connecting and creating a more supportive environment for LGBTQ+ individuals and their families. Get more information at www.luvwithoutlimits.org. That’s L-U-V without limits.org. Or find the link in the show notes under the links from the show. We hope to see you there.

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