In the Den is Getting a New Host!

In the Den with Mama Dragons is entering a new era! After almost two years, our original host Jen is passing the hosting microphone on to another amazing Mama Dragon who will take the lead. Our new host is Sara LaWall. Sara has guest-hosted several episodes in the past and should be familiar to regular listeners. Today, Jen sits down with Sara to visit, so that we can all get to know our new host just a little bit better. 

Special Guest: Sara LaWall

Sara serves as the Minister for the Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, in Boise, Idaho, where she weaves her calling for social justice and collective liberation into her ministry advocating for queer rights and other issues connected to her faith and her heart. She holds a MDiv from Meadville-Lombard Theological School (Chicago, IL), a M.A.Ed. from Pepperdine University (Los Angeles, CA), and a B.F.A in Theatre Arts from the University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ).  She serves on the boards of The Pro-Voice Project and the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare. She is the proud parent of a 19 year old daughter (who is her dragon, having come out as trans in 2020), and a 15 year old son and married to an amazing husband, partner, and champion. When asking her family’s help to write this bio (because they can be a little dry) her kids said, “She is a great mother and amazing preacher that stands up for others when they can’t stand up for themselves. She taught us to never be afraid to be who you are and say what you truly believe.” She is grateful (and a bit surprised) they have actually been listening.

Links from the Show:

• Join Mama Dragons today: www.mamadragons.org 
• Find Mama Dragons on FB:  https://www.facebook.com/mamadragons 
• Mama Dragons on IG: https://www.instagram.com/themamadragons/ 

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

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 this journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. Thanks for listening. We’re glad you’re here.

I am beyond excited for our episode today. After almost 2 years of hosting this podcast, it is time to pass that joy-filled role onto another Mama Dragon. I want to start by thanking everyone who has helped to make this podcast successful. I am hopeful that our brilliant guests have provided insight and wisdom that has helped all of our listeners become more skilled and confident in parenting their own LGBTQ+ humans. I am hopeful that understanding has been expanded and relationships have been strengthened. And I cannot wait to watch the podcast continue to grow over the next few years!

Some of you might be familiar with our new host. She has been a guest host several times and done a fantastic job. Her name and her voice won’t surprise any of you, but some of her qualifying credentials might be!

Sara LaWall holds a MDiv, a M.A.Ed., and a B.F.A in Theatre Arts. She serves on the boards of The Pro-Voice Project and the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare. She also serves as the Minister for the Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. She is the proud parent of a 19-year-old daughter, a 15-year-old son, and is married to an amazing husband & partner. Welcome Sara! 

SARA: Thanks, Jen. I’m so excited to be on this side of the microphone.

JEN: Are you ready to help our listeners get to know the person who will be hosting their future episodes?

SARA: Sure. Let’s go.

JEN: If you could start off by taking us back, all the way, all the way to the start to how you grew up, tell us a bit about your family dynamics, how you viewed the world, where you were? What was life like for you while you were growing up?

SARA: Wow. OK. I was born in Tucson, Arizona, and when I was about 9 months old, my parents were divorced. So my life growing up was in that vein. I was primarily raised by my mom and spent every other weekend with my dad from the time I can remember. I have no memory of my parents ever living together. And my mom’s parents, my maternal grandparents, were Jewish. And I spent every Friday night with them. They would come pick me up from school and we’d go out to dinner and so I had a really strong relationship with my grandparents growing up. And I only realized later as a parent what a miraculous thing it was to be able to have your parents take your child every single week overnight for 13 years. That lasted for that long until my grandmother died when I was 13 years old. So that was a really traumatic moment in my life because she was beloved to me. I loved her.

JEN: Were you an only child?

SARA: I was my mom’s only child. But my dad remarried and had two girls. So I am lucky enough to be both an only child and the oldest sister of three girls.

JEN: Okay. That’s cool.

SARA: And they live, now, in Milwaukee and we get along great and it’s really lovely. I feel blessed to be able to live in both of those spaces.

JEN: Yeah. That’s super cool. Alright.

SARA: I, in high school, there was no high school in my school district so I got to choose what high school I wanted to go to, which was kind of exciting for those of us who were in my junior high together. And so I went to high school, it was a little bit far away from where I lived and I was a theater geek in high school. I had done children’s theater from the time I was young and knew I wanted to try to make a life doing theater, and I did it in high school. And I had the most extraordinary drama teacher ever. She was one of those teachers in high school who everybody was always in her office hanging out and everybody was always talking to her about their problems and she was just so warm and kind and generous. And the drama room was where we all hung out, was where I made some of my very best friends. And, in fact, I met my husband in high school.

JEN: Awesome.

SARA: And we were in drama together. I actually met him in science class first. But we were in drama together. We were really good friends all throughout high school. And we didn’t get engaged until we were 19, which is crazily young in my older brain now. But then felt perfectly fine. We both went to college together at the University of Arizona where we both were theater majors. So we really were on this trajectory to make acting and theater a part of our lives and pursuing that as a career together. So we graduated from the University of Arizona and hopped off to Los Angeles and there we lived trying to be actors like millions of other young people, pounding the pavement and working a ton of other day jobs while we scratched away at trying to build an acting career in Los Angeles together.

JEN: How long did you work for that? How long did you try?

SARA: I tried for about almost ten years, actually. I ended up doing a lot of theater in LA. So that was really great. I really wanted to do film and television, but as everyone knows there are only so many parts for millions of actors. And I did some small little things. My claim to fame, I was on an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

JEN: Awesome.

SARA: Yeah. And I was a big fan of Buffy at that time. And so that one goes a long way. Although it’s funny now that I’m a little bit older, if I share this particular detail with a group of young people, some of them don’t know what Buffy the Vampire Slayer is. So it really dates me.

JEN: If we can find a link to that on YouTube, we will be including it. I will be hunting for that.

SARA: Let’s not.

JEN: I will be hunting for that.

SARA: It was one line and it was on the worst episode of Buffy ever.

JEN: You had a line?

SARA: I had a line.

JEN: Oh, I’m finding that.

SARA: I was really rather disappointed. I didn’t get to be a demon. It was very one line, if you blink you miss it. And the exciting thing is, when you get a role in film or television in Hollywood, you get to have the script early. So I got a hand-delivered, hush-hush script to this episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that wasn’t set to air for six whole weeks. And, as a fan of the show and an avid watcher, I thought this was the most exciting thing, more exciting perhaps than even being on set. And I picked up that script and I read it the minute I got my hands on it. And then I went, “What is this?” It was the worst, worst episode in Buffy history. I’m sorry, Buffy fans. If there are fans out there, the title of the episode is “Doublemeat Palace” and if you know that episode you know what I’m talking about. 

But let’s not dwell on Los Angeles. Needless to say, ten years of pounding the pavement doesn’t earn one a steady income. And my husband and I started talking about having a family and what that would look like and how we were going to make that happen. And so that was the point at which I went back to school to get a Master’s in Education, at the time thinking that I was going to teach drama. That’s kind of what I sort of imagined for myself. And went down that road and got that degree. And right near the end of that process of getting my Master’s, I got pregnant with our first child. So I actually completed my Master’s Degree with an infant. I got really good at typing one handed and holding the baby and typing papers. But I really wanted to push through finishing it. But then decided that I wasn’t going to go into teaching because I had gotten another job. I got a job as a director of religious education at a Unitarian Universalist church. And it was a strange moment in my life when I needed a job desperately. My pregnancy was very complicated and I had to stop doing what I was doing. And so I was really just looking for work and interestingly enough, my husband and I had just started attending a Unitarian Universalist church. We were maybe nine months in. And this job popped open and I just didn’t think I was going to get it. But as fate would have it, they hired me anyway. They hired me even knowing that I was pregnant. I really agonized about whether or not I should share that tidbit of information. I wasn’t sure how well that was going to go. And it turned out to be one of the most fulfilling jobs I’ve ever had, and led me to the career path that I’m on right now as a Unitarian Universalist Minister.

JEN: Okay. So I’m going to back you way up.

SARA: Okay.

JEN: And ask, were you raised, I know you were with your Jewish grandparents on Friday and Saturday. Was your mom religious? Was your dad religious? Did you have that in those homes also?

SARA: My Jewish grandparents were not particularly religious. It was more cultural. We celebrated all the holidays. Interestingly, they lived on a block in Tucson where all the neighbors were Jewish. So we knew all the neighbors. We socialized. We would go to everybody’s houses for all the holidays. I used to joke that we celebrated all the holidays that involved food – which in the Jewish tradition is pretty much all of them. And we would do Hanukkah celebrations together. But I wasn’t raised in the faith. So it was really only around the holidays, although at one point I remember really wanting to have a Bat Mitzvah and beginning to talk to my mom about that even though I’d never been to temple, never been to synagogue. And beginning to talk to my grandmother about that. And I think that, if my grandmother hadn’t died when I was 13, like right around that time when all of those plans and considerations are being made, that that might’ve happened. Perhaps, in another parallel universe, I might’ve become a rabbi. Who knows. But that didn’t transpire. But my dad and my step mom were what I like to call “Mixed Protestant.” So every other weekend that I was at my dad’s, we bounced around to liberal protestant churches. We were presbyterian and we were United Church of Christ. And those are the two that I remember the most. But it was a little bit of everything and a bunch of different churches that I remember in my childhood. 

One funny story, my sisters and I when we were young, we were at this – I think it was a UCC church downtown – and they would do communion with full bread every Sunday where the pastor would rip the loaf in half and you’d pass the loaves around and tear off a piece of bread. Of course, nobody does this post-COVID. But as kids we would try to tear off the biggest hunk of bread we could possibly get because we were starving at 11 o’clock on a Sunday morning. And then the service would be over and my sisters and I would go on this treasure hunt trying to find the leftover communion bread. And we could never, ever find it.

JEN: Was there leftovers? I would imagine everyone just ate it all.

SARA: I think there was always some left over. It wasn’t a terribly big congregation. But I learned later from my Protestant colleagues that, in fact, in some traditions you have to either bury the communion bread or eat it all. and so there’s people back there that are finishing, but we never got to be those people and I’m still kind of sad about that.

JEN: That seems like a cool job to be the Bread Eater of the church. I like that job.

SARA: Wouldn’t that be fun?

JEN: That would be a good job. So was your mom religious at all?

SARA: My mom herself wasn’t particularly religious. But when I was in junior high a friend of hers invited her to attend her United Methodist church in Tucson that was really super liberal. And we went together. And so I kind of came of age in this United Methodist church and stayed all the way through college until we left for Los Angeles. And this church was so liberal that the mythology about when the minister was hired they were started by a group of folks who were deep in the recovery community and they were also really connected at the time. It was very popular to Maryann WIlliamson’s Miracle – I forget the name of it now – but to some of her work and practice. And so when they hired their first minister, they didn’t want him to say the word “Christ”. He spoke of Jesus of Nazareth. And he told all the stories of Jesus and referenced the Bible. But never said the word “Christ.” And growing up in this church we used gender neutral terms for God in the 80’s – in the late 80’s and early 90’s. We called worship a celebration and the sermons were called a commentary and our minister performed civil unions for LGBTQ+ couples. And they were members of the congregation. And it was one of the first reconciling United Methodist churches in its conference – I came to find out later. But of course, as a junior high kid, I’m just there thinking that this is just what United Methodism is, like everybody must be this liberal, right? So it was a beautiful place to have this sense of community and spirituality and they also rented their sanctuary space to a small reformed Jewish congregation. So in the back of the sanctuary is the Arc of the Covenant that houses the Torah for this Jewish community. And I just kind of felt like I could fit there as a kid who had Jewish grandparents and this Jewish background and whose grandparents were beloved to her. That was such an important part of my identity. And this United Methodist Church really allowed for all of that to exist at once. In some of the Protestant churches that I hopped around to with my dad, their theology was just a little more Christ-centered. And I remember one fifth-grade Sunday school class when our Sunday school teacher, who was a guy which I thought was really cool back then, but basically said that it was okay for us to hitch-hike so long as we believed in Jesus and our salvation and the salvation of Jesus because we would be protected. And I shot my hand up and said, “But that’s illegal.” I couldn’t make sense of that. I couldn’t really ever make sense of the theology of salvation because I had Jewish family members and I couldn’t ever figure out why on earth they would ever go to Hell when they didn’t even believe in Jesus in the first place. But for me, it wasn’t really traumatic. It was just sort of, “No thank you. I don’t believe that.” But I really love church, all the churches. I love the choir and I love the ritual and I love the ceremony and I love the hymns. And I just sort of found my way through by constructing my own theology that fit my life.

JEN: It sounds like you were sort of drawn to spirituality early. Is that a fair thing to say?

SARA: I think so. I think I’ve always been kind of a spiritual seeker as a very young person. I mean, I remember asking my mom for a Bible when I was 13. And bless my sweet mother who probably was a little bit concerned that her daughter was asking for a Bible. But did all of her research and got me this really great annotated student Bible. And I loved it. And I just bounced around to all of those places through high school and through college in experimenting in all kinds of different traditions and spiritual practices because I was very much seeking something that felt meaningful in my soul.

JEN: It kind of reminds me a little bit of the book, “Life of Pi.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, where he’s going, this boy, he’s just going to all these different churches and the pastor and the Imam and the Rabbi, they all think he’s a member of their church. And he’s like, “I am.” And they’re confused. It sort of reminds me of that a little bit. So did you husband, when you met him, you shared theater and you had this shared geographical history. Did he have similar desires? Was he also a spiritual seeker?

SARA: Yeah. Very much so. He ended up coming to that United Methodist church with me that was Saint Francis in the Foothills. And we, I think at some point in high school, but we became members of the church in college together and went through their new member program and were really active. I was a summer camp counselor and a youth group leader. And we loved it. And then we moved to Los Angeles and we kind of – church just stopped being part of our life, I think out of circumstance. We were just caught up in building a new life in a new city. And there was a point at which we both talked about wanting to find a church community again because that community was so powerful and it was so meaningful. And it was really at Saint Francis that I also learned about the value of justice-making and spirituality being two sides of the same coin. This congregation was so active in social justice issues of its time. They were a sanctuary congregation for the first sanctuary movement with migrants from Nicaragua and Honduras coming over and housing them, literally, in the sanctuary. They were this reconciling congregation, welcoming to LGBTQ+ folks, and performing civil unions. And so they were really out front on a lot of issues of their day. And that moved my husband and I. That’s what kept us there, really was the spirituality and the justice. And once we got settled in Los Angeles, we wanted to find a community like that again. And I remember walking into a United Methodist church somewhere in Studio City, California, near where we lived and we sat through a service and it was nothing at all like Saint Francis and what we had experienced in Tucson. And we looked at each other and we thought, Nope! And we never went back. And it was years before we ever looked for another religious community again.

JEN: Do you think this welcoming congregation and participating with this earlier version of Methodist congregation, do you think that influenced your ideas about queer people or did you already have those ideas and then it just reinforced them? Like, you were like, “These are my people. They agree with me.” Or were you like, “This is a new way to look at the LGBTQ+ experience”?

SARA: I think it reinforced them. I was raised by a very progressive mother who had a lot of friends and very good friends who were lesbian and gay. And I just kind of grew up around it as normal. I don’t remember ever being in a place or being in a space where I thought it was unusual or where I didn’t understand. And I remember this one time, my mom had to go to a conference in San Francisco and we had really good friends there. And their son, their gay son, lived in San Francisco. And she was going to this meeting and she’d asked this man if he would be willing to hang out with me for a little while, if I could go hang out at his house for a little while, while she had to do this meeting because it would be very boring for me. He said, “Sure. But I’m preparing to go to this film festival and I have a bunch of friends coming over and would that be okay?” And my mom said, “Sure.” And it was a local film festival that was going to screen queer short films. And so all of his friends came over and they were all queer. I think there were some drag queens. And we made a pink triangle cake and a pink cake in the shape of a film camera. And while we were making these wonderful cakes, everybody was singing show tunes and I just thought I had found my people. “Who are these people who want to make pink cakes and sing show tunes all day? This is where I belong.” as a ten year old. And it was delightful. And I went to the film festival and they were just the most warm, loving, fun – I mean the energy in that room and the energy that they brought was so fun and so delightful. You know, we’re singing songs from the Wizard of Oz and A Chorus Line. And it just was so great. And that memory really sticks with me. And so finding Saint Francis and being in a welcoming community just felt right, like reinforced all the messages that I had been given growing up.

JEN: What about, there’s a stereotype – which there’s a reason there’s a stereotype – among theater kids. Did you have a lot of exposure to LGBTQ kids in high school being part of the theater program or was everybody pretty closeted back then? Was it kind of a non-issue?

SARA: Everybody was pretty closeted back then. One of my friends came out to us much later in life. And so I don’t know. I don’t remember even wondering. And it was also a time in the 90’s when the stereotypes, the queer tropes were pretty rampant even in Hollywood. If you remember, In Living Color and the Two Snaps Up. So this is the kind of thing that theater kids were playing with and being around. But I think we all were aware of that. It just didn’t play out in our space together, not until I got to college. And in the theater department in college, I was surrounded by queer people, out queer people, very vocally out queer people who were very comfortable in their own identities and very willing to be out and that was just how it was.

JEN: That makes a lot of sense because I also went to high school in the 90’s.

SARA: Yeah. Not the friendliest time for queer people, honestly. It was still a pretty tough time and there were still a lot of really awful portrayals of queer folks.

JEN: Yeah. In my mind, it was not as hostile because it was so secret. So it was this oppressive invisibility. Now it’s very much more visible but now they’re getting hit by everybody’s arrows and stuck in the battle.

SARA: Yeah. That's a great description.

JEN: So I’m not sure. I think being out and being closeted, it just kind of changed culture a little bit. But I want to talk about how your growing up, going to these churches, and being with your grandparents, and all of these things shaped your identity, right? Your culture in your family shaped your identity. Which attributes of yours or qualities that you like, do you think came from this background? Not things you had to develop as an adult, but things that just were part – we already talked about LGBTQ inclusivity and your desire for justice. But do you have other characteristics or traits that you think came from this upbringing?

SARA: My mom was a pretty outspoken human. She was a career prosecutor and ended up as an elected District Attorney in southern Arizona for 24, I think, years before she retired. And I always have memories of my mom really fighting for justice issues, even in her work, and doing some really incredible things, and bringing me along. So as the mom’s only child and single mom’s only child, I went everywhere. I went to work with her. I went to conferences. Conferences became our way of doing summer vacations, just tack on a few days on the conference in whatever cool city it was. So I just remember being brought along. And I think being even exposed to some social justice issues because of her work. Really early on being exposed to doing work around gun violence prevention. And she’s a pretty tough lady and she was, early on she went to law school in the 70’s. She was a high school teacher for, I think, ten years before that and then decided to go to law school, and was one of the few women in her law school class. And the first female elected to District Attorney in Pima County. There had been a woman serving who was appointed before her. She would often tell the story about how one time she showed up to a law school class and it was winter and it was freezing, but the rules of the time were that women were not allowed to wear pants to class. But she showed up in her pants anyway because it was cold and her professor sent her away out of the class because she wasn’t following the dress code. And as she tells it, she just went back to her car, took off her jeans, buttoned up her coat and went back to class. So I grew up hearing stories from her and from her friends about what it was like to be a woman fighting in a field dominated by men and watching them fight for the issues that were important to them. And she would often take me to different kinds of rallies. So I very much got those qualities from her. And I feel like the only child side of me made for a lot of independence. And both my parents are really, wickedly smart humans and very outspoken. And then the whole Jewish side of my family, like stereotypically, really loud and really opinionated. So you really have to assert yourself in my family to be heard and just boisterous. So I think a lot of those qualities I got from being in that world all the time, in my family and with my mom in her working life.

JEN: Okay. So if we jump back to school again, you had your education degree. Your Master’s of Arts and Education. And you’re teaching at a church.

SARA: I’m running the education program at the church.

JEN: And then somehow you went to Divinity school after that. You already had a Master’s and you already had a job and you had one kid for sure, maybe two by then.

SARA: I had one kid.

JEN: And you decided to go back, again, to school for another Master’s. Talk to us about that.

SARA: Yeah. Just being a part of the Unitarian Universalist community and watching the ministers in my congregation do what they did and feeling like, after a couple of years of the work, like this could actually be a career for me, rather than the Los Angeles version of Sara that moved to LA to pursue an acting career so it was just getting jobs to pay the bills while I did this other thing that I wanted to be a career. And to be able to find something that I sort of could imagine as a future for myself and something that played to all of those gifts and strengths and talents and things that I had learned in my degree programs, was really remarkable. And so I knew I wanted to stay. And the church itself and the theology of Unitarian Universalism is so wide and so diverse, it felt – in a very interesting way – much like that United Methodist Church back in Tucson, Arizona. Big, big, tent, and it was this place where I felt like all of my spiritual, religious, and personal identities were welcome and where they really fought for justice and for values like the inherent worth and dignity of every person. And it just really spoke to my heart. And I knew early on, not only did I want to raise my children in this place, but I wanted to have a career. And that was the path for me at that point. The career advancement if you will, which sounds like such a strange word with regard to ministry, but that seemed like the path to be able to have the most options and to be able to stay in this community but also to grow my own education and spirituality in the process. So I went to Divinity School. I did a very early, modified residency program so I didn’t have to leave. I was at a Divinity School in Chicago that was a Unitarian Universalist Divinity School. And I would go back to Chicago several times a year for classes. But we would do all of our classes and coursework online and then we’d have these week long intensives that would wrap up the class each term. So I feel like I got the best of both worlds. I didn’t have to pack up and leave. I didn’t have to quit working for a church in order to go learn how to work for a church. But I also got to be a student, away from home, on campus with colleagues and friends and have that small experience too. And it was a wonderful experience.

JEN: Okay. So you’re in Los Angeles. What year are we talking about that you went back to get your Divinity Degree?

SARA: I applied in ’08, I think. But then I got pregnant with my second child and I ended up deferring my start date for two years while I was pregnant and realizing I couldn’t go pregnant for a whole host of medical reasons, not because you can’t go to school pregnant. I don’t mean that. And then when the second was really young, I just didn’t feel like I was ready to leave yet. And so I didn’t start Divinity School until 2011.

JEN: Okay. So you had two kids by the time you were on that degree?

SARA: Yep. I had two kids by the time I was on that journey.

JEN: And then, was there a step between that? Did you come straight to the Boise job or did you have part of your career between graduating and coming to Boise?

SARA: I took a longer time in Divinity school just because of all the family needs and the working and all of that. And I graduated in 2014. And, yeah, I went into the process, what we call a search process, in our denomination for ministry. And Boise was open and came to Boise as my first ministry as an ordained minister.

JEN: Okay. And you’ve been doing that for ten years?

SARA: And I’ve been doing that for almost ten years.

JEN: I’ll share with the audience, that’s going well.

SARA: That’s going well.

JEN: So we’ve kind of talked about it a little bit, but I want to dive a little teeny bit deeper. You met your husband. I want to talk about your decision to get married, when that happened in the timeline. And you talked a little bit about what having kids looked like, but then I want you to talk to us about your kids.

SARA: Okay. My husband and I got engaged when we were 19. And it was just sort of unfolded. It really wasn’t a surprise to either of us. I think I remember telling him at the time, and following all those 90’s tropes, “Well you have to actually propose. I’m not going to marry you if you don’t actually propose.” So he conjured up the proposal. And the way that he does things, he’s a very hilarious human. And we went out to dinner and he would say things like, “Sara, would you make me the happiest man and pass the salt?” And this just went on and on and on until finally the ring, which we had picked out together, came out. So I had a lot of say in how this was going to go down. And then we didn’t end up getting married for about three years. And not intentionally because my mom was running for office during that time and basically said to me, “I’m not planning a wedding and running for office at the same time. So if you want any of my help, you have to wait.” And so I waited.

JEN: Fair enough.

SARA: So we got married and we moved immediately to Los Angeles. We got married in October of ’97 and by December we were in a moving truck, moving to LA. We both knew that this was where we wanted to go and kind of what we wanted to try giving the film and television world a go. And did that and found an apartment and lived in North Hollywood for quite a while until the first kiddo came around. And then our career lives began to adapt and change to help us support this little baby. Who was, my first, was actually born nine weeks early and was in the NICU for six and a half weeks.

JEN: That’s early.

SARA: So it was a very complicated, very challenging time in our lives.

JEN: So you have two kids. We talked about moving around and when they were all born and the process and stuff. But at some point, one of your kids invited you to learn some new information about them or you always knew? Talk to us about that.

SARA: This first child came out to us originally as nonbinary using they/them pronouns and a different name in, I want to say, 2019. I’ve been trying to reconstruct this story and it’s really hard to remember exact timing. And then in 2020, I think late 2020, came out to us as trans. And really the next step of “I’m a girl and I want to use she/they pronouns and I have another new name.” And that all unfolded in 2020 during the pandemic. In many ways for her, that was great because online school allowed her an opportunity to find herself as a trans woman and kind of sink into that identity without having to navigate the social challenges of school. And I was so very grateful for that. So she got to start high school, which here in Boise starts in 10th grade officially you’re going to the high school in 10th grade. She got to start high school with her new name, new pronouns, new identity and that was just such a blessing. It was really such a blessing.

JEN: How did the impact of both of those hit you when she first said that she was nonbinary and later when she said she was trans? Was it kind of like, “Hmm. We expected this.” Or were you blindsided? How did the news hit?

SARA: It was so interesting. When I look back, I can see moments where I thought, “Okay. It’s possible that this kiddo might be queer.” And I say queer because I wasn’t really ascribing a specificity to how that would look. When she was little, she wanted a pink towel. She asked a lot of questions. When we moved here to Idaho in 2015, that was when the whole North Carolina bathrooms issue was exploding. And I would listen to NPR a lot in the car and she started to ask a lot of questions about that and have a lot of conversations about the clothes that girls could wear and boys could wear. And girls could wear more clothes and girls have more options. And we started talking a lot about gender politics when she was ten. However, from the way in which I was raised and the Unitarian Universalist community being really welcoming and really open, I just wanted to create as much space as possible for her to figure out who she was. And so I never really pushed. I never really asked questions. I just tried to the best of my ability to meet her where she was at. Well, she’s a very introverted, socially anxious human who was not loud and vocal, and who took her time and went really quietly and really slowly through these steps. So I wasn’t surprised. But the struggle for me was that she didn't come, was that adamant sense of “This is how it must be.” And that was the picture that I had in my head of trans kids at the time. I had seen some documentaries about four-year-olds who were trans who were like, “I’m a boy. I’m a boy. I’m a boy. I know!” And parents who, how can you ignore that when your child is screaming at you, this identity. Mine was not screaming her identity at me. It was much more subtle and much more quiet and I had to ask a lot of questions and kind of really help her feel comfortable to just say it all and get it all out. And that took some time. And that was strange because that’s not at all how I imagined that conversation should go.

JEN: The introverted, quiet, slow kids don’t want to be in a documentary.

SARA: No.

JEN: So there's not a lot of viewing out there for that. But I think the experience is very, very normal. But we don't see it very much.

SARA: A couple of years later, I asked her, “Why did it take you so long to come out to us, your liberal parents who talk about our unequivocal support of the queer community in church?” I was sort of puzzled by this “Who gave you comprehensive sexuality education!” And she was like, “Mom. It’s just hard. Period.” And so, “Okay. Fair.” “It’s just hard to tell your parents. It’s just scary. And I had to figure it out for myself.” And I was like, “Yes. Obviously.” I do remember, I think one of the hardest parts for us was when she wanted to change her name. And that was because my husband and I chose that name before she was born and mostly because the pregnancy was complicated and I had a really – early on I had a not-so—good chance that the pregnancy would actually carry to term. And so this name was attached to that whole experience and it was more my attachment to the name than my attachment to her identity. I had to work through that. But I will say, like everything else, that now just feels like such a distant memory. And when she came out fully as trans and when she adopted this new name, it was like a light went on inside of her. And I don’t know that I would've been able to say that there was a light off, necessarily. At home, she was a pretty happy kid. I didn’t really notice anything. But wow. Wow, could I tell the minute that she really started inhabiting herself that this was who she was meant to be.

JEN: And how old is she now?

SARA: She is 19.

JEN: So we made it all the way through high school.

SARA: Barely.

JEN: How did any of this impact the younger brother?

SARA: Early on, we came to learn later, from the younger brother, that our daughter had been trying this new name out in gaming as a gaming handle. And so for him, he kept saying it was no big deal. He was already used to calling her that. He was right there. and he had a few questions. But he seemed to just kind of handle it really well.

JEN: Is he a little bit more introverted like her, kind of quiet? Or is he a little more extroverted and was ready to storm the capitol to protect her?

SARA: Kind of in the middle. He doesn’t want to create waves anywhere. But I think he’s got that spirit of a fierce protector deep inside him. So, early on, he would be the first to correct people for names and pronouns. I mean, he just kind of went with it. He went with it as just normal.

JEN: So you have a long history, if I understand correctly, of activism and justice work. I’d love to hear about some of that. But also how that’s changed or evolved since your daughter coming out?

SARA: Yeah. I have always, always been drawn to justice work from the time I can remember. I mean, my mom took me to a rally for Hands Across America when I was ten. And Hands Across America was the movement tied to ending hunger in America. And the action was that Americans were going to hold hands from coast to coast in an unbroken line as a way of being in solidarity with the issue of hunger and calling attention to it. And we went to our appointed place in our state with everybody. And I was really passionate about this as a kid and being brought along that I think I really helped at the appointed time. I was the bossy ten year old telling people it’s time to hold hands. And yes we should block the road. We have to do it for at least a minute or two. Otherwise we’ll break the chain and just really getting in there. And ever since then, I had a bunch of girlfriends in junior high and we were rabble rousers when it came to justice issues and fairness and equality. And I think it’s because all of our parents were as well. And we really kind of followed in those footsteps. So throughout high school, throughout college, justice work was very much a part of how I inhabit the world. 

And so coming into Unitarian Universalism, and I think it was influenced by the Methodist church too that I went to for so many years. Coming to Unitarian Universalism where justice is such a pivotal part of how we live out our faith in the world and our expression of our faith’s values. I got involved in all kinds of issues that were connected to the work that we were doing in the church. I was really involved in immigration issues in 2013 going to Arizona to protest the SB1070 which was the bill that was “Show your papers” bill at that time. And having been from Arizona and being raised so close to the border, that issue really spoke to my heart and watching what my own father-in-law went through because I married into a Mexican American family. I was really passionate about that particular issue, and LGBTQ+ Issues. We were really fighting against Proposition 8 in California, which was the same-sex marriage proposition that would make marriage only between people of the opposite sex, and doing lots of advocacy work as a congregation and [inaudible] in that space. So that’s always just been part of my identity. And in fact, that is why I was attracted to the congregation here in Boise because they were in a capital city, they were looking for a minister who really could help them advance and grow their justice work. And at the time, in 2015, I thought well, this is a really great opportunity to be in a red state and to help be a voice for liberal religion in a state where conservative religion gets more air time and is kind of the underpinning of the culture and the government. And I still hold onto that vision even though, nine and a half years later, I’m pretty weary and I’m pretty tired. It’s a hard fight to be a progressive in Idaho and to help lead a progressive community because it feels like you just keep getting pushed down and pushed back and defeated again and again and again. So I was advocating for LGBTQ+ issues and rights since I got here. There were bills attempting to ban gender affirming care before my kiddo came out. And I remember doing some testifying in legislative hearings against those bills. But I tell you, when my kid came out, it’s just hard to describe. I don’t know that – I would never have changed my activism, but, wow, does it feel personal. And when it feels personal it just changes something in you. And I will say, when my kid came out, was in 2020. That was just kind of the fire storm of anti-queer, anti-trans legislation was really getting momentum here and across the country in red states. So it’s like a perfect storm in a way of there was no way we as Unitarian Universalists could not address this and could not be active. But as a parent, that fierceness, that fire was really growing inside me because I wanted to protect my kid.

JEN: There is something different about it. We see it time and time again. Even when the parents themselves might be a married lesbian couple, and they say over and over, “We’ve been fighting for our own rights our whole lives. But it hits differently when it’s your kid.” Anybody who’s a parent is going to understand that if they think about different contexts. 

So along this line of activism and justice work, we think, at Mama Dragons, that education is a major part of that. And that’s what the podcast is for. So it seems like your interest in hosting the podcast makes perfect sense in my head. But talk to me about what made you think, “I’m going to apply for this? I’m going to try. I’m going to see what happens.” Why this podcast?

SARA: I think I’ve just found this deep sense of passion and connection with our queer community. Because of my kiddo but also because of all that has been unfolding in our country and honestly because of my faith tradition. We’re pretty big advocates and allies across the board, creating coalitions to help support trans folks who need to relocate and trans families who might need to relocate to get out of their red state. And so to be able to have an opportunity to talk about these issues and help people understand and learn and help myself learn even more and grow even more, just felt like it was just at the exact right time. And I really admire the work that Mama Dragons is doing in this space and really being supporters of parents but also when you have that kind of foundation support, then you really can begin to advocate and fight in a different way. And I want to be part of that. And I want to be part of that space of network and support in learning for all of us because it’s so very needed, because our Queer Beloveds, whether they’re our kids or our friends or our teachers or our neighbors, our Queer Beloved are under attack across this country and it just devastates me. And I just want people to be able to live life. And so to be able to support a space where we can support each other in that work feels really, really important, especially right now.

JEN: Yeah. I’m with you on that. Any way that we can try to enact change in something that I’m interested in. I want to take a minute, you can say no and we can skip it, but I know from previous conversation that you took a break from activism. It’s really easy to listen to all of this and think that you’ve been running 170 miles an hour for 40 years. But we talked and I know that you took a little break. And, if you’re willing or interested, I would like to hear about that break because I think it’s good for all of us to understand that sometimes our priorities have to shift a little bit and self care becomes a priority and it’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to step back. And it doesn’t diminish our voice. So if you’re willing, I’d like you to talk about the break that you took.

SARA: I’m happy to talk about the break. But I first want to talk about something related in the whole world of activism and self care and community because this is something that I like to talk to my congregation about all the time. Is for us to always remember that the people that we see on the front lines, the Martin Luther Kings, those who are getting arrested, there is a wide network of support behind them that is enabling them to do that. And so some of the activism that I’ve been able to do is because I have a congregation of support. It’s because I have a spouse at home who is taking care of the kids. It’s because I have family members who are picking up the slack. I have folks who are feeding me. And so it’s, in some ways, it’s easy to be on the front lines when you have those networks of support. And yet, we see only the attention for those who are out in public, out on the front lines and sometimes forget about the scaffolding and all that is behind them to make things like that happen. And it’s really important to me that it’s like, if you are making sandwiches, if you are taking care of kids, you are doing social justice work. If you are bringing someone soup, you are participating in that social justice work because social justice work is just as much about community care as it is about front-line activism. And in any of those spaces, wherever you are in that work, and all of us can inhabit a bunch of different places in the world of social change and in the world of social justice work. You can’t go full speed ahead every single day forever and ever. You will wear out and you will burn out. And thankfully social justice leaders and movements are learning to talk about that and help each other access that. And I will say, it’s also a real struggle for me because I hold a lot of privileged identities. I’m a white person. I’m an upper-middle class person with a job that has a lot of flexibility and a lot of support behind it. I own my house. And I say that because it’s a difficult line to walk in activism because I feel like it’s our responsibility as people who hold a lot of privilege not to turn away and not to stop because “Oh my gosh, we’re tired.” Or, “I can’t bear to look,” when we have to really understand and recognize that our beloveds with marginalized identities, people of color, queer folks, folks with different abilities, they’re in it all the time. They don’t get to stop being in it. They don’t get to turn away. And sometimes they don’t get to rest because it’s just all-consuming. But there’s a balance for all of us, right? So in 2021, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And this was still, for my community, right in the middle of the pandemic. We’re still all online. My kids are all online in school. And I also tested positive for the Brca II genetic mutation. So that meant that my lifetime risk of cancer just skyrocketed. So I had to make a lot of hard decisions. I ended up having three surgeries in nine months. So my last surgery was August of 2022. So that 2022 legislative year, Jen, I told you earlier, I disappeared from the world, from the social world and certainly from the justice world for a good 18 months, maybe even longer, maybe almost two years. That legislative session, I hardly did anything. And even in 2021 before the diagnosis, 2021, the middle of the pandemic when we’re trying to figure out how to do life in a pandemic, I wasn’t particularly active in the session. My brain was overloaded. My body was overloaded. I was exhausted even though I didn’t have to go anywhere. And for me, it didn’t really feel like a choice. It felt like this was the only way that I was going to be able to move through this time in my life and I felt very guilty about it. It was really hard not to participate. The anti-gender-affirming care bill, I can’t remember what number it was now, in 2022 came up for a hearing in February and it was like one week after I had had one of my surgeries. And I remember hearing about it and throwing on my clothes and driving down to the capitol and signing up to testify. And I shouldn’t have done it. I was a hot mess afterwards. And then I sat in the committee hearing room weeping the entire time because it was so difficult to sit through the testimony and some of the things the legislators were saying. And I don’t recommend that. That was not a healthy choice. I shouldn’t have done that. So it’s really hard to make those decisions. And I really had to take time to tend to myself and figure out a way to come back that felt like it was healthy and in a way that was sustainable. And that’s an ongoing conversation. I don’t have a magic formula. I don’t know what it is. I say yes to way too many things because I cannot help myself. I know you are the same way. And sometimes it bites me in the butt. But I learn and what I am noticing now in our community in particular and in communities of advocacy and organizing and activism, is that the community is really starting to talk about community care and community support in all kinds of different ways, like in the ways that I mentioned. You don’t have to show up at the Capitol, but here’s what you can do. Or here’s a space for you. If you can’t bring yourself to walk in those doors, we’re still going to hold space so that you can be as close to it as possible and be in solidarity with everyone who’s there and with your community. And that makes a huge difference. There’s a lot of affirmation of making choices that are the best for you. And that’s going to look different for all of us.

JEN: I appreciate all of that. I think a lot of us understand the guilt that comes from having to take a breath. And, like you’re talking about, having breast cancer and still feeling guilty. So those of us who have a dentist appointment and feel guilty, take a breath, laundry has to be done, groceries have to be purchased. It’s all okay. I’d like to speak to how excited I am, how delighted I am that you’re joining our podcast team and that you’re going to host the episodes. I’m so looking forward to listening to the insights and experience that you bring to the episodes. You’re such an amazing person. Thank you so much for helping us get to know you before your first official episode launches next week.

SARA: Thanks so much for the opportunity, Jen. And to be able to follow in your footsteps and all of the groundwork that you have laid and all the groundwork you’ve laid for Mama Dragons, I mean, our community doesn’t know this, but Jen is the reason I am in Mama Dragons. She kept hounding me. “Why aren’t you? Why aren’t you?” And so here I am and I have you to thank for it. And I’m really looking forward to how this all unfolds.

JEN: I’m a high pressure recruiter, apparently. It comes from my roots. Thank you again.

SARA: Thank you.

JEN: Thanks for joining us In the Den. Did you know that Mama Dragons also offers an eLearning program called Parachute. Through this interactive learning platform, you can learn more about how to affirm, support, and celebrate the LGBTQ+ people in your life. Learn more at mamadragon.org/parachute, or find the link in the episode show notes under links.

If you enjoyed this episode, please tell your friends, and take a minute to leave a positive rating and review wherever you listen. Good reviews make us more visible and help us to reach more folks who could benefit from listening. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, please donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can follow us on Instagram or Facebook or visit our website at mamadragons.org.