Kindom Camp

For queer youth, belonging isn’t a luxury, it’s a lifeline. In a world that too often tells them they don’t fit, affirming spaces can be the difference between surviving and thriving. The power of belonging becomes both healing and revolutionary. Today In the Den,we’re diving into this topic, exploring the life-saving power of queer-led youth spaces that help foster that sense of belonging. Sara talks with two incredible guests who are working to create just such a space, the Rev. Dr. John Leedy, the Executive Director of Kindom Community, and Andy Hackett, Program Director. 

Special Guest: Rev. Dr. John Leedy

John Leedy (he/him) is a Presbyterian pastor and has a bi-vocational calling, serving as both the Executive Director of kin•dom community and the Associate Pastor of Hope Church in Austin, TX. He holds a B.A. in Youth & Family Ministry from Abilene Christian University, an MDiv. from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and a Doctor of Ministry degree in Christian Formation and Liturgical Theology also from APTS. He is a Benedictine Oblate of St. Meinrad Archabbey, has a long history of camp & conference work, and lives in Austin with his wife and pastoral colleague, Rev. Dr. Krystal Leedy, along with their two daughters. John came on staff as a camp counselor at the first ever kin•dom camp in Texas and knew immediately that this work would not only change his life, but would change the lives of countless other LGBTQIA+ young people who are in need of brave spaces marked by love, inclusion, care, and celebration. 

Special Guest: Andy Hackett

Andy Hackett (he/him) holds a BS in Child Development with a minor in Political Science from Texas Woman’s University. He is also certified Lifeguard/First Aid/CPR instructor and Level 1 challenge course practitioner. He lives and works full time at a Camp and Conference Center in East Texas with his dog, Baxter. Andy grew up attending a specialty camp for children with celiac disease, and after coming out as transgender, he thought "We need a camp like this for LGBTQ+ kids"- and kin•dom camp was born! He develops programs and activities that happen at camp, helps us find and train the amazing individuals that join our summer staff, and is the face behind emails reminding you to register for camp! 

Links from the Show: 

• Kindom Camp: https://kindomcommunity.org/camp
• Queer Camp Directory: https://directory.queercampfair.com/
• Gluten-Free Cookbook: https://theloopywhisk.com/ 
• Join Mama Dragons today: www.mamadragons.com

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.  

Transcript

SARA: Hi everyone. Welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons. A podcast and community to support, educate, and empower parents on the journey of raising happy and healthy LGBTQ+ humans. I’m your host, Sara LaWall. I’m a Mama Dragon myself and an advocate for our queer community. And I’m so glad to be part of this wild and wonderful parenting journey with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here. 

Mama Dragons is growing. We’re currently searching for passionate, dedicated individuals to join our board of directors. If you’ve got lived experience, leadership skills, or a heart for supporting LGBTQ+ families, we’d love to hear from you. You can learn more by email m.v@mamadragons.org. Your voice could help shape the future of Mama Dragons. 

Hello, Mama Dragons. Today we are talking about queer-led spaces and belonging because we know that for our queer youth – particularly in these times – belonging isn’t a luxury. It’s like a lifeline. In this world that so often tells our beloveds that they don’t fit, affirming spaces can really be the difference between surviving and thriving. So today we have two extraordinary guests with us to talk about queer-led youth spaces that center belonging. With us In The Den are the Rev. Dr. John Leedy, the Executive Director of Kindom Community, and Andy Hackett, their Program Director. Kindom Community is the queer-led umbrella organization creating spaces of queer belonging and celebration. Rev. Leedy also happens to be a Presbyterian pastor, an Associate Pastor with Hope Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, working in youth ministry. And part of Kindom communities mission and program work is they create these summer camp experiences for LGBTQ youth ages 12-17 as a way to have a queer-led, queer-belonging, queer-friendly summer camp space where they can show up as their full selves in a week filled with affirmation and celebration. These camps are spaces where all genders, sexualities, identities, abilities and varieties of belief are welcome. 

Now, you might remember Kindom Camp from the episode featuring the book Trans Kids, Our Kids published by the Trans Youth Emergency Project. The camp was one of the stories featured in that book which was how we learned about them and invited them to be on the podcast. So, John and Andy, I am really excited that you all said yes and we’re here to have this beautiful conversation today. Welcome to In The Den.

JOHN: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here. 

ANDY: Yeah. Thanks for having us. I’m super excited. 

SARA: Me too. This story brought tears to my eyes when I read it. Just reading about spaces like this, particularly in this really fraught political climate with so many attacks on queer kids – and trans kids in particular – so I just loved learning that this existed in our world, particularly in the state of Texas. And we’ll get there. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. But John, I wonder if you can start by sharing with us the origin story of Kindom Camp and Kindom Community. 

JOHN: Sure. Absolutely. So, Kindom Community was founded in the year 2020 as a new worshipping community of the Presbyterian church (U.S.A.). It was founded to be a space for people who had been harmed by religion but who were still looking for some sort of spiritual connection with other people. Kindom Community was started in the Dallas, Fort Worth, area and slowly began to grow. And then, as we all know, the pandemic hit. And that changed the needs of that community and how they were trying to reach out and connect with new folks. And they were kind of struggling for a while to find what their point of entry would be to building relationships with folks. And this is actually where I’d like to kick it over to Andy. And this is where his story with Kindom begins. So, Andy, tell the origin story of the specific camp idea. 

ANDY: Yeah. So I am a native Texan and I am a life-long camp kid. I’ve been going to summer camps every summer since I was 7 years old. And for me, one of the most transformative experiences of my life was going to a camp for children specifically with celiac disease, which I was diagnosed with at 3 years old. And when I was 7 years old, that was the first time in my life I ever met another kid that had celiac disease. And I still to this day have never missed a summer. This past week was actually my 16th year going to that camp. And as I grew up and started coming into myself and my identity, I kind of just had the thought of, “Wow. Wouldn’t it be so great to have a camp like my celiac camp but for LGBTQ kids in the state of Texas?” Just because I knew it was so transformative for me to be around those peers and adults that had shared experiences and could relate to me. And so this had always just kind of been a lingering idea in the back of my head that I chatted with a lot of my different camp friends about. One in particular – Garret DeGraffenreid, who’s another one of our co-founders – him and I talked about this for years. Just like, oh, wouldn’t it be so cool. And my freshman year of college, I had to take an English course that was just like “Write a research paper about whatever you want.” And so I wrote a research paper about the benefits of queer-specific camps, taking data about queer youth that we are know are affirmed have at least one supportive adult in their life have a 40% less chance of committing suicide. And also, we know from camp research that kids who go to camp where shared commonality occurs, there’s really high amounts of self-confidence, self-esteem, and overall sureness of self. So it can be assumed that gay camp will be good for the kids. And from there, that kind of lit my fire under me. So I started asking around, seeing if there was an organization I could partner with to help make this happen. And Garrett, my good friend, pointed me in the direction of Kindom Community. And without a doubt, Kindom decided to take on that project. And we kept saying the motto our first year was, “We’re building the plane as we’re flying it!” And we had a host site lined up. We had staff lined up. And all the sudden, next thing I knew, we were registering campers, advertising camp, planning workshops, planning events, and in 2022, summer of 2022 was our first year, I believe that first year we had 55 kids and around 35 volunteers come out. It was just a surreal week of, this back-of-the-brain thought that I’ve had since I was 15 or so, is finally come to fruition. And Kindom by no means was the first overnight queer summer camp in the US. As a teenager I was aware of these and either my parents were like, well, we can go to one, but it just never worked out. And I wanted one that was closer to home. And so we were one of the first overnight camps in Texas which is, I think, was a huge deal and kind of a catalyst for this whole Kindom Community movement that’s now spread to three different states. And then we’re still growing. 

SARA: Three states? What states do you operate in now? 

ANDY: So we operate in Texas, Nevada, and Illinois. 

SARA: That’s amazing. That’s great. So for those in our community who are nearby those spaces, you can check out their website. We’ll make sure to post a link in the show notes so folks can find you and do a little deeper dive to see what might be near them. I was, as you heard, particularly amazed at the story of the camp coming alive in Texas in the midst of some of the worst, most harsh, terrible, anti-queer, anti-trans legislation coming out of the Texas legislature. And I’m really curious, we all now understand Texas to be a pretty hostile space for queer kids and programs and services and parents, which makes spaces like Kindom Community so very needed. But I’m curious if it also presented any obstacles for you as you were moving forward in the creation of the camp and the community? 

ANDY: So the first year, of course, the top of our mind was always safety of our campers, safety of our volunteers and of our staff. And so even, one of the very first conversations we had, I was very adamant about, “Before we talk rainbows and glitters”, I’m like, “How are we going to keep these kids safe?” And so that’s always been on the forefront of our minds. One of the biggest things that we still hold our commitment to is we will never say the location of our Texas camp publicly and we will never post a picture of a camper's face to protect their privacy. So any time you get on social media and you see a front-facing photo, that is an adult volunteer that has given us enthusiastic consent to having their face out on social media. And so that’s something that we’ve always just taken really seriously, across all three sites, is just not posting pictures, or images, or video, of our campers to really care for their privacy. And I will say, honestly, our first year was probably the easiest, safety-wise. We’ve now gone through two legislative sessions since camp has started. And each one has presented obstacles. So just last year, we faced the fact that a new law is in effect that bans gender-affirming care in the state of Texas. And that could’ve threatened all of our healthcare professionals' medical licenses, their nursing licenses, if a camper were to bring their gender-affirming care and our nurses were to administer it at camp. And so we had to make some really tough decisions. We talked with various lawyers, various doctors, various health care providers. And we were advised by some really, really great legal experts to play the long game here, not take any risk. And, unfortunately, that ended up in us making the decision that if you take gender-affirming care, unfortunately, we can’t administer that at camp. And so we called all of the families and said, “Hey, if your camper does not want to miss a dose of their gender-affirming care, we understand. We will give you a full refund.” Every single one of those campers decided that camp was more important. And I think it was probably about seven or eight of our campers who chose to forgo their medication for the week because, to them, it was more important to come spend a week in community. 

SARA: Oh, but how awful. That just breaks my heart to hear that. 

ANDY: It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do since being with Kindom was make all those phone calls. Because I, as a transgender person who’s been on gender-affirming care for over five years now, John is great and he was like, “I’ll do it. I’ll make the calls. I’m the executive director. I’ll do it.” I was like, “No.” As the trans person on staff, I felt really called to be able to do that and have those conversations with those parents. And it was very tough, but it was also rewarding in a way to hear from the parents about how much camp has impacted their kids. One of the second phone calls I had, it was a child that has since moved out of state, but still travels back to Texas every year to come to camp. And that parent on the phone just broke down and said, “I’m not mad or anything. Your camp has saved my child’s life. So thank you for everything you’re doing and continuing to do.” And so it was very hard, but also brought some very sweet moments around in a weird and obscure kind of way. 

SARA: It’s one of those unexpected impacts of legislation like that that really forces these families and these kids to have to make this choice. And wonderful that they choose camp. But heartbreaking that they can’t also simultaneously get their healthcare needs met. 

ANDY: Yes. Absolutely. 

SARA: But I’m glad you’re there for them. I am curious to know, John, if you’ll talk a little bit about the story of the name Kindom. 

JOHN: Sure. Absolutely. So, first off, it’s not a typo. Internet search engines hate the name because they always are like, “Did you mean Kingdom Community?” and so the idea of Kindom came about from the Cuban, Latina theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz. And who, doing her work of mujerista theology coined this term, “Kindom”. So in the long tradition of the Christian church we have always talked about the Kingdom of God. And the way that we have understood and interpreted that is through how we understand kings and queens and knights and lords as this kind of feudal hierarchy. And any time there is a hierarchy, there are negotiations of power. There are negotiations of privilege. There are people who are in and people who are out. And despite what we read in the Gospels about Jesus turning the idea of kingship on its head as something very different, we – as humankind – have found a way to continue being humankind and finding those avenues to oppress and to alienate and to marginalize. And the history of the Christian church is full of that story. And so Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz comes along and coins this different term, this different way of being, this different way of relating to one another. So instead of a community modeled around a hierarchy where there is kingship or a sense of ownership, there is instead kinship. Kin as in family. Whenever I go over to my in-laws’ thanksgiving to the sprawling family reunion that it is every year, I’ll try to ask, “Hey. I don’t recognize that person. What relationship are they to you?” And they’re like, “Oh, they’re kin.” I still don’t know what that means. But I know that it’s some kind of family. And so when we think about at Kindom camp, who we relate to one another, we try to treat each other as a beloved family. Like, how would we treat this chosen family that we have all journeyed out into the woods together? And so the way that we care for our campers, the way that we care for our staff, the way we go above and beyond to not only accommodate, but to celebrate everything our campers come in through those camp gates with. We try to treat each other as family. And doing so, we hope that this is the dream, that this is the future that we have to live in to. That one day, a camp like Kindom won’t be needed. We wish our organization did not exist because our hope would be that every summer camp everywhere would be able to accommodate the personhood and needs of every camper that comes in the door. So that’s where the idea of Kindom came about. It’s got a deep and beautiful history to it. And one that is, by its very nature, intersectional. And so one of the things that Kindom community learned very quickly is that there’s a large overlap between the queer community and the neurodivergent community. We bring in occupational therapists. And we have a sensory room. And there are so many things that we do throughout the day that we intentionally do to provide care for our neurodivergent campers and staff. Every year, we seek to specifically reach out and grow our BIPOC representation, and making sure that at least the vast majority, of if not 100%, of our camp leadership identifies somewhere within the queer community. So that representation is really important. Those intersections are very important because, for a lot of our campers, Kindom camp might be the very first time they meet another trans adult or another person that flies the same flag that they do. So that’s where the idea of Kindom comes from and that’s some of the ways we live that idea out at camp. 

SARA: That is so beautiful and, I think, so valuable for our queer young people to have the experiences of being in spaces that are predominantly or all queer because so much of life and our culture still is very heterosexual-normative, very cis-normative. And I just love that. I love exposing my own child to those spaces so that she can know that there are beautiful, wonderful, amazing humans out in the world doing really cool things just like her. I am curious if we can talk just a little bit more about the connection with the Presbyterian church, understanding that there might be some out there that find it a little strange or unusual for a church to sponsor and support such a queer-centered, BIPOC-centered, affirming space. I know Presbyterian, (U.S.A.), denomination has been very queer-affirming for a while now. But can you talk a little bit about the role that the church plays in this work and in a more general sense in being an affirming partner in the community?

JOHN: Absolutely. And this is actually a question that we do get all the time, especially at Pride events and we’re introducing ourselves and parents have questions like, “What kind of camp is this?” And I usually know the actual question that they’re asking. So, while Kindom Community was founded as a new worship community outreach of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), we have since become our own stand-alone 501c3 nonprofit with our own board of directors – Some of whom are people of faith. Others are people of multi-faith traditions or do not profess a faith tradition at all. Our summer staff is very reflective of that as well. We have people who profess a number of different faith traditions. And we have people who, for one reason or another, do not profess or practice any particular faith traditions. And that’s also something that we learned the first year of Kindom Camp is that so many of our campers come to camp with such a myriad of experience with religion. So we have Christian campers for sure. We have Jewish campers. We have atheist, agnostic. We have the cards and crystals, DND camper. The full gambit of religious expression. 

SARA: Great.

JOHN: And we have plenty of campers who have been very hurt by the church. And we have plenty of staff who have been very hurt by the church. So when we think about what holistic camper care looks like, spirituality is a part of that. It’s kind of an innate part of our human nature, whatever that looks like or however that’s expressed. And so we don’t want to pretend that spirituality isn’t a part of something that can make us whole. So the way that we have designed Kindom Camp curriculum is that all of our spiritual programming is opt-in only. And so if there is a camper who is coming to us and has some big religious baggage or has been burned by the church or just has no experience with religion, they can experience the entire week of Kindom Camp without any kind of obligatory religious messaging. That said, if we do have campers who want to explore “unclobbering” the bible or a queer bible study, or meet a queer pastor, or thinking about what it means to be queer and Jewish, or to do yoga, or therapeutic Dungeons and Dragons, or whatever, they can opt-in to those sign-up workshops that we offer every afternoon along with a wide range of other sign-up activity offerings. We do gender-affirming haircuts. We do our own Kindom Campfire Chat Podcast where campers can tell their stories. We have folks leading all sorts of arts and crafts things. I think we had a scream therapy nature hike. Just all sorts of different offerings. But some of those offerings are spiritual in nature that our campers can opt in to. 

SARA: Man, this sounds beautiful. I would like to come to camp. 

JOHN: And we actually get that a lot. The number one thing that I hear from adults that I talk about Kindom Camp with at Pride events or wherever I’m out and about, is that they wish they had a camp like this when they were growing up, or they wish they had a camp like this when their older children had been growing up. And I know, as a queer person, my story, both my mental health journey and my journey in religion, would have been very different had I had a camp like this growing up. So as I share about Kindom Community and Kindom Camp, there is a lot of interest in affirming churches to support this kind of work. We have a number of congregations, mostly from mainline denominations that have said, “This is a way that we can contribute, either financially or with volunteers, to directly help and support this community and the future of this community.” And so we do have churches that do financially sponsor us. But we are very upfront with them. We cover up any sort of religious insignia while we’re there. We are really careful about how we discuss or lead group discussions where religion might come up. And so we just had our first Kindom Camp of the year this past week in Illinois. And in our staff training we talked about that if a small group wants to talk about religion, that we need to get consent from the entire group before we have that conversation. So we do take that very seriously. Our faith community partners understand that and can appreciate why we have that approach. So, yeah. It just kind of works.

SARA: That’s extraordinary. Extraordinary. I’m so amazed at all of the ways that you’ve described that this camp seems particularly special and unique among your typical summer camps, even as those are transformative experiences for a lot of kids. This really sounds like a lot of intentionality has gone into it. Andy, I wonder if you have a story you might share from camp that illustrates some of what we’re talking about and captures what this space means to the young people who attend? I think I read in an article somewhere one counselor described it as a radically life-changing experience. 

ANDY: Yeah. Absolutely. I’m a big data guy. So I love numbers. And so I always am having our campers and our volunteers and everyone fill out surveys. And the amount of volunteer surveys that I get back that talk about how they came into the week not knowing or not realizing how much of their inner child would be healed from doing camp work. And anyone that’s ever worked at a camp, one week of summer camp feels like you just ran 45 marathons in a row. But they still, even through that – we’re at a very rural part of east Texas. So it’s somehow 4 million percent humidity. And through the heat and through the sweat and through all that, our volunteers are still finding ways to heal something within them. Which I think is really amazing because we think, “We’re here for the campers, we’re here for the campers.” But also, the volunteers get so much out of it, which I think is really beautiful. I think a moment of camp that is always a highlight for me is our last night of camp. Everyone’s kind of in their feels because they know they’re going home the next day. We always have a drag show. And we always have multiple performers come out: Drag Kings, Queens, people that do very “hair did up and heels” drag, people that do more gothic, emo drag. It’s really amazing. And it’s just so amazing to see the way that these kids just light up because there’s just so much joy in that room. There’s so much joy in this room and there’s kids that are screaming and singing and volunteers that are just having a great time. And campers that, all week maybe were having a good time but always still just kept to themselves – a lot of introverted campers come and see us – something about being in that room with just pure and utter joy, just brings everyone out of their shell. Everyone is able to have a good time. We’ll dance. We’ll sing. I remember last year, there’s one camper that had a hard week. Camp is a challenging thing. You’re in a new place. You’re surrounded by new people. Your loved ones aren’t there. You’re surrounded by a bunch of strangers. And she was having fun, she was “I’m having a good time, but I’m also just homesick.” And I remember at one point during our drag show, I look over and she is duck walking down the runway and vogue dancing and I was like, “That is the moment I’ve been waiting for all week is to see those more kept-to-themselves campers just explode with joy and with the biggest smiles that you’ve ever seen on their faces. And that’s just something that I look forward to every year that I often think about. Whenever the work gets tough, whenever I’m staring at spreadsheets all day and I’m like, “What am I doing?” those little moments I’m able to think about and be like, “This makes it all worth it.” 

SARA: That sounds incredible. What a beautiful way to end camp together. I can just picture it. When you’re gathering your campers at the start of every camp, do you have a camper orientation intro session with them? How do you talk with them about who you, as the camp staff and program, define belonging and your expectations of each other while you’re together in camp? 

ANDY: Yeah. So I make kind of a big to-do about orientation. I don’t like to skip anything. And mostly because I also firmly believe in setting your campers up for success. And in my experience growing up to camp, it used to always be, “I can’t tell you what’s next. It’s a surprise. Everything’s a surprise.” And I am like, frontload your kiddos because with how many neurodivergent kiddos we hold, they need to know what to expect. So orientation is really just nerve-settling for a lot of our campers. And so it’s kind of this multi-part. First, we go along and we do orientation stations where they’ll go and they’ll meet our nurse. So they know they can go to if they need any help physically. They go get a tour of our whole sensory room. So they know they have somewhere they can go and meet the folks that can help them out if they’re feeling overstimulated or dysregulated. And we also have licensed professional counselors on our staff. So they go and they meet our therapists so they know who they can go to if they’re just needing someone to talk to or anything like that. And then they go and they talk to John. And John gives them a conversation that we call, “Kindom of Kindom Camp.” And that kind of is just, what are we here for this week, expectation setting – We’re going meet a lot of different people. We’re going to learn a lot about ourselves. We’re going to learn a lot about each other. And there’s disagreements within the queer community and that’s something we’re really upfront about. And we always talk about we are kin to each other now. We are here as a family. And, while we’re going to learn a lot of new terms, we’re going to hear people talk about experiences that maybe we don’t understand, our expectation is that, at the minimum, we are kind to each other. And you might not personally understand it, but you’re going to affirm and respect everyone’s identities and who they are and just presume kindness in everyone’s heart. And then we do a big old gathering at the end of the evening where we kind of just review everything we’ve talked about that night because it’s a little bit of information overload. And I just talk about what are we here for this week, kind of reiterating some of the stuff John’s talked about. And then we introduce the rest of our staff, the rest of our volunteers, the leadership team so that’s John, Bailey, and I. And I think that kind of just sets us up for a good tone of the week. John, I think you might have more to add on that first night of camp. I’m kind of always just running around that first night. 

JOHN: Last year, we gave Andy one of those clickers, like those attendance clickers, just because we wanted to see how many questions Andy would have to answer that first day of camp. And, Andy, do you remember how many it was last year? 

ANDY: It’s like an obscene amount. It was a lot. 

JOHN: So we, thinking about that idea of how we do belonging at camp and how we introduce that, there are a lot of things that we do to promote belonging. And then there are ways that we live into the spirit of belonging. 

SARA: Talk about that.

JOHN: Things that we do to promote belonging are, every morning at breakfast we have adhesive name tags out on the table where young people can try on different names and pronouns. Because, at that stage in adolescence, so much of their identity is being formed by bouncing their sense of self off of their peers. And so for folks who are looking at “What could this name feel like?” or “What do these pronouns feel like?” We give them that chance. And we train our staff that whatever those campers put on their nametag, we will call you until you tell us differently. Sometimes that gets tricky when we’re trying to track which camper we’re talking about through the week and they’ve had three different names and we have to figure that out. 

ANDY: It’s a journey. 

JOHN: There’s a deep community commitment to honoring people’s identities as valid and as presented. So there are ways that we work with that in our cabins. So all of our cabins are ungendered. When our campers first walk into the cabin, they’re told, “Welcome to And Kindom Camp. Choose a bunk.” And my first year at Kindom camp, I was a camp counselor and that was my first time also as a professional youth worker to sleep in the same room as people whose gender was different than mine. So through staff training and our youth protection policies and this deep commitment to safety, that just works. And not having those artificial gender binaries all over camp, there’s an anxiety that goes away when those gender binaries are taken out of the equation that everyone can just be. So there are a lot of things that we do to promote belonging. But there’s a story from this past week that kind of captures the spirit of how we live this idea of belonging. So this past week at our camp in Illinois, on Wednesday, it rained almost all day. And while we couldn’t have our canoe trip, we did get to let the campers play DND for three hours during a thunderstorm and they loved it. We just can’t do camp better. They just loved it. And so we learned that afternoon that our evening guest speaker had been flooded in from a nearby town and couldn’t make it into camp. And the theme that we were discussing that night and this presenter was going to speak on was on belonging. And so I said, “Okay. Instead of trying to scramble and find another speaker or put something together at the last minute, instead of just talking about belonging, let’s just create a space where we can belong.” And so I remember, I ran to the store and picked up stuff to make a big surprise ice cream sundae bar. And we set it up in this dining room that has this really long table in it. And told the campers, “Hey, we’re going to do this tonight. Go downstairs.” And they were thrilled. And so after all of the campers had gotten served and all of the staff got served, I was standing at the head of the table and I just looked down this long hall and this long table and everyone was smiling. Everyone was talking. There was nobody sitting in a corner. There was nobody disengaged. And it was like, this is what it feels like. This is us creating space and then stepping back and letting queer joy and celebration and belonging take over. And I told the staff this week that I had the words to that song, “Crowded Table” by the Highwomen running through my head. “I want a house with a crowded table and a place by the fire for everyone. Let us take on the world while we’re young and able and bring us back together when the day is done.” That image of all these generations and all of these different kinds of people around this one table, that was such a powerful moment of belonging. And one that we didn’t have to work too hard to create. 

SARA: I love that. We should all be so lucky as to experience spaces like that in our lives. I’m sure, at this point, we’re going to have parents and listeners wondering, “How do I get this where I am?” So, I know you operate in Illinois and Nevada and Texas now. But, what advice might you have for folks who are further away from that and if they want to think about how they might be able to create something or bring Kindom Camp to their community? 

JOHN: Well, first off, as an organization, we are deeply and genetically non-competitive. We know that there are lots of other queer youth camps in this country. In fact, there’s kind of an aggregate directory site called Queer Camp Fair. And they put listings of queer camps all over the United States. But for us, even if there were ten queer camps in every city in every state, it still wouldn’t be enough. And so one of my pieces of advice is, if you can’t make it to Texas or Illinois or Lake Tahoe in Nevada, find another camp that’s doing this work. We are not the first and we’re not the biggest. And there are lots of other camps that do this work really well, too. So I’d say, find somewhere close by and lean into that. We would love as many campers as possible to come to Kindom. But we also want to make sure as many campers as possible get something like this in their lives. If there is interest in bringing a Kindom Camp to your state, to reach out to someone on our staff and start up a conversation. We’re a small staff. So we’re very easy to get ahold of. We’ve had parents contact us with questions for camp and Andy will call them right back on their cell phone or I’ll meet with them for coffee. So we try to be very interactive with our parents. One of the other things that we try to do, because we’re a small nonprofit, there are a lot of ways that we want to provide care and resources to our camper families throughout the year. We do the one week of camp really well every year. But we want to support our camper families the other 51 weeks of the year, too. So there are a lot of wheels that we are not able to reinvent which is one of the reasons we’re so grateful for Mama Dragons and the work that you all do to support parents, because that’s something that we have a big heart for. So at the very end of camp, when parents pick up their campers, we have a session just for parents where we bring in our licensed professional therapists and usually I’m there or one of our staff is there. And we say, “Here’s the week your kid just had. Here are some ways that you can help ease their transition back into what is not always a friendly or safe environment back home.” And so Mama Dragons, for us, is one of those resources that we can share with those families and say, “This is an avenue for support the rest of the year.” So, looking for other camps in your area, reach out to us if you want to try to get your camper to Kindom Camp. We are still registering for our Texas Camp and our Lake Tahoe Camp. And all of that information is on our website. Andy, what do you think?

ANDY: Echoing what John said, send us an email. We are easy to get ahold of. You can always find our information on our website kindomcommunity.org. I always love talking to prospective parents or people that are interested or just need help knowing where to start because every queer camp out there has their niche, right. There’s leadership camps. There’s art camps. There’s all that kind of stuff. I’ve always kind of said – not officially, but unofficially – I’m convinced niches is serving neurodivergent campers exceptionally well. And I’m always happy to talk to guardians and be like, what does your child need out of camp? And is Kindom the best place to serve that or one of these other amazing camps that we work closely with, to say, “Hey. I think you would thrive in this environment.” I’m always happy to talk to folks.

SARA: And we’re so grateful to be a resource that you offer to parents as the Mama Dragons community, we appreciate those partnerships so much. Andy, I also read that, in Texas, you offer a young adult leadership training. 

ANDY: So this is a program that’s still – camp in itself is in its early years – and young adult training is like one of those that’s slightly more nuanced than summer camp because there’s a lot that we want to be able to squeeze in. So we’re still fine-tuning that program before we offer it at any of our other sites. But, one of our policies in Texas is we don’t hire volunteers until they’re 20 years old because we do our best to stay in accordance with the recommendations of the American Camping Association. And one of their biggest rules is that your youngest volunteer has to be two years older than your oldest camper. And so for us, it’s just easier to do a blanket, everybody’s got to be 20 years old or older. But, we didn’t want our campers to age out at 17, and then have two years where they’re like, “You’re too old to be a camper, You’re not old enough to be a staff member. So, sorry.” And so we started this program. We call it YALT for short, Young Adult Leadership Training, where they come to camp the same week as the campers and they stay in their little cohort and they do a mix of traditional camp activities – so they still get their turn to go do archery or do the zipline or swim – but then they’re also learning some practical life skills. So many of our young adults are either on their way to college, to the workforce, to trade school, to anything like that. And so we meet with them ahead of time and say, “Hey. What do you need help with?” and we’ll do resume workshops with them. We’ll do interview prep. We’ll just do general life skills. And then we’ll also talk about leadership. How are you a leader in the camp context whenever you come back to be a counselor one day? Or, how do you be a leader just out in life as a queer individual living in Texas? And stuff like that. I like to think of it as building their tool kit for two years so that way, when they’re 20 they can come back and be on staff. This year is a really exciting one for me, because it’s our first time we have one person that has gone full circle – two of them actually – was a camper their very first year, did their two years of YALT, and is now going to be a counselor with us. They’re completing that circle. And so I’m super excited to see that loop be completed. Because I know that the campers that went through that program, have that perspective as campers, are going to do wonderful. And they are just so excited to engage in camp in a leadership capacity this year. And I’m super excited to see that happen. 

SARA: That just goes to show how meaningful an experience you’ve offered. And that you’re thinking about how to allow the opportunity for your campers to keep Kindom Community and Kindom Camp in their lives as long as possible. And that they want to come back. 

ANDY: Absolutely. You’re never too old for camp. Our oldest camp volunteer the past few years has been – how old is he? – 69 I think. 69 or 70 and the campers just love him. 

SARA: That’s so great. I’m sure that there are parents listening who, in this moment, feel pulled by a lot of hope and a lot of fear. And I’m curious to hear from both of you, what advice do you have or what wisdom do you want to share with parents of queer kids, particularly those who are just starting to understand and support their queer kid, their kid has just come out to them? 

JOHN: So I’m the parent of a nine-year-old and a five-year-old. And they are both in this time of life where their personhood and personalities are emerging. And sometimes changing every week and what they’re interested in, what they like, what they don’t like. I was just planning my five-year-old’s fifth birthday last week and I said, “What kind of decorations do you want?” And she said, “Hello Kitty.” And I’m like, “I didn’t even know you knew what that was.” And so, one of the things that came out from the Trevor Project was a study on how to best support transgender and nonbinary youth. And at the very top of the list, 92% of respondents have said “One of the best ways that adults can support transgender and nonbinary youth is by trusting that I know who I am.” I know as a parent, we bring in so much hope and dreams and these things that we kind of wrap our children in. We wrap them in their names. And we wrap them in our family stories and our traditions. And all of that is powerful and meaningful. And then our kids show up one day and they introduce us to parts of them we didn’t know were there. There can be a lot of emotion with that. There can be a lot of joy and grief and everywhere in between. And I think all of those feelings are very normal. How could you not feel that around your child? And one of the things that Kindom Community does is we trust who these campers say that they are, be it their names, their pronouns. Every year, we have to go shopping for some new pride flag. We had a camper identify as gender chaotic. And I scoured the internet to find the gender chaotic flag and it will fly at Kindom Texas this year. And so when we have a camper come to us and they say, “Hi. My name is John. I identify with he/him pronouns and I’m bisexual.” “Thank you so much for sharing that with us. What does that look like in your life because none of these identities are monoliths? They look different in the lives of every single one of our campers.” So coming toward our campers from a place of curiosity, with genuine interest about who they are, who they say they are, who they know themselves as, that’s easy for us as seasonal camp staff that get to be with them for a week. But I know that that can be tough for parents. But it can also open up a huge opportunity in the life of your child for them to see the love of their parent as unconditional, as however I show up and whoever I show up as, I’m going to be loved no matter what. So I want to encourage parents out there to trust your kid, that they know who they are and ask good questions. And it is truly beautiful what happens in the life of a young person when their sense of personhood is trusted and validated by older adults that they look up to. 

SARA: Andy, what about you? 

ANDY: I am not a parent. But as somebody who transitioned as a teenager in Texas, the biggest thing for me that helped was the effort. I saw my parents try their best. And that’s something I always tell parents when I talk to them on the phone. A lot of times I have phone calls with parents that are telling me about their kid and maybe they use the wrong name or the wrong pronouns. And all the sudden they just feel so guilty. “I’m so sorry. This is all new to me. I’m trying my best.” And I always tell them, “Your effort does not go unnoticed. Your child, no matter what they say to your face, no matter how many times they get onto you to get it correct or all this kind of stuff, they see that you’re trying and they appreciate it more than you realize.” So especially when it comes to gender identity. That’s a big change, new pronouns, new names, but the effort matters. Just try your best. It’s a lot of change. And another thing I will say it is very developmentally appropriate for youth to change their identity 40 million times because that’s how they make sense of the world around them. They’re seeing what feels right. They have to try it on before they decide if that identity or that label feels correct to them. So allow that trying-on phase. The first time I came out as anything to my mom and dad, I told them I was bisexual but I was still a girl. And then, like a year later I was like, “Actually, I think I might be a boy.” But in the middle, they didn’t see that within my friend group was a lot of nonbinary, agender, what is gender, gender crisis. And we got there. And it’s very interesting because we see that transformation in our kids. One of my favorite stories is one of our campers that’s been with us since the beginning, the very first year of camp, came into registration with a shirt that said “We’re all lesbians.” And was a very out and proud lesbian. And then the next year, had a trans pride flag shirt on and all the sudden was going by he/him pronouns. And it was amazing because the parents just embraced that. And they said, “You know. We’re on this journey together. We’re a family. We’re a team.” And just knowing that if your child identifies with one label or one identity one day, and then later on down the road they say, “I don’t know if that label or that identity fits me anymore.” That’s okay. They’re trying it on and seeing what fits. I always say there’s no harm done in an identity exploration. It’s appropriate and we want our kids to be doing that. Because, if not, they’re going to be suppressing that. And that’s the last thing we want. 

SARA: Yeah. Thank you both. 

JOHN: One more thing on Andy real quick. So Andy actually is a parent of a wonderful dog and one of the things that brings me a lot of joy is watching Andy play. And the way Andy plays with his dog, the way Andy plays with the campers, there’s this sense of joy and open, free play that we do really well at camp. And we don’t have to belabor the point that this is a scary time in our world, that there is so much out there that is dark and menacing and can make us lose hope really fast. I can’t emphasize enough the value of play, is finding ways to play with your kid. And whether that’s creating something just for the sake of creating it. Or doing a craft or going outside on a nature walk. You’d ask, how can you bring this Kindom camp to where you are. Bring the spirit of camp into your home. Go outside. Make friendship bracelets. It's that, like, “everything I needed to learn in life, I learned in kindergarten” thing. Just remember to play with your kids. And that’s one of the things camp does so well. And play encourages that queer joy to come out and shine in some beautiful ways. And that queer joy is resistance. It’s hope. And it’s life. 

SARA: That’s awesome. All of that’s such powerful advice. Thank you both so much. This is such an extraordinary conversation and all that you’ve shared with us about Kindom Camp and the whole community. Before you go, we do have two final questions that we like to ask all of our guests at the end of every episode. So in addition to the role that camp plays and this work plays for you, the first question we like to ask has to do with the Mama Dragons name. It is about fierceness. The Mama Dragons name came about out of a sense of this fierce protection for our kids. And so we like to ask our guests, in your own lives, what is it you are fierce about? Andy, how about we start with you.

ANDY: This is the obvious answer, but it’s without a doubt in my mind. I am fierce about my Kindom campers. I hold every single one of them, all hundred-and-some-odd that we’ve served over the past three summers, near and dear to my heart, particularly our transgender and gender expansive youth. I care very deeply about that, in Texas especially. It breaks my heart how many of my volunteers and campers have fled the state, have fled the country. And so that has been my big passion the past several years, in Texas specifically, is being very fierce and very passionate about trans rights and protecting the peace of our trans youth and adults. 

SARA: Awesome. John, how about you? 

JOHN: Every year on the first day of camp when our campers are checking in at registration, there’s always new campers and unfamiliar faces that I haven’t met yet. But then there are the campers who come back. And there’s something to seeing the faces of these returning campers. And every time I see one of their faces, I just think, “Thank God you’re back another year.” Not just back at camp, but you made it another year. And we do all of this camp work, we run ourselves to the bone, we fundraise like crazy, we hustle for camp improvements. We do all of this so that these LGBTQ teenagers can grow up to be LGBTQ adults. And that’s why we do this work, is for them. I think I said it before that my life would’ve been very different with a camp like this. I think every one of our adult staff's lives would have been different. But we have a fierce commitment to making sure these kids grow up. And anything we can do to support them is not something we’re going to shirk at. 

SARA: Yeah. Wonderful. Powerful. Thank you. Final question, in addition to camp, what is bringing you joy right now? We like to end with joy, recognizing that we need to cultivate as much joy as possible in these times. So in your own lives, what is bringing you joy right now?

ANDY: In this moment that’s been my hyper fixation for the past few weeks is my new cookbook. Like I mentioned earlier, I have celiac disease. And so I got this gluten free cookbook. And I’ve been making so many gluten free pastries that are some of the best things that I have eaten in so long. So, shout out to The Loopy Whisk, my favorite gluten free baker. I made baguettes last weekend. I made pesto rolls the week before that. I plan on making my friend and I cinnamon rolls this weekend. So that is just bringing me so much joy. I love cooking and I love baking. So that’s been my joy recently. 

SARA: The Loopy Whisk. 

ANDY: Yeah. The Loopy Whisk, she specializes in all kinds of allergy-free cooking. She’s based out of the UK. I had to order a lot of random flours from the UK on the internet. But I’m making some of the best bread of my life.

SARA: Amazing. That is amazing. I love that. What a great answer. John, how about you? What is bringing you joy? 

JOHN: For me, just coming off of a week at camp, the thing that is bringing me joy is literally the dozens and dozens of friendship bracelets that were made by these Kindom campers and staff and they each have different words on them and different pride flag colors. And by the end of the week, I had maybe 8 inches worth of these friendship bracelets up my arm. And I just ordered a whole bunch of beads and string and I’m going to start making some of these with my kids. So right now, the sound of these beads on my arm for these friendship bracelets just reminds me of the joy of seeing these young people. I’m an arts and crafts gay. And so any sort of artsy thing, that’s where I am. 

SARA: I love it. Love it. Thank you both so much for this conversation and more importantly, thank you for your work, for your fierce commitment to creating camp spaces like this and community for queer youth with full belonging and full affirmation. It just feels so very important and so very life-saving as you have talked about. We’re going to make sure to put Kindom Community website and camp information in our show notes. Anything else that we’ve mentioned here, we’ll even put a link to the cookbook, to the website that Andy references for all of our gluten free friends out there, so that you can get involved. Because you can apply to be a volunteer, you can figure out where the camps are located near you, and just learn more about the camps and maybe embracing some of those opportunities and creating something similar in your own community. You’ve inspired all of us today. Thank you both so much for joining us. 

JOHN: Thank you so much. 

ANDY: Thank you so much for having us. This was so wonderful. 

SARA: Thanks so much for joining us here In The Den. Did you know that Mama Dragons offers an eLearning program called Parachute? This is an interactive learning platform where you can learn more about how to affirm, support, and celebrate the LGBTQ+ people in your life. Learn more at Mamadragons.org/parachute. Or find the link in the episode show notes under links. 

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