Episode 13: David Blacker's Gift: Using Therapy to Support LGBTQ+ Families

In this episode of 'Demystifying the Transgender Journey,' hosts Lynn Murphy and Wendy Cole engage in a heartfelt conversation with psychotherapist and gay dad, David Blacker. David shares his unique journey from a 25-year career in advertising to becoming a clinical psychotherapist, driven by a lifelong passion for helping others. The discussion delves into David's personal experiences growing up as a gay man in the 80s, the impact of societal expectations, and the importance of creating safe, affirming spaces for LGBTQIA+ individuals. David offers valuable insights and advice for parents and families navigating the challenges of supporting transgender and gender-expansive youth while addressing the misinformation and fears perpetuated by society and media. The episode emphasizes the significance of visibility, storytelling, and acceptance in fostering a more inclusive and understanding world.

To find out more about David visit: 

https://www.davidblackerpsychotherapy.com

https://www.instagram.com/davidthetherapist/

To find out more about Demystifying the Transgender Journey visit: 

https://www.thetransgenderjourney.com

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/demystifying-the-transgender-journey/id1799458202

https://www.facebook.com/thetransgenderjourney

https://womenwhopushthelimits.com

https://www.facebook.com/wendycolegtm

https://www.youtube.com/@wendycole8326

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendy-cole-gtm

 

 

 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Well, welcome to another episodeof Demystifying the Transgender
Journey, brought to you byWomen Who Push the Limits.
I'm one of your hosts, Lynn Murphy.
I'm the founder of Women Who Push theLimits and author of the bestselling book,
50 Life Lessons from Inspiring Women.
Your other host today is the amazing WendyCole, who transitioned at the age of 67.

(00:20):
So we've got kind of a unique setuphere between a cisgender woman
and a transgender woman, and we'vebeen told that there aren't really
many people doing what we're doing.
Our goal is to educate people aboutthe misinformation and disinformation
and things that are just plain wrongabout some of the things that they
hear in the news and on social media.

(00:40):
So we want to educate peopleby having these conversations,
sharing real people's stories.
And digging into what's going on.
We think that by hearing the stories,we think it's going to change people's
minds about some of the things thatthey hear that are not correct.
So we're sharing different perspectives,these authentic journeys, and

(01:00):
with our goal to educate and haveconversations about the topic of
Demystifying the Transgender Journey.
And we are so grateful that you,our audience, are here today,
and we're even more grateful tohave an amazing person joining us
today as our guest, David Blacker.
David is a Los Angeles basedpsychotherapist and proud gay dad who

(01:22):
specializes in working with the LGBTQIA+community through an affirming, culturally
sensitive, and strengths-based approach.
His practice is rooted in the beliefthat healing begins when clients
feel seen, valued, and empowered toembrace the fullness of who they are.
David's focus is working with people inthis community and other marginalized

(01:45):
communities who are in their teens andtheir twenties, as well as their parents.
His clients find David to be especiallygifted at helping them navigate anxiety,
self-esteem issues, relationshipdynamics, and identity-based trauma,
as he draws on a deep understandingof how homophobic, transphobic, and

(02:06):
heterosexism have impacted mental health.
This is an important partabout the mental health.
Now, before becoming a therapist,this is a kind of an unusual path
to becoming a therapist, but Davidspent 25 years as a successful
copywriter and creative director inthe advertising industry, a background
that continues to inform his creativeand narrative driven therapeutic style.

(02:30):
He remains passionate about storytelling,which is what we're all about,
contributing for over a decade to
Gays With Kids, a parenting resource forgay, bi, and trans dads and dads to be.
Outside of his clinical work, he's notalways in the office, even though it
probably feels like it to him, Davidwrites screenplays and enjoys life with

(02:52):
his husband and their teenage son, whetherin the therapy room or on the page,
David is dedicated to helpingpeople find meaning, connection,
and pride in their stories.
So today we're so honored that Davidis going to be sharing his story.
David, thank you so muchfor being here today.
Wendy and I are just delightedthat you agreed to talk to us.

(03:13):
Absolutely.
It's my honor.
So let's start out, share alittle bit about your background.
Sure.
And how your background influenceswhere you are today, and how you
went from being an advertising personto being a clinical psychologist.
Sure.
Thank you.
Thank you for that lovely intro.
It's wonderful to behere with both of you.
I am a big fan of whatthis project is all about.

(03:35):
And that's enlightening and sharingstories, right, because that's how
we really learn from one another.
So a little bit about me, I grew upin Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and
when I was 23, I think, I moved toLos Angeles to pursue a screenwriting
and copywriting kind of profession.

(03:57):
When I was going to undergrad, I remembertelling my parents that I wanted to major
in film and they were kind of like, well,how about that and something that we can,
you know, rely on for you to make money.
And so that's where advertising came in.
I thought I can still tell littlestories and little bits and so, um.

(04:18):
Dual majored in film and advertising,then came out to LA and quickly went down
into the advertising agency world andstarted out as a junior copywriter all
the way to a group creative director.
Towards the end of my time in advertising,which was about 25 years, about
seven years ago, I transitioned intoa world of psychotherapy and it was

(04:45):
something that I always wanted to do.
I know that sounds a little cliche, butwhen I was a little kid and my parents
would ask me, what do I want to be,I said I wanted to be a psychologist.
And they would say, "Why?" and I wouldsay, because of the experience that
I have as a young boy in elementaryschool who has a therapist that I get
to see once a week, and knowing how Ifelt when I would leave those sessions,

(05:09):
I wanted to be able to help otherpeople to achieve that same feeling.
The thing is my parents who areoutstanding and very attuned to me,
as well as guidance counselors, andteachers in high school, they all
said when I told them I wanted to be atherapist, "Oh, well you're so sensitive.
You have so much empathy and so muchcompassion that it might work against you.

(05:34):
It might be too much for you.
It might be internalizing otherpeople's stuff." And because I was
so sensitive, they thought thatmaybe that would not be best for me.
So, it made sense to me, and Ikind of put that on the back burner
and followed my creative pursuits,but the feeling was always there.
Throughout my life when I was atwork, I would always be that person

(05:59):
organically that people were drawnto talk about things that are going
on in their lives, or whether itbe my friends, or my neighbors.
Mm-hmm.
And so it got to a point where I feltI, I think maybe I should be doing this.
I think maybe there's something tobe said about helping people to heal.
And after two decades in advertising,it was fun and the money was good,

(06:23):
but I wasn't feeling fulfilled andI wasn't feeling like anything I was
doing was really making a difference.
And in raising my son andhim becoming a teenager,
I kept thinking about this quote thatalways stayed with me, and that is: "Be
who you needed when you were younger."And that, that is what attracted
me to therapy and to finally say,"I've lived 40 years at this point,

(06:48):
I can go back to graduate school.
I can get my degree and I canbecome a clinical psychologist
or a psychotherapist."
And that's what I did.
Yeah.
So you had experience at an early age.
I haven't heard a lot of peoplewho've had therapy at that young age.
Yes.
How did that
come about?
Well, I come from a family that is sortof half, "Therapy is amazing and great

(07:11):
and can help one get in touch withthemselves" and other family members that
were kind of raised a little bit more,you know, in a generation where that's
implies that there's something wrong withyou and What are people going to think.
And luckily, my parentssupported the idea.
While I was in elementary school andI was having some, maybe I wasn't so

(07:32):
aware of it at the time, but I thinksome stuff about feeling different
from the other boys in school.
And I think my parents picked up on thatand made the decision to have me spend
an hour a week with a psychologist.
And it was a really magical experiencewhere during that 50 minutes I felt seen.

(07:53):
And I felt like I didn't have to puton an act even as a young person.
That I didn't have to pretend to likethe rock music that my friends like
or know all the scores to the Eaglesgames, or the Flyers, or the Phillies.
And so it felt like a mini vacationwhen I got to just be myself.

(08:14):
Yeah.
So you,
that creative side early on, thatwasn't necessarily the heteronormative.
No.
It wasn't for me.
No, I was born in the late '70s andin the '80s, you know, guys, boys
didn't gravitate towards art, andmusic, and things that were really
creative, and expressive, and emotional.

(08:34):
And I always, naturally, I wasinclined towards those things.
And so it made me feel differentthan everybody because those were the
afterschool activities that I wanted toparticipate in, and yet there weren't
those options, at least not a lot of them.
I remember you, in all honestyand openness to the audience,

(08:56):
I've known David for decades.
True.
And I remember you back in thosedays, you were always very creative.
You loved your writing,you wrote beautifully.
And I remember sitting on yourbed watching you write something.
It was just a delight.
You were different from a lot of theother guys, but I thought it was great.

(09:22):
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yes.
And even I knew I was different.
That difference that we're speakingof, it wouldn't be until years later
that I would really, truly, understand.
Embrace it.
And embrace it.
Instead, I fought against it.
I kind of went into something,in the therapy world we call Code
Switching, even from an early age.

(09:43):
And what that means is Iwould be one way publicly.
Then, when I'm alone or in a placethat I deem safe and where I can be
comfortable, and everything from the waythat I spoke to, the way that I dressed,
to the music that I would listen to, orthe TV shows that I would watch, or the
magazines that I would read, there wasa very public version of that, which

(10:04):
was what all the other boys were into.
And then there was, the truth.
Right?
Yeah.
Well, and I remember the '80s.
I was well into my adult timein life and that was really a
dangerous time for men to be gay.
Yes.
Yeah.
There were
the AIDS epidemic.
People didn't know what had caused that.
There weren't any treatments.

(10:24):
There was the isolation.
Yeah.
Did that influence anything?
Were you aware of that at the time?
Entirely influenced.
I mean, people on a playgroundmight call me gay or girly when
I was in elementary school.
Didn't really knew what that meant, butknew that it wasn't something that I
wanted to be because people would laugh.

(10:46):
And so it just made me kind of goinsular and play down the things that
were suggesting to other people thatI was girly or that I might be gay.
Every message that I was exposed togrowing up in the '80s whether I was
5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years old, was thatgay was bad, less than, not something

(11:11):
that we would choose or want to be.
Every TV show that had a storylineabout a gay person, it portrayed
them as the victim of something.
The victim of bullying, the victimof discrimination, the victim
of not being the good athlete.
They were often the peoplethat were laughed at.
If you were watching a talk showlike Jerry Springer, for example,

(11:34):
the only exposure that we wouldsee were gay and queer people
almost being the butt of the joke.
And so every message conditioned meto think "That is not something that
I am okay to be, that I'm allowedto be, that I should choose to be."
And this was even before I understoodthe physical and emotional dynamics

(11:58):
of what constitutes sexuality.
But I couldn't turn off thethings that were inherently me.
And so as I got older and enteredmore kind of the high school
years, I would find myself datingwomen, being attracted to women.
And the more I would maybe getmade fun of, the more women I would

(12:22):
seek out, to prove to the worldand myself, I'm not what you're
saying I am, this is my girlfriend.
And because physically, everything wasenjoyable for me with these lovely women,
I had a hard time differentiating between
a physical dynamic with a woman and anemotional kind of attraction to somebody.

(12:47):
And because physically, everything wasA-okay, I thought, "Oh, I mustn't be
gay, gay is sex." That is what TV, andpoliticians, and people at the playground,
and at school, they say, "Being gay isa sex act." And that was what I grew

(13:07):
up in my formidable years believing.
Gay is not a sex act.
There's sex acts in all relationships.
What I didn't understand then, thatI would later learn, is that being
gay is also very much an emotionalconnection and sense of normalcy with

(13:28):
somebody of the same sex, same gender.
And so it was the hardestlesson that I ever had to learn.
All my life,
I was emotionally drawn to men.
My best friends who werestraight cis men, I would always
want to spend time with them.
I would want to be there for themwhen they were having problems.
If there was a death in the family,or they were doing badly in a certain

(13:50):
class, I would want to tutor them.
I was pulled to my straight male friends.
I just wanted to be around them.
I just wanted to have adeep relationship with them.
Never felt that way with women.
I get along wonderfully with women.
But there wasn't that feelingof This is what love feels like.

(14:12):
That is something that I wouldhave with the men in my life.
Once I was finally able to realizebeing gay is, "Hi honey, I'm home."
And having that person you love there,and eating dinner together, and doing
fun projects together, and watchingTV together, it's not a sex act.
That is a very kind of dated sense.

(14:35):
That is what gay is, it's an act.
Gay is who you are in your being.
While there are many differences betweena gay person and somebody who's trans,
what's similar is that you just are thisthing and it was the way that you were
born, and then at different phases in yourlife, it might start to show and come out,

(14:57):
but to deny it isbasically denying yourself.
And that's exhausting.
Just as exhausting as it wasfor me to code switch all the
time to, to live a double life.
And it's so draining.
It is.
Totally.
Yeah.
Right.
I mean,
yeah.
More than any of us knowing your storyand everything that you've shared.

(15:20):
When I was living in New Hope,Pennsylvania and had a lot of my gay
friends, there were so many parallelsto our lives, and that's the beauty
of everything you just related.
It parallels everything that a transgenderperson would feel and experience growing
up, going through childhood, all of thatyou kind of know, but because of the

(15:41):
socialization, you know how wrong it is.
That was beautiful, David.
Well,
and David, you're working with teens andwith people in their twenties, so Yeah.
You know, feeling different growing up.
Wendy just said, you've got the parallelswith people who were born transgender.
So how does your background, how do youuse your background of feeling different?

(16:04):
Not that you're transgender,but growing up gay.
How does that influence how youwork with your transgender clients?
Well, every person has theirown specific and unique story.
I think I come from a place of looking atevery relationship and every conversation
through a lens of affirming somebody'sstory, meeting people where they're at.

(16:27):
Not trying to change minds, but tounconditionally embrace and support
somebody for exactly who they are,where they are at that point in time.
I think because I promote myselfas a gay man, a cis, gay man, and
I'm a father, I have a husband.
I put that out there on all my marketingmaterials, not because I am someone

(16:50):
who really loves oversharing, I justthink that somebody who has felt
othered in their life, whether it bein elementary school, whether it be
in college, or in their adult years.
There's a shared languageand a shorthand with
knowing when you're amongst company, soto speak, or amongst "family" in that

(17:11):
expression of someone else who mightbe queer, or someone else who might be
on a journey where they grew up feelingless than, or othered, or not allowed
to be their full, authentic selves.
And I think that comes across.
I always do a free consultation withprospective clients and I'm pretty
upfront about how I work and how I lookat psychotherapy as a way to hold a

(17:37):
mirror up for clients so they can seethemselves in this time together and that
I can model something for them that mayhave been missing in their own lives.
And by that I mean, these folks may havenever sat across from somebody who loves
them exactly the way that they are.

(17:57):
Not that some of the people in theirlives don't mean well, but to have
someone say "You are absolutelyperfect just as you are today.
Nothing could ever change.
And exactly who you are iswho you are meant to be,
and it's beautiful."
And then I'm not afraid to challengeclients when I think they're
telling themselves things thatmight not be serving them well.

(18:19):
But what I found, I guess to, to answerthe very specific question is it's a
gift to sit across from somebody and havethem open up and share and be vulnerable.
So what I want to do with that giftis reflect back to these individuals,
regardless of their age, that this isa place where they don't have to be

(18:40):
anybody else other than who they are.
And I get that, but I getit from my perspective.
I want to understandyour perspective, right?
Mm-hmm.
I don't talk about myself in sessions,other than the fact that I'm gay,
and I'm married, and I have a kid.
That's pretty much allpeople really know about me.
But that alone breaks the ice.

(19:00):
That alone makes it feellike this is a safe space.
Because while our stories are different,there are a lot of those things, as
Wendy were saying, that are crossoverbetween their life and my life.
And I'm sure your clients cansense that in you even though you
don't go into all of your details.
Because it sounds like you're really agift to the clients that you work with.

(19:24):
I appreciate you saying that.
What I say to everybody is "This work hasits tough days, but it is a privilege to
be welcomed into people's inner worlds."
Yeah.
And it never gets boring.
It never feels old because everyday is a new story and a new emotion
that we get to explore together.
I think that is what has helped my successin having a pretty steady flow of clients.

(19:48):
I'm upfront.
If a parent calls me and they say"I think my kid is trans, or they're
saying that they're like genderexpansive, we need them to be in
therapy to get a handle of this."
And I'll say, "What, what do youmean by get a handle of this?"
"Well, we need to talk them out of it."
"This isn't how we wantto raise our child."
I always say very quickly "That's a reallyscary thought, but I'm not the right

(20:12):
therapist for you or, for the family,
because that is not how I practice."
I work with people to celebratewho they are, and their identity.
Not to tell someone else how theyshould live their life or not.
And some people are surprisedat my directness or my
willingness to turn clients away.

(20:34):
But I can't be a part of that.
So I'm not
Asking you for conversion therapy.
Yeah, no.
It's, you know, exactly.
And listen.
I tell parents that are really wantingtheir kids to be in therapy and talking
about wanting them to not be what theyare telling their parents they are.

(20:55):
And I say something and it can bevery sobering, but I say to the
parents "Do you want a trans daughteror do you want a dead daughter?"
Either way.
She's a daughter.
And in one way, she's in yourlife and the other way she's not.
And that's hard for people to hear.
But I've had enough experience in thiswork where there is a disproportionate

(21:17):
number of preteens and teenage folks whoare trans or somewhere on the spectrum,
figuring out their kind of gender story.
And the rates of suicidal ideation andthoughts and desires for self-harming
are exponentially higher with thispopulation than any other minority

(21:39):
group or population of that same age.
And I've met with enough of thesekids to know that not allowing these
folks to be who they are and gettingthem the care that they need to be,
become who they are, and to create safespaces for them to have conversations
about who they are is harmful.

(22:01):
And I'm very direct about that withthe people that I meet with, if
they're not aligned with the factthat it's not about stopping something
that's not wrong, it's about makingsomeone feel okay to be who they are.
And that is what wesign up for as parents.
Don't have kids, if there areconditions on having kids.

(22:23):
Well, and when you get parents, evenif they're willing to accept this,
but it seems to me, that parents mightbe surprised, shocked, not know what
to do when their child is questioningor when they decide to come out.
And that's understandable.
It is understandable.
So how do you work with parents?
Give our audience some advice orsome ideas about how to deal with

(22:44):
their own confusion, their own,
Their own grief, really?
Yeah.
Grief.
Absolutely.
And I have clients who are just, that.
They're parents of kids who are onthis journey and I tell them that
it's wonderful that you're here, thatyou're having this conversation, that
you're not home, going online andgetting into all these Reddit articles,

(23:08):
cherry picking certain stories.
But rather, you areexploring your feelings.
And the fact that they made thephone call, the fact that they're
spending the money to be there tellsme that they have good intentions.
They may be confused,they may not understand.
Here's the thing, our kidsdon't need to understand.

(23:29):
Our kids don't needyou to understand them.
Our kids need you to be curious andwant to hear what they have to say.
And they want to have a seat at the tablewhen it comes to their life and who they
are, and how they look, and how they live.
So when I work with theseparents, it's usually going
through a lot of psychoeducation.

(23:50):
It's talking through communicationskills on how we can come
from a place of curiosity,
not criticalness.
Not going to our kids with with,you know, a finger pointing.
You can't dress like that.
You can't be that way.
But more like,
What do you feel when you're goingto get in the morning and you're

(24:12):
picking out what you're going to wear?
Picking that shirt, howdoes that make you feel?
Let's focus on the feelings andlook under what the end result is.
The end result is amanifestation of something.
Let's look at what'sjust beneath the surface.
That's where the work is.
Right.
Not that I like to have a pinktank top, but what that symbolizes.

(24:35):
How would I feel wearing that?
Versus
How would I feel wearing the clothesthat my mom and dad buy me that
might not feel like I'm being me?
Coming from a place of curiosityis the answer with parents.
Seeking out their own therapy andallowing themselves to have their
feelings, have their grief, grievingthe version of your son or daughter

(24:59):
that you imagined them to be.
Right?
We have to give our parents timeto adjust to this massive change.
By not doing that, and expectingthat parents are just going to be
"Okay! Whatever you say, I support."
That's a fantasy.
Obviously, kids should alwaysfeel supported and affirmed

(25:20):
and loved and all those things.
But, it wouldn't make sense for a parentto believe one way their whole life
and just to suddenly change their mind.
That's not what we're asking.
You take the time you need, talk tothe people that you need to talk to,
do some research, read some books.
But when you're doing your research,and you're reading books, it needs to

(25:42):
be by people who've been through this.
Not by some talking head who ismaybe having an agenda when they
put their books together, right?
Talk to people who've worn these shoes.
Talk to other parents who have childrenthat have been on this journey, and that
will tell you the watch outs and willtell you the benefits of what happens

(26:04):
when you just hold out your arms and say
"Hey, come here. You're you, and you'remy kid. And that is all I care about."
The rest of the stuff?
We want to make sure you're safe.
We want to make sure you're healthy.
We want to make sure you make rationaldecisions that aren't impulsive.
And we'll figure this out.
You know, that's what we're aiming for.

(26:25):
That's what I try todo with these parents.
And again, I meet them where they're at.
If someone comes in and theyare completely a mess with
all these fears and changes.
I don't tell them theyshouldn't feel that way.
They should feel this way.
It's real.
They should have their thoughts,they should have their concerns.
They should allowthemselves to feel stuff.

(26:46):
So then they can get overthat and then get to the
"Okay, so what are we going todo here? How are we going to help
our kid be the best version ofthemselves that they can be?"
Do you advise them to share thosefears and feelings with their kids
or to keep them more to themselves?
How does that work in that environment?
It's a great question.
I don't want to guide parents intoputting anything additional on their kids

(27:12):
that aren't the kid's responsibility.
It is not the kid's responsibilityto take care of how mom and
dad react and respond to this.
That's, that starts to be likeparentification and there is enough on
that little kid's plate right now thanto have to take care of siblings, and how
it's going to be for them, and parents.

(27:32):
They can have empathy for the fact thatthis is going to be a lot for my family.
But no, I don't think any of thosethings should be addressed with the kid.
However, a parent is a parent.
And so when we're talking about thingslike smart, healthy, rational decisions,
choices, who we spend time with when wecome home, how we leave the house dressed,

(27:55):
expressing ourselves, is very necessary.
But like all parents, there arerules and there are boundaries
and there are limitations.
And I respect parents feeling as though
We get a say in what happens here.
But we're not going to get a saywhere we dictate to you who you are.

(28:17):
You know what I mean?
There's a difference between that.
And safety seems like one issue too,that there's got to be a balance in
safety there when you're talking abouthow you get dressed in the morning.
When you brought up safety, I thinkit's important to say, when your
parents or your caregivers, whoever'sraising you, if you do the things
that are advised regarding how wehave this conversation with our kids,

(28:41):
the chances of them doing things
that are unsafe go way down, right?
If we kick our kids out of the house,the kids are going to be exposed
to some really dark things thatcan happen outside of the house.
If we keep our kids surrounded by love andsupport and letting them know that this
is where they belong and nothing's goingto change, that, they're not going to feel

(29:05):
compelled to learn things the hard waybecause there's a safety net around them.
I always tell parents, ourjob is not to be shields.
Our job is to be safety nets.
Let kids make up their mindsand learn things sometimes
and learn from those choices.
Nothing is more educationalthan our own regrets, you know.

(29:26):
That's when we really learn.
So in that regard I think it's reallyimportant for parents to talk to
other people who've been through this.
To talk to therapists or whatevertherapy looks like for you.
It could be meeting with yourpastor, or at a temple, with a rabbi.
It doesn't have to be, sitting in a roomdoing therapy, but we need an outlet.

(29:49):
These parents need an outlet.
They can join PFLAG, they can goonline where they can find a Facebook.
They don't have to speak.
They can just observe and see that thevery fears that they have are the fears
that everybody in that circle has.
Right?
And then when this woman overhere tells the story about their
child who transitioned in highschool, it's so informative.

(30:13):
And there's this sense of
It gets better.
Not just for the child going through thistransition, but for the parents to know
Now my trans child is in college andis studying what she wants to study,
and she has her friend group and she'sfound her tribe of people that make
her feel she can just be who she is.

(30:34):
That gives the other newparents so much hope, you know?
It makes them feel that
Okay.
There is another narrative here.
It doesn't just have to be thenarrative that, we see in the
press where it's fear tactics, and
this is going to happen,
and
that's going to happen.
The facts are that those bad thingsonly happen when a lot of people

(31:01):
come together and perpetuate falsethings that are just not true.
So you talked earlier about parentslooking at Reddit and things like
that, and we know that there's so muchon the social media and in the news.
Yeah.
That kids can go there and look atcertain things, but politicians,

(31:21):
rule makers are trying to ban certainbooks, certain things that they
don't want children exposed to.
Yeah.
Because they don't want them to be, what?
Turned?
So how important is it that thatpeople who are transgender in their
youth have positive representationsof someone who's transgender?
It makes all the difference.
It makes all the difference.

(31:42):
Visibility is the thing thatI speak to often in sessions.
Look for the people that are visible.
Look for the people that are allies.
Put your focus on them.
There's so much noise that you haveto navigate through to get to those
people that are healing, that arehelping, that are in this fight.

(32:05):
I always say
this kind of metaphor, scaretactics and trying to get parents
to fear this or fear, fear that.
It's kind of like when youhave a toddler and you build a
beautiful pool in your backyard.
That toddler wants to get intothat swimming pool, right?

(32:25):
But the toddler mightnot know how to swim.
So you build a wall ora fence to protect it.
The thing is, if that toddler wants toget into that pool and swim as much as
they, they do, they will find a way toget over that fence and get into the pool.
So don't you think that weshould teach that kid to swim?

(32:45):
And so when it comes to gender orsexuality, pretending that we can just put
up a big wall to stop these things fromhappening aren't going to change anything.
All it does is make the person haveto have a harder time getting to
where they ultimately should be.
As parents, we don't wantto be the road bumps.

(33:06):
We don't want to be the thing that makessomething that's already the hardest
thing in the world, even harder, right?
If you come from it with curiosity,and wanting to understand,
you don't have to agree.
You don't have to believe what I believe,but just understand my perspective.
Put on my shoes.
Just walk in them so you canunderstand my perspective.

(33:31):
Someone else cannot tell someonetheir perspective doesn't matter.
True, very true.
They can say it all they want,it's not going to change anything.
Mm-hmm.
Back in the last century and thefirst decade of this one, you didn't
hear too much about transgender.

(33:51):
No.
Back in those days, I wasconsidered a transsexual.
Mm-hmm.
There were others who wereconsidered transvestites.
Yep.
Today, you're now transgender.
Mm-hmm.
We're all part of thisone big conglomerate.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That spans from non-binary gender fluidto the cross dressers to the transsexuals.

(34:15):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that's a lot for people incisgender, straight society especially.
But I even learned it in gay society too.
Mm-hmm.
It's not fully comprehended.
Yeah.
And I think that changing theirperspectives is going to be from doing

(34:36):
exactly what we're doing now, havingan open conversation about all of this,
which I think is really hugely important.
What's your perspective on why allof a sudden in the 20-teens and now
the 2020s and all, we're seeing somany more transgender people, to

(34:59):
the point where the politicians areable to use it to divide society?
Yeah.
It's a great question.
I think Lynn indicated this before,as soon as there are changes in
the world when public opinionstarts to evolve, you find that
Okay, people are having new opinionsand nothing bad's happening.

(35:24):
And if you put aside what people tellyou are supposed to be, what you're
supposed to believe or what culturallyhas been believed in the past.
If you put those things aside and justcome from a place of, okay, so let me
try to understand what I don't know.
Right.
I'm going to pause there andI'm going to come from this
question in a different way.

(35:44):
Because I wasn't likingwhere that was going.
So in my own lifetime,I have seen this shift.
I've observed it.
I know what it was like in theearly 2000's or the late '90s when
some of these themes would come up.
And then I would see that, in I think2012, you started to see certain

(36:05):
rights, certain protections, certainmedical support being made available
for individuals who are trans.
And as soon as that happened, and assoon as we started to have people in
TV shows, and on reality shows, andpeople in schools that are trans,
it started to create this thing of

(36:27):
Okay, this is happening.
We're evolving a little bit.
And what we don't know wewill ask some questions.
And the world didn't end.
And nothing bad happened in classrooms.
The more that happened, and the morethe stories get told like this podcast,
whether it be documentaries, movies,side characters on TV programs, that's

(36:51):
when it starts to feel normalized.
Once this thing feels normalized,we start to realize, we all
know someone who knows someone.
The more it happens and we see thatnothing bad is really happening,
other than people feeling likethey can live in their own skin,
you start to see that change.
Now, that change can also startto upset people that don't know.

(37:17):
They just don't know.
They don't have exposure.
They've never met anybody.
They don't watch the type of shows,or programs, or movies that might
show different kinds of characters.
And many of these people arelovely people, but their ignorance
to this thing makes them scared.
What they don't know makes them scared.

(37:38):
What they can't understand makesthem scared, and so the answer is:
Learn.
Do some research.
But talk to real peoplewho have worn these shoes.
Not people that are telling you
"This is going too fast. Theworld is changing too fast."
Minorities of all differenttypes, shapes, sizes, have

(38:01):
fought for decades and decades.
This is not fast, but you know, as badas some people rightly say things are
right now for the trans community, whenyou put on the news, we can't forget
that 15 years ago they were worse, right?

(38:22):
A lot worse.
I don't want to downplay or sound likeI'm not paying close enough attention to
someone's lived experiences right now.
But it is important to understandthat this is like reciprocal.
This is this goes in a circledepending on politics and stuff.
But we can't forget that we've come sofar for the whole entire LGBTQ+ community.

(38:46):
We've come so far.
When I'm speaking to a client who's 23and trans, I'm not going to focus on
You should be appreciating rightnow where you're at because of...
Right.
That won't work.
That's not going to work.
Because they only know what they know.
They only know what it's beenlike to grow up in their world.
This is the first time they're seeinga lot of that messaging that I saw

(39:07):
in the '80s about how I shouldn'tbe gay, or how being gay is bad.
These folks are getting worse messages.
They're getting messages of
You don't deserve to have thesame rights as every other kid.
You don't deserve to be able to gointo a bathroom that is the bathroom

(39:28):
that you should be going into.
You're not allowed to readbooks that mention a word
gay or mention a word trans.
If you don't want to read booksthat have the word "gay" or
"trans", don't read those books.
But you, stranger, you over there,cannot dictate for other people
what they can and can't read.
That's ridiculous.

(39:49):
And if you don't want to support the transcommunity, don't marry a trans person.
Exactly.
Literally that
simple.
A drag queen reading a book toa kid is not going to make them
want to become a drag queen.
These are not the way that it works.
And no young teenage boy, or evenyounger than that, is going to go

(40:12):
and put on dresses and do makeup andall that kind of stuff just for fun.
No.
I mean, if it's Halloween andwe're doing a bit and great.
But if someone's going to do this thingthat the world, a lot of the world
tells them is bad and they're goingto do it because they can't not do it.

(40:33):
That's how important it is.
Regardless of what this personor that person's telling
me, I can't turn this off.
I know.
That's exactly how I felt at age 10.
Yeah.
It doesn't go away either.
Yeah.
For the whole world to lose their stuffover people who are dressing differently.

(40:55):
We don't have the Kens and theBarbies, if they're dressing.
But you look back when I grew up, wehad Bob Hope, and Bing Crosby, who
were cross-dressing for God's sake.
Absolutely.
And Mrs. Doubtfire, andour minds didn't explode.
We lived through that.
All of a sudden there's thisbig thing that people believe.
Do you know the differences betweenthose examples and what we're seeing now?

(41:18):
In those examples, it was cis,heterosexual people putting on the look.
It's different when it's agay person or a trans person.
Right.
And why should it be?
It shouldn't be.
It shouldn't be.
I just saw a documentary aboutPee-Wee Herman which is on HBO.
And Paul Reubens, who's the gentlemanwho created Pee-Wee, he said he would not

(41:41):
have been able to become Pee-Wee Hermanif he had come out in 1984 as a gay man.
He couldn't have a "kid's"TV show if he was a gay man.
And so when you say
"why is that?" "Why can that be that way?"
It's okay for a straightperson to dress up and put on
makeup, a straight cis person.
But if it's a gay person, theyare trying to indoctrinate people.

(42:03):
So how do you work with parents whenthey're hearing and seeing all these
horrible things about kids are goingto school and they're being done
surgery on at school and coming homeon opposite and all these things.
How do you get through to people?
You were saying learn, readthings, talk to people, actual
things, but there's a populationof people that just are so stuck.

(42:24):
How do you get them unstuck to wherethey do talk to people and read?
If I had the perfect answer to this,I would probably try to monetize
it because it's a question thatso many parents come to me with.
And I have a few things to say.
One is resist.
Resist what we don'tlike what's happening.

(42:45):
Whatever that looks like for you.
Whether it is having some conversationswith some other people in the community
that may think differently than you.
Try talking to them.
Get them to understand.
The other thing that I would say isif you can make your child in the home
feel loved and supported and that theyare beautiful exactly as they are,

(43:10):
that is what we are doingas our job as parents.
We cannot control what is outthere in sometimes the mean world.
And sometimes the worldis lovely and amazing.
But knowing what we can and cannotcontrol is a big part of it, right?
Mm-hmm.
We can surround our kids with loving,nurturing, supportive people that

(43:32):
embrace and celebrate who they are,and then they'll have memories of that.
We cannot change what otherpeople do and say, we cannot
change what happens in politics.
We can vote.
That is what we can do.
But, understanding what is withinmy control and outside of our
control is step number one.
Number two is something thatI call radical acceptance.

(43:56):
Where sometimes we have to acceptthe things that aren't fair.
Sometimes we have to accept thethings that we don't want to accept.
We have to accept things not because we'reselling out or we're becoming complicit.
It's not that.
It's liberating to free yourself of tryingto make something a different outcome.

(44:20):
Right.
If my kid hated sports and I love sports.
And for years, I would try toget him to like sports, but
he just doesn't like sports.
For me to say, you know what?
My kid just doesn't like sports.
I'm going to liberate myself fromtrying to make him love sports.
And I'm going to feelthis weight is lifted.
Now, I'm just going to let that go.

(44:42):
Don't get me wrong, thesethings politically, it's
not about letting stuff go.
It's about being able to acceptwhen there's something you
can do, and when there's not.
And then we just haveto keep our kids safe.
Help them make choicesthat keep them safe.
Stay informed, but not obsessed.
Know the headlines, but don't spendyour entire days spinning out on social

(45:08):
media, reading every negative thing thatthis person says or that person says.
If it's important enough, weare going to hear about it.
It's not just going to be onsome, Twitter or TikTok feed.
I try to get folks to stay awayfrom social media when there is a
24/7 news cycle that keeps thesenegative stories front and center.

(45:29):
Center.
You know what that
has?
That's been such a detriment.
It has.
It has.
And there's positives to it.
I'm not going to say that there's not,but when it comes to fear, you typically
take that one fear and then you see thenext story and it makes the fear bigger.
And then you see the next story andit makes it even bigger to the point
where now you really believe allthese things as if they are fact.

(45:52):
And they're not always fact.
No, they're not.
No.
A lot of things, become executiveorders, which immediately go into
the court system, and they die there.
Yeah.
But it makes a big story,a big headline, and it, and
it upsets people for weeks.
It incites so much fear.
I've had so many clients come in, closethe door and just start crying because

(46:15):
of just reading a headline about theirpassports are no longer going to have
the correct pronoun and sex listed.
And I will say that is a fact.
That has happened.
I have more than one clientwho has come in and said
"For the first time in my life, eventhough I transitioned when I was
six or seven, and have had passportsthat have indicated the correct sex,

(46:41):
something has changed since January."
Some order has put been put outthere where now these individuals
for the first time are gettingtheir passports renewed with the sex
that was assigned to them at birth.
Right.
And it is devastating for these people.
Of course it is.
Understandably.
Mm-hmm.

(47:01):
And so of course those arethe individuals that go
What's happening now?
Am I safe?
And it's really not okay.
No.
January after the new regimetook over, we heard a lot
about people who were suicidal.
Yeah, absolutely.
I have seen in the last fouror five months, something that

(47:26):
has blown me away, and that is
"I don't feel safe walking around.
I don't feel safe getting on a bus.
I don't feel safe walking intoa McDonald's or a, a restaurant.
I feel like there's a target on my back.
Literally, just before the newadministration went into effect, I'd walk

(47:50):
around, I'd dress, how I'd dress, I'd havemy hair, how I have it, I would be me.
Then something shifted and I felt likeall the things that I was maybe taking
for granted, just overnight, stopped.
I felt like there is a target on me.
I feel there are all eyes on me.

(48:11):
I feel like I can't go anywherewithout people snickering about me,
questioning me, talking about me."
And the truth is sometimesthat stuff is irrational.
Sometimes that stuff is not.
It's hyper vigilance.
We grow up in a world, alwayshaving to protect ourselves.
So we're hyper aware of our surroundings.

(48:32):
But there has been a major shift.
Hearing that so much more so in thelast four months than previously.
How much would you say, David, is a resultof the repetitive news cycles pushing that
out on people to the point where it's nowfront and foremost in their minds that

(48:55):
This is reality
when in fact so much ofit is just a lot of noise?
Yeah.
But they aren't able todifferentiate between the noise
and the reality of the situation.
How do you handle that?
In sessions we always kind ofbreak down the fear, the worry.

(49:17):
We kind of look at it and we tryto separate ourselves from it,
as if we're sitting over hereand we're looking at this unfold.
And oftentimes what we try to do, is takeourself out of the situation and think
of it from a more kind of grounded lens.
And then we say
"Is this fear something that is thatseems real? What's the likelihood

(49:38):
of these bad things happening?"
And sometimes, like our examplewith passports, extremely likely.
Because it is happening.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
But, I would say to a client
"In Los Angeles, in the last fourmonths, do you know anybody who has been
attacked strictly because they're trans?"
I try to look for evidence to show

(50:03):
Okay, well then, what we'reworried about is very real.
But if there's no evidence, andit's just "hearsay" from the
internet, I say "That's not real."
Some of it might be based on sometruth, but ultimately it's kind
of like, social constructions.
People say
"Well, this is just whatI'm supposed to do."
Or
"This is how people are supposed to act."
Or,
"This is, you know, how much moneyI'm supposed to have a certain age."

(50:25):
None of that stuff isreal, it's just fake noise.
Over time these things grow andthey become like a social norm.
But they're not real.
And so I think certain people in thepress, and in the world, and in politics
will take a very vulnerable, smallcommunity such as the trans community,

(50:48):
very small, and put so much attention andfocus and money against fear messaging.
In the grand scheme of life,it is so completely not a real
issue, or concern, or problem.
It affects very few people's lives.

(51:10):
And yet, the amount of time, and focus,and money that got put into blowing
out these messaging to tell a verybroad audience that this is bad and
this is bad, and this is happening.
And it is horrific that wepick on a community that
has already had to struggle.

(51:32):
Had to struggle in society , intheir own lives, in their own minds.
It's horrifying.
So when I sit with parents,let's stay grounded.
If we're emotional, we're notgoing to make any progress.
We're not going to be able to makerational mindful choices here.
So we have to get grounded, andthen we need to look for evidence.

(51:53):
And when we can't findit, maybe we can say,
"That's not a fear we should have."
When there is evidence, then let'scome back and have this conversation.
But right now, thisstuff over here is real.
So let's just focus on that.
Let's not focus on things thatthere's no evidence and that we
can't quite do anything about.
So that's something called CBT therapy,you know, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

(52:15):
Really looking at things as thestories that we tell ourself.
So, let's look for evidence.
Let's think about
What would our wise bestfriends say to us right now?
And say that to ourselves.
You know what I mean?
Or that one person you really trust,that doctor, or that therapist.
At this moment right now, "Oh myGod I'm, I'm, I'm spinning out.
I'm so anxious. What can I do?"
What would that personsay to you right now?

(52:40):
That's usually the bestadvice for you to take.
Thank you, David.
Yeah.
When you talk about evidence, we'reseeing things that are impacting
cis women because they don't lookfeminine enough, so they're being
I saw that in the news last week.
Grabbed out of bathrooms being toldthat they don't belong in the bathroom.
I mean,
I watched AOC being interviewed by a swarmof reporters on the sidewalk in New York.

(53:06):
And that was one ofher statements back was
"All these trans laws are going tobe horrific for women in general."
Mm-hmm.
And now it's happening.
Yeah.
If you are too masculine,you're going to get pulled out.
Someone's going to stopyou in the ladies' room.

(53:28):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ridiculous.
It's exactly what will happen whenwe scream these things out from a
megaphone on all reputable channels,on all reputable newspapers.
When we keep showing the footageof these people saying these very
wrong, very dishonest things, yes.

(53:49):
It's going to get to a point whereyou are giving people the voice to
now say and do these things in realtime, in bathrooms, at schools.
And that's, that is what they want.
That is what they
want.
There weren't problems before, untilthey stirred all this stuff up.
We
exactly
Talk about evidence.

(54:10):
Exactly.
There was nothing like that before.
And one last thing that I wantto say is what do you do with
these parents who are concerned?
What do you do with thesekids that are concerned?
Look for the exceptions.
Look for the beautiful storiesof love and open-mindedness.
And you will find themif you look for them.

(54:31):
Oh yeah.
You don't see them in the press.
They're, they don't make the sixo'clock news, but they're there.
And if you look hard enough and thengo towards that, we can't fix what's
happening over here in big governmentland, but over here in our community,
when there's that that center where alot of minority groups come together,

(54:51):
and there's a place to be who we are, andmaybe volunteer our time to help littler
people that might benefit from our wisdom.
That is what we do.
Nothing can make you feel betterthan being for younger people what
you needed when you were younger.
When there's a lot of scary noise,look for the healers, look for the

(55:13):
helpers, look for the exceptions.
Where are there good people?
Because there are, even though , wedon't tend to be as loud, we, there
are good people out there, right?
Like you.
Thank you.
And like you two ladies, I mean, lookwhat you're doing with this project.
Trying to debunk silly mythsand just educate people through

(55:34):
real stories, real experiences.
Not, you know, research.
But realness.
That's exactly what Ilearned 10 years ago.
Very quickly, as soon as I transitioned,is people have no framework for this.
Yeah.
And just simply explaining it,
yeah.
In terms that people can comprehend, goesa long way to changing their perspectives.

(55:59):
Wendy, that's why they don't wantthese messages and these stories
to be part of the education system.
Because what happens is when youtell these stories, it makes these
things a possibility for people.
Right.
It gives them hope.
It gives them permission tothink what could be possible.
So when we strip these things from theeducation when we're learning about

(56:22):
the birds and the bees, and when we'relearning about identity and stuff, to
remove these things so they get no ideas.
Right.
Right.
But what they don't realize is the ideawas there from the day they were born.
Yeah.
They just don't have a framework for it.
Because culture has become moreopen-minded to things that are different

(56:45):
from say, what our neighbor thinks, thatmore people are going to run towards this.
People are this.
Mm-hmm.
We're just now acknowledging and givingpeople the freedom to be who they are.
Right.
There's no going back.
They'll be this, even if youdon't give them a platform, it's

(57:07):
just going to be harder for them.
They're going to try and push usback, but with the cell phones,
the internet, and the connectionsthat we have to each other, it's
going to be damn near impossible.
Yeah.
And just for perspective purposes,gay lost its diagnosis status as

(57:28):
a psychological condition in 1973.
Yes.
I remember
Most people do not realize that2012 was the date that happened
for the transgender community.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Almost 45 years.
Yeah.

(57:48):
That's incredible.
Yeah, exactly.
And so that's science.
That is every smart doctor and physicianand researcher come and get together to
create something called the DSM wherewe diagnose all these disorders and
if we can't listen to what they say.
Right?
Versus what some political pundit says.

(58:11):
Right.
Who are we going to believe?
Exactly.
One of the things that the politicalpundits are saying now is that
they've created this research aboutpeople who are de-transitioning and
this body of work that really, Idon't think has much meaning, but.
Yeah.
Maybe you can address that.
What's the truth about peoplewho are de-transitioning?
Yes.

(58:32):
I've had the pleasure to workwith certain people that have
shared a variety of stories.
And the first thing that I want tosay is that every story matters.
Every story.
Whether somebody lives theirlife to the fullest this way,
versus someone who may not be.

(58:54):
Everyone deserves their story.
What I've learned is that if you lookat the research, and we won't stay on
research, but just as a starting offpoint, the most recent research that has
been done has said that of nearly 30,000transitions, folks who have transitioned.
13% of them have de-transitioned.

(59:16):
Okay?
So 13% of 27,000 to be exact.
Of those 13%, only 2% report thatthe reason that they de-transitioned
was because it didn't feel right.
Or it wasn't what theythought it would be.
It didn't make them feel the waythat they thought it would feel.

(59:37):
2%. The other 11% of peoplethat have de-transitioned.
It's about things thatwe're not talking about.
It's not about regret, itis about family rejection.
It is about financialbarriers to a certain life.

(59:57):
And it is about fear of safety.
Fear of getting on that bus, andseeing what's going to happen
to me when I'm out in public.
Those and if there was research done forthese individuals who have gone through
this process, that is what we're hearing.
That is what we hear in therapy offices.
So much of it is about

(01:00:19):
Other people aren't on board.
The people that are supposed to loveus and support us aren't on board.
So we change our mind andwe keep code switching.
But, I will say this, I also readrecently that of all the people that
have gender affirming procedures done,

(01:00:42):
1% of them regret it.
And that is less than the number ofpeople that regret traditional medical
procedures such as knee replacements,hip replacements, childbirth.
There is a larger number of peoplethat regret those procedures than
people that have done work to maketheir bodies what they should be.

(01:01:06):
Get their birth defects corrected.
Corrected, correct.
Yes.
So when we talk about de-transitioning
Yeah.
Are there phases of that?
Are we talking about only peoplewho have had surgery or are we
talking about people who havetransitioned socially with hormones?
Yeah, hormones, puberty blockers,these things, and I don't want to speak
out of turn, too, medically focused.

(01:01:27):
But they're reversible.
Kids that are on a journey, for themost part, these things are reversible.
And that's another fallacy thatwith kids, it's that they're being
rushed into these types of decisions.
It is such a thoughtful, long,multi-step process of meeting with

(01:01:49):
mental health experts, of meetingwith doctors, psychiatrists.
It's a process that nobody is going to getall the way through and then say "Nah."
It's just not true that kids are going toschool one gender and coming home another.
For anyone to think thatthat's true is just ignorant.

(01:02:12):
Totally.
Find me one, just one example of that.
And then we can havea discussion about it.
Who would want this kind of attention?
Exactly.
Who would put themselves out thereto be ridiculed, and to be talked,
about and to be discriminatedagainst because they want attention.
Mm-hmm.
That's why I said earlier, nolittle boy is going to do that.

(01:02:35):
Yeah.
So when we talk about detransitioners,it could be people who have
transitioned socially or hormonally.
Mm-hmm.
Not necessarily, we're nottalking about people who have
only transitioned surgically.
Is that right?
Yes.
And I'd want to do a little bit moreresearch on that, but what I can say

(01:02:56):
is that if you start the process as achild or a teenager, everything that
I've read has indicated that thesethings, you can pause, you can change
your mind, and you can kind of undo.
And then things beyond that, Iwould say doctors should weigh in.
Because there's confusion.

(01:03:16):
Wendy and I even did a short episodeabout What Does it Mean to Transition?
because people are confused about that.
Mm-hmm.
There's so many stages of thetransition, like you were talking about.
There's so many stages that the youngpeople have to go through that they
may start transitioning socially.
They may be wearing differentclothes, or change their appearance.
And I'm not sure it's that urgentor super important to define it.

(01:03:41):
I think however people describe theirtransition, whether it's a social one,
whether it's one, one where they firstwould go public with how they feel.
I think everyone candefine that their way.
I guess medical transitions,it's maybe slightly different?

(01:04:01):
I agree.
I just think people don't understand.
They think there's onething that somebody does.
One day you're this and youtransition the next day, you're that.
Yeah.
And so we're trying to explainthat there are differences and
that "transition" means differentthings to different people.
Yeah.
They're doing things different waysand like you're saying, each one
is unique, we should honor that.
And some of it is none of our business.

(01:04:22):
Right.
Some of it.
The governor who was runningalongside of Kamala Harris had
said, and I love what he said,
"If you don't like or know somethingabout your neighbor, mind your business."
Yeah.
You know, um, Tim Walz.
Do we quiz cis people like that?
Right.
Right.

(01:04:42):
Yeah.
Why is the default that we can buttour noses into other people's lives
that are just a minority, a gayperson, a trans person, a bi person.
Why don't you do that with thenext door neighbor over there?
Yeah.
Why do you think that you understandthem, but you don't understand
yeah.
The group that's supposedly just like you.

(01:05:04):
I mean, we're all so unique.
It's the human experience.
It would be boring if we weren't.
If we were all identical, therewould be no interesting films.
There would be no interesting books.
It would be Pleasantville.
Everything's just the same.
The Stepford wives.
Or the Stepford Wives.
David, let me take it backdown to you for just a minute.

(01:05:27):
Yeah.
Your personal journey, whatis it that surprises you most
about your life to this point?
What surprises me most about my life.
I thought everything would be fixed.
And by fixed, I meanset, like, set in stone.
That the things that I decided,the things that I told myself
when I was younger, were rigid.

(01:05:49):
This is the way it's going to be.
And what I've learned in doingthe work that I do, and in talking
to so many people is that lifeis never on either extreme.
Life is what happens in the middle.
Life is the gray area.
That's where life is.
Neither extreme of anything is right.

(01:06:12):
It's the gray area.
Nothing is black and white.
Um, we talk about binary, we'rein a world where everything needs
to be listed and categorized,and you got to be this or that.
Most things don't fit in that way.
The other thing thatI'm most surprised by is

(01:06:32):
every day you can changeyour mood, your energy.
People that have a clinical diagnosis ofsomething, it's certainly not that easy.
But we can decide tomorrow,I'm going to start over.
Tomorrow, I am going to go back tograd school and study something else.
Again, those things take a certain amountof privilege and I don't want to make

(01:06:54):
it seem like it's easy for everybodyto do certain things that cost money.
But, nothing's set in stone.
The thing that I try to convey whenI'm spending time with clients is that
change is constant and change can behard, but change can also be amazing.
We worry about things so much, butwhat if, when we worried, we said

(01:07:17):
"Okay, this is my worrying thought.".
What if we just added another thought of
"Or, it can turn out really well,or it could be a great new job
that pays more money and makes youfeel even better about yourself."
Right?
We're so inclined to bydesign or just naturally go
to the worst possible outcome.

(01:07:37):
Okay, that's a part of your brain, butlet's balance it out with the other.
Let's balance it outwith what could go well.
What can go right.
What could be good about moving, orgetting divorced, or having another child.
And because my own life has changedin those big ways, I thought
it was going to be this way.

(01:07:58):
I thought I was going to marry a woman,have a child, and then get divorced.
That is what I told myself, becauseI always wanted a child and naive,
young, silly, ignorant me, just thoughtthe only way that that was going
to happen was with a woman, right?
And so I would have the child, and thenI'd be like, okay, I have what I need now.
Let's get divorced.

(01:08:18):
So very young, but I say this as toremind people that things change.
New things can be wonderful.
Don't be so rigid, don't be so setand think that you know everything.
Because as soon as I sat back andrealized, I don't know much, that
was when I became open to new stuff.

(01:08:40):
Coming out, putting myself outthere to meet somebody, meeting my
husband, deciding to have a child,without having to marry a woman
and get divorced, deciding to leaveadvertising and go back to grad school.
A lot of these things, you know,there's some privilege there
that I was able to do that.
But the story that I'm trying to conveyhere is that things can always change.

(01:09:03):
In three years we may get a differentperson in office that is going
to roll back all the things thatsomebody else has removed, and
so we, we have to look forward.
I believe that if you're livingin the past, not really living.
If you're living in thefuture, not really living.

(01:09:24):
You are only really, trulyliving, in the present.
I think we can learn from the past.
I think we can plan for the future,but only right here and right now,
are we able to actually control stuff.
We can't undo things in thepast, and we don't have a magic
crystal ball about the future.
So I always try to get the peoplethat I spend time with to understand

(01:09:51):
if we're thinking so much aboutthe future, we're robbing ourselves
of being able to enjoy right now.
Right.
And sometimes it's hard to enjoy rightnow, and so we can fantasize about
what it might be like in the future.
But being present and beinggrounded and taking what is, as
opposed to what you wish it wouldbe like, is a good place to start.

(01:10:12):
Mm. I like that.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, thank you David.
So, one last question.
Yeah.
What keeps you going?
Because your job is not an easy one andyou see all kinds of different things.
People who warned you at the beginningthat you were too empathetic and,
probably going to take on too much.
What is it that keeps you going, David?

(01:10:32):
Um, the Zoloft.
No, I'm just joking.
Thing that keeps me going is probably achange, once my son Max came into my life,
from 14 years ago, from that day onward,
there was no more selfish Dave.
There was no more being concernedwith what other people think.
It became

(01:10:52):
I'm a father.
Everything that I do is going tobe to raise this little thing and
make this thing strong and big.
And that has been my focus.
My reason for leaving advertising was,as I said, I wanted to be more fulfilled.
I also wanted to be around for my kid'ssoccer games, or karate tournaments.
Advertising didn't alwaysallow that to happen.

(01:11:15):
I was traveling a lot.
So, seven years ago when there wasstill enough time to really raise
my son and that was a big motivator.
I didn't want to regret being thedad that missed a lot of things
because I was making a lot of money,or, what seemed like a lot of money.
So what motivates me?
It's Max.
I know that sounds cliche.

(01:11:36):
That motivates me.
I'm very motivated by security.
By security, I mean stability havinga job, working hard, knowing that I'm
going to make enough money to pay mybills and save a little bit of money.
And that makes me feel kind of grown up.
And, when I think about the future,that's what I'm thinking about now,

(01:11:56):
401(k)s and that kind of thing.
And the other thing is nostalgia.
I'm very motivated about nostalgia.
And I don't mean living in the past.
I mean, remembering the things that Ialways loved and creating space for them.
Now, whether that be listeningto a record I loved when I was 12
and playing it at dinner party orduring dinner or remembering that I

(01:12:21):
love to oil paint when I was a kid.
And now, I come home and I spend timewith my family, and then my son goes
to bed, and my husband goes to bed,
sometimes I go downstairs andI oil paint and it's relaxing.
So I try not to forget the things thatalways brought me a little bit of joy.
Because, in therapy, wecall it Inner Child Work.
Every time we do something that our12 or 13-year-old self would have

(01:12:44):
loved it's sort of healing that 12or 13-year-old, you know what I mean?
Very much so.
You have a lot of skills from yourprofession that you're using on yourself.
I guess so.
It's, it's good becausetherapy can be expensive, so.
Oh, well David, is there anything elsethat you want to share with us today?
Um.

(01:13:05):
No I think it was a lovely conversationand we touched on a lot of ground.
If anything were to come up, if anyonewho's listening has any questions for
me, I'm sure we'll be able to get mycontact information up or my website.
Yeah,
We'll put your contactinformation in the show notes.
You've got a beautiful website.
Wendy, what else?
I'm really grateful that youagreed to come on and talk with

(01:13:26):
us, and this has been fabulous.
I really loved it.
Thank you, David.
I'm glad.
I'm so glad, I enjoyed it too.
And I will continue to watch.
I know you have several podcast videosup that people can watch and learn
from and it's a very relatable thing.
When I watched a couple of the podcasts,
what I walked away thinking was

(01:13:47):
this is very relatable.
This isn't throwing information at you.
It's learning through reallife stories, and I love that.
Well, thank you that'swhat we're going for.
Being visible for others.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And thanks to Wendy for everythingyou've done, Wendy being so visible.
David, we've really enjoyed this today.
Thank you for this.
And I know that the audience isgoing to get so much out of this.

(01:14:10):
We touched on things for parents,on things for young people, and
people who are still not sureabout what this is all about.
So I'm appreciate you helpingus educate people for that.
Well, to our audience, thank you forjoining us today for another episode of
Demystifying the Transgender Journey.
We've had such a great conversationwith David Blacker today.

(01:14:30):
We know you're going to share it out.
There's so many peoplewho need to see this.
So, subscribe to our channelso that you get notification
next time there's an episode.
Be sure and watch our previous episodes.
Like David said, there's somevery interesting ones there.
Push that little "LIKE" button thereso that the algorithms can kind of say
oh yes, people need topay attention to this.
And leave us comments.
We'd love to hear your comments.

(01:14:52):
You'll see our website on thetrailer at the end of this.
Go find our website, find our Facebookpage, and tune in to the next time.
So I'm one of your hosts, LynnMurphy, our other host, Wendy Cole.
Thank you so much, Wendy,for doing this with me.
And David, again, thank you.
To our audience, we will seeyou next time and remember to

(01:15:13):
stay curious and stay kind.