love where you live: increasing hope in our communities, with guest Faye Seidler

Elle hosts fellow North Dakotan Faye Seidler, the state's top-level advocate specializing in suicide prevention, LGBTQ+ populations, and state data. Faye's approach combines personal resilience with a commitment to community and systemic change. Elle and Faye discuss their love of the state, framing love as an action and an investment in human connections. They discuss former Governor Doug Burgum's shift from state hero to disgraced sell-out, and what it means for the state.

Links to connect with Faye, as well as all other resource links, are in the full show notes at hoorfpodcast.com

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Transcript

Elle Billing: 0:00

Hi, my name is Elle Billing. I am a chronically ill queer femme, and I'm tired. I'm here this episode and every episode to dig at the roots of our collective fatigue, explore ways to direct our care in compassionate and sustainable ways, and to harness creative expression to heal ourselves and to heal our world. Welcome to Hoorf: Radical care in a late capitalist heckscape. My guest for this episode is Faye Seidler. Faye Seidler is an award-winning advocate that specializes in suicide prevention, LGBTQ-plus populations, and state data. She was born and raised in North Dakota and has a decade of experience in community organizing, public speaking, and professional development training. She is known for connecting and uplifting others, bringing communities together, and always keeping hope in focus. I am so excited to have a fellow North Dakotan on the podcast with me today. Welcome, Faye. Hi, Faye. Welcome to Hoorf.

Faye Seidler: 1:34

Thank you for having me.

Elle Billing: 1:35

Yeah, I'm so glad you're here. I really love the work you do, and we'll get into that. I'm just really glad that we made this work. Before we get into like all the stuff that I want to talk about, because there's so much.

Faye Seidler: 1:45

Yeah,

Elle Billing: 1:45

I'm gonna, I'll just start with my first question, and then we'll dive in. How have you received care this week?

Faye Seidler: 1:50

Received care.. um, that's a, that's a big question. That's a good question to start with, and an interesting way to frame it, because it prevents the squirreling out of the answer that is like inherent to a Midwestern to avoid talking about any accountability for our self care. I would say for this week I have not probably received much care with how you're asking that question. I will say that I begrudgingly worked out yesterday. I'm not someone who gets a lot from working out. I don't get the endorphins and the runners high from it. I do it strictly for my health. The same reason I eat a lot of vegetables, I'm not in that for because it's good, like I actually dislike most vegetables, like, like, you know, some fried broccoli tastes good, right? But most of the time I'm eating lettuce because it's supposed to be good for me, not because I'm like, oh, yay, a head of lettuce, what a joy tonight, like

Elle Billing: 2:48

roughage.

Faye Seidler: 2:49

Yeah, I will say that I took care of myself and did self care through the process of working out and making sure that I am being accountable to my own health and future by doing that, and I hated every minute of it. I was a baby during it, in the middle of it, and after it, but I did it, and I play Ring Fit for the Switch, which is my favorite kind of working out, because you get like metrics, like my numbers get bigger as I work out, like,

Elle Billing: 3:16

oh, that's cool, you gamify it,

Faye Seidler: 3:17

yeah, gamify it, so it feels good. So I did that yesterday, and I think that was probably the biggest care, self-care item of my week.

Elle Billing: 3:25

Yeah, my I take my mom to physical therapy every week, and to make it easier for her, I started doing physical therapy too, which I knew I needed, like I needed it so bad. And so we go the same day back to back appointments, but I have to wake her up in the morning --"It's time to wake up!"

Faye Seidler: 3:41

Yep,

Elle Billing: 3:42

and she has a really hard time with time because she has dementia, and but she knows when I wake her up, she knows it's Wednesday, and we have PT, and she's like, in the blankets. "I don't want to, can we skip today? I want to stay home."

Faye Seidler: 3:55

Yep, yep.

Elle Billing: 3:56

Like, "no, we gotta go. We gotta go." Neither of us want to go. We're both like physical therapy, doing it for stupid health,

Faye Seidler: 4:04

right,

Elle Billing: 4:05

but the lettuce thing is so funny, because my dad eats a salad every night, he loves, like,

Faye Seidler: 4:09

oh really,

Elle Billing: 4:10

I wish I could give you some of his salad joy, because he'll go, "oh, that was such a good salad,"

Faye Seidler: 4:16

and I'm not saying you can't have a good salad, I'm just saying, if you open the fridge and you look at all your items there. Who looks at the head of lettuce and is like,"ah, yeah, I got that in there. I'm winning in life" because I got my lettuce, and they might.. I'm just saying I'm very far from that.

Elle Billing: 4:29

No, I hear you. I've been.. I was vegetarian for like 19 years, and now I'm pescetarian.

Faye Seidler: 4:35

Yep,

Elle Billing: 4:35

and like I do love some vegetables, but even getting enough of them, instead of just like subsisting on carbs and starch, is still like-- I have to eat a vegetable with a meal, like it shouldn't be that hard because the root of vegetarian is vegetable, and yeah, I still struggle. Yeah, I'm with you. So, can you talk a little bit about what it is that you do? I know that's a could be a long answer, and that would be fine. And but you, you work in like activism, and I don't want to like mislabel it or misrepresent it in my question, so I'm just going to ask you to kind of explain the kind of work you do in the state of North Dakota.

Faye Seidler: 5:11

Sure, no, absolutely. So my work, the hat that fits over all of the hats that I wear, is suicide prevention advocacy, so everything that I do, no matter what it is, across the state, in terms of like talking to people, emailing folks, doing trainings, finding data, doing research, connecting partners, anything I am doing is probably connected to my ideals of increasing hope in our communities, increasing resiliency and connection for the purposes of reducing suicidality, but really, in a more cerebral way of thinking about it, I'm not really trying to reduce suicidality, I'm trying to increase hope, I'm trying to increase the connections people have to want to be here, the joy they have in their life, their access to, you know, things they find rewarding or fulfilling, because suicide at zero is obviously like a very important cool goal, if no one ever felt the need to self-harm in any way, that would be good, but if that's all we did, what have we created? Like, that is the absence of the harm, not the presence of the joy or the things we want in life. So, arguably speaking, the suicide prevention lens for me is really about increasing hope and joy and connection in life more than strictly suicides need to go down, and there's a different approach when you consider that when you're doing your work, but because I'm a suicide prevention advocate, you might think, like, okay, so what does that mean, what do you do, how do you do it, and the thing is, suicide is multifactorial, it's complex for people who are experiencing it, there's never one cause for it. There's never necessarily one moment. One moment can be the end of a series of events that created a catalyst, sure, but it is a series of events that gets us there. So, when I think about suicide prevention, it is very holistic. It is the whole system of life and health, and when I think about it, I think of the through line of life, that is, you are born, you start to experience things, you start to learn about life, you grow up, you have parents, friends, you go to school, usually those are things that happen, you eventually graduate or don't, you eventually maybe go on to college or don't, you have a career, you don't, you have a partner, and whatever, I look at the systems and I think across the entirety of your life, are you able to meaningfully find connection and hope and support? So, to make that more concrete, is a youth safe? Do they have a person they can talk to if they're experiencing a mental health crisis? Do they have appropriate people to talk to if they're going through some kind of trauma? If they've experienced very multitudes of hardship, do they know, do they have safe or trusted adults to talk to if they are, let's say, dropping out of high school or experiencing something like that as a young adult? Do they know things like Youth Works exist? Do they know that they can get these services from these different sectors across our state? Do they know how to, like, you know, find a career that can, they can still feel fulfilled at, that they could still make a life through? Could they pursue a GED if they wanted to? Could they get that and then go to college if they wanted to? So, thinking about that at every level of life, I've tried to connect people to the sectors and systems that exist across our state, and that could be connecting them to Youth Works and experiences of young adult homelessness, but that could be connecting them to, like, 988 our Suicide Prevention Lifeline, if they're experiencing severe acute depression or suicidality, but it's also empowering people, and that is, let's say, you, life didn't go well, you experienced a lot of abuse as a young person, you dropped out of high school, you're a disconnected young adult. I also come in to say that, okay, that is rough, but I've been in very similar circumstances, and what do you want to do? Like, you don't have to do anything like what do you feel is where you want to be in your life, and maybe they are an artist and they want to do more with their art, and I could be like, you can do that, and here's how you can: you can connect with community, you can find mentors, you don't have to go to college, you don't have to worry about that, you can still develop what you want to develop. So my role in the state is everything, but it often is that connection piece. It's connecting people to experts that know more about particular things than I do in the work of homelessness, economic insecurity, mental health, help, therapy, all of that. But it's also being that champion that has experienced suicidality and homelessness and trauma, multitudes of that who's experienced suicide myself or attempts of suicide, and I exist to say that there is another side to it, and one kind of final caveat to that, and I can get into a lot more of a lot of it. I guess the first thing is I do specialize within LGBTQ-plus populations. It's not the only thing, I serve everyone across the state, but I am the expert in North Dakota when it comes to like LG Plus resources, prevention, and data, but the other point I wanted to get into is just that I think that a lot of people in my shoes have the message that, you know, anyone can do anything they want, you know, just put your mind to it, and I often kind of fight against that, because as a kid I never believed it, like that's that's BS, of course I can't do anything I want, I have an institute of limitations and restrictions, and all this stuff, like effort,

Elle Billing: 10:02

and I'm, I'm disabled and chronically ill. I definitely can't do both half the things I want to do, let alone like all of them,

Faye Seidler: 10:09

right?

Elle Billing: 10:10

Yeah,

Faye Seidler: 10:10

so my refrain from that, that I think is helpful, I don't see a lot, is that you can't do anything and everything you want, you're not necessarily going to achieve the particular dreams you have today. So my promise to people is, if you put in effort over time, you get somewhere. Maybe it's not where you wanted to go, maybe it's not, you know, the full extent of your dreams, but if you put a year into the work, and maybe that's an hour a day, maybe it's 40 hours a week, you know, it everyone has different times and timelines and schedules. If you put in that time, I guarantee you, after a year, you'll probably be surprised at how far you've gotten, and maybe it's, you know, a little bit up a mountain, like metaphorically, but it's a place where you can go. I've gotten somewhere, and I think that, that to me is the framework that a lot of people can actually like build on, because they're like, yeah, I can put in time and effort, I can believe the process, like I worked out, like tie the back to the care and stuff, and that doesn't necessarily mean you live on climb that mountain, but if you put in time and effort, maybe you find out you want to do something else, instead of like fantasizing about this dream for 40 years, and you don't do it, which hopefully that isn't the case, maybe you do it for like five months and realize, actually, I don't like this, I don't want to do this. The piano is not my instrument. I'm going to do something else. So, by putting yourself out there just to try different things, to put in that effort and see where they go, you learn more about yourself. You get to define what your dreams really are when you put in that time. So, I bring all that up just to say, and the way that I build hope with people is that accessibility to the possibility of a future, and that is, try, you know, you maybe aren't going to be the best person that's ever done this, you're not going to be, you know, the best archer in the world, but you're going to find some fulfilling, meaningful contributions that you can make that you feel good about in your life. So that's like the message that I just try, as a suicide prevention advocate, to really instill in people that tomorrow can be better, not that it will be better, but it can be better. Yeah, that's that's a lukewarm positivity that I, I herald forward into the future.

Elle Billing: 12:13

I really appreciate that realism, though. I think we can get stuck in one of the two polar opposites of like everything is terrible or I can do everything that anything that I want to do, and both of those lead to hopelessness, I think, because I remember when I was teaching high school, I had a student who, when you asked him what he wanted to do after graduation, he was going to go to Boise State University and play football,

Faye Seidler: 12:38

okay,

Elle Billing: 12:39

he had never played football a day in his life, he was, he was convinced he was going to be a walk-on, because he could play like catch, catch, like football catch with his, with his cousins, and they wrestled around with the ball, and completely unrealistic, right? BSU is like a really good college team, and like, he had no skills, and he weighed maybe 95 pounds.

Faye Seidler: 12:59

Oh no,

Elle Billing: 12:59

this kid would have been like snapped in half,

Faye Seidler: 13:02

yep,

Elle Billing: 13:02

and trying to talk to him about what a realistic goal was, like he, he was so single-minded about playing football for Boise State, and like realizing that, like, he couldn't, like, that was the only thing he was thinking of, so then that "I can do anything I want" led to like hopelessness and helplessness. Well, like, if I can't do that, then what's the point of doing anything?

Faye Seidler: 13:24

Yeah,

Elle Billing: 13:25

where it's just as bad as thinking, starting out thinking I can't do anything.

Faye Seidler: 13:29

Yeah,

Elle Billing: 13:29

trying to help people zero in on those like realistic goals, but also not holding them back. Like, that was where, where we struggled as a team of teachers was like, we want to encourage kids to strive, but realistically, like, where's where's the line, but

Faye Seidler: 13:46

how do you gentle parent them?

Elle Billing: 13:48

Yeah, exactly. How do you gentle parent them? Yes,

Faye Seidler: 13:52

I will say one frustrating thing, generationally, as someone who's getting older, right, I have benefited from the knowledge that I can listen to my elders, because they've experienced decades of life longer than me, and probably have some answers on things. I don't trust them if they talk about AI, I will say, not to be too ageist on that, but like some technological things, like they maybe don't have the wisdom about some of them-- but I will say that all the truths of life, of like, you know, relationships and aspirations and disappointments, like someone who is an elder has gone through so many things that you can listen to them to learn about, you can prevent having to learn these through your own mistakes, but I also feel that that lesson takes a while for people to learn, and it feels like people have to like fail on their own to learn that they should start to listen to other folks, and they don't actually have to like reinvent the wheel on everything.

Elle Billing: 14:51

Oh, for sure. Yeah, like I'm I'm in my 40s now, and I'm like, yeah, now I know what my parents were talking about. yeah, a little bit.

Faye Seidler: 15:02

Well, I also

Elle Billing: 15:03

not completely..

Faye Seidler: 15:04

when my parents were this age, I'm just like, oh, this is what adults know at this age. Wow, they were really under-informed from what I considered or had hoped when I was a youth.

Elle Billing: 15:14

Yeah, there's that. There's that too. Yep, I said something about that to my parent, my.. to my dad the other day, that actually one of the most comforting conversations I had with him, about 10 years ago, was in my kitchen, and I was really struggling at the time, and he asked what he could do to support me. I'm like, you're here, like that's great. I said, I just, I really felt like I'd have made my shit together by now, and I don't, and like I feel like I'm such a huge disappointment, and you know, he hugged me and said,"You're doing great, like I'm so proud of you," and I'm like,"But I, you have like you're so put together and I'm so not, and I just thought I'd know what I was doing by now," and he kind of like gave me a look, and he goes, "No one knows what they're doing from one crisis to the next, we just moved from one crisis to the next with a little more knowledge than we had last time,"

Faye Seidler: 16:06

that is so real. And I, that's like, the if I were to hold up a sign so I could save time, I would hold that sign up to 20 year olds like all of the time, because they are convinced that if they are not famous or have everything figured out by 25 their life is over, and I'm like, no, the 20s are a perfect time to figure life out and make mistakes. It is like, you don't have to be perfect then, or ever, but especially not in your 20s. Like, please take some of that weight off, be kind to yourself.

Elle Billing: 16:34

Yeah, but the thing is, my dad is like my rock. He is like one of the most to me. I've lived with my parents for five years now, and so I have, I think, I have a more realistic picture of, like, my parents and their relationship, and how my dad functions.

Faye Seidler: 16:46

Yeah,

Elle Billing: 16:46

but at the time, like, and he still is my rock, right?

Faye Seidler: 16:49

Yeah,

Elle Billing: 16:50

he was like, he's the most put-together person I know, like, my dad just knows things, and he is steady, and he helps people get through stuff, and he gets through stuff, and like, he just always seemed so wise, and so for him to tell me, I don't actually know what I'm doing, I've never known what I was doing, I just like moved from one crisis to the next, and hope that I get through it a little better than last time, it was actually really reassuring to know that, like, like, instead of it freaking me out that, like, "oh god, no one knows," it's like, "oh, I'm actually doing okay. Like, everyone feels like this, and I'm not alone."

Faye Seidler: 17:27

I have a strange pull, but have you ever watched

Star Trek: 17:28

Next Generation?

Elle Billing: 17:30

Yes.

Faye Seidler: 17:31

Do you remember the episode where Picard has, like, telepathy, I think, with the medical doctor? It's later in the seasons, it's like season five, six, or seven, but I remember because it shared very similar themes and messages to what you communicated, because they get an insight into Picard's mind, his thought process, and what they discover is that he is often less confident than he projects as the captain, because he needs to project that to make sure that the people working under him don't like get anxious or scared and are less able to inform him and that's kind of the role of being a leader is to constantly project that anchor so other people can perform and you can listen to them and me not having that experience you did that was my experience for understanding that was that episode of Picard, episode of Next Generation, and Picard as like the masculine father figure for folks who didn't like necessarily have that access,

Elle Billing: 18:29

yeah, like a strong leader who is has empathy, and yeah, well, I guess since we mentioned leadership, I'm gonna hop around on our topics a little bit. What the heck is going on with Doug Burgum? One of the things that you, and one of the reasons I really wanted to have you on the podcast, is because you have such a deep and, like, abiding love for North Dakota, and like everything that you post on Facebook, and all of the work you do, you have, and not just like the feeling of love, but like the action of love.

Faye Seidler: 19:04

Yeah,

Elle Billing: 19:05

like everything you do is because you love North Dakota, and the people who live here. And I didn't appreciate that really growing up until I left, and then chose to move home, like, when I, when I was living in Idaho, like, I could say that I love North Dakota, because I missed it. I was homesick every time I'd come home to visit, I'd be like, I am so homesick for these people. And then I go back to Idaho and be like, God, I had a really good trip home. I never thought, but I never thought I'd move back. And now that I'm here, I'm like, these, these are my people, right?

Faye Seidler: 19:42

Yeah,

Elle Billing: 19:42

and one time you said that the highest honor that anyone in this state could have is to serve as our governor.

Faye Seidler: 19:50

Yeah,

Elle Billing: 19:51

and I, you mentioned Picard and leadership. I think there's so many.. there's different kinds of leadership, right? There's like the leadership that seeks power, and there's the leadership that seeks to serve, and there's along that continuum, there's a, there's a combination of those things.

Faye Seidler: 20:06

Yeah,

Elle Billing: 20:07

Doug Burgum has really screwed up,

Faye Seidler: 20:09

yeah,

Elle Billing: 20:10

hasn't he?

Faye Seidler: 20:11

Yeah, like,

Elle Billing: 20:11

what? What is your take on what I suppose you have to be kind of diplomatic because you don't, in your work, you don't really go partisan, but like, what

Faye Seidler: 20:23

I would caution my diplomacy involving Doug Burgum, if you follow my Facebook, I mean,

Elle Billing: 20:30

yeah, it's nonpartisan, it's just like this guy screwed up, like he is really, he sullied our state, like,

Faye Seidler: 20:37

so I have a story that relates to Doug Burgum, and the reason that I pay him to be in my brain, like it's not rent free, like he just, like, like, come over, Dougie be in my brain,

Elle Billing: 20:49

yeah, come talk to us, we're upset.

Faye Seidler: 20:51

So I visited the Heritage Center in Bismarck, and it was the first time going, it was about two, three years ago, I think two years ago, but I'm not, you know, sure in the particulars of that, but it's the first and only time I visited it, and I was walking around it, and it was a lot of art from indigenous communities, and you know, a lot of this art pieces that talked about, you know, the land and honor and respecting the land and the different heritages and practices of our different indigenous communities in it, and as I was walking through this, I kind of felt this like sense of awe, like the real, actual, like real awe, the definitional awe, not just like the way that we use it in common parlance, but just, you know, overwhelmed with this connection and beauty in the world and the state, and what happened to me in that moment, as I went through it, was that growing up in North Dakota, for myself, I am neurodivergent, I'm trans, and I didn't fit in anywhere. There were no one that was like me as I grew up. I felt ostracized from everywhere and everyone, and even my ability to communicate as someone who's neurodivergent meant that it's like I wasn't even really speaking the same language that most people were speaking, and I wasn't being understood, and it was very confusing to me. So I felt like this lost kid, and as I then experienced things like homelessness, and just like at times, my life, having no one I ever talked to, I felt such a disconnection, and in the world of suicide prevention, disconnection is the biggest risk factor for suicide. It is the thing that makes us the most likely to have suicidal ideation and depression and things like that. So I felt this intense disconnection, which defined a lot of my life. In that moment, in the Heritage Center, I realized where I was connected. The thing that made sense to me was I was connected to this land. I was born here. I am a child of North Dakota, and for the first time in my life, I'm like, okay, this this finally makes sense. My connection and place to this world is North Dakota in this land. So that was a really powerful moment for me. So another powerful moment was I thought about all the ways that I worked in suicide prevention and de-siloing, and that was talking to everyone that was in kind of the frame of your question. I talked to Republicans and Democrats, I talked to religious leaders, I talked to human rights advocates, I talked to everyone everywhere, and I kind of try to understand them. I try to understand how their life has come together, what they believe, where we share our values, and I started to see, like, way more connections than disconnections, to the point that it was almost alarming. Like, if we just stop yelling at each other, so much of what we want in life is the same. We want kids to grow up happy, we just disagree on how. So that's where I started to have this, like, I am a person who de-silo, who connects all these people together, and I started to think, who does this, who else does this, and I got to think like, no one really does this, this is something like a governor does, and I got to realize, wait, I love the state, I love everyone in, and I love what people are doing, I try to connect everyone, that is being a governor that is in these two ideas together that I am a child in North Dakota, and that I love it all immensely, and I want to connect it to make it better for everyone, even folks who maybe disagree with queer folks, even folks who you know fight each other. Like I want ultimately people to find joy in their life, no matter what their background is, and I want them to, you know, come together in ways that make sense, whatever, like that was this dream borne by these experiences, so all this together is just like what informs the greatest thing that I could be in my life, and that is the governor of North Dakota, and I have a plan for elections in 2040 giving myself ample time to learn how to, because as much as I love the state, I don't know how, like the particulars of running an entire state, that is, that is years in the making of knowledge, so I'm not there yet, but that was where I'm like, I want to do this, I'm going to work on doing this, so that's my backstory, and then you have Mr. Burgum, Doug Burgum. Of former Governor Burgum, now a Secretary of Interior Burgum, who achieved that goal as the underdog in the 2016 election, right?

Elle Billing: 25:09

Like, never done politics,

Faye Seidler: 25:11

no, he was just a

Elle Billing: 25:12

and ran on that, because he's like, I can bring people together, like I understand you all,

Faye Seidler: 25:19

this guy was a cheerleader, a self-identified cheerleader of the state. He was a Microsoft. He was this, like, I was a chimney sweep, and he actually said, I swear, I could be wrong about this, but he said he shines shoes at one point, like he has this like mythologized version of rags to riches that he likes to like, like, put out there, and then he, like, sold his company in Microsoft, made allegedly a billion or more dollars, like that's where his, you know, finances come from, but you look at his pictures of, like, the early 2010s, you look at his commitment to revitalizing downtown in a way that people kind of agreed with, like, he's credited as in some way invigorizing, invigorating our state and getting young people back into it, like he's this legendary visionary of North Dakota that got elected governor based on this idea that he would lead with like reason and compassion. He cries, cries, tears up during his State of the Union in 2017 for North Dakota or State of the State address, and says a story about this homeless young man that he interacted with, and how awful and horrible that was, and how they should be able to help help people out, and that we should balance a budget, we should lower taxes, but not at the compromise of the compassion to the fellow people of the state. The beauty of the state is where Doug Burgum was, and then fast forward nine years, and he's just like, let's drill, baby, drill, let's destroy the con, like the ecosystems of this world, let's just do everything,

Elle Billing: 26:50

open up the boundary waters and clean coal, all of that,

Faye Seidler: 26:57

and do you know what, he could have gotten elected if he was, he could have, he could have ran for governor of North Dakota in 2024 and he would have won. There's not a single person that would have doubted his ability to win that election. The only reason that Armstrong said that he was a contender, and I'm pretty sure about this, I guess I don't know for sure if that's the case. I'm pretty sure Armstrong said that he only ran because Burgum wasn't in that race, like basically no one believed they had a shot against Burgum, because he was so well respected by Democrats, by by by Republicans, by everyone in the state. He was like the hero of North Dakota, and the thing that I think about a lot these days is, you know, he tried to campaign for president, right? He like went out there and pretended he had a shot at being president, cosplayed that for a little bit. You know, a lot of funny memes happened where you gave everyone a $20 gas card to vote for him, so he could be like inside the Republican primary, kind of treated as a joke by a lot of the people, not really treated with much respect at all, but then he ends up dropping out because he has no clear chance, and from that moment on, he, you know, in that moment, he's like, I would never do business with Trump. He doesn't say this particular, he does say, I think you should be judged by the company you keep, so he gives this like wishy-washy answer about not supporting Trump or supporting Trump, but anyways, he then shows up at Trump's trial in a matching suit with, like, Patel, is there, I think, and a few other other people that are in Trump's circle right now show up in matching suits to Trump's, like, fraud trial as this, like, weird initiation ritual, like, that is so bizarre, and to me, like, signals where he sold his dignity and his identity to be a stooge, because that's what that was, is like, whatever Burgum was, he consented to wearing a weird suit that matched all the other people to say that I am simply a cog in this machine now, and I support any and everything that happens from it. So, most of the times I talk about Doug, and you know, post about him, I make that connection so explicit that, like, all of the things that you may not like about the Trump administration, Dougie is 110% behind it. He is two seats away from Trump, and most of those meetings he is smiling the weirdest smile, like not to like judge someone's face, but that just is so uncanny,

Elle Billing: 29:26

unnerving. Yeah,

Faye Seidler: 29:28

it's just like I don't want, like I really don't want to get into like this head space, but I would be comforted if they had like an MRI, like if I would like to know that Doug is in good mental health, and made these decisions with, like, a good state of mind, because I honestly, his legacy is so big that I still just can't believe what is happening. I can't believe the things he says, I can't believe the things he supports, I can't believe that he is where he, like, it is impossible for me to compromise the Doug Burgum of 2017 and the Doug Burgum of today. Like, I do not know what has to happen for a person to sell everything that they ever cared about for nothing. He has 3400 followers on Facebook with his, with his interior of the secretary like Facebook page, he had 40,000 as governor of North Dakota. He is less relevant and less respected now than he has ever been.

Elle Billing: 30:27

Yeah, one of the things that I didn't know that much about him before, I wasn't living in the state at the time, but one of the interviews that I did with another North Dakota person that I actually grew up with, who is a owns a business in downtown Fargo, said that at a business conference prior to Burgum being elected governor, the issue, the issue, quotefingers, of same-sex marriage came up, and someone asked him about it, and he was like, it's good for business, like, yeah, it was a, which was a very pragmatic answer for somebody who was going to eventually be running on the Republican ticket, but like he was not virulently anti LGBTQ-plus.

Faye Seidler: 31:12

He vetoed the first anti trans sports laws in 2021

Elle Billing: 31:15

He did, and I had just moved home, actually, right around that time, and I remember thinking, okay, so he at least stuck to his guns on that, because earlier he had said that he wasn't going to interfere with any of those things, because it would be bad for North Dakota, and now he's like part of the Trump administration, which is doing all the things that it's doing, and the conversation we had on that interview was like he sold his soul, like,

Faye Seidler: 31:42

yeah, and I, so I do the Dougie and Trump comic, like it's like a journey of all the things he's done, and I actually have a story arc in it that concludes, and I kind of thought I was finished with it at that point, I said what I needed to say, but then I got more and more annoyed that it just kept on going, so the Trump, the Dougie and Trump comic continued, but the moral of the story was a Faustian bargain, like that was very clearly a selling of the soul, and the interesting thing about the Dougie and Trump comic that I do is that it is much more intentional, and I think people think about, like, you know, some of the early ones are just like one-off jokes, right, but I often like, put in usually three to four different stories in what is three panels of dialog, usually just like 20 words or less, and each one of them has an implication, like almost all the words I choose, and why I choose them, and why I choose the framing of has an implication, and I don't think people always appreciate that, because they're like, oh, they're making fun of these people, I don't like these people, yay, laugh, react, but like the reason I bring that up is that I make it very clear that the punchline of those comics is not Trump, it is Burgum, it is his relationship to power, and the fact that he's gotten none, the fact that he's done all of this for nothing, that even though he has sold his soul for, you know, the idea of magic and power, like it was a Faustian story, no, like, and it's like, you know, taking my greatest dream, like I described as being, you know, governor, as loving the state, as doing the best I could for it, and throwing that away for nothing. Like, I would feel better if he had a gold castle, like, if he, like, if he had a material thing where it's just like they gave me a Jello whale, I'd be like,"Oh, okay, yeah, Jell-Whale, like

Elle Billing: 33:24

that sounds pretty cool, man.

Faye Seidler: 33:26

That's something like I'm just like, "Okay, cool, but he's gotten less than nothing from it, he's gotten negative from it, so it's just like, grrrr,

Elle Billing: 33:34

yeah, and so kind of looping back to, like, you know, doing things because we have a love for the people and the place where we are. I loved what you said at the very beginning about, like, your job is about increasing hope, like that is hard right now.

Faye Seidler: 33:52

Yeah,

Elle Billing: 33:53

I imagine you know we live in -- what I believe every state is purple, you know-- but we, people classify us as a red state, and we're working in a place where you know budgets get cut, or think for like humans for human service projects and humans, but like you and I both, I work in art and like connecting people in the way that I do, and you work in advocacy. How you do, I guess. My next question is kind of pings off the first one, where you're like, where you talked about being Midwest and not taking accountability for taking care of ourselves, but how do we practice like self care, so we can still engage in community care and like continue doing this stuff for the long game.

Faye Seidler: 34:42

Yeah, there's a lot of ways to answer this, and I think the first and most important that I hope people take from this is that waking up is the win. If you wake up, if you just wake up, that is the win, and everything else you do is a bonus, and I think you have to contextualize that, because I think a lot of people beat themselves up at the end of the night, because you know the world's still on fire, they didn't do enough, they couldn't help their friends enough, they, you know, feel like they're burdens to other people, but like our lives are so intrinsically important and valuable, and most of everyday life, and a lot of our capitalist structures are convincing us that we're not, and they're convincing us that if we're not producing or making things, or you know, contributing, that we're not worth anything, and that's abjectly not true. Like, we existing, we waking up, like there are people often in our lives who care about us, who root for us, who like that we're still here, and us being here, doing what we do, whatever it is, other folks draw a lot of value from that. So, waking up is the win. Sometimes I wake up, and that's all I do. Like, the day is too hard, it's too overwhelming. I don't want to get out of bed. I think every morning I'm just like, I have to get out of bed, like not even for physical therapy, like just every day it's just like,

Elle Billing: 36:00

no, yeah,

Faye Seidler: 36:01

that is warm and comfortable. Why would I ever leave it? And the answer is, because, like, your body gets sore if you're in bed too long, and I'm just like, or you have to pee. Like, we have built-in like features that stop us from doing that. Unfortunately,

Elle Billing: 36:15

even on non-PT days, I'll walk by my mom's room and she's like awake, and I'm like, "How long have you been up? I don't know. I just wanted to lay here. I'm not ready to get up yet."

Faye Seidler: 36:24

Yeah, it's very real. So, what I also tell people is that it's okay to take an L. That's like what I say when it's a day that I'm not going to be productive and I'm not going to get anything done, but it's important to recognize you are on an L day and recognize it early in the day, because I think sometimes we get in the car and there's no gas, but we still try to hit the pedal as hard as we can, and we get nowhere, and we like doom scroll for five hours, or you know, we are, you know, looking for something anxiously, and it is not happening, or we're just like clicking on videos over the videos, and what we really just need to do is step back from that, maybe for a while, and you know, accept that just be easy to yourself that day, maybe, maybe just read like you're not gonna like save the world, you're not gonna find anything, like just, you just need to like take that day off, so it's okay to take an L. The other thing to keep in mind with this too, so waking up is a win, some days aren't gonna go good, that's fine. The other thing is that there's a big difference, and people don't always realize this, between things that we call self care and self soothing. Self soothing is is a component of self care. It's not worthless, it's not something to avoid, but if you're only self soothing, you're not doing self care. And self soothing is often those kind of dopamine release immediate satisfactions that we get, and that could be, you know, the latte that we get, that could be a treat we give ourselves, that could be like, you know, someone that we don't like called us, so we one, don't answer it, and two, just binge Netflix for five more hours, like it is fine to do this, I'm not saying it's not, but a lot of people will only self soothe and not self care, and self care takes work, like if self care is easy, you're probably not doing self care, because self care is going to the dentist, self care is doing that, working out, or going to PT, self care is doing your taxes, no matter how much you don't really want to this year, and all the things that structurally develop your life to create a foundation where tomorrow is easier for you is self care, so it's important that we are thinking about that when we move maneuver through our lives, that we are doing something to build the foundation of our life to assure that we continue to be as healthy as we can, as hydrated as we can, so we do have the energy to do things in the future, and it's hard to do self care, and if you are at a point where you like doing anything like that, like you know, going to the dentist, going to the hospital visits, going to the things that we need to keep our life going, like that's where you have to ask for help, because sometimes you need people to help you with your self care until you can start helping yourself, and that's where you need friends or family or case workers, wherever that comes in, to be able to help you get rooted, and sometimes you need more help, and sometimes it's collaborative help, but the point is that when we're thinking about self-care, it has to be that bigger idea of making sure that your foundations are good, and that you are really taking care of yourself, and to acknowledge, and this is important, that you are worth taking care of, because I think people miss that point a lot. And one of my favorite quotes of Twin Peaks is the idea from Cooper that every day, once a day, treat yourself to something, don't plan it, surprise yourself. And I think that quote is so rich for the wisdom it has, and so immensely impactful for mental health, because we so often, even people who are like trained therapists, or mental health folks, or suicide prevention specialists, like myself, we're so good at like letting other people know, like, hey, you should do this, you should do that, whatever, and then. We don't take care of ourselves, like we're just like we're the things that we can shit away, that are the crap away that we, we are the thing that we can sacrifice constantly to help other people, and we rarely go, but we also deserve that care and love, like we also deserve that coming in. We deserve to take care of ourselves at the same level we take care of other people, and that's sometimes missed by care providers, in particular. So, another thing is that you have to surprise yourself and take care of yourself. And the last thing, and this is like a subsection of many things to answer your question, because these are all things I talk about frequently within care and community care and self-care, and all that kind of stuff, is the concept of community, because I think that we have, I don't think that we have really deconstructed as a culture what community actually is, because here's how I see it being used, and I see it being used in kind of the same framework of intersectionality, and that is in a very, like, I don't know the right word to use here, but it's when people approach these concepts when they are like community or intersectional ideas. It's so often, well, because we should be intersectional, you should help me, because we should have community care, you should help me in the community, and it's so often people putting down this gauntlet of because of these values you should help me, and rarely is it people saying because of these values I should give, because of these values I should do more work in these communities I'm not part of, at least supporting them in what way I can, or because I am part of a community I should donate to people in my community, I should help them out, so people look at these things as almost transactional, that you know, because these values exist, we should pull value from the populus into the things we care about, and I don't have, like, an answer, I don't have, like, okay, so this is actually what we should do, and this is how it should work, I don't, I don't think there is an answer to that, because obviously we've understood intersectionality and community and grassroots and all these, you know, concepts for longer than both of us have been alive, and we seem to be going through the same problems every generation. So, I feel like,

Elle Billing: 42:11

right, I was just thinking, like, for me, when I say self-care for community care, is like, I take care of myself and practice self-care, so I am available to be part of my career, because, like, like you said, it's not what can I extract, it's like, where, where can I go and be of service, and where can I be engaging in community and being part of those things, but I, but I definitely, I definitely see what you're talking about, where like people want the benefits of community without investing in it,

Faye Seidler: 42:44

and that's honestly where I was going to go, kind of like to that answer, and to kind of how you framed it, because I think that's ultimately the approach we can have, is that intentionality of trying to just, in my head, I think about it as a garden, like you go into a community to plant something, maybe like a tomato plant, maybe something else. You go there, you nurture it, you water it, and maybe you get some tomatoes out of it. Maybe other people get some tomatoes out of it. But the more that we each can invest in that community garden, the more that it will be a benefit to anyone who does need it. And ideally, if we put in that work and other people do when we need it, it will be there for us. So to answer kind of the framework of that question, I think that the, you know, the not meme, now we say everything's a meme, the you can't pour from an empty cup, adage, I guess, like it's that, like when we think about self care intrinsically, it's about making sure that we are healthy in this work as long as possible, generationally as long as possible, because anything you can do in one day does not matter compared to the effort you can put in through years, and if you ever burn out from this work to the point you can't do it anymore, that's losing decades of what you could have contributed. So, making sure that you are safe to continue this work as long as possible, and to put in just the smallest amount each day is way more important than trying to over commit every day, and eventually burning out with it. So, I agree to that premise that you have to take care of yourself if you want to be an effective advocate or activist. And if you're a person who's bad at self care, you can actually trick your brain logically by understanding that if you don't self care, you're a worse activist. So, like, if you want to be better at your job, you have to do self care, which is why I work out reluctantly.

Elle Billing: 44:23

Yeah, that's whatever you got to do. So, my last question that I ask everybody, what is one true thing that you have learned from your work?

Faye Seidler: 44:34

One,

Elle Billing: 44:35

yeah, I mean, yeah, you've dropped some real good gems already.

Faye Seidler: 44:39

I would say, as a person that's core value is suicide prevention, or increasing hope and resiliency and joy, all that kind of stuff. The thing that allows me to do this work at this high-level level in North Dakota--with all of the stress that comes from both the work and myself as being a targeted minoritized person in that work-- is gratitude, and I find that if I didn't have gratitude to appreciate what other people contribute to the cause, to the community, to themselves, and to their life, I don't think I would last another week in this work, because we feel so alone in the work that we do, because everyone has so much on their plate, and I work alongside folks that work with, let's say, environmentalist, that work with, like, indigenous populations, that work with those experiencing homelessness, and these are all causes that I'm like, "Oh, thank you for doing this, like, I'm so glad you.. I wish I had 3000 hours a day, so I could do all of this, and I often feel like I have to do a lot of my work in suicide prevention and LGBTQ-plus intervention because I'm the one doing it at the state level, like there is, there's not a person that can tap me out at this point, so I find that instead of complaining that there aren't more people working on, let's say, suicide prevention or working on LG-plus issues or trans issues, I'm okay with that, because I know that they are out there doing really important work and saving lives, and the work that anyone does anywhere is work to the benefit of everyone everywhere, and I find that gratitude allows me to feel connected and feel not hopeless in what seems like hopeless systems, because when you pay attention to the news and what's accessible on social media. It is doom. It is here's the next awful story about the next awful person doing the awful thing to awful to awful circumstances and people, and you think what is worth saving in this world when that's all you see, but when you are connected to people who are passionate -- doctors and teachers, or community leaders, or folks that work with peer support with, like, substance misuse, and are there to guide other people through that, and to say, "Hey, buddy, I know that it's bad for you right now, but I got through it. I'm here with you every day. I'm going to make sure that you are okay" -- Seeing those stories is what inspires you to believe there is something to humans still that we have as many compassionate and driven and hopeful and amazing advocates that sacrifice so much of their time in life to make this world better. If you can connect to that, if you can connect to that idea and that notion and that gratitude, I think that you can be pretty resilient to how harsh today feels, because you're connected to just how amazing people can be, and that's the stuff that you can carry with you at night, is just how incredible and loving people really are when you stop focusing on some of the ways algorithms convince us otherwise.

Elle Billing: 47:35

Thank you, that was great.

Faye Seidler: 47:37

Yeah, what do you say you have gratitude for that?

Elle Billing: 47:41

Yeah, for real. Thank you. Yep, I have nothing to add. Thank you so much.

Faye Seidler: 47:46

Yeah, of course.

Elle Billing: 47:46

Thank you for being here.

Faye Seidler: 47:48

Yeah, and thank you for having me. I got to talk about both Hope and Doug Burgum. It's like the best day of my life.

Elle Billing: 47:53

It's like a double scoop of ice cream cone.

Faye Seidler: 47:57

Oh yeah,

Elle Billing: 48:02

thank you for joining us on this episode of Hoorf. To get the complete show notes and all the links mentioned on today's episode, or to get a full transcript of the episode, visit hoorfpodcast.com Join the Blessed Herd of St.

Winkus: 48:16

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