Listen, Learn, and Love - Episode 50

This episode is an interview with Richard Ostler that originally appeared on Listen, Learn, and Love.

• Listen, Learn, and Love hosted by Richard Ostler - Episode 807
• Bridges–Support for Latter-day Saint Parents of Adult Children Facebook group
• I’ll Walk with You–A Support Group for Latter-day Saint Parents of LGBTQ+ Children Facebook group
• candiceclarkcoaching.com
• https://www.facebook.com/candiceclarkcoaching/
• No Empty Chairs podcast

You found me! If what you heard on the No Empty Chairs podcast gives you hope for more help, please schedule a free Conversation with Candice. You can also visit candiceclarkcoaching.com for more information about how coaching tools can help you keep your relationship with your children and your faith. While you're there, be sure to pull up a chair and sign up with your email to be the first to know about news and events for moms whose kids don't come to church.

It's going to be okay, and even better!

Transcript

Thank you for having me. LLL has been an important part of my journey both as a parent and as a podcaster. 

Grayson Moore, Episode 48 - his understanding that his gender can be eternal and still be misaligned during mortality - a new idea for me. Conversation with mutual friend processing Grayson’s journey - “God doesn’t make those kinds of mistakes” I knew it wasn’t true as it came out of my mouth. That was the beginning of change for me. That shows where I was in my head when I started listening to LLL 6 years ago. So many stories here have helped me expand my imagination and my capacity to love.

Organize my thoughts around how I have grown to listen, learn, and love better over the past few years, how that effort has impacted the sense of safety in my family, and some ways I am still finding it challenging. One thing I have learned is that repair is the way through. We make mistakes. We hurt each other, and then we do the work of repair so we can grow. I hope it’s clear as we talk that I love everyone in this story. There aren’t any villains here, just people doing the best they can from where they are now, including me

I’m a pretty typical LDS mother in many ways. My parents are from Utah. I grew up in Oregon until I moved to Utah at age 13. I am the second of 6 children, all of us active in the church. We have the appropriate number of returned missionaries and temple marriages. I had a good childhood with loving parents. I went to high school in Provo, then attended BYU. I have two degrees from BYU in comparative literature. My husband’s career took us to Iowa, where I live now. I took my kids to music lessons for more than a decade and spent every fall and spring Saturday morning at the soccer park for several years. My children are all adults now, ages 19-32. I’m going to use “they” for each of them, even though they don’t all use those pronouns, just so it won’t be obvious which child I am referring to. I’m trying to tell my story today, not theirs.

Grateful for the lessons LLL taught me, as well as groups like https://www.facebook.com/groups/WalkWithYouLDSParentsOfLGBTQ/, so when the first of my queer children came out to me and their dad by group text, I was able to respond immediately because I knew what to say, and what not to. I didn’t know everything, but I knew enough to say, “Ok. Thanks for telling me. I love you.”

That was it for a while. I was divorced by then and my younger children preferred living in the marital home with their dad, so the quantity of interaction wasn’t what it might have been. Things were quiet on the queer front for me for a bit after that text message.

And then we had a global pandemic. One of the ways my children showed love for me was treating me like an elderly person. For a while, they didn’t visit very much.

But one day, one of my children came for a visit. We were chatting in the backyard, socially distanced, about their sibling. When talking about this sibling, my child used the pronoun “they.” I was confused about whether they were still talking about their sibling or more than one person, so I asked for clarification.Wisely, my child said, simply, “You should talk to them about that.” That was good advice, so that’s what I did.

I didn’t do it right away, though. It seemed like a scary conversation to have, asking the sibling about using they/them pronouns. I wasn’t sure what that meant about their identity. I was so afraid, and I had mixed feelings, realizing that this was information other people had about this sibling that I had not yet been entrusted with. It felt dangerous. And I also felt left out.

A few weeks later, I did have a conversation with this sibling, my child. They told me that they use they/them pronouns, but they were okay with she/her. It was an uncomfortable conversation. I wasn’t quite ready for them to be truly open with me, but I kinda wanted credit for having the conversation. I wanted to be ready, but I wasn’t, and I think they could tell. I asked them if they wanted me to switch pronouns knowing that doing so would raise questions with the extended family if I made that change in the way I talked about them. At least, that was the reason I said out loud. It was a real reason, but not the only one, or even the main one. The other part of it was just the discomfort of changing, and not feeling satisfied about why I should change or understanding quite what it meant to them to use these pronouns. I felt a lot of confusion and worry. Being queer in any way seems challenging in the world we live in, and possibly being transgender even more so. I was using the discomfort of my extended family as cover for my own discomfort.

So I kept using she/her pronouns for this child, all the time, everywhere, for a few more years. And yet, at our local family gatherings, even with my other child’s in-laws, and their friends, I noticed that I was the only one using she/her. Everyone else close to this child used they/them pronouns for them. 

Another thread of my story picked up sometime later. I went to a high school graduation party for some kids in my ward. When I arrived at the party, one of my children who was assigned male at birth was already there, wearing a short sundress on their over-6’ frame. This child was friends with the graduates and probably realized there was a good possibility I would see them at the party. A sundress was a reasonable fashion choice for an outdoor party on a hot, humid day in May. This child had always had their own way of dressing, especially as they got into high school. They had a soft pink blouse with floral embroidery on it that made me think of my grandmother’s pajamas whenever they wore it, which was often, but this was the first time I had seen them wearing a dress. I felt surprised and confused. My perception of my child and their identity shifted in a way I had never considered, prior fashion choices notwithstanding. It felt very uncomfortable. I didn’t know what wearing a sundress meant to this child about their identity. Again, I worried and felt confused and left out.

A few months later, (notice the slow timeline) we had a conversation about their pronouns, they/them, and I began using them. Going back and forth between different pronouns for the same person, depending on the people I was around, made it harder. So I started using they/them whenever I even thought about this child. It was all hard work, and work worth doing.

I continued to misgender this child occasionally by using he/him pronouns, but after 3 years of practice, it happened less often. It was much easier when the people around me also used they/them pronouns, but this was challenging. Extended family members in Utah weren’t eager to come along with this. Responses ranged from tepid to actual resistance. Other people like ward members might not know about their pronouns, and I wasn’t always sure it was a conversation worth having with everyone. Not everyone has earned our stories. By this time, that was a more honest reason, because I was feeling more at ease with the pronoun situation in my family.

About a year ago I had a quite difficult conversation with my parents about my sibling’s child, who is also an adult. My mother was asserting that she would use my nibling’s deadname until she changed it legally. My own child had told me that pronoun use by the extended family was a prerequisite for them attending family reunions. At the time, my mother called that emotional blackmail.  I was pretty reactive about it at the moment and that interaction didn’t go well. I’m not proud of the harshness I showed. I was sharp and defensive and judgmental. I was also in pain.

A few days later I asked for another conversation with my parents. This one went better. I went into the conversation better prepared emotionally, intending only to listen and ask questions about their views and experience. It was really hard to manage my own emotions, and to keep myself open to hearing what they had to say when on some level I thought I already knew and understood their views well. I was trying to listen with my heart as much as my head, and to feel their hearts as much as their thoughts. After some time, 10 minutes? 20? I asked them if they wanted to hear my perspective. It was important that having them say no to that offer was genuinely an option. But they sincerely said, “yes,” and were prepared in a way neither of us had been for the earlier, contentious exchange.

We talked some more, and I shared with them a thought exercise that I walk myself through. When I am struggling with what to do, sometimes I like to assume the worst case scenario, that I choose wrong, and then I imagine what the subsequent conversation with Jesus might sound like under those circumstances. I have imagined what it would be like for me to continue to use people’s deadnames, and pronouns that align with their sex assigned at birth, knowing what I know about the negative impact that has on mental health and personal safety. Now, if I use deadnames and former pronouns and I have a negative impact on them and  I’m right, there’s no problem. But if I use deadnames and I have a negative impact and I’m wrong? That isn’t a conversation I want to have with Jesus.

On the other hand, if I am motivated by love and respect for agency when I choose to use someone’s chosen name and pronouns, and those names and pronouns turn out in the eternities to be wrong in some way, I imagine a much different conversation with Jesus, one I’m willing to have, even if He were to tell me I should have done something differently, or those were the wrong pronouns. I’m comfortable being wrong in that situation because of my reasons and my heart.

I know there are a lot of ways to look at this, and I respect that people, even people close to me,  have their own reasons for making choices different than mine. I would hope, though, that those same people would consider the possibility that I also have good reasons for making a choice that, in their view, is wrong.

In that conversation with my parents, I also shared with them what the Church Handbook said at the time. The Church Handbook says something different now, but at the time, Church policy made room for addressing queer people by the name and pronouns they chose. It said: “If a member decides to change his or her preferred name or pronouns of address, the name preference may be noted in the preferred name field on the membership record. The person may be addressed by the preferred name in the ward.” 38.6.23 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/general-handbook/38-church-policies-and-guidelines?lang=eng&id=title_number118-p836#title_number118

Knowing this made a difference for my parents. I could see in their countenances, especially my mom, that they were reconsidering their position on using someone’s chosen name. That was when I realized that my parents, who had had an out, queer grandchild for about ten years by then, had no idea what the Handbook said about it. And I started to see in a new way how they lived in a very different world than I live in. There are many out queer people where I live. My kids’ kindergarten teacher was a gay man. I’ve had two different massage therapists who happened to be lesbian. One of them was married. I lived two doors down from a couple of gay men for a decade. I work at a university where it’s pretty common to see people’s pronouns included in their email signature. Several of my colleagues have rainbow Safe Zone signs up in their offices showing they’ve had specific training to support queer students. I listen to a lot of podcasts like Questions from the Closet/All Out in the Open and LLL. My parents’ world is their house, their Utah ward, the grocery store and Costco. They consume different media than I do. Their lives are not set up to normalize queerness, or to follow queer concerns. 

I felt increased compassion for their confusion about some of their grandchildren, and for their efforts to hold on to their worldview. I also realized that I was one of the few resources they had in this arena, and even though we had had some conversations about pronouns, I had essentially been hiding myself and my children, not wanting to have uncomfortable conversations. Not feeling safe to do that.

Last year, after practicing they/them pronouns for one child for about 3 years, I finally became ready to use them for my other child. Even though they didn’t really mind she/her pronouns, I no longer wanted to use 2nd choice pronouns for them. I was grateful for the option for a time, and it served me well while I caught up with reality, but 2nd choice pronouns were not sending the message I wanted to send to this child, so I switched. I now feel a little embarrassed that I wasn’t ready to make that shift for my child immediately.

Before this I had conversations with each of my siblings about pronoun use as a stated prerequisite for my children to attend family reunions. These conversations had been brief. They had been met with some willingness, but not a lot of understanding about why it mattered so much. 

So last summer at my family reunion I decided to share with my parents, siblings, and niblings what I’ve shared with you here about learning to use my children’s pronouns over a four-year period. My goal was for them to know how I would be talking about my children from now on, and why, what that meant to me, that I feel supported when people close to me also use my children’s pronouns. It matters to me as well as to my children. I may slip up, but I am not consciously going to go back and forth. It is too confusing for my brain, and at this point I feel disloyal using the wrong pronouns for my kids.

I was pretty nervous, but I also felt strongly that it was the only thing for me to do. I had been invited to give a 10-minute devotional before dinner one night. As soon as the invitation came, I felt inspired that I had been given this opportunity to share more of my story, my life, and my heart with my family. Because I knew I would be nervous, I wrote it all out. It went through at least 3 major revisions, and much more fine tuning as one of my children and a handful of close friends helped me edit it. It was particularly meaningful to me that my child was helping me. None of my children would be present when I gave it at the family reunion. I felt alone as keenly as I have ever felt alone, but this one child would know what was happening and was in my corner. It means a lot to have your child’s respect and support. There are no words for how much that meant to me, before, during and after what turned out to be a pretty difficult experience.

After I shared about my pronoun journey with my family, I talked about the difference between impact and intent, that sometimes we innocently do things that have a harmful impact on others, like stepping on someone’s toe. Even if we didn’t mean to step on the toe, the toe hurts. And once we know the toe is there, we can exert ourselves not to step on it repeatedly if we choose.

I noticed that as I used my children’s pronouns, it changed how I felt and acted toward them, about them, and around them. Using their name and pronouns helped me be more accepting of who they are and reinforced that fact that they matter to me. It helped me feel more love.

As I prepared for my reunion devotional I read an article by a transgender man that discusses some harmful messages that queer people receive when we misgender them by not using their pronouns. The article itself is a thoughtful discussion (https://letsqueerthingsup.com/2014/09/15/what-youre-actually-saying-when-you-ignore-someones-preferred-gender-pronouns/ WHAT YOU’RE ACTUALLY SAYING WHEN YOU IGNORE SOMEONE’S GENDER PRONOUNS SEPTEMBER 15, 2014 SAM DYLAN FINCH), but when the harmful statements are extracted from the discussion and sent around the internet as a meme, they come across as reductive and assuming negative intent, not just negative impact. So I took those ten messages and flipped them around to identify the potential beneficial messages we send when we use someone’s pronouns, and I shared those with my family.

Messages a queer person hears when we use their pronouns:

• You know yourself better than I know you.
• I would rather change the way I speak about you than hurt you repeatedly.
• Your sense of safety is important to me.
• Your identity is real and should be acknowledged.
• I want to teach everyone around me to respect you.
• Being uncomfortable is fine if I avoid being offensive.
• I can hear you talking and I am really listening.
• Being who you truly are is not an inconvenience to me.
• I would prefer if you kept being honest with me.
• I am an ally, a friend, and someone you can trust.

President Russell Ballard said, “We need to listen to and understand what our LGBT brothers and sisters are feeling and experiencing. Certainly, we must do better than we have done in the past so that all members feel they have a spiritual home where their brothers and sisters love them and where they have a place to worship and serve the Lord.”

At the end of my family reunion devotional, we sang “I’m Trying to Be like Jesus.” I don’t think my choices are the only way to try to be like Jesus. I genuinely believe it’s possible to make a different choice while trying to be like Jesus. We are all finding our way forward as imperfect humans. I was trying to communicate that my choices are also an effort to be like Jesus, to love as He does, try to show kindness, be gentle and loving in deed and in thought. It was an emotionally exhausting effort. After my niece gave the family prayer and blessing on the food, I was spent. I sat down and took a breath. I thought the worst was behind me. I was wrong.

There were multiple different reactions to what I had shared. Some family members told me I was brave. I don’t know how much of what I shared they agree with, but they could sense my positive intent and genuine love, and resonated with the general substance of the message. I think what surprised me most was the conversation i had with my mom the next morning. She told me, “I don’t agree with everything you said, but it was very brave and it needed to be done.” It felt like a gigantic stride forward from arguing 6 months earlier about whether legal name changes were required before changing what you call someone. Some family members weren’t there. They had left early for other commitments, but they heard about it later. Knowing they had heard about it, I sent them my slides and my script, which I had read verbatim, with tears streaming down my face and shaking the whole time. After sharing that with them, I was told that I should not have shared this at the family reunion, it was not the place, that I had poor judgment and was untrustworthy. It’s still painful to me that someone close to me thinks that I was trying to be hurtful or get some kind of revenge.

I also got the message that I was inappropriate almost immediately from family members who were present. They were sharp and defensive and judgmental. I realized later, they were also in pain because of their own experiences and choices different from mine. Several strong personalities asked me what I was thinking, said what I had shared was inappropriate for children, and mocked my emotional intelligence. They came on pretty strong, to the extent that–in spite of knowing that I was physically safe–I was shaking for 3 hours afterward. It took me 30 minutes to realize that I was in shock. 

A couple of my niblings really did want to have a conversation, but I had to consider whether I could engage with them given the way they had started off. I got a drink of water and then decided that I could. The way out was through, and in spite of my fatigue I felt like I could hold onto my own integrity in the face of further difficulty. Two of us talked for a while, along with another family member who asked if they could join us. I was grateful for their presence. They were sincerely interested in the conversation and in the relationships and I think had a calming effect on both of us. Eventually, they were the one who walked me to my bedroom, tucked me in and said, “Yes, you are definitely in shock.” 

We did not come to a meeting of the minds in that 3-person conversation, but we did come to a meeting of the hearts. I think my nibling felt reassured about my intentions, and they went to some effort to reassure me about their love and concern, even though we see things very differently still. They came back to me the next morning to apologize for how they had started the conversation, which I really appreciated. The others who were upset with me and behaved badly have still not acknowledged or apologized for their behavior. We haven’t been together in person since and have had only the briefest of interactions. Given how much time has gone by, I think they are choosing to pretend it didn’t happen. I am still processing this experience 6 months later. It felt like other experiences I’ve had in my adult life where I was told in one way or another that I wasn’t allowed to take up space, that I was wrong or that I didn’t matter.

To be honest, I still have complicated emotions about this experience, a lot of sadness, and even some anger at being treated unfairly and having my motives questioned. I want to acknowledge that because I have found genuine peace as I’ve grown along with my kids being who they are by being honest with myself, and sometimes with others, about how I felt. Pretending is not the way forward. I’ve found peace and hope by accepting reality and working through difficult emotions and unmet expectations.

So I feel sad, and I feel angry that some of my family members think I should feel ashamed. And my job now is to extend the same effort to be like Jesus, to love as He does, try to show kindness, be gentle and loving in deed and in thought toward these relatives who see things differently than I do, as I have been learning to do for my kids. In some ways, it’s even more challenging when I think they are the reason my kids don’t feel safe at family reunions and, frankly, why I don’t even feel safe at family reunions.

So where do I go from here? I keep looking for compassion–for myself, for my children, and for the people who have harmed me and my children. I’m not going to pretend I don’t experience sadness, anger, and fear. And I also am not going to live my whole life from those emotions. Over the years the work of people like Jody Moore, an LDS life coach, and Dr. JFF, a therapist and relationship expert, has had a big impact on my awareness and ability to take responsibility for my own emotions, for my own life. And at the Gather Conference in September, I particularly appreciated hearing Dr. Lisa Diamond, a professor of psychology, talk about social safety. It helped me recognize that some of the strong reaction I encountered at my family reunion was the result of people having their sense of safety threatened by my sharing my experience in that setting. It was unexpected for them. If I had it to do over now, I might take that into consideration and try to establish more safety, but honestly, I am not sure there’s enough safety in the world for some of my family members to be okay with sharing my point of view in that setting.

Somewhere in all of that personal experience, I decided to get certified as a life coach so I would be more skillful in supporting others whose lives don’t turn out as they originally planned. I love helping parents access more peace and hope in the Atonement of Jesus Christ. A couple of ways I do that include being a moderator in the Facebook group Bridges: Support for LDS Parents of Adult Children that was founded by your brother Dave. 

I have a life coaching practice focused on supporting moms whose kids don’t come to church. And I have a podcast called No Empty Chairs: for moms whose kids don’t come to church. Where the name comes from (1st episode): Benson version, unintended consequences, wielding it as a threat that generates shame, reclaiming the phrase. There is no such thing as empty chairs in heaven. Our children are people, not objects, not metaphors of expectation. On the podcast, I talk about things that have helped me feel more hope and build better relationships, and my favorite thing to do is to interview other parents about their experiences.

I still don’t have answers to many of my questions about my children. We have varying degrees of closeness. They are each on their own individual journey. What I know about them matters less than what I think about them and how I feel about them. What I think about them is that they are kind and smart, eagerly engaged in good causes. They are some of the most Christlike people I know, even though some of them don’t believe in Christ. And I love them more than I can say.