#95 | How Somatic Education Builds Courage and Connection for Parents Raising LGBTQ Kids

Welcome back to Just Breathe. I am so happy you are here and really, really excited to bring you another great interview. I know I always say that, but honestly, I feel so lucky that I get to interview so many really, really interesting human beings, and I always get just excited to bring them to you. So today's guest is going to talk about a topic that I know that we are all curious about and all have questions about and perhaps don't always know how to ask these questions or who to ask these questions of. So I am thrilled, thrilled, thrilled to bring you Court Vox, who provides personal guidance and expertise in the unique and often ignored areas of sex. He is a trained sex and intimacy consultant, surrogate partner, intern, and sacred intimate. Founder of his practice, The Body Vox, he brings professional opportunities for his clients to learn about and embrace their bodies and those of others. Sex, the thing that the world is now acknowledging as so important for our general wellness our mental health, and indeed our lives in general is on the agenda. While much progress has been made, it is still too often a taboo subject. Cort serves as the counselor of our times, breaking down the walls of shame and anxiety around intimacy and sex. Traditional forms of therapy are done through talk. The work of a somatic sex educator is to further this work via touch and body-based experiences in comfortable, judgment-free, and safe environments. Body acceptance, exploration of sensation and desires, and learning how to ask for you want— for what you want, boundary setting, and intimacy work are some of the many reasons clients seek this form of therapy. Fox is a sex educator experienced working with clients of all sexualities and genders. He continues to collaborate with fellow sex educator Pamela Madsen for workshops around the country. And without further ado, I am absolutely delighted to bring you Court Vox.

Welcome to Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen. The podcast transforming the conversation around loving and raising an LGBTQ child. My name is Heather Hester, and I am so grateful you are here. I want you to take a deep breath and know that for the time we are together, you are in the safety of the Just Breathe nest. Whether today's show is an amazing guest, or me sharing stories, resources, strategies, or lessons I've learned along our journey. I want you to feel like we're just hanging out at a coffee shop having a cozy chat. Most of all, I want you to remember that wherever you are on this journey right now, in this moment in time, you are not Welcome back to Just Breathe.

I am so happy you all are here with us today. I'm really excited to welcome Court Vox here today with us on the show. This is a conversation I've been really excited to have and I've been looking forward to this interview. And I think all of you are really going to enjoy this. So buckle your seatbelts, get a piece of paper, start taking notes, 'cause there's good stuff. So I'm just gonna start right out of the box. Why sex? Why did you choose this as your topic? And like, what made you want to hone in on this?

Well, I didn't choose sex as my topic. I chose sex and intimacy as my career path. So why did I choose this? You know, I ask myself that question sometimes because it's not an easy business to navigate. I joke sometimes like, why didn't I choose to be a breathwork specialist or a yoga practitioner? I could have walked in the world so much easier. There's still so much shame and stigma around sex and it comes out in kind of divisive ways. In running my business, more of the things that are in the back end of how I'm treated by institutions of banking and things like that. The social media, marketing, advertising, those are all things that are very challenging for me to do. So, but that is probably for another podcast.

Yeah. Yes, that's— those are the things you don't think about, right?

Yeah, but why did I choose this field? I really feel like I was called to this field. It wasn't something that I chose quickly. I probably spent the majority of my 30s really kind of easing into this. I have always been very sexual and very erotic. I remember my first kind of sexual experience at the age of 4 with my friend who was also 4. And I remember being very active sexually in terms of like self-pleasuring. And my mother was very open about self-pleasuring. She just asked that we go to our room and do it in a private space. But it was never shamed. It was never talked about in a way that was like, "Don't do that." There was always books in my house around sex and, you know, where babies come from and how it happens. And it was always a discussion. And I think the way that I view my body and my sexuality is in great— you know, I owe great respect to my mother for that. But to kind of move on, you know, I came out when I was 19, when I came to LA, went to UCLA. And, you know, my 20s, I feel like I was in a relationship for the majority of the time. Time, and I didn't really get to explore my sexuality as much as I did in my 30s. And in my 30s, you know, it was sort of this progression into kind of an exploration of self, and then kind of noticing that I had a capacity to meet a lot of different people and a lot of different body types and enjoy that, and also help people kind of move past some of the things that they were kind of shameful about or didn't want to talk about, including like desires and even just being like laying with somebody, right? So I feel like I was called to it. I studied Shibari rope bondage. I started studying Shibari rope bondage. I'm still a student of that. And I was in like a group class And I needed a practice partner, and one of the women in the class said, I will be your practice body. And she just happened to be a psychotherapist that dealt with the nervous system. And I said, you know, I really would like to get out of the career that I'm in now, which was corporate. And she said, what do you want to do? And I said, I think I want to be a sex therapist, but not one that talks to people, one that like helps people figure things out through their body and body-based exercises and experiences? And I said, I don't think it exists. And she said, have you heard of Sexological Bodywork? And so that kind of sent me on a path where I studied for 2, 2 and a half years. I also became a surrogate partner during that time and studied other things. As soon as I kind of graduated, I left corporate and then I joined a company called Back to the Body, which runs sensual retreats for women around the world. And I've kind of never stopped. So that's sort of how I came. That's the long story.

That's good. No, I think it'd be hard to tell that in a short way. I think that was, it's something that people want to know and I think people are afraid to ask, right? To your point, any— talking about sex can be, you know, a lot of people are very embarrassed to do so and ask the questions they really want to ask. So that's why I was like, this is— I want that to be this space today. What are the questions that, you know, people would want to ask you but might be afraid to ask you or be, you know, embarrassed to know? You talk about Somatic. You use the word somatic, and I would love if you could define that and talk about what that means, because I think that's just a word that we're not very familiar with and we don't use on a daily basis.

Yeah, thank you for, for asking. Somatic means of the body. So, you know, unlike a traditional coach or therapist that just works with talking talk therapy for the most part. My work really facilitates learning through body-based exercises, experiential learning, and touch. So there's a couple different kind of veins of somatics, but it's getting back to our bodies, getting back to noticing the wisdom that we carry within ourselves. And our culture and our society has pushed us so far from that knowing that it's almost like we have to relearn, relearn the wisdom of our own bodies and listen. And so my work is really centered around that as much as it is connecting with sexuality and Eros.

And you do this in typically a group setting, or is this something that you do kind of one-on-one or couple on one? How is this work done? What is— how would one engage with you in this process?

Yeah, I work with all bodies and intentions. I run group workshops and retreats for queer men. And I, like I said, I work for a company called Back to the Body that runs retreat for predominantly cis-het women. And I also work with couples, queer couples and straight couples. I work with women, but I work with women differently than I work with men privately. I work, I also do private immersion with clients, mostly with queer men. When I work with straight women, I work with a female practitioner or therapist as a third party to help guide and to help triage. With the client and we work as a team in that way.

Okay. That's really, really cool. I'm just kind of going out of order of how, but I'm so intrigued by that. Um, because I'll, I'll get, I'll get around to the other things, but this is so fascinating to me and kind of on the same subject, like most of, I just thinking about, you know, a lot of my friends, a lot of, you know, people, women, especially my age were not, we didn't ever talk about this growing up. Right. Like we weren't raised. Typically in homes where sex was ever talked about. And if it was, it was very much in a shameful way, like, that's shameful, um, or that's not to be discussed, or just— I don't know. I, I'm just wondering your words of wisdom for, you know, what do you kind of initially say to women as they come from this type of background, really, to help them kind of get out of it? Because a lot of that's like headspace, right? So to get out of their heads and move into kind of relearning their body.

So I'm gonna name that when I speak around women's sexuality and health and wellness, I feel a level of cringiness in myself. And I want to name that because I certainly don't want to tell women as a masculine-identifying body I don't want to tell women how to be. So I just want to name that, that women's bodies are your bodies, right? And I think that's the most important thing to identify is bodily autonomy. And so much of the experience of women is that their bodies are not their own, and that they are witnessed and seen through the lens of the masculine, through the lens of men. And how women are supposed to present, how they're supposed to behave is for the masculine, is for men, right? And so when you can sort of untangle that, the question becomes, who am I and how do I connect to my body for my pleasure, for myself? How do I want to present for me? That feels erotic and sexy and turn-on for me, not for the lens in which I'm being seen. And I think that's something that straight women have in common with queer men. The difference with queer and gay men is that gay men are the lens and we are the seen-through-the-lens. Does that make sense?

Ah, yes, it does.

Which is, you know, another sort of layer. But it's sort of like we preen and groom and present and walk and talk and exercise and eat and do all these things so that we can sort of be accepted and fit into a cultural narrative of acceptance from the masculine.

Right. And I mean, specifically, yes, which is so interesting because I'm really seeing that now with my son as he's, you know, 22, almost 23, and just over the past few years, how that's, you know, kind of shifted and, um, and really kind of tapping into that. So it's interesting to me. And I think, okay, you know, the, the, the quiet voice says, okay, is there something I could be wisdom that I could be sharing with him to perhaps, you know, just kind of spark another thought. Like, here's another way of thinking of this, right? Because as you and I know, you don't ever tell your kids anything because they will do the opposite, right?

You know, I think, you know, that's always kind— that has always been my approach with my son, who's now 19, around discussion around drugs and discussion around sex, is that I've always presented it as choices, right? So, you know, these are the choices that are going to come your way. And in choosing to have sex, you're also choosing to open your body and open your spirit to someone. And I guess, you know, my invitation to him was always to look inside yourself and notice if you're ready for that. Are you emotionally ready for this? Connection to happen? And if the answer is no, maybe, maybe, you know, it's not the time. And I think, you know, from what I know, he did wait until he felt he was ready, and he was with a girlfriend that he'd been with for a year, and it was a beautiful experience, right? Same thing around drugs of, look, you can choose to do all these drugs, and in choosing that, you may also be choosing a life of addiction. You may be choosing a life of poor health, right? These are all the things that kind of come with that. It's not speaking, you know, it's just as a language nuance of, you know, speaking about things as choices rather than repercussions. Because as you said, you tell a child not to do something and they want to do it. And so as parents, if we can simply present the information of this is a choice, and with those choices you are also choosing this. And same thing with, with sex, of, you know, if you are choosing to have sex as a young person, you are choosing this emotional experience, this physical experience, and also, you know, you are choosing, you know, if you're choosing not to use a condom, you are choosing to open yourself up to pregnancy. At a young age. Is that something that you want to choose, right? Or do you want to wear a condom, right?

Right.

And also all the STDs and STIs that come with that too. Those are like, those are important conversations.

Well, they are, they are. And I think that that's something, I mean, you and I kind of twofold here, you and I touched on this before we started recording, but the things that, you know, we wish we would have known or wish we would have, you know, back when we started parenting, right? So that we perhaps could have started, you know, I know for myself specifically, started these conversations so much earlier in a way that they were conversations and not a, well, just don't do that because it's scary, or don't do that because you could die, right? Because that's so not effective at all, and all it does is close them down and freak you out. So I think that, you know, this is such a helpful conversation in being able to really just open up and just, even if it is uncomfortable, uncomfortable for you to know, these kind of conversations are so much easier because we all know what the choices are, right? So we can have this conversation and here are all of your choices. Do you have questions about any of them? Do you want to know more information about any of them, right? And, and I think kind of to part 2 of this, which is, you know, you and I were laughing, so you are a queer man parenting a heterosexual boy, right? And I'm a mom parenting gay kids. So how do we do this, right? And how, when we don't really know what we're talking about specifically. And so having, as we have these discussions around choices, and we really want to offer this like here's the information you specifically need to know that's gonna be helpful for you. Like had I known 6 years ago how to help Connor like navigate being a gay, you know, at that point a gay young man and moving into, you know, through college and into young adulthood, holy cow, would that have been like a million times better. But I didn't know what I didn't know and I didn't know how to find it, right? So what kind of wisdom do you have to share around that? Because I imagine it's a lot.

Around finding it or how to forgive yourself?

That might be a whole nother conversation. I'm getting down that, but yeah, finding it. Yeah.

Interestingly enough, my son's also named Connor.

Greatest name.

Yeah, good name. You know, before I go into that, I want to say, you know, having the discussion around sex, we often go to— and even I just did it— we go to this place of talking about all the risks involved. And what we don't talk about is all the, like, great things, right, of how powerful pleasure can be in mood stabilization and connecting with friends and connecting with lovers. And it's just not the person that you've had sex with. Like, you're running all these endorphins and dopamine signals that come from these pleasure signals inside us. These are ours, right? And that translates into everything and every interaction we have. And so, noticing that those sexual and erotic connections that we have really are beautiful. And if we can have that conversation that pleasure is healing, pleasure is valuable, that's counterculture. That's a counterculture conversation. And to start having that early on, I think, is really important.

Absolutely. I mean, just— yeah, go ahead.

The thing I also want to talk about again is, you know, with children is bodily autonomy. And, you know, I remember as a child, my mother would sort of pass me off to relatives or friends to give them hugs and kisses. And it was sort of this, like, you know, she just— to hear her talk about it, she just loved me so much that she wanted to other people to love me as much as she did and to share that, right? And I look back on that and I also remember times when I didn't want to do that. And the conversation was not, "It's okay, you don't have to." It was, "Come on, it's Uncle Joe or it's Uncle Mary," or, you know, whatever it is, "You know, they're happy to see you. Give them a hug, give them a kiss." And like that actually sends the signal to your child that they're not in control of their body. And so to say, you know, it's totally fine if you don't want to be affectionate with these people, thank you for trusting yourself. That is a different conversation, and it's the conversation that I think really needs to be fostered with our children now. Also just talking about bodies. Of as your children's bodies change, you know, commenting on how they're gaining weight or losing weight or they're too thin or they're too big or they're eating too much or they're not eating enough. And like, it's just a lot, right? It's a lot to hear from people at school. It's a lot to hear from teachers and to hear from media and then to also be hearing it from your parents. It's just something that we have to stop doing. Of the kind of inconspicuous body talk. And even, you know, and this is something I look back on, you know, as a gay man of dealing with my own kind of body dysmorphia issues and doing it in front of my son of, oh my gosh, I need to go back to the gym. I need to lose 5 pounds. I need to run. Ugh, I feel so fat. All these things, they're just, they just don't send the best messages of, of body acceptance and body sort of friendliness with your body.

Yes, it's so true. And it's such a something that's so ingrained in us that we don't realize what we're doing. And it's such a cycle breaker moment to be able to be aware of that and to be aware of your wording. It's something that we've been doing in our house. I love that you brought that up because It, you know, something that all of my kids are very sensitive and aware of. And so we've had many conversations around this and I am 100% guilty of saying, oh my gosh, I don't like the way I look, or I feel overweight, or, you know, all the things you kind of just named. I need to get back to the gym. I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And, and learning to shift that and say, I want to, I wanna feel healthier. So I, I personally am going to shift the way I'm eating, or I'm going to do this because this makes me feel better. You know, what, what are the things that you like? And I have, you know, these big conversations around like, you know, what, what they like, like what makes them feel good. And, um, but it's definitely a rerouting of the narrative, right?

Right.

Because we all, that's kind of, again, like that was very, I think, generational and something, a generational cycle that we have to break so that our kids can go forward with a much healthier view of eating, working out, and loving, which all will come to loving their bodies.

You know, the word integration is often talked about. You know, it's like we do this work and we integrate. Like, what does integration mean? And integration is sort of like when we have this felt sense of something in our body, and then we have also language to talk about it and language to speak about it in maybe a different way that sort of aligns with this rerouting of our nervous system. And rerooting of narratives that are really deeply part of our lineage and our ancestors, of our mothers and our fathers and our grandparents, these messages that have been cultivated. They've been being cultivated for many, many years. And so to change them involves an integration of the learning in a way that is somatic And also from like a language perspective and also sharing with others. Like, how do we share this information with each other of, hey, like I hear you speaking to yourself in such an interesting way.

Are you aware?

Are you aware of how you're speaking to yourself? It's affecting me too. You know, and again, that's another language of of stop talking to yourself so negatively, as opposed to, hey, are you aware of how you're speaking about your body right now? No, how am I speaking about my body? Well, you just said that you're fat and you need to like run for 12 miles. Oh God. And you're like, oh God, wow, did I? I did say that. Well, that's not really kind, is it? You know, it's allowing people to come to their own conclusions rather than shaming them for the shameful feeling they're already having.

Right?

Like piling on. Oh my God. Yeah. Well, it's such a great pattern interrupt. I mean, to be able to like, mm-hmm, that moment and like stop it, like stop the thought and become aware of it and think, okay, you know, help not only yourself, but someone else think, okay, how could, how can I look at this differently? How can I approach this differently so that I'm taking care of me and just taking care of me, not even in a better way, just doing it right. I think that's such a big thing.

Yeah. I mean, that was something we kind of talked about before we started is this idea that, you know, as parents, we tend to put so much focus, outward focus on our children and their success and their happiness and their joy. Joy and how they're behaving and things that we oftentimes we lose sight of the work that we need to do ourselves. And just in sort of the reframe and the reorientation of our own connection to our bodies and our own sexuality and our own eroticism, our own life force energy by way of embodying those things. We are teaching our children, right? Not by telling them, but by doing, as by setting as an example. So self-care and self-advancement and self-growth is, is a, is a really big part of being a parent.

It is.

I think it shifts the relationship so, I mean, 180 degrees. Definitely with, I mean, with yourself at 100%, but with your child, because they, even if you aren't saying anything out loud, they see the shifting, right? They're, they're constantly taking note, right, of your actions, of your behaviors, of your words. So it is powerful. It's really powerful. It's inter— I'm in the, just like, this made this pop into my head, and when we were talking about this earlier too, I'm in the middle of writing a book, and I'm working with my editor right now, and a lot of this book is the personal work that as a parent you need to do in order to be the best support for your child, in order to support them in their coming out process, and as they navigate. And I initially was getting a lot of pushback. You know, people just want to know what to do for their kids. They don't want to know this other stuff. And I was like, well, unfortunately, I mean, yes, I get that, but this other stuff has to be done, right? So I'm not, I'm not wavering on this being in there because this is important. And this is such an important— this was such an important, like, incredibly valuable lesson that I learned that I didn't know that I was allowed to do. Like, that was mind-blowing to me that I was allowed to take care of myself. I can't be the only one that thinks that, right?

So yeah, and in doing that, you know, you also give permission to other people to do the same, right? As, as a parent and a mother, um, and as a father, you know, to to really insist on your own advancement and your own growth and be able to share that with other people, it's like, huh, I could be doing the same thing. That's available for me too. You know, if you're open to it, I'd love to talk about this article that's written by a colleague of mine named Kai Cheng Thom around gender.

Yes, I would love that. Yes, please.

So just in a nutshell, the article really is about evolution. And she talks about how gender binary, how we think about it, is really about— it's much easier for us to think masculine, feminine. And if a child is going from being born in a masculine body to being transitioning into a feminine, more feminine body, that's easier for us to understand, wrap our heads around. But when the sort of trajectory of this human is evolutionary, we have a much harder time dealing with that because it's not black or white. And what they're talking about is sort of that gender can be, and the invitation to look at gender as an evolution. And that even if I'm looking at myself and who I am, of looking about who I was in my teens and my 20s, really identifying more in my feminine energy. And then in my 30s, really stepping more into what I felt as a more masculine energy. And I'm still sort of in there. And then also now kind of wanting to reconnect with feminine energy. And so this noticing this evolution of gender in myself and also how that pertains to my sexuality. And that your sexuality is evolutionary, just like your body is evolutionary. We're all going to continue to change. That is the one fact I can name, is that we'll continue to change. And if we can create space for our evolution, if we can create space for the possibility that your child's gender will shift and evolve, it alleviates so much pressure on everyone's part of, you know, this discussion. If my child does transition, or my child does name themselves as non-binary in this moment, that maybe later they could change their mind. And that's actually okay. It's okay. Because you know what, it's their body.

Exactly right. I mean, and how is that affecting anybody else, really?

Yeah, it's, it's really how it affects other people is that it leaves people in their own discomfort, and really that's their work, not the other person's.

Correct.

Correct. And so, you know, I just, yeah, go ahead.

No, no, no. I was just thinking that I, I love that I would love to actually read this article, but I, I love that she was talking about the feminine and masculine energy, which I don't think a lot of people realize that we all have both. Right. And that's, and so to what degree that you are kind of I don't feel— I always kind of picture it like a, you know, you're kind of— you tap into both of them. I, you know, and we're all— it's on a spectrum. There's the word I was looking for. And I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, I mean, what she actually is proposing is slightly different, which is that what, what we're able to see and feel as a culture is the binary. Masculine, feminine, and we all have both. But really what gender has the possibility of being is more like a galaxy, or like all the colors in the coloring box, right? And when you ask somebody who's sort of like exploring non-binaryness, like how it feels in their body, it's sort of like it's not one or the other, which is again much easier for us to understand because we've been so conditioned conditioned in binary, black-white, negative-positive, right? Masculine-feminine, that it's harder for us to grasp that, oh, my gender expression or my sexual expression looks like all the colors in the coloring box, not just the two at the opposite poles.

I love that. That's such a great visual. Because people can wrap their heads around that.

Yeah. And it's, you know, you kind of, you can understand like how for people who are not kind of inhabiting that space, how that feels maybe overwhelming and confusing. But if we're able to reframe it in more of a positive outlook of looking at it like possibility, of this actually is not confusing. What this offers is so much range and so much possibility of who I'm allowed to be and who I can be and how I present and how I move, how I speak, how I love. It just creates more possibility.

But it also encourages one to really be so aware and do that work to continually be just very in touch and connected to who they are, right? What, what does that mean to them? And so, and so, you know, kind of learning, relearning how to go internally to see who you are and not looking for that out here. By checking a bunch of boxes.

Yeah, and again, the sort of what's possible— and I'll speak from an I-space— and also what's possible, what has been or become possible for so many of my clients in exploring their erotic potential and their erotic body and erotic desires is that, you know, what we're able to do when we are exploring in those spaces is really explore the depths of who we are as beings. Because, you know, what I've noticed is that when we're in psychotherapy, which I think is really valuable, we're up here, we're in our heads. And when we're, you know, speaking from a heart place, we're speaking from our chest up. I've worked with dancers and yogis and I've worked with so many different types of people but you would think these dancers and these yogis and these breathwork practitioners, they're really connected to their sexuality but they've really focused on a belly-up approach where they're not counting their genitals as part of their their body, and they're not speaking to them as if they're part of the plan or part of the party. And so to start to include your genitals, to include your sex as part of the conversation, is really important. And it's also daunting for some people, for many of us, because it just has not been, right, has not been permissioned, has not been allowed. And there's so much wrapped up in that conversation.

Yes. Oh my goodness, yes.

Um, overwhelming you?

I have like 100 questions right now, and I'm like, okay, I'll be quiet. That's the best way to put it. I'm like soaking this all in. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm actually having like epiphany moments and questions all at the same time. I'm just fascinated, and I know that people listening are going to be fascinated on how, you know, how, how do we do this work as adults, as, you know, parents A, and then B, kind of circling back to, you know, obviously the earlier we can start talking with our kids about sex and about just their bodies and their whole bodies and, you know, all of these things we've talked about today, the better. But how do, how do we do this? How, how do we How do they find you?

How do people find me?

Yes, how do they find you?

They just reach for the star and pull it down. No, um, you can find me on thebodyvox.com, um, also Court Vox on Instagram, The Body Vox on Instagram.

Okay, well, I will be posting that in the show notes for sure. But let's say, you know, there's a group of people that are like, yes, this is work I would like to do. I need to do. Is this something that women would, you know, come as just a single person, or do they come as a couple, or how does that work with your retreats?

So the women's retreats that I work, Back to the Body, they're They're for individual women. And next year we have so many offerings. We have some programs that are sort of entry level, and then we have programs that are a little more advanced. And so there's sort of something for everyone. And that's backtobody.org.

Okay.

And then, you know, to work with me privately, I work for 3 days minimum in immersion. I work with, with men and women, and like I said, when I work with women, I work in a triad model, so with another female-bodied practitioner or therapist to kind of triage with the client.

Sure, sure.

Oh, that's very cool. Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you so very much. Kind of my final question, this is my A big question that I ask everyone who comes on is— and you can kind of choose, it's one of two questions— what are your words of wisdom that you would share either with a kid coming out right now or a parent who has a child coming out right now?

You know, I'm going to speak to the kid coming out. I think what I'm going to say might be counterintuitive to what you might think I would say, which is check in with your surroundings, check in with where you live, who you are living with, and understand before you come out whether it's safe enough. I think, you know, your people's safety, children's safety is important. And, you know, there are organizations like The Trevor Project that have hotlines for you to call, and that can be done on your own. You don't have to share that with anybody if you need support. But yeah, just noticing like if you're in Florida and you're in a really conservative school and you have conservative parents, and you fear for your life in coming out, that's a tricky one. I'm not going to tell somebody to come out in a container that's not supportive or that is not safe. And so first and foremost, understand that you are safe and that you will be held. And then beyond that, if the answer is yes, I feel like I will be held safely in my body here. To either do it how it feels right for you. You know, I think we've come to this place in America where coming out is sort of, okay everybody, let's sit down, let's have this deep conversation, and I'm going to tell you that I'm coming out. But you know, to speak with some of my European friends and partners, their coming out story was not they didn't sit their parents down, they didn't do that. They said, "I'm going out with my boyfriend. I'm meeting Joel again, you know, I'm going to this queer party." You know, it was more of like, "I'm living my life this way." And so I wonder if there's sort of, obviously there's a cultural difference, you know, with the United States and some of the other countries like Sweden and Belgium and that are a little more advanced, in my opinion.

Absolutely.

And also, I don't know that it has to be so cut and dry always, but everybody has their own way of doing it.

Right. Well, I think that's— there's, there's no wrong way of doing it. But to say, I love that you touched on the safety piece first because that is I could not agree with you more. And, you know, I think it's also— gosh, that is the, the goal, right? So that someday in America, that, that's— that is the way, that it's no different. My boyfriend's coming over, my girlfriend's coming over, my boyfriend and my girlfriend are coming over. I mean, you know, like, that it is not a, like, you know, shocking moment or a any of what's going on right now. So that is, that is the work. That is the work. So thank you so much for being here today.

Yes, thanks for having me.

A fantastic conversation. Before we end, is there anything else that you'd like to share?

I don't think so. I, I think I've, I've shared it all.

I think you have. We did.

You We shared a lot.

You shared a lot. Thank you. This was really fascinating and wonderful, so I appreciate you being here.

Thanks for having me on.

Thanks so much for joining me today. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would be so grateful for a rating or a review. Click on the link in the show notes or go to my website, chrysalismama.com to stay up to date on my latest resources, as well as to learn how you can work with me. Please share this podcast with anyone who needs to know that they are not alone, and remember to just breathe. Until next time.