How Tiny Mindset Shifts Help Parents of LGBTQ+ Kids Move From Fear to Empowered Advocacy

Welcome back to More Human, More Kind. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome back Heather Hester for a conversation that is warm, soul-stretching reminder of the power of small shifts, self-trust, and everyday miracles. Welcome to More Human, More Kind, the podcast helping parents of LGBTQ+ kids move from fear to fierce allyship and feel less alone and more informed so you can protect what matters, raise Brave Kids and spark collective change. I'm Heather Hester.

Let's get started.

In this episode, you'll discover the life-changing power of micro shifts, how asking simple, intentional questions like, what if this could be easy? Can open up entirely new possibilities in your relationships, mindset, and well-being. We'll also talk about how to reconnect with your intuition. You'll learn practical, accessible ways to listen to your inner knowing and trust your body's messages, even when the world teaches you to look outward for answers. And we'll talk about why your inner relationship is everything. We'll explore what it means to rebuild self-trust, pause with intention, and let those moments ripple into radical personal transformation. This is the kind of conversation that makes you breathe deeper, think softer, and maybe, just maybe, shift the way you move through the world.

Welcome back to More Human, More Kind. I am really, really happy that Heather Hester is here again. It's been A few years since you were here last time, and you've been up to a lot of fun and interesting and life-altering things that I just thought it was time for you to come back and share some more of your magical, but really just beautiful way that you look at the world and encourage the rest of us to look at the world. So thank you for taking the time to be here.

Oh, I am so excited. I am thrilled. It is perfect timing.

It is perfect timing. It always kind of happens, right? When you, even those days where you think, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if I'm up for this today. Those things that you go ahead and do often are like, I'm so glad I did that. Like, that was just what I needed, right?

Yeah, usually that's the way it goes, right? Yes.

Yes. So Heather and I are in a couple of different groups together. That's how we've gotten to know each other and we work one-on-one. And one of my most favorite things that I've learned from you is been, you know, big picture, helping me learn how to shift, like making very small shifts in my mindset or the way that I look at something. Um, but when we kind of dial in on that, it's, you have this approach that is really lovely. And I often, like, I hear you in my head now and I have your little, your things written down so I can be like, oh yes, remember that. So I'm wondering if we could start there and if you could share a little bit about that.

Absolutely. I would love to. I would love to. So I would say that it starts, of course, with me. And I'm someone who in my lifetime has grappled with depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-doubt, self-confidence, all the things, and have tried a lot of things to get it right, to fix myself, to be the person that I should be, I could be, all, all of that. And what I found is that in trying to do things the way that I thought they should be done, in trying to do things the way somebody who wrote a beautiful book, it worked for them, that I felt more and more broken, more and more like I was doing things wrong. Like I had such a long way to go and instead of, instead of supporting myself, through learning and, and looking at the way other people do it, it was having the opposite effect that I just was seeing more and more of the things that were, I believed were wrong with me. And, um, when that clicked for me, then I started saying, well, then let me learn who I am, like how I work.

Mm-hmm.

So. I can start to do the things that work for me instead of work for somebody else. And maybe there's overlap there, you know, isn't that lovely? And I need to figure out what, how I work. And in that process, I studied a lot of different things. I went to intuitive development classes and learned about intuition, which I think is such a beautiful thing. We should all be taught how to hear ourselves and trust ourselves because our intuition and our body is speaking to us so clearly. And we believe it means something different, but that's a big conversation for maybe for another day. But in that process of learning how I work, I learned that these tiny little things, these tiny itty-bitty things, made a big difference. If I kept thinking about how come I'm not that kind of a person, how come I don't do it that way? I, I just felt bad. But if I started to stop and ask myself, okay, what if it could be a little bit different? What if I could be a little bit different in this conversation? You know, most of our life is, is on repeat. Most of our life is Groundhog Day. What if this morning I could do something a tiny bit different? What if in this interaction I could, I could open up a little bit more, be a little bit more vulnerable, whatever the thing was. And what I found was that there was such compassion that I had for myself. Oh, that was hard and you did it. There's a little hope in you. I didn't see things like that.

Who knew?

And What I found is that this is really beneficial for other people too. Other people, different people need different kinds of questions and different kinds of prompts, but these simple teeny tiny little itty bitty things have huge ripples.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, they do. So can you give an example? Well, of one thing that you might say to someone?

Well, one question is coming to mind. What if it could be fun? And, you know, that's a powerful question because we're trained to think, what do I need to do to make this happen? What are the steps? We're really trained to think about essentially how hard something's going to be. Right.

And I think even— sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but I think that we're trained to think that it has to be hard in order for it to be successful.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's not conscious. There's so much of our lived experience that is completely unconscious.

Right.

You don't— it's, it's like you get a peek behind the curtain once in a while when you realize, Oh, I've been thinking it needs to be really hard to change my relationship with my partner, to parent differently, to, you know, whatever, run my business. And when you stop and think like, well, what do I actually want? And if I'm having a business or a relationship, maybe I want part of it to be fun. Part of what I want the experience to be is fun. And so asking yourself the question, what if it could be fun? And then you just, you don't have to answer it. Your, your brain starts to look around for answers and your body changes and your body relaxes. And then the next thing you know, these ideas show up for you. These experiences show up for you. It's really incredible what happens.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It is really incredible what happens. And I think the parallel to that one is, what if it could be easy?

Yeah.

What if it could be easy? And I feel like every time you say, you know, one of these to me, or I think about it and I have it written down, I can feel my entire body just take a breath, right? Like relax and just ground and get clear. And when we're so wound and in the hard, the hard, right? And the, it's hard and it's upsetting and it's that it's hard to see anything. And so, oh, these questions, while they sound so simple, they're actually quite profound.

Yeah. Yeah. I call them the magic wand questions. It's so true. It's so true. And it's like you keep running into a wall trying to figure out how to fix the thing or get what you want or make it the way you want, do it right. And it's like if you were driving a car, you wouldn't just keep smashing into a wall. You would back up and say, okay, we gotta try something different here.

Right.

Right. And then you start to relax and open up and say, okay, what, what could that be? And that's what happens when you ask one of these questions. And I listened to a podcast. I have no idea what podcast it was, but there was an interview with a CEO of some really big company. And he does this when he's really jammed up and he can't figure out his way through to solve some big CEO problem. He sits at his desk and he leans back and he says, Well, what if this could be easy? And then he just kind of relaxes into the question and he says, something always comes. Something always comes. And it's like, it's like one of those things with all the dominoes that knocks the ball that drops the thing into the twirly thing. It just sets something in motion. Yeah.

Yeah, it does. It does. Well, I think it is that breath. It's that permission, right? To see things in a different way, to actually see a solution instead of just having your head down and in the grind or in the hard or in the whatever, the sad, whatever it is that you're in that you just can't see outside of when you say, you know, what if it could be easier? What if it could be fun? And you pause and that it is miraculous what happens.

It totally is. And part of why it works is because when you're in the experience, you lose track of the fact that that's not you. The experience is not you. Consumes you and you, it feels like it's you. But asking the question and taking the breath makes you take a step back and it makes this little tiny gap of space between you and the experience. And in that gap of space, there's the possibility for you to consider doing it differently, for you to consider maybe this doesn't mean what I think that it means. You know, so much for most people, not everybody, but for most people, when we're having, when something feels hard, our inner monologue is, this is because you're not doing it right. This is because you're broken. This is because you're a problem, whatever. It's not like, oh, I'm sorry, this is hard for you. I'm sorry. You're having an uncomfortable experience. You, you, You know, you're okay. But when you take that little space back from it, that word permission, it gives you permission to say, okay, what do I want here? How would I like this to be? What if something else is possible?

Right? Huge.

Huge.

It's so huge. Well, and what it also then does is not only does it allow you to consider the possibilities or see the possibilities as they come to you. It also invites you or teaches you kind of that practice of trusting yourself, like trusting your— like your intuition, right? So it's that beginning. Every single time you do that is one more practice or one more like, oh, Like if I hear, if I stop and listen to either what I'm hearing or how my body is feeling and what that is telling me, like you trust yourself more and more each time.

Yes.

So they, they work together. It really works together.

Absolutely. And I know I didn't realize, and I think most of us don't realize, I mean, life is happening at a million miles an hour. All the time from all directions, right? That we don't realize what these little micro moments, what they mean, how we're interpreting them. And that piece about trust is huge. We really don't have trust in ourselves, most of us. And we wouldn't see it that way. We wouldn't think that we don't trust ourselves, but when you feel something And your response to the feeling is, oh, never mind. That's just because you're afraid. That's just because you're not good enough. That's just because they're better than you. That's just because, ooh, you, how could you trust that? How could you have trust in that relationship? That inner you is That trust is broken down. You make promises to yourself, tomorrow I'm gonna do it. Next time will be different. And you don't, you're not thinking about, am I making this as a commitment to myself? Or what does this mean? Building trust within yourself is so huge. This is the relationship we have our whole life. This is who we've got everywhere we go. Every minute we're here, it's us. So it matters.

It does matter. And I think that we have been taught in a lot of ways to seek that whenever we feel or think anything, we seek the answer outside of ourselves, right? We seek the validation, the information, the answer to the question, the, yeah, whatever it is, instead of taking that pause to say, what does that mean? I remember years, years ago, way before we met, way before I started this podcast, I remember it was right at the beginning of everything with Connor, and I remember saying to somebody, I just feel in my gut that something is wrong. Something is wrong. And I, it was, I was canceling doing something, going on this trip. And this person was very upset with me because I was canceling the trip. You know, I wasn't going and I was like, I can't leave. I can't explain it to you, but I just feel, and they were like, that is the most ridiculous thing to ever listen to your intuition, to listen to your body. They were really upset and that's okay. Like that was their experience that they were having and that's fine. But it has stuck with me all these years because it ended up that my, I needed to listen. And what happened was that it just kept getting louder until I actually was like, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I hear you. You are trying to tell me something.

Right.

Right. And I need to pay attention to what you're trying to tell me. And that's, you know, that was an extreme example.

Mm-hmm.

But it was such a great wake-up call for me to be like, oh wait, like this is actually me, my body. We're not an enemy, right? Like not working against me.

Yes.

And so how do I kind of reconnect into this? Because I think there are also a lot of, um, I mean, we could go a lot of different directions in this, but I will just say that I think that there are, whether it's, um, religion or academia or just different belief systems, that that is what they train you is to trust something else, right?

Right.

Yeah.

To not trust yourself. Yeah. And so part of a, I mean, a big, big part of what you teach is how to trust yourself and how to repair that.

Right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's probably in part cultural because we're such a go get it done. What, you know, what's next kind of culture. But what I heard in your story is this sense of something's not Right. Something requires my attention. I need to slow down. I need to be paying attention. So a lot of times when people get something like this, they feel, well, my intuition is broken. I don't have an intuition. I didn't know that that was coming. But the beauty of what you said and how you processed that was, no, I, I know that I need to be watching. I know that I need to be paying attention. I know that I can't take my eye off of my family right now. My attention is required. That was the message.

Right.

And, you know, people think that the message is some kind of a to-do list. Here's your next step. And once in a while it is. Pick up the phone and call so-and-so, whatever. But in this— Totally. In this instance, the message was simply be present. There's something happening. Your, your, your attention is required.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Right. That's an extreme example, but I think it's an important one because I think there are many out there.

Yeah.

Who feel, feel that way or feel like, no, I, there's messages. I know there's information. I just don't know how to reconnect with myself. Yeah. And, um, so I think that is— it is such a gift to be able to, you know, to do this. I say work, but it's not really work. It's like getting to know yourself again, right? It's like taking—

exactly, exactly—

a pause, right? Like, it's like this intentional self-care, intentional time with yourself.

Yeah. I have this client who I'm just fascinated by. There's a couple things that are happening with her that have sort of spun her in a direction that's been hard for her. And I'm seeing her switch the momentum and it's so exciting to see, but she's someone who, in my language, is an external processor. Right? She understands what she wants and how she feels by hearing what other people think and how they would choose and how they understand a situation.

Sure.

So asking them their opinion, how do they understand things, that helps her. She feels within her what feels right and wrong and what— and it helps her decide how she wants to move forward.

Okay.

She didn't totally understand that that was her process. She came to believe that she was someone who was incapable of making decisions, incapable of knowing her own mind, who needed someone else to tell her how to do things. She really, over the years, lost so much confidence in her ability to navigate life. And when she started to understand that this was how she was processing, Something really powerful happened and I helped her create language so that she could say instead of, you know, what would you do? Or what do you think I should do? To say, it's helpful for me to hear how you see this. What would you think about this situation? How would you choose to walk me through how you would make this decision? And that really helped her understand what felt right for her. And part of being that the way that she had evolved into being was that now it's messy in relationships, right? People are feeling like she's feeling they're gonna be mad at me if I don't do what they say. They're feeling like, why isn't she doing what I told her? It just, it got all soupy and messy and frustrating and she was suffering. And so once she started to understand this distinction, there was a lot more self-trust that could come back and a lot more sort of compassion and understanding. And it took away that pressure to do what other people expected, to navigate all of that. It took a lot of that pressure away, which was huge. But she was still frustrated. She's, you know, I can catch myself getting into the thought loops and the habits, the old habits, she told me, but I still don't know what to do. Nothing has changed. And I said, well, you have to take your eye off of the problem. You're there babysitting your problem, checking on it every 30 seconds, a minute, an hour. Are you still here? Am I still doing— is my life still broken? Is everything still wrong? You know, you haven't gone anywhere, right? You're still— I said, you gotta— when you catch yourself, which is huge. Because that— she didn't even understand that her level of self-awareness was above where most of us are most of the time. For her to be able to understand, oh, I'm stuck in this loop, that's huge. You have to be able to recognize that to be able to say, okay, what if some— what if something different was possible, right? So That was a question that worked really well for her. What if something different is possible here?

Mm-hmm.

And it slows down the projection of what everybody else is thinking, what everybody else wants. It makes space. But then she would try and figure out how to solve the great big hairy problems of life. And I said, okay, we just gotta ask the question and take a breath, and then we gotta walk away from thinking about the problem for a while. Stop looking at it. And yep, some really big things are happening in her life, not because she's a whole different person, but because she's learned how to have trust in herself and learned how to take a pause and listen for what feels right for me right now.

Mm-hmm.

And that's what we need, right? Yeah.

Yes. Yes. Well, it sounds simple, right? I mean, it sounds easy. And I think sometimes we're like, oh, I don't know. Can that work? Yeah, it can. Right?

Yeah.

I think sometimes when we hear things like that, we're like, oh, I don't know. I mean, can I do that? Am I able to do that? And, um, and I would just say, like everything, it's practice, right? We, we are definitely a culture of, okay, I'm gonna stop doing this tomorrow and, you know, 100% this thing over here. I'm gonna start doing this thing over here at 100%.

Yeah.

It's all a practice. It's a bumpy, bumpy road of practice and And I think the thing that you said about her being so aware, having that awareness is— that's huge.

Huge. Huge. But we're so busy trying to figure out how to get it right and trying— you know, nobody wants to feel uncomfortable or unhappy or all of these things. Wouldn't it be lovely if every moment of the day was unicorns and rainbows and and we're, we're the full box of crayons. So some of the emotions that we feel, feel uncomfortable. And that doesn't mean that we did it wrong. That doesn't mean that we're broken down or failing at life. It's just in this moment, I feel like this. And when you can start to unhook, unplug, this feeling means I'm failing and that kind of a thing. This means I'm not good enough. And just understand the feeling as an experience that you're having, you're really just taking back so much of who you are. And it's so lovely to see. It's so wonderful to experience. And it is simple, but it's also a new habit.

Right. It's a new habit. Exactly.

Exactly. And it can be helpful to work with somebody. Or have a friend or somebody in your life who can say, okay, you're stressing out. So let's pause, take a breath. Let me ask you, you can hand them a piece of paper with your questions on them. What if it could be easy? Okay, let me, let me pause. What if it could be easy? Okay. You know, or a journal and you have those prompts written down and you just, you know, journal it out. What if it could be easy? You have to learn what works for you. Everybody's Everybody has their own things, but remembering that it's about that shift in your energy, that shift in your perspective. It's not about suddenly all of your problems are solved. That's—

Oh, absolutely. Well, that's unrealistic and that doesn't happen anywhere.

Exactly.

So that's—

but that's how we build things up in our mind. Like somehow I can find the magic formula. I'll never have to feel this again.

Right. Well, there are many out there who are selling the magic formula, right? And yeah, that's kind of a beware, buyer beware, cuz that's not real. So you recommend a couple of different practices. One, one I know you can do on your own, but another you offer in a group. And so the one I'm thinking of that you can do on your own is the heart walk, but then you also have your group on Tuesday. So I wonder if you could share a little bit about both of those because they are really good practices for strengthening that awareness muscle and strengthening that pause, which is really hard to do at first.

It is. It is. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I always say, trust yourself, trust what works for you. Trust that you're doing it right. Don't add on 45 layers of stress and pressure that you have to do it a certain kind of way. The important piece is that you're learning how to listen to you and trust that if it's working for you, then it works.

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

So the heart rock walks, something I still do on my own and a number of other practices in a similar nature, but the Hard Rock Walks were the way that life taught me. So when I was going through all of this and trying to figure out who am I, how do I work? How do I stop hurting? How do I feel better? How, you know, all the big things. I would go out in the woods and walk with my dog. And when I was really caught up in my head, I would get back to my car and I would not even really remember any of the walk. Right. Because I was so busy in my head. Over time, I started being more mindful on my walks, paying more attention. And one of the things that I would do is I would ask myself, what do you feel right? And it's amazing how fast your brain answers that. It's amazing how hard it is to actually be in the experience of what you're feeling. I really invite everybody to try that on and see, because your brain is going to start talking to your invisible audience real quick and explaining how you feel, and then you're not feeling anymore.

Right.

The feeling stops.

Right.

The explaining's happening. So I kept practicing that, and I noticed that when I would practice that, I wasn't thinking about my problems or the big questions of life. I was just being present in the moment and I started finding all these heart rocks, these rocks shaped like hearts everywhere. And the walks, when I was present and I was practicing, they were everywhere. And I started making little piles of them under my favorite trees and alongside the trail. And I would tuck them into little nooks of branches and things. And I started to understand that there was this marriage between the inside of me and the outside of me, that the world outside of me was reflecting what was inside of me. And you've had this experience when you're late in your car and you get behind the slowest person on the planet and you can't get where— and everything is making you crazy. Right? You've had that experience. You've seen that happen. Yes. And so I started to watch for this in other places and other, I call them signs and synchronicities, and now I call them miracles. And miracles for me are anything. It could be a heart rock walk. It could be a billboard that has the word that you're just thinking, or that matches the song on the radio. All of these things that mesh together. The person you've been thinking of this morning, suddenly they call you, you you get an email from them, this enmeshment of all of us, the way that the inside of us is reflected by the outside of us. So realizing how life-changing that is for me to live with that at the top of mind, that I don't have to figure out how to solve the big hairy problems in my life. I can just pay attention to what I'm feeling and shift my energy and the world around me changes. So I started leading this thing on Tuesday mornings called the Miracles Club. And I have ladies who come every single week. And then I have all these beautiful people who drop in and a lot of them stay and some of them come and go. Anyway, this is the practice that we do. We reflect on our miracles for the week and it's Tuesday morning. So a lot of times people aren't feeling particularly miraculous or sparkly. But somebody says something that sparks somebody else that sparks somebody else. And we start to remember the things that went right. We start to remember the synchronicities, the little magical moments, and sometimes the big magical moments that happen. And then I lead a meditation, a visualization, and it is this power of shifting what's happening inside of us. And then watching for it to be reflected back to us outside of ourselves. And it's changing lives. It's changing lives in this beautiful, wonderful, soft way that's very, I wanna say palatable, but that's not the right word. It's very, it's, I have a, a, a woman who comes tangible. Tangible. That's the word. A woman who comes in and she's had, she's been married for a very long time, but she's always had this, it's like been sandpaper in her marriage. It's been friction and hard and scrapey and she hasn't felt like she could lean into it and be, you know, feel snuggly and safe in there. And that's a long time to live that way. Yeah. And suddenly she's finding that she's not bothered by the things that have bothered her for 25 years, 30 years. That suddenly she feels safer in this relationship and she's not watching, she's not pissed off all the time. She's not keeping score. It's not personal. That's so beautiful.

Huge. It is.

So beautiful.

It is.

Yeah.

I love that so much. Oh my goodness. Okay. So tell everyone how they can find this, and I will also put it in the show notes. So then it will be easy for everyone to find.

Beautiful. Yes. Okay.

To just click on and get there. Yes.

Click and come to the Miracles Club. That's free. You can drop in and check it out. You can come in any shape or form. Sometimes people come and they don't put their camera on. Some people come and they don't share. There's no expectation. You are welcome to come in whatever way you want to participate. You are welcome. My website is unconventionalintuitive.com and I lead a lot of events and workshops, both in-person and virtual. That's a great way to interact with me. And you can also work one-on-one with me if you want some support in really making these new habits around self-trust, around self-compassion, and that pause where you take back your power and your ability to make the changes you want to make. I'm here.

And it is so worth it. I will just say as a current client and friend, I'm very lucky because I get to work with you and I get to work alongside you in other capacities. So it's a fun a fun way to really learn about all of the things you do in lots of different ways. And that's so much fun for me. Yeah. But it is life altering in the very best way. And it's such a good way to take care of yourself. So check Heather out, click, click, click. And thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. This has been so fun to get to have this conversation with you, and I really appreciate it. And I love that I get to have you in my life in so many different capacities.

Wow.

So fun.

You know, Heather's are fun, so.

That's right. That's right.

What a conversation. Here's what we're taking with us. Tiny questions can be powerful catalysts. Whether it's, "What if this could be fun?" or "What if something else is possible?" These gentle prompts carry space between you and your struggle, and in that space, clarity can emerge. Your intuition is not only real, it's trustworthy. When we pause long enough to listen to ourselves, we often find we already know the next right step. Learning to trust your internal guidance isn't indulgent. It's essential. And finally, self-trust is a practice, not a destination. Like any relationship, the one you have with yourself takes time, awareness, and intentional care. You can't rush it, but you can rebuild it moment by moment. Ultimately, today's episode reminds us that we don't need to overhaul our lives to feel better. We just need to begin with presence, curiosity, and compassion. When we create even the tiniest gap between our experience and our reaction, we open the door to transformation. So here's your invitation: take the breath, ask the question, trust the whisper. You are more capable and more connected than you think. Thank you so much for joining me today. Remember, new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.