Culture
And Then She Came...Part 2
In this episode of Lightstop All Things LGBTQ+, host Annie McKinnon welcomes back Jillian Abbey to discuss her newly launched book, Perfectly Queer. They explore themes of self-acceptance, the challen...
And Then She Came...Part 2
Culture •
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Interactive Transcript
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Hey everyone and welcome to this episode of Lightstop All Things LGBTQ+, where everyone has a voice.
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I am Annie McKinnon, a transition coach, writer and podcaster. I have recently repranded and have a new
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email address. If you would like to get in touch or even feature on the show, then send me an email
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over to info at Annie McKinnon.org and of course that link will be in the description.
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And just a reminder that this podcast is now released every two weeks. But today I'd like to
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introduce you to Jillian Abbey. Jillian lives in Tampa Bay with her partner Jen,
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their wildly wacky children, Sophie and Olly. And I rescue Cat named Po. Jillian was on the show
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last year and I'm delighted to welcome her back to hear about her newly launched book,
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Perfectly Queer and to find out where she is now. You can find her full bio and links in the
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description. So without further ado, let me welcome Jillian back to the show. Welcome back Jillian.
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I'm so glad to be back here. I love that we can continue this conversation.
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Over a year later. I was just about to say I'm really just so excited. You were my fourth guest
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when I started this podcast. And now your number 50 is absolutely amazing. And of course you've
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launched Perfectly Queer, your book, which I have to say is absolutely amazing and really,
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really funny. Of course it's got its Halloween points in it, you know, the struggles, the
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challenges, but yeah, really really funny. I laughed all through it and I can see from comments
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that people have reviewed that people are just loving it. I think it's been a long time waiting
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for this to come out, Jillian. Yeah, I'm really excited by the reception of it. You know,
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I had a lot of fear leading up to the release of the book because I had come out to my family,
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I had come up to my friends. I had started coming up more to my local community and through
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podcast, but this book and the fact that it was going to be available worldwide in audiobook
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and paperback and so many different formats and it was getting attention. This was like a big
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coming out. And so I kind of braced myself for the almost inevitable criticism that I thought
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would come along with it. And I have to say that I am overwhelmed by the amount of love and
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support, the amount of people who said that whether they're queer or not that they have seen
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themselves in the story and seen struggles that they've gone through and then that it does take
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very difficult hard subjects like depression and divorce and and coming out, but with the
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lightness to it because you know, why not why not find some fun in it? I don't know.
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Absolutely and I think like you've just said you covered it all and I'm sure everyone who reads
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that book queer or not will relate to some parts of that book. I know I certainly did.
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In your introduction, Jill, you know that this book is not just for LGBTQ plus people and that
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is a universe that universality to it and that's just what you're talking about. So if people
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that are not queer are picking up this book, what can they expect to get out of it?
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Well first they can expect that if anyone sees them reading the book, they might assume that
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they're gay. That is something that's so strange to me because I'm like, wait, if I'm reading a
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murder mystery, nobody says, oh Jill, what are you plotting? But there's there's some like
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strange proximity to queerness thing that people may ask you. So if you're an ally, you can just
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let them know that you're a proud ally. But what a friend pointed out to me that I think is really
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good is the tagline on the book is facing big fears, living hard truths and loving myself fully
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out of the closet. And she said, if you just removed that out of the closet line,
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that's why the story will resonate with so many people because we've all had those moments in our
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life where we have to make a decision whether we want to or not. And there's fear around it.
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There's realities and truths that we have about ourselves that maybe we're not comfortable sharing
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with the world. You know, we're used to putting on a facade, especially for us perfectionists out
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there. And it's all on a journey to loving ourselves better. I really think is what so many of us
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are here to do on earth is just feel as comfortable as possible in our own skin so that we can show up
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as the best version of ourselves and all surround us. Right in the book, good experiences come from
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Mamie. Can I ask what was it like revisiting those? It was pretty wild actually. So I had always
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labeled myself as somebody who had the memory of a goldfish. I couldn't remember a lot. I couldn't
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remember what I had for lunch. I couldn't remember people's names and faces. Even when I looked back
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in my own history, when I originally just started writing through these things, I didn't have a lot
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of things that I thought I could talk about. I attended a Hayhouse Writers Workshop around the same
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time that I had just started journaling my story. And one of the things they suggested in there
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was to block out. I believe it was like 30 minutes or so and just write down as many memories as
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possible. And don't judge them and don't censor yourself. Just it was like a free right.
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Having to do that for 30 minutes straight, I was amazed at the rabbit hole of memories that
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it took me down. And it was really cool in hindsight that there were so many different things I did
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in my life decisions I made, places I put myself, people I aligned myself with, that I judged myself
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harshly on in the past for doing it. And when I had to do this dive back into my history, I saw how
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all the dots connected. And I started to get more enlightenment about, oh, that's why you had to go
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through that learning experience. Or oh, that's why you had to be in that bad relationship to know
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what a good relationship is. And sure. It was a very healing type of exercise to go through.
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I might try that one myself actually. In your first chapter, star baby, what does that mean to you?
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Wow. I have mixed feelings around it. So star baby, when I was a child, my mom used to call me star
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baby. And we even, I remember talking about getting it as the vanity plate, my license plate on my car,
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which at the time seemed a little absurd to both of us because I was so, I was so far away from
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driving age that the fact that we were planning that kind of seemed silly. But my mom just said she
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had this sense that I would do something big with my life. Now, obviously, lesbian memoirist was never
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on her list of how she thought that may happen. But there was almost this underline expectation
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or thought planted in me that like, your life is going to be something big. Let's see what that
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big is. And in a way that's a blessing in a curse because I did really cool things in my life.
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My first paid job was dancing with the Joffrey Ballet, which is one of the best ballet companies we
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have here in the United States. I was a junior. Yeah. I was a junior Olympic level diver. I never
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actually made it to the junior Olympics, but you know, reached a decent competitive level in spring
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were diving. I studied abroad in coach Obama, Bolivia for a year when I was only 15 years old and
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worked in an orphanage and raised all this money for them. I just had a lot like my whole childhood
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was very achievement driven. And that was partially me because I ended up becoming like an achievement
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junkie. I loved how good I would feel after I accomplished the next cool thing. And at the same time,
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it was a star baby also in a way became a weight of like, well, what are you going to do next?
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Well, what are you going to do next? And when I got into adulthood and a lot of those gold stars
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that they hand out for like, good job on your test or, you know, oh, you got straight A's in
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college, all those awards, a lot of them go away in adulthood. And so suddenly the thing that had
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fueled me for so long was not there anymore. So yeah, nicknames for kids. I don't know.
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I do understand the weight of that. Yeah. Because when you're a kid that continuous
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supples, if you like, in recognition and then commentate or heard, and you'd say it's all gone.
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And yeah, you're achieving, but that's not always been recognized. Right. That can be her.
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Yeah, it was weird. It was just like a total shift of what I used to value and what it seemed
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like other people valued suddenly had shifted. And Joe's not great anymore.
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Right. And so I did a lot of career hopping in my adult life too. And I think that was kind of
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an effort of, okay, I'm good here, but I'm not great here. Okay, I'm good here, but I'm not
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great here. What else can I do? What else can I do? Now I'm in a place where I feel very settled.
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And I engraving that that external validation so much less than I used to. Like I can just be
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content in life. And that feels really good. I'm really, really pleased to hear that because it
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is a great place to be when you arrive there and just have that feeling of contentment, peace,
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settlement. And for some it arrives early in life for others like myself, I arrived late in life.
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But you spoke about Bolivia there. And I'd like you just to talk us through about what that
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experience was like you were 15 years old. Yes. So I became a rotary exchange student because I wanted
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to get out of Buffalo, New York. It felt very, at the time and in the small suburb where I lived,
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it felt like a very homogenous community. And so I really wanted to see how other people lived
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different ways of life, different experiences. And so I said, send me anywhere. And the rotary
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club said, you're going to coach a bomb on Bolivia. And I said, fabulous. Nobody in my community
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seems to know where that is on a map. So I'm excited to go there. It was an incredible experience.
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But taking that trip during such a formative time in the teenage years and realizing that I was
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in a place where the things that I did, this is pre-Facebook, pre. I mean, the internet was just
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getting started with dial up. So I kind of had this sense of like, well, what happens here stays
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here. Not that I lived my Bolivia time recklessly, but there were things that I don't know. It let
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me loosen up the control on my life a little bit more. And one of those experiences that I talk
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about in the book from Bolivia is the fact when I first got to the country, my host sister, who
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was my age, kind of gave me a tour of our school and of the neighborhood. And she held my hand while
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we walked. And so as a 15-year-old who, you know, kind of didn't ever show interest in boys. And so I
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thought that maybe I just, I always chalked it up to being so, so success driven that, oh, I don't
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have time to be attracted to other people. But I remember in that moment being there when she held
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my hand in going, this mixed feeling of, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. And also, oh, my gosh, what if
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somebody sees us? Like, is this allowed? And what's going to happen if somebody sees us? And then,
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you know, I talked about in the book as well that like I went back to my Spanish textbooks from
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middle school that said, like, Latin cultures are more affectionate and I'll greet with kisses on
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the cheek. And, you know, holding hands, girls holding hands is not so uncommon. And I'm like, okay,
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I feel safe because this is a cultural thing. This isn't a gay thing. It's a cultural thing. But
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also I kind of really like this. I don't know how I feel about that. So, experience in something
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that was making you feel good. But on the other hand, questioning, well, is that a lie should
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have been done this with this happened at home, probably not. So lots of feelings coming up
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through that experience. And I've really enjoyed that part of the book as well reading through that
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journey. You talk about achieving, graduating from college. What was the most challenging thing
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about that? I balled my eyes out at the graduation for college because I felt like I was at the top
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of my game. I had done well academically. I was involved in every single club possible. I had,
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for the first time in my life, I felt like I had a really solid friend group. And now we would be
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back dispersed all over the world. And then I was entering the working world that nobody seemed to
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talk excitedly about. So, leaving college was really hard because I knew things were going to shift
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for me. And I was going into a career that was very respected with a company that was very respected.
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Everyone seemed really proud of me. But I think that was the part where I started to realize,
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like, I'm not so excited about life anymore. But I was doing everything I was supposed to.
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That came up in the last episode. Didn't that do enough of the thing you were supposed to
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write rather than what you really wanted to do or what you got was telling you to do?
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It's interesting, isn't it? And also in the last episode, we spoke about your husband and coming out.
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I think you go into a bit more than this book about your coming out to your in-laws.
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You tell us about that. And I think I think this is one of the points in the book where you do use
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humor as well. But I got a real sense how difficult that must have been. And I just like
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were audience to hear if you're able to share that with us. Sure. There were a lot of factors that
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went into coming out to my ex-husband's family. They are a very religious family. They're a more
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financially well-off family. And for me, never having predicted that I would be getting a divorce
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in my future that I would ever have to sort out child custody type of issues. And on top of that,
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all because I'm part of the LGBTQ plus community, I was really nervous to come out to them. And
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you know, as I mentioned in the book, I had the gift of time with coming out in that my ex-husband
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and I decided that we could do this on our own schedule and the way we wanted to. So we went through
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the holidays together with he and I both knowing what was coming, but without his family knowing.
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And it was shortly after, and we had such a great holiday together. And at the same time when I pulled
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away from his aunt's house after Christmas, it really hit me emotionally hard because I knew it
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was probably the last time I would ever see these people. There were all of those tiny little
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last moments. And the hard thing about coming out is that oftentimes we have to process those alone.
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So coming out to them was a challenge, but there were some beautiful surprises in it too. In that,
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when my ex-husband told his siblings, they were incredibly supportive, not just of him, but of both
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of us. They recognized that queerness is not a choice and that me coming out with the truth and
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and us choosing to move forward in the direction that made the most sense for both of us in the long
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term, that that was a hard thing and that we needed support. We didn't need judgment in that time.
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And so they were there to support him when he told his parents of what was happening.
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Again, his parents struggled with it. It's not easy for any parent when their child is going
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through a divorce. And obviously there were a lot more layers to this one too because the next
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question is, well, why they seemed so happy together. And now his religious family with their
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religious community of friends was also going to potentially have to discuss queerness, which is,
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you know, if you don't have the language for it and you don't have knowledge of it, it's a lot
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harder to discuss what you feel and where you land. Absolutely. And I guess there must have been
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stuff around judgment with them having to go into those religious environments and talk about
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being queer, a queerness. It sounds like you also had great support, which is lovely to hear.
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It is. I'm really curious to hear about Amy and the lesbian vitamins.
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Yeah. Wait, I thought that that would be a reaction.
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Yeah. There's so many emotions there. And I have to say, she and I are still friends.
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We still have to text each other on occasion. I had her read the manuscript before the book came
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out and was really surprised when she called me in tears because it was very out of character for her.
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And she said, I'm so sorry. I never saw this from your perspective. So, but for your listeners
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out there who have not yet met Amy through my book, she was probably the best way I think I could
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have started out on my lesbian experience. She and I had been friends for about a decade.
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I felt very comfortable with her. We were total opposites in every way possible.
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And at the same time, we had a mutual respect for each other in some ways. So, when I shared with
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her that I had come out, she made a joke about, I think at the time, she made some joke about like,
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you know, the only way you can confirm is if you if you try, and then I did end up going back to her
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and saying, were you serious about that? And she was ish. I don't think she thought I would take
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her up on that offer, but we're kind of like, yeah, okay, baby, yeah, sure. Why not? And like I said,
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it was like lesbianing with training wheels because she was very experienced. And at the same time,
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she didn't shame me through any part of the process. And so it was a great safe entry into, okay,
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what is intimacy between two women and what is sex between two women and what are, I don't know,
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there's just there's a lot more layers to it that if I had to go through that with a complete
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stranger that I met on a dating app, I imagine it would have been a whole lot scarier. So
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in that respect, I'm so grateful to her for holding that safe space for me and for kind of like
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teaching me some of the things along the way and also really helping me confirm that that lingering
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doubt in my mind of like, how do you really know your gay if you've never been in a relationship
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or if you've never been intimate with a same sex partner? So that confirmed, okay, quiet that
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noise in my head. At the same time, she and I were completely mismatched. And I tried so hard
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in my mind to convince myself that eventually she will fall in love with me. Eventually, she will
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see what a catch I am. That's a great thing in the story that you know, just waiting to find out.
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And I would say to our listeners, you've got to pack up this book and really read about this
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relationship because it kept me. I'm thinking, what will happen next? Right. And that's the thing
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is I painted this Amy in my mind, my aspirational Amy of we could be great together if X, Y, and Z
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change. And I think there's a lot of people regardless of relationship type who sometimes do that.
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They want it to work because let's be honest, dating is hard. Yeah. Trying to find a new partner
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is hard. And I just had such a fear of being alone that I was like, I will make this work.
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Yeah. And I think you're right. I mean, through my life and relationships that have been times when,
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you know, I've gotten what someone may be in then a few months or even a year after, looking at
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that person thinking, who are you? But then realizing, well, actually, I meet you up in my head.
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And it's a park-breaking realization. It is just almost like you're not who you are because
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I had just meet your personality and character up in my head. And of course, it was lovely. But then,
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boom, I say, it's, you know, yeah. When I realized that I enjoyed my time thinking about her and
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fantasizing about what the future could be like more than the actual time we were together.
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The time we were together, I would leave feeling like garbage most of the time. That's the
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saying, doesn't it? Those saying that we choose to ignore. Oh, I did. Yeah, because we don't want that.
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We don't want the feeling of garbage. We want that feeling that, I guess, that fantasy that we've
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meeting our head to be real. Right. And so I even went to like an intuitive card reader and,
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oh gosh, I don't know all the different titles she has. But I basically said, why does this person
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keep showing up in my life? And what are we supposed to be? And I was really hoping she would be like,
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oh, this will all work out for you. You're meant to be together. She told me, she's like, I'm getting
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a strong twin flame energy. And at the time, I didn't know what that was. I was like, oh, twin flame,
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yes, hot passionate relationship. All right. And she's like, no, not that. The twin flame is a person
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who comes into your life to show you more about yourself or open you up more or to teach you
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something about yourself that you couldn't have learned on your own. And she said, are you doing
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that for each other? And I said, oh, yeah, absolutely. Like she's obviously teaching me more about my
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identity and my attraction and what I love. And also what I don't like in terms of relationships,
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because I really didn't have a lot of dating or relationship experience. And then conversely,
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you know, she had a lot of dating experience, but she wanted her person. And so I was able to show her
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that, well, if you keep treating us all like we're contestants on the bachelor at, you're not going
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to find your person. And that's why I'm so like she and I went our separate ways. And it was
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only a few months later that she met this woman that she's like, I don't know how our paths have
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never crossed before into Ampabay. And now they've been happily married for a while. And she's like,
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I can't believe I found my person shortly after, you know, we had our time and experience together.
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I wonder how much impact you had on her realizing just as much as you realize that she wasn't for you.
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That's interesting, actually. You talk about suffering physically. You lost a lot of weight for what
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you talked about. You have a small frame anyway. And your hair started falling out.
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So there was the period of time between when I came out in a therapy session and could finally,
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like, love and accept myself. This is who I am. That's so cool. Oh crap, I have real life. And then the
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time where I actually came out to my ex-husband. And so in those months, knowing with certainty
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who I was and feeling like I was living a lie every single day when I had to wake up in the morning
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next to him, talk to him throughout the day, it felt like I was keeping the worst secret of my life.
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And it's, you know, for people out there who are familiar with the term masking, it is that was
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some very heavy masking of not now I know who I am. And I'm putting on a different front. And this
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all feels like a lie. And I'm so out of alignment. It started to take a mental toll on me. And so I was
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living off of espresso and Jack Daniels and not sleeping. And then that cascaded into the physical
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to the point where I ended up in urgent care because I had a lot of different physical things going
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on. And I remember the urgent care practitioner looking at me and she said, do you have a history
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of cancer in your family? And I thought, oh my gosh, like, they think it could be that. And I don't
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think it's that. Like, I know what it is, but I wasn't ready to come out to the practitioner too
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and say, do you know the secret I am carrying right now? Like, that's why I don't need cancer treatment.
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I just need to come out. But it was an eye opener for me that if I didn't come out to him soon,
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that my body was was fighting the war now. Yeah. And I didn't know how long I could sustain that.
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Yeah. And you talk about being a perfectionist a lot. This was probably one of the most
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imperfect times of your life to deal with. Yeah. That was the hardest thing about it is I
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one thing that was important me to talk about in the book was my own internalized homophobia or
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some people prefer the term internalized heterosexism. Because I had been raised in a household and I
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even myself believed like, no, I love gay people. I have a gay friend. And I realized that I was
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okay with it as long as it was everyone else and not my own label. And so as a perfectionist,
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and it breaks my heart to even say this, but this is just the reality of where I was at is that
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I saw queerness as the obstacle to my perfect life. This is what would make me imperfect. This is
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everyone wants me to be straight. And if I come out as gay, nobody will see me as perfect anymore.
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Yeah. I'm assuming that that's why you've named it perfectly queer.
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I am so so the original title of the book was a chronic case of hetero and which I thought was
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hilarious, but I'm actually really glad that my editor and the sales team pushed me to explore
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more titles. I'm so glad we landed on perfectly queer because the lesson by the end of the book
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and where I'm at now is that my most perfect life is the one with my queerness in it where I embrace
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my queerness because that is me. Yeah. And I would never have gotten to the life I have now in the
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be this person that I wasn't. It catches up with you at some point. Of course it does. And
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the vote here is through to the end of this podcast we are now. But what I want to know about
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Jill is Netflix and the award. I still go back and catch episodes every so often. Is that the
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original award? Yes. I watch a little bit of Generation Q with them. I think the free
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subscription ran out. I was like, I'm going to go back to the old one. Yeah. I thank
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a nice friend Netflix and I think that's what really kind of helped me understand my sexual attraction
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in a safer way because it was just me watching the TV and going, oh, I didn't realize that this
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turned me on. Or, oh, I didn't realize that like this life, this type of relationship, the type
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of energy just between two queer women, like that's something I'm really drawn to. So there was the
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L word and then you know, you search a little bit more and it's like, oh, there's a whole lot of
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movies out there where I could finally say it's been an interesting experience of moving out of living
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so much my life in my head and now living it in my body. And I really think honestly through the
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TV, like that is one way where I would start like, oh, now I feel something in my body. Oh, okay,
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maybe this is attraction and not, you know, just, oh, he's such a nice guy and this would be perfect
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together. It was a whole different sensory experience. And you certainly explain that in the book as
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well. I really enjoyed that part. But we covered in the first episode, you're coming out as I said
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and I'm interested to hear your children's perspective. You spoke a little bit about it in the
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first, but in particular, what's a Lego bin? Yeah, so my son, I believe he was six years old at the
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time that I came out and when my ex-husband and I decided to tell the kids that we were getting a
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divorce, it was important for us to explain to them why because I didn't fasten anything about
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kids and really all humans is that when you don't provide answers, they fill in the blanks.
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Yeah, absolutely. And I didn't want them to have stories of, well, mom and dad never loved
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each other or mom and dad were fighting or mom and whatever because we did have a good marriage.
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I did love him very much. The management of that breakup is what matters the most. If it's managed
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in a healthy way, then it's like slightly to affect the children, other people round about for sure.
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Yeah, and we also thought too that it kind of, the thing is with the book that like the
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queerness piece didn't, I don't want to say it didn't affect them at all, but like that was not
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the part they cared about. They were just like, oh, okay, fine. And so I asked my kids getting back
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to your question, I asked them, do you know what a lesbian is? And that's when my six-year-old said,
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what's a Lego bin? And I was like, yeah, not Legos. Well, kind of mom's going to Legoland and she's
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never coming back. And so I thought it was just a really cute way and I was fortunate that they
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have been raised with other queer women in their lives. So I said, well, you know this person
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and that person or this couple and that couple. And they're awesome and we love them. And so for
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the kids, it was nothing strange. It was just like, oh, okay, you love this person or you love that
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person. Wasn't that hard. Wasn't the difficulty that a lot of people sometimes try and make it out
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to be like kids can't understand LGBTQ topics because it wasn't about sex. There was zero
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discussion of sex in the conversation with our children. And it wasn't, isn't it?
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Isn't, no. Oh my gosh. And it wasn't the what will be a better place if people could just say,
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okay, okay, she loves that person, love that person that doesn't matter. But unfortunately,
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we don't. Yeah, I just thought that was really really funny. What's a leg up in that really
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pickled me? Yeah. And then she came. Then she came. So where are you now? Let a listener
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know a little bit of how well a bit not see how she came. That's a yeah. How that relationship
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started. This is the part for anyone who's not watching a video of this. I am blushing hard.
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I'm sweating profusely. Yeah. So life is great. Mm-hmm. Right now. I've been so happy with the book
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and the reception of the book. My partner, Jen, who I discussed in the book that we eventually found
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each other. We've been together almost four years now. We're engaged. We've been in a long distance
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relationship the entire time. I think I want to write a separate mini book on navigating the
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long distance relationship. Good lessons learned from that. That's a bad good one. But congratulations.
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And you're the engagement. Yeah. Thank you. So and we're just in the process of
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knitting our lives together, which is really exciting. And you know, my son especially has said
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like she's the missing piece of our family. The kids adore her. She brings a whole new dynamic
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and perspective to our family that we didn't have before. And so for them, it's almost like the
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divorce didn't cause a lack. They're surrounded by more loving and caring adults who are adding
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new information, new perspective and new support to their life, which is great. So they've gained.
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They've gained. Yeah. I mean, not that there weren't hard things. I don't want to like diminish that.
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But from a long-term perspective, they really have kind of a dream team of parents around them,
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including my ex-husband's girlfriend as well, who's absolutely amazing. So there's that.
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The reason why I'm sweating too is because I've actually started on my next book. And I decided
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I do want it to have the focus of sex and intimacy and love. Because one thing I found is that
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like it's great to come out. And all it's like, yeah, you're gay. But there is a lot that we carry
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with us for those of us who have been in heterosexual relationships our whole life and maybe dissociated
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during those intimate moments or we've lived a life where we've been so disconnected from our bodies
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and to now have to be present and in our bodies in a relationship. That's a big shock. And I don't
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know that we have a ton of conversation around that either. It's not just like, oh, I'm gay and now I'm
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having the best sex of my life. I mean, it's great and all. But there's a lot of like lessons learned
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there and things that I'm still trying to figure out for myself and to work through for myself.
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Because that's the great thing even in this first book is that a lot of it you are figuring out
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as you go along. So it's not like picking up a book and someone telling you, you know, this is,
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it's real life experience and figuring out as you go along and what transpires from that. And that I
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think makes the book great. Well, thank you for saying that because also, so I have the blogs like
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queerabby.com and I have my TikTok as I ask queer Abby. And I sometimes get flack from people who think
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I'm trying to be an advice columnist. And I'm like, I can't tell you what to do. I am probably not
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the person to tell you what the right thing to do is. But I'm happy to share stories in my
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perspective and what I've learned. And if that helps you to say, oh, I did the same shitty thing.
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Oh, I was feeling the same weird way. Great. That didn't feel like it was advice that was you
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bringing me the reader into your, uh, into your life and your perspective on that and your struggles
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and your triumphs and just really, really enjoyed it. Oh, thank you. So, Jellie, and if we were to end this
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conversation right now, what would we have missed? I don't know. You are fabulous, Annie. I'm so glad I
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got to come back and chat with you again. And I'm just so proud of your podcast and getting over
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the 50, episode milestone. Yes, fantastic. 50. Yeah. I guess the last thing I would, I want to say
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is that the space that I've moved into now is a space of service. And so my next step that I would
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like to take is to continue the bridge and continue the conversations so that people have a more
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of an understanding of the LGBTQ plus community, particularly parents out there who have children
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who are coming out and maybe are unsure of how to navigate the situation. And so in the coming
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months, I'm really going to be leaning into my blog site again in my TikTok site where people can
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submit their questions anonymously or with their name if they want. And then I will share my
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perspective and resources I have and other people out there, coaches and therapists and things to
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help each other out because I feel like we are getting in a lot of positions where people are
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saying a lot of hurtful things, people are backing into their corners and feeling very attacked.
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And we're not looking for solutions. Yeah. And so I hope that through the website, we can do more
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more thoughtful processing and maybe work towards coming to some solutions with hard subjects, hard
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things. Sure, and I absolutely love that because it means that then you can come back on the show.
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When that's released, and we'll have a brand new conversation, thanks to talk about.
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So if you were to leave one message for our listeners, what would they be?
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There is no greater feeling in this world and nothing that is worth fighting for more
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than you to live as you were created to be, to live in alignment with yourself and to be able to
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live in your truth. And that's a really hard thing to do. And so if it seems really hard and scary,
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it is and it's also entirely worth it because we want you here.
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For you as you are because then you can show up best.
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Yeah, for us. I say watch the know. There you go.
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So how can our listeners contact you, Jill? I will of course put up all the links down,
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but your main contact if they want to get in touch.
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Yeah, so my blog site is queerabby.com and you can enter your email address. And if I ever
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get a newsletter up and running maybe someday, I will reach out to that way. Otherwise, Tiktok
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is ask queer Abby and on Instagram, I am Jillian Abby author.
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Love it. And I will, as I say, put those links in the description. But what I know,
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it's been to have you back on for a second time and I really looking forward and hoping that
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you'll come back on when your next book's out and show your knowledge and insight was with
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our listeners. So I'm sure love you anyway. So great stuff. And I'm also so happy to hear that
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you've settled down and you and the kids are happy and it just sounds like life's great at the
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moment. I might have a normal life. Finally. Sure, you'll think of something Jill too, not that in
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its head and bring some stuff into it. So, so thank you so much. Thank you, Annie.
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And I'd also love to thank the listeners and chaining in two weeks time for the next episode of
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LATESTOP ALL THINGS OF LGBTQ PLUS. Thank you.