“A number of podcasts do a good job examining trans ideology, but there’s a glaring black hole where the voices of mothers should be.” -reader/listener comment on StoicMom’s Journey podcast. I hope to fill this “glaring black hole” with Conversations from the Trenches!
In this episode, I talk with the mother of an adult trans-identified daughter who is taking testosterone. Lisa Salamone is also a fellow life coach, and I loved being able to nerd out with her about “The Model” and other life-coaching concepts! We share some of the tools that have helped with the work of “letting go” and taking charge of our experience, modeling how to respond to external circumstances in a healthy way, and the importance of the energy we bring to interactions with our trans-IDed children. I loved Lisa’s concept of “clean pain” vs “dirty pain” and I admire the difficult work she’s done to be able to operate from a place of peace and intuition to maintain a relationship with her daughter, even as her daughter’s body has changed from the use of cross-sex hormones.
Two of my StoicMom articles are referenced in this conversation. One is Communicating with Your Archetypal FTM, Part One: The Energy. In it, I talk about moving from fear to trust so you don’t damage your relationship, and I describe a bit how to do it. I start to explain this in my conversation with Lisa, but I end up going a different direction with the thought.
You can find a diagram, short explanation, and even some examples of processing “external circumstances” through The Model to change your experience based on the meaning you assign those circumstances in this StoicMom piece:
As always, I welcome comments and discussion. I imagine some of this was challenging—we talk about “some hard stuff.” Where are you in this work? Are you on a journey toward more peace? How good are you at “negative emotion”? Are you recognizing yourself as a badass? If not, what would it be like for you to “perceive a higher path” and work toward that?
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Be the Change You Wish to See -with Lisa