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Mining the hearts and minds of unorthodox teachers.
Here you'll find playful, inquisitive, and friendly dialogues with the likes of psychologists, musicians, teachers, yoga instructors, philosophers, DJs, health educators, entrepreneurs, astrologists, holistic healers, meditators, life coaches, athletes, hairdressers, authors, speakers, comedians, leaders, advocates, changemakers, seemingly regular people bursting with wisdom, artists, mathematicians, and much more.
The Junkyard Love Podcast - for a better life.
Junkyard Love Podcast.
At what age do we learn how to be a better ...
conversation?
Junkyard Love Podcast.
So, what I would love to do, Wendy, welcome.
Welcome to the show, welcome to the Junkyard Love Podcast.
Thank you again for doing this.
Um, we have just briefly mentioned your new podcast, uh, Demystifying the Transgender Journey, I think is the name of it, correct me if I'm wrong.
But I would love, um...
The link to that is gonna be below, anybody who wants to check that out, follow that.
But I would love a little bit of a background bio on that.
What, what, what is that?
What have you been working on?
Um, tell us all about your new podcast.
Well, Jacob, thank you very much for mentioning all of this.
I, I believe that I've star- I, I've, I've started on this path in 2015 when I started living my authentic self.
I wound up talking with my neighbors, I talked with people, I...
The community I lived in, um, there was a large gay population as well as cisgender straight people, and I wound up talking with everybody about what it means to be born transgender.
So, by 2022 or so, I started to get really highly annoyed at all the bullshit out there about people like myself.
All the lies, all the misinformation, uh, the fostering fear and everything else.
I decided, "Okay, if there's a way I can use my voice and all, I'll put, put something out there opposite of that." And I'd kind of like to actually inform regular straight society what this is about, those are the people that I wanna talk to.
So, I got, uh, really interested and fascinated with podcasting.
Uh, when I moved to Rhode Island, I hired an agency the s- second day I was in my apartment.
I hired an agency to represent and promote me on podcast interviews, and that started my podcasting in the fall of 2023.
I met Lynn Murphy, a cisgender woman, knew very little about the LGBT world but was very fascinated with what it meant to be born transgender and she wanted to interview me for her podcast and a, and a book.
One thing led to another, we became friends, we've recorded a lot of video with me and we've recorded other people as well.
And by the spring of 2024, we'd did an agreement to co-host a brand new podcast called Demystifying the Transgender Journey.
She's been like a sponge, absorbing everything I've told her, researching, talking to other people as well.
She's an accomplished author and podcaster of her, on her own rights.
And it's just been u- uh, an incredible collaboration.
And I've invited other transgender people to join me in a community that we're doing as well as the podcast, but the community is for straight and gay cisgender people who may have transgender people in their lives.
And a lot of people in the transgender commun- community, I, I understand this, I don't personally agree, for me, I'm open to answering questions people have.
A lot of people are not comfortable with that, so even if you're friends with somebody, your friend who's transgender may not be open to having a conversation about what their life is like, how they feel.
A lot of people feel that it's, um, kind of a thing where you are being challenged to explain yourself.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
No matter how nice the person is.
So, one of the things that I like to do with people is, "Ask me anything you want to.
Don't worry about how you phrase it.
If it's phrased in such a way that I think is hurtful to another person or might mak- might make them uncomfortable or upset with you, I'll explain how to ask the question better." And that's how we learn to communicate with one another.
We're, we're regular people, just like anybody else.
Right, right.
You're just a person too.
Exactly.
So, um, the whole podcast, the whole community, everything is oriented at...
Now, my mission is to humanize being born transgender for the rest of society.
Mm-hmm.
And in order to do that, I'm doing that with conversations, with, uh, speaking with people.
I've, uh, also added, this year I've added consulting.
My career in tech, I let- my last 18 years I was a consultant in technology.
Well, I can be a consultant on transgender too.
Yeah, yeah.
Hu- human technology as well.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So, I, I love what I'm doing.
Mm-hmm.
And I also love, uh, coaching people and helping them through their transitions at whatever stage they're in.
A lot of us are...
I had tremendous limiting beliefs-
Mm-hmm.
...
about what was possible for me, and they were formed in childhood and all the way through my teenage years.
I had told my parents that I was a girl at age 10 , and that did not go well.
I was threatened with being committed to a psychiatric facility and fixed.
Mm-hmm.
So, I formed all of these beliefs.
Of course, when you're, when you're born, that's when the doctor looks and says, "It's a boy," or, "It's a girl." Well, that's just the physical sex, period.
That's the genitals for sexual, uh, reproduction.
Has nothing to do with gender.
Gender's between the ears, not the legs.
Uh, gender is formed in the frontal cortex of the brain during the second trimester of birth.
The sex- uh, sexual orientation is also formed in the brain in the amygdala of the brain in the second trimester.
And for most people, those are all totally congruent with what happened to the body physically.
For some of us, myself included, I got a full dose of female in the frontal cortex of my brain.
I knew it was there by age three and four.
I felt different, I felt comfortable with other little girls, not with little boys.
It was just that simple.
It's a feeling.
And you'll hear or read or whatever, uh, dysphoria.
People are dysphoric, um, and all.
What that really is, is that's the incongruence between how you feel, how your mind feels about who you really are versus when you're born and the doctor announces it's a boy or a girl, the socialization begins from that moment, from the parents, the immediate family....
the extended family, it grows into the school system and your friends.
And by the time you're five, six, seven, eight years old, you know you can't really express what you feel.
Because of the socialization you've experienced, you know how bad it is that, th- the way people feel about it.
Right.
Uh, "You can't be a girl, you were born a boy." Well, that's just the physical anatomy, it's not what's in your brain, it's not what...
how you were, uh, designed before birth.
Right, right.
Okay, so what i-...
I- I- I was, I was thinking about this, 'cause something, something that you said...
So, so for one, just to lay a little groundwork be- before my question, something that you said that I really liked, and it was something I started this podcast with something in...
a similarity in mind, is that you often just go...
you'll go to, you know, a bar or a restaurant and just sometimes sit down next to somebody and, and strike up a conversation-
Mm-hmm.
...
and, uh, just kind of, you know, si- see, see where they're at it...
with it, you know?
And I can imagine the beauty of the conversations that must unfold, um, you know, maybe some clunky areas that you probably have to trudge past, but...
So, so I was thinking about, you know, what, what I would...
L- like, if, if I was not even, you know, thinking about you, but you sit next to me and then suddenly I'm, I'm in this, you know, i- incredible, interesting conversation about transgenderism, um...
Transgenderism is a word, right?
Yeah?
Is...mm, yeah?
Um-
It can be, yeah.
Okay.
Well, I, I guess I'm making it a word today.
Uh, it can-
There you go.
...
be made up...
m- made up in my world.
Um, but, so, okay, so, so I was thinking, like, I have personally spent a lot of time...
You know, we talked about I really love meditation, I really like philosophy, um, even, like, deeper into meditation, if you've heard of Advaita Vedanta, um, uh, a lot of, like, reflection of the self and, "What is the self?" And-
Yes.
...
and, "Who am I?" And all, all that fun, interesting stuff.
So, I've spent a lot of time in that area, but even when I was younger, I, I never really...
it never really occurred to me of, of wondering who I am, "Well, am I a different gender?" And so I was like...
So, the...
whe- when I think about, you know, myself and my, uh, "What does it mean to be a human?
What does it mean to be, you know, just a, a person in the world?" I don't...
Th- the gender part never occurs to me.
And so as much as I think that I could, like, relate with you when I have my own versions of, uh, you know, j- everybody has questions, who they are and what, what is all this, whatever, but you have this other thing that I just...
I don't have the experience with.
So, I think my question would be, what, what are the...
what are the corollaries to you between, like, you know, everybody questions, "Who am I?
What am I doing here?
What's this all about?
Who am...
You know, I was born to these parents, I feel this way, they tell me I'm this way," all that stuff.
What is the difference between, like, that and questioning your gender?
How does that feel-
A- actu-
...
for you anyway?
Actually, uh, I really appreciate this question a lot.
It, um...
For most people, one of the reasons they never question their gender, and for most people the word gender isn't even really an active part of their voca- vocabulary.
Oh, yeah.
Uh, because of that, you know, stereotype of the doctor checking the baby and announcing it's a boy or a girl, everybody uses the word sex.
Your sex is female, your sex is male.
While that applies to your physical anatomy, it doesn't necessarily apply to your gender.
Fo- fortunately for most people, there is no incongruence between the gender that was implanted in the frontal cortex of their brain and their physical being.
There's no incongruence there, they never question it.
So, that's one thing that I always tell people, "If you've never looked in the mirror and questioned your actual gender identity, 'I should have been a boy,' or, 'I should have been a girl,' if you've never done that, I don't expect you to fully understand this and understand the depth of, um, the distress that this brings on people."
Right.
Um, on the other hand, this is just a much more profound life change than what anybody else would go through.
Um, packing up and changing careers and moving across the country, that's a profound life change.
And the only difference between that and this is just your physical presentation, what you're doing.
We go through the same process of, "What are our thoughts about this?
What are the beliefs that we have that are preventing us from achieving that life change that we either want or know we need to go through?" That's one of the things that I had to work on, is shifting all of my thoughts and emotions, which I formed in childhood and teenage years, that kept me safe-
Mm-hmm.
...
because I couldn't tell people about this.
I found out when I told my parents it was a very bad thing.
So now, I have all these beliefs, you know, "You can't do this." Um, it's a p- a, a, a very impactful thing, and you wind up...
I found I repressed huge parts of my personality too.
Mm-hmm.
I couldn't be social with people.
I had this secret I was hiding.
Right.
And the way I got through all of this, my first therapy appointment, uh, from my first through my third, my therapist challenged every one of my thoughts, every one of my beliefs in myself.
And I started learning how to rewrite the stories.
We tell ourselves the same thoughts and stories every day, 90% of the time they're the same from day to day.
Mm-hmm.
They become locked in, rock hard beliefs.
Mm-hmm.
So, in order to make this transition...
And by the way, I hadn't, I hadn't cross-dressed in 35 years.
At the time of my first therapy appointment in January of 2015, I hadn't talked to another human being about how I feel in four and a half decades.
Wow.
All that repression was making me physically sick.
I, I couldn't imagine, yeah.
That must have been so heavy.
I...
Yeah.
I, I was 70 pounds heavier than I am now, my blood work was horrible, and I was type 2 diabetic.
Three years of living authentically and completely changing my life all went away.
My blood work comes back perfect all the time.
My primary care doctor was freaking out over it and said to me, "What do you attribute this to?" And I said, "I'm happy."
Yeah.
Truth.
Living in truth.
For the first time.
Yeah.
Exactly.
I'm not hiding anything-
Yeah.
...
and I'm not repressing anymore with all those horrible thoughts and those emotions that are associated with those thoughts.
They'll kill you.
Yeah.
P- we, we produce chemicals in our bodies-...
uh, neuropeptides from the brain, chemicals from different organs of the body, and that's how the human mind communicates with the body how we feel, what we're thinking, whether or not we're in anxiety, or depression, or fear, or survival mode, or whatever it is, or complete and total joy.
And that is communicated to our bodies physically through chemistry and all of the drugs we produce?
We're the best drug dealers going.
Oh, yeah.
They're highly addictive.
We're all Holden.
All Holden.
And we can get totally addicted to depression, anxiety.
It becomes a way of life and that's who we are.
Yeah.
And I wouldn't wish being born transgender on my worst enemy.
That is how intense this, this is.
Uh, we have all kinds of ways of distracting ourselves.
Um, I distracted myself with my tech work.
Um, technology, it was normal to have a 10, 12, 14-hour day work week.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
So, okay, that's a distraction and I enjoyed the computers and all of that stuff.
It was fun.
But, um, uh, I just really can't begin to tell you how profound of a life change this really is for people.
Mm-hmm.
But it doesn't have to be that difficult.
When I transitioned, I did not know any other transgender people.
There's really...
We're only a really small percentage of the population.
Yeah.
All this BS out there about us is about a little over 1% of the population.
Yeah.
I, I feel like a lot of, uh...
I, I don't wanna dive too into, like, you know, what the news networks are saying and stuff.
Yeah.
But I feel like they make it sound like there's like boogeymen out there.
Like, "Oh, be careful." You know-
Yeah.
...
"Watch out, there's all these transgender people who are trying to lie to your kids," or whatever.
It's j- it's-
Mm-hmm.
It's so silly and they're, they're overlooking your humanity, and it's just-
Exactly.
It's really a, it's really a boring take, to be honest.
But, um, it's something that we're all dealing with, so I- I'm glad that you are here speaking your truth and sharing with people, you know?
It's-
Um, one of the things that I learned once I started, uh, deconstructing all the male socialization I went through.
Yeah.
Um, shifting all my thoughts and emotions, forming new beliefs that were much more supportive of me, within three months I went from full repression to, "Wow, I can't believe I can do this."
Yeah.
That's the power of learning to shift your thoughts and emotions and form new supportive ones.
I used visioning, meditations in different forms.
Um, I really got into journaling-
Mm-hmm.
...
for the first time in my life.
And not so much writing down stuff and making it pretty and p- putting it all...
No, I just typed in a Word document-
Yeah.
...
all the thoughts I had that were driving me crazy, I typed them.
And the power of that is five days later I'd go back and read them.
"Holy shit." "I don't wanna think like that anymore.
No wonder why I'm so miserable.
I don't wanna feel like that anymore." Start rewriting that thought.
You can't go from, "It's horrible," to, "It's wonderful," in one step, but gradual shifts of changing the thought patterns.
Right.
That's what it takes and it's constant work.
Yeah.
Well, well, so you...
We, we, through...
We discussed Joe Dispenza.
You got into Joe Dispenza.
Um-
Oh, absolutely.
It sounds like that was pretty, pretty, pretty invaluable to you.
Um, I- I also...
Excuse me.
I also stumbled into, you know, on, on my own journey of discovering who I am and, and, and just, just the whole, the never-ending journey, right?
Um-
Yeah.
I stumbled across Joe Dispenza and, man, it was some of the most profound stuff.
Not only does he have such great meditations, but his books, his lectures, his appearances on podcasts.
I feel like-
Awesome.
...
you can listen to one of those and you walk away just completely with a different perspective on yourself and other people.
Yes.
And, um, it, it really, it really opens the door to, like, um, th- this really fascinating and interesting thing that everybody should, everybody should have, feel permission to, to dive deeply into, you know?
The-
Exactly.
...
the human experience, why we're all here, all of this.
So, um, what I would love to ask you is, when you first started going to therapy, when you first started, um, speaking with a therapist out of this, you had all this, you know, I think you said four and a half years of...
Or four and a half decades of, of suppression.
I mean, it must have been so intense to actually get in there and talk about it.
But was this all around the same time?
Did you start reading Joe Dispenza?
Did you start journaling around the same time?
And, and kind of what immediately seemed to help you feel kind of free to, to continue carrying on?
The very first session was an intake session.
It lasted for about an hour and 15 minutes or so and I poured out everything.
It felt totally amazing just to say the words to somebody and have them sit there and talk with me about it.
Um, I had really put a lot of effort into looking for a therapist, one who I could relate to, one that I felt really comfortable with, and she was perfect in so many ways but, uh, this f- uh, her...
Uh, she didn't just listen to me and "Well, how do you feel about that?" And all...
It was more, "Why do you think that?
What makes you believe that?" She challenged everything I said.
When I got up to leave that session, it was like, "Wow, I've actually talked to somebody and she heard me." And then as I was leaving, I turned to say goodbye and she looked at me and she said, "What's your name?" And I snapped back, "Wendy." I had picked that name in the sixth grade.
She was the most popular girl in my class.
Blah, blah, blah.
If I ever wanted...
If I could ever be a girl, I was gonna be like Wendy.
That was my name.
So I snapped it.
Stephanie crossed out my male representative's name on my file and wrote Wendy on my file.
From that day forward, I was Wendy to her.
That was hugely profound.
She was the first person in my entire life to hear me and really accept me without any conditions as to who I believe I am.
By our next session, we got into boundaries, because I had no boundaries between myself and family at the time.
Mm-hmm.
So, to do this, you need to focus on yourself.
You need to really focus on you, what you need, what's right for you, and that goes for a lot of life changes.
You can't compromise...
Well, you can.
I advise people not to compromise their transitions or any major life change to satisfy somebody else's needs.
Mm-hmm.
That compromises what you're doing for yourself.
So just focus on you and, and make it happen.
Th- The other thing we got into was the...
I brought in the visioning because I...
She was taking me back into my hippie days.
The I Ching, meditations, all of the fun stuff.
And-
Fun stuff, yeah.
It was all good.
And it was, uh, shortly thereafter that I discovered Dr.
Joe.
I picked up his book.
Uh, I actually bought it in audio and listened to it because one of my exercise routines is to go for a three to six-mile walk and I'd plug in my earbud, earbuds and listen to Dr.
Joe, and it blew me away.
And in Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, chapter seven and eight, that's so fundamental to everything that I did.
All the way through the first six months of, um, 2015, from January to June.
By the time I got to June, there was no longer any repression.
I was so done with my male facsimile and that life, and I was ready to leave everything behind, and I did.
And I couldn't have been happier.
My wife at the time was, uh, uh, in March when I announ- well, in Fe- late of, late February of 2015, I announced that I was doing hormone replacement therapy.
I was going to a clinic in Philadelphia and start that, and she said, "Well, we didn't discuss it." I said, "Well, there's nothing to discuss.
Boundaries."
Mm-hmm.
"This is something I need to do for me.
It's not open for discussion." And she said, "Okay, then we're getting a divorce." And I knew the answer to the question, I just said, "Why?" And she said, "You're going to become a woman.
I'm not a lesbian.
I am not gonna live with somebody who lives as a woman, and that's it.
We're done." I said, "Okay.
I, uh, I fully understand and appreciate it." And what I tell people that I'm coaching who are going through this, what...
They'll, they'll say, "Well, I love him- I love her.
I don't wanna leave her." And my response has always been, "If she's expressed the fact that she's not a lesbian, she doesn't want to be married to somebody who's going to live as a woman, respect her wishes, honor her, and show her that you love her by letting her go." That way she...
Also, how would I feel?
I ask myself this too.
How would I feel being a heterosexual cisgender woman married to a man who now says he's a woman and going to live as such?
Yeah.
It's not fair.
So that's a personal decision that people have to make.
Right.
But I...
It was about five, five or six years later, my ex-wife now looked at me, um, uh, when I visited one day and she said, "You know, it's really good that you left and did this all on your own.
You never would've transitioned nearly as well-
Yeah.
"...
living with me." I said, "Yes, I know that.
Thank you."
Yeah.
You know, we would've been negotiating everything and I wasn't going to live like that.
This is something I had to do for me, to be me, who I've always been.
Right.
Right.
Okay.
So, so how do you...
I, I, I, I also think about this, this area a lot as well.
The...
So much of our personality could really be for others if we're not careful.
And there's not anything inherently wrong about, you know, w- we live together in a community, we live together with other-
Right.
...
people and there's a little bit of push and pull on that.
But, um, if we're constantly just making sure everyone else is okay, everyone else isn't uncomfortable, if we're constantly just kind of making sure we're keeping the peace in the games of society, but it's betraying who we are and who we feel we are-
Mm-hmm.
I mean, what's the, what's the point?
Uh, uh, uh, you know, where...
I, I think about...
I, I, I, I like to, I like to contemplate lying and, and, and being truthful.
Um, in my, in my early 20s I had, I had my own lies.
I had lies that I would realize after a while that I would have to exert energy to keep afloat, right?
Mm-hmm.
I can't just be who I am in the moment 'cause I might slip up and I might say the wrong thing.
And, uh-
That's right.
I've used the example...
Excuse me.
A little bit of a strange cough lately.
Um, I've used the example of...
So, like, if you're being unfaithful in a relationship and you're having a great time or whatever, or you have been unfaithful, whatever, having a great time, you're enjoying, you know...
Y- your lies are tucked away back there, they can't get to you, whatever you think.
Having a good time with your wife or your husband, and then suddenly your phone lights up from across the room.
And then instantly you're pulled into your own lies and your own fear.
You go, "Oh, geez, who could that be?
Ho- hopefully she doesn't see it.
Hopefully it's not someone coming to, like, break my life apart, you know.
Hopefully it's someone not coming to expose me-
Right.
...
for who I am or something." And, and-
Mm-hmm.
...
your peace is threatened 'cause you're not being who you are or who, uh, you're not being truthful to the people around you or to yourself.
Mm-hmm.
And, um, now I, I, I love sharing it.
I love talking about it because the, the peace that I feel to be myself, though, though, you know, I, I...
All the things about me being human, I didn't, you know, h- heal everything wrong about me or anything.
I'm still make mistakes and I still all these things, right?
But just the fact that nobody could get me, nobody could come and sneak up on me.
My phone can light up at any time and with any person in any relationship and there's no dishonesty that can come.
And, um, I, I like...
Uh, Jordan Peterson said, uh, he has one of his 12 rules for life thing and it's, uh, don't hide things in the fog.
And, and I always loved that.
It's like, if you don't hide things and lies in the fog, they can't come, come and hurt you.
Um, and so I, I suppose I don't have, like, an exact question for you-
Mm-hmm.
...
but, but do you resonate with that?
Do you resonate with like-
Oh.
...
being able to just...
There's nothing that could get you?
Does that feel...
I mean, how free does that feel to you?
Well, when I first transitioned and started living full time in, uh, um, 2015, it was so freeing.
I mean, no longer any secret to hide.
Uh, my ex-wife said to me that not...
And my therapist and my psychiatrist that she had me see also to, um, change up all the s- I was on a whole collection of psych meds in order to suppress this.
I found out I could go to psychiatrists and just make up symptoms and they would prescribe stuff, and that was it.
As long as I kept showing up, they'd keep prescribing.
That's another way in which I suppressed all of this.
Mm-hmm.
I never once told them.
I did tell my psychiatrist that I'd been seen, at my therapist's insistence, and he wanted to send me for conversion therapy.
This is...I was in Doylestown, Pennsylvania in 2015 and he wanted to-
You sure it wasn't the 1920s?
And he wanted me to go for conversion therapy.
So I went to a new psychiatrist.
Both my therapist and my psychiatrist met my male facsimile for the f- uh, when they first met me, and I found out a couple years later when I was talking with Stephanie, both, uh, the doctor and her were totally mind blown at the intense personality change immediately as soon as I became myself.
It wasn't a gradual change, it was sudden and it just kept going 'cause I felt so good no longer having to hide anything.
Yeah.
Uh, that graduated into, I played around at various times with living stealth.
One of the things that I had guilt about my entire life was I married a woman.
We were together for 40 years and that was a lie.
I told it by omission- ...
but it was still a lie, and that was a source of profound guilt for most of my married life.
So I did tell her about this in 20- in 1978.
We'd been married for a while.
Uh, we already had a family.
I couldn't take the, the stress of hiding this, so I wound up talking in my sleep and that's when she, uh, demanded an explanation, woke me up.
I expected to be divorced by morning.
The following morning she said, "Well, as long as you don't do anything about this, we'll stay together." And that's the way it stayed for the next, uh, 30 something years.
Period.
So, uh, as far as the hiding and the relief, it just keeps going.
It keeps getting better.
Every day it's a new experience.
The first couple of years there were tons of new experiences, things you've done for the first time as yourself, feeling good.
Where it's not different from anybody else hiding stuff is, um, I moved into a city where I knew nobody.
I'd never been here as an adult.
I decided I just wanted to go there, and it's a growth experience to do something like that.
So, I spent much of 2024 socializing with people in different venues around the city and meeting people, becoming acquainted with people.
In my particular situation now, that's a difficult thing to do and stay and keep my secret that I transitioned.
What I like to do is let people get to know me first as a person.
Mm-hmm.
Because once that happens, when I do bring out the fact that, "Oh yeah, I was born transgender," I phrase it that way for, for two reasons.
It emphasizes that this is how this really happens, we're born this way.
It also takes the word that's out there in the world, choice, that I chose to do this, it takes that off the table.
Mm-hmm.
And the fact that they have gotten to know me as a person and actually talk with me and everything else, that diffuses the whole transgender issue, so when I come out to people, it's much less of a surprise.
Depending on where I lived, people would again walk away from me.
"No, that's too much for me to handle, I'm outta here." That kind of thing.
I did get quite a bit of that.
But where I'm, where I'm living now, it's just the opposite.
People don't care, and it's cool.
And so in January, because I am getting more visible and becoming more active, I have my own podcast now, um, I'm public speaking, doing other things and I'm out there, I want my friends to find out about me from me.
I don't wanna lie to them.
I don't wanna repeat that process.
So they've gotten to know me, so I came out to everybody and it's been fine.
Mm-hmm.
So I'm very fortunate in that area.
Mm, a lot of people don't, don't have that because of where they live.
Right.
But yeah, um, we can really mess ourselves up royally by hiding our truth and who we are.
Right.
So I intentionally nowadays don't walk around with a transgender pin or, uh, a flag or any of that.
I would rather have people have conversations and get to know me and then I'll tell them about it and we'll go from there.
Yeah.
And majority of the time I've made more friends doing that than not.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, a, a, a simple conversation can diffuse so much of what we think we know, you know?
Just-
Exactly.
You know?
Um, I, I, I think that, I think that what happens a lot, I mean, it, it does happen with a- with some...
There's a version of I think when it comes to like the LGBTQ, um, that whole world where there's a hint of, "I want you to treat me differently.
I want you to treat me special." And I don't know if that's necessarily true, but it's something that I, I, I feel a little bit or I hear a little bit about it.
Um, and, and I think that it's like something on my end that I like to just kind of glance over.
Uh, I, I like to like, I don't think at the heart of what people are doing, they necessarily want to be treated special.
I think they just want to be able to be who they are and not have to explain themselves all the time, um, something like that.
Um, but I don't know, where does that resonate for you as far as...
'Cause to me, when I talk to you, I don't get the feeling that you're trying to make me treat you differently.
To me, I think you're just trying to live a human life and express your truth and like it, like that only has something to do with me if I'm talking to you, you know?
Like, um, do you, do, do you want people to treat you differently?
Do you want people to treat you special?
Absolutely not.
My whole thing was I just wanted to blend into society as any other woman and be treated that way, and that was all there was to it.
2018 and 2019, uh, this was something that I explored.
I had s- I had surgery after, um, I had surgery in 2017, so totally female, and I decided I have no idea what my true sexual orientation really is.
So I went and explored that.
I found out I really am a heterosexual female....
and I had a great time dating men for two years.
Never revealing, nobody ever knew, and it was all fine.
As far as how I'm living now, and for most of us, most of us really only want to just be able to live our lives openly, authentically, and not have to worry about hiding.
Uh, as s- as I've said before and I'll repeat this, a lot of people feel that if they're asked questions that now they're put into a s- place where they're having to explain and justify themselves.
I've never felt that.
If somebody asks me a question, I take it at face value for what it is.
They're not trying to make judgments or anything.
They'm, just are curious-
Sure.
...
and they ask the question.
I'll answer it and have a conversation with them about it.
But, um, I think on the part of society, um, a lot of people in society feel or misinterpret what they're hearing to think that we are n- needing to be treated special because of who we are, and that's not the case at all.
I don't believe most of the community wants that.
We just want to be.
Just being, just living, and have people accept you for who you are and what you are.
That's it.
It's that simple.
Um, sadly, it gets demonized and made into a whole bunch of other things, but that's not the transgender community as a whole.
Um, there are a lot of people in the community that feel like victims because of society.
I happen to know a lot about the history of, um, where we came from, having grown up in the '60s, and, um, my childhood was in the '50s , so I'm older than dirt.
.
But I'm so glad to have made it to this point in my life.
It's a totally new perspective, and that's what I wanna share with others in society, and help them change their perspectives of people like myself.
It's pretty much that simple.
Yeah.
Um, a lot of, uh, um, a lot of people in straight cisgender society, that- that's the whole heteronormative world that, uh, has been embraced in this country ever since I've been around.
And so anything that falls outside those boundaries, uh, is something very different.
When I remember as a child, as a teenager, gay people were treated exactly the way transgender people are treated today.
It was not acceptable.
Gay people were arrested.
People like myself in places like San Francisco, New York City, we were arrested, thrown in jail, fined, names in the newspapers.
That's the way it was.
And it was like that for gay people pretty much into the mid to later '70s.
That's when their diagnosis changed from a psychological thing that they were born with and that they were, you know, freaks regarding and all of that in society, and there was a lot of protests and, you know, 19- June of 1969 was the Stonewall Riots in Manhattan, in Greenwich Village, on Christopher Street.
And that's when the 20th century modern day gay movement started was that June.
And the first persons to throw bricks at the New York City cops weren't the gay people.
They were the transsexuals and the drag queens.
Hmm.
I was known as a transsexual then.
And they were the ones that threw the first bricks and started the riot, namely because they were sick and tired of getting arrested, thrown in jail, and paying outrageous fines.
Mm-hmm.
So, that's the history of where we've come from.
Guess when the diagnostic code changed for people like me?
When?
2012.
Oh, wow, that long?
That long, yeah.
I tried to transition in '70, '71.
Um, Clockwork Orange had come out.
Um, Wendy Carlos, a transsexual who had transitioned, did the soundtrack for Car- Clockwork Orange.
Uh, I knew that she could, did it.
Why couldn't I?
Well, in those days, if you didn't have celebrity status and financial means, forget it.
Right.
And that was also when I was...
I had a psychiatrist who was actually trying to help me in those days, and he took me as a case study patient to a quarterly meeting of psychiatrists, some in a conference room in a hospital with about 15 to 20 psychiatrists.
I'm talking for no more than three or four minutes.
The doctor stands up, looks around room, says, "I'll see you all next quarter." Points at me and goes, "You're a freak.
You should move to New York City and turn tricks like the rest of them." In those days, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.
We didn't have cellphones.
We didn't have social media.
There was no connectivity between human life forms of any kind other than newspapers and the six o'clock news.
That was it.
No cable TV.
It was the stone ages.
Yeah, yeah.
So, fast-forwarding to today, a lot of people, even in my own community, don't understand the history and where we came from, and the struggles that people went through to get here.
And the fact that we've only had rights and retic- recognition by the medical community for 13 years now.
That's it.
So, we'll see where all of this goes, but, um, my mission, as I said, was to humanize being born transgender and to do as much as I can to change perspectives that people have of people like myself.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I mean, you, you bring me optimism and I'm sure you bring many others optimism.
So, I, I think, you know, as, as much as, as much as the media and, and, and news and just the, you know, the modern media zeitgeist, for lack of a better term, um-
Oh.
...
makes it seem like this, makes it seem like we're in the 60s or something.
But, um-
Well-
...
I, I, I think on the other side, we're, we're all gonna be going, "Oh, we were a bit silly about our reactions, weren't we?" "Those are just humans trying to exist like us.
Oh, okay." You know?
Yeah.
And that's basically all it is.
Yeah.
It really is.
Yeah.
Um, it's, it is a profound life change.
It is, does fall outside the norms of society.
Uh, therapists, uh, that have interviewed me, um, have also learned a lot about what this is about.
Hmm.
Even though, even though we've had, uh, medical and healthcare and therapeutic care and all of that for 13 years now, that doesn't mean that the medical community is prepared to deal with us either.
Uh, there's a lot of really good people out there who do and then there's a lot who really have no comprehension of this as well.
Right.
And that will come in time.
Um, the way things are now, um, they would like for us to hide again, go back to living underground in major cities and all of that stuff, the way it used to be, but that's not gonna happen anymore.
No, you shouldn't suppress who you are.
No, absolutely not.
Mm-mm.
And I know I'm not everybody's cup of tea and there are a lot of people out there that wouldn't want anything to do with me, uh, for their own personal reasons, and I'm okay with that.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
But, uh, I have, I have met some really wonderful people and had some really great conversations and made some really good friends, all of whom I still keep in touch with.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It's, it's been a really fascinating and interesting journey.
So, I have, I have two questions that come to mind at once, um, I'll give you the challenge of trying to intertwine them.
Uh, uh, firstly, I think, what, what is it about other people, like our initial...
I'm thinking about that guy in that meeting, like what is it that, which was so challenging to him that he felt like, "No, I'm gonna call this person a freak and walk out." Like, what...
I, I feel like somehow something about you expressing, like triggered something within him, um, you know, it's, it's kind of the same thing that happens when I notice if I, if I casually bring up death.
Like death is something that I don't, it's not a big dea- I, I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, I enjoy philosophy and I just think, it's something I contemplate a lot.
Mm-hmm.
But I'll notice, I'll mention it in, you know, a casual conversation and I'll just completely lose someone's interest or they're like, "Oh, I don't wanna talk about death.
I don't want..." You know, they just get super uncomfortable and they like change the subject and I got to notice-
Mm-hmm.
...
"Oh, okay, like things that I think about aren't necessarily at the forefront of, of what everyone else is thinking about." So, um, I'm curious about what you think they're...
You know, what, what lies beyond, behind that, um, initial reaction like that?
And then, um, also my second question to, uh, give you the challenge of intertwining them is, um, what someone who notices that they're in that position, someone who maybe is like, maybe they have someone that they love and they're whatever, for whatever reason they're listening to this conversation and they're realizing, "Man, I, I think my reaction was kind of like that.
I think, I think, uh, I didn't have the best response because I was so caught off guard when someone brought that up to me that, um, I, I turned my back on them when, when they, they were asking to be seen, you know?
And so, how do I, how do I commend with that?" So, what lies beyond, wh- what lies behind that reaction?
And then if someone realizes that maybe they were in that boat or they're still in that boat, um, what, what's kind of a good next step for them to, to contemplate it and maybe, um, reach out to that friend or something even?
Well, it, it really all goes back to the whole structure of our heteronormative society, um, and people are gravitating toward that right now with there's only men, there's only women, you're born that way, that's the way you stay, that's the way it's always been, that's the way it will always be.
That's their mindset.
That's their belief system.
Someone like myself and the vast majority of the community is totally outside that norm and they can't possibly live and accept that because it's outside their whole belief systems.
Uh, law of attraction and beliefs, you can't live outside your beliefs.
Yeah.
So being open to a new perspective means that you have to start questioning what you yourself believe in order to even hear this person who's saying, "I just want to be me." In order to hear that person, accept that person for who they are, a person that believes that strongly in the whole heteronormative society structure and belief system has to begin to question that.
You throw on top of it, uh, religious beliefs.
Mm-hmm.
That gets even more profoundly difficult to change that person's perspectives.
They have, they have to begin to be open to changes themselves.
And my sign back there, change is good.
Love it, yeah.
I, in my previous life, uh, change was always very difficult.
We don't like change.
Change is risk.
Change is something that is, a lot of people are afraid of.
And all the, the last 10 years of self-discovery and really digging into who I am as a human being and learning e- things about the human mind and thoughts and beliefs, I've come to really embrace change.
Change is good.
It really is.
And it can be, it can be challenging, but it's also exciting.
It's different.
And I've come to also believe that life is about possibility.
Hmm.
And it's our beliefs and all the thoughts that we carry that support those beliefs that will either mask what is possible for us or completely hide it from our view and make us believe that it's totally impossible.
Mm-hmm.
Um, so in order for somebody who is not willing to hear about someone like myself, it's not me, it's them and it's their belief structure....
and their inability or unwillingness and refusal to change even part, a part of their belief system to allow this to come into it.
Yeah.
I, I feel like people, they...
I mean, we, we get stuck to our identities, don't we?
You know, uh-
Oh, yeah.
...
I, I feel if, if, if you don't have a understanding that you're much more than just who you are in society or, you know, you're much more than just the typical, you know, your job, your, your, you're a father, you're a mother, you're a construction worker, you're, you're these things.
I mean, you're, you're also those, but paradoxically, you're, you know, the expression of consciousness itself and all that cool stuff too.
Mm-hmm.
Um, I, yeah, I think that challenging that stuff is, is pretty heavy for people and, uh, I, I think their initial reactions when they're like that, it kinda exposes them of, "Oh, you've never challenged the things that you were taught as a child." Like, that-
Right.
...
that, that could be an issue.
Yes.
A real issue.
Yes.
A lot of people are not open to, uh, uh, changing their belief structures.
That's just such a scary thing to do.
And a lot of, uh, um...
I was one of them, one of those guys out there living my life, um, w- was very unhappy behind the scenes and quite miserable, but just toughed it all the way through.
And my identity was my work.
Mm-hmm.
That's how I got through.
I became this computer person, then I became this consultant person- ...
that went out and did s- did, did things at different corporations and all of that.
That was my identity, was my work, my job, my career.
And a lot of us get totally wrapped up in that and we don't see who else we are.
I was busy repressing who I really was and so it made grabbing onto that even much tighter, much more forcefully and, "Yeah, that's who I am."
Yeah.
Yeah.
But that really wasn't.
Yeah.
Yeah, what, what a crazy amount of pressure to put on a job.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, complete me.
Exactly.
Tell me exactly who I am entirely.
Yeah.
That's, that's heavy, you know?
Yeah.
It's, it's nice to set it down.
But, uh, I've really enjoyed, uh, uh, going through, learning all of these things about myself.
I've, uh...
And, um, I've, I've done a lot of work on my own emotionally, mentally, and all of that, and I've also hired people to help me 'cause there are things that you do need guidance with and all of that.
Mm-hmm.
And once, once doing that, yeah, I can take another step forward.
Mm-hmm.
I still, I still have, I still had, uh, limiting beliefs that I'd formed in childhood that were still hanging around there.
I'd overcome the majority of them, but they were still there and every time I thought about public speaking, uh, they would, they would really kick in and say-
Mm-hmm.
...
"Nope, you can't do that.
That's not safe." And so, and that was a very deep situational subconscious fear-
Mm-hmm.
...
and belief that I was holding onto.
I got help, hypnotherapist, and we've broken through, and it's all good.
Yeah, I mean, you, yeah, hear you on podcasts, you know, you're, you're talking, you're sharing.
You're definitely not afraid of public speaking now, so it's amazing.
No.
But e- where I say it's situational, um, the idea of...
I spoke about, about eight or 10 times in Manhattan at different events and different situations, and both at NYU, at the Out Foundation, and at a couple of other places, and I enjoyed it, but I hadn't done it in years.
Uh, 2019 was the last year that I ever did that and so the thought of starting up doing that again even after sitting in front of the camera talking with people like you and having these conversations, the idea of standing in front of a live audience, whoa.
Yeah.
I got some help.
We're getting through it.
I'm good.
I, I actually joined, uh, Toastmasters in January to improve-
What's Toastmasters?
It's a, uh, organization, it's a national or actually global organization, uh, that, uh, helps people become better public speakers.
Oh, brilliant.
I love that.
Yeah.
It's been around for forever.
Last century it was here.
Hmm.
And, uh, I got in front of my, uh, uh, f- first meeting and I decided, "Okay, I have no idea what I'm going to say." I gave up...
One of the other things I learned about myself was I'm very much sacral.
I go by how things feel as opposed to what I think.
Hmm.
I was raised to be this.
Everything has to be logical, laid out, planned, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
In 2015, I gave that up, Jacob.
Mm-hmm.
I totally gave that up.
I have no idea what it will be like to live as a woman.
I don't even know if I'll like it, but I gotta try it and see where it goes.
And that's what I did, and I just decided, "I'm gonna go by how it feels." Uh, the last six months of 2023, um, I put my business on hold, my coaching business on hold, focused on emptying the family house and selling it.
Hmm.
Took me five months, done, gone.
During that entire process, my ex-wife was asking me, "Well, where are you gonna live?" "I don't know." "Well, when are you gonna f- figure that out?" I said, "After I'm done with all of this, I'm sure the universe will guide me in some direction.
There'll be a path that opens up for me." And that's when I usually get told of, "You're really out there."
Mm-hmm.
"You belong in California." I've been told that too.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, yeah, that, that's a sentence that happens in Texas often.
I hear you.
So, uh, I, um...
And it really- ...
did happen.
Um, two of m- uh, uh, one of my LinkedIn connections said, "Wendy, if you're considering, uh, moving back to New England and you would be open to Rhode Island, reach out to this person.
She's a realtor.
She'll help you." And I'd been living for three weeks in a hotel and had no clue where I was going to go.
I followed up with that, I made a contact, we had a Zoom connection.
Next thing I know, I'm in Rhode Island, standing in front of an apartment building with the realtor....
and the rest is history.
Yeah, yeah.
S- so what you're saying is you began trusting your gut instead of-
Yeah.
...
overthinking things.
Over the last 10 years?
Totally.
So when I went to Toastmasters for the first time, they said, "Oh, you can introduce yourself now," and, uh, it's that part of the meeting, and, uh, "You can just stay at your seat." Well, no, there's about somewhere in the neighborhood of 20, 25 people in the room.
I got up in front, introduced myself.
I said, "Hi, I'm Wendy Cole.
I was born transgender," and I paused and watched the facial expressions.
They couldn't have been nicer.
I explained why I was there, that I want to improve my speaking, I've done approximately 40 podcasts, I'm, uh, getting into public speaking more, and I'm out there.
And then I ended with, "I'm an open book.
You can ask me anything you want to and absolutely nothing's off limits, and that includes all of you." That was my first meeting.
And that felt so good.
It was freeing.
Oh wow, yeah.
I wasn't hiding, I wasn't making excuses, I wasn't pretending, and I was just me.
Freedom to be yourself.
Exactly.
What a gift.
Okay, well so I wanna ask, I wanna dive a little bit more into, uh, I mean, you, you s- you mentioned hypnotism, um, hypnotherapy.
I did a little bit of that myself actually when I was kind of, uh, years ago I was working through just my own trauma, depression, just for me, just severe things that happened in childhood that, um, I didn't know how to deal with, you know, 'cause I was just a kid.
Of course.
And so la- lit- later in life I had to, I had to read some books and I had to listen to some podcasts and I had to deal with these things, you know?
Um, and one of the things that honestly helped me was, was hypno- hypnosis, hypnotherapy.
Um, I actually had, like, this crazy...
I don't know if you had any, um, uh, I don't know if you had any sort of, like, mystical experiences that you, that you're willing to share about, if that was a- of any part of your journey?
But for me, I was, uh, I was doing a ton of breath work, I was doing a ton of yoga, I was smoking a lot of cannabis, so that's obviously a huge part of it.
Uh-huh.
But, uh, I was, I was just, I was in my basement just unpacking.
I'm just like, "Whatever's not me, I'm ripping it out." You know?
It's like, eh, I mean, I was kinda caught up trying to destroy my ego at the moment.
I didn't realize- ...
that I ge- I could hug my ego and, and all that.
But, um, I, uh...
Ah.
I, uh, I, so I, I did hypno- h- hypnosis and I would just find random stuff on YouTube, I'd find different, um, uh, hypnotherapy people, I'd just kind listen to their things and I would just give into it, just try it out, you know?
Um, o- obviously I wouldn't, you know...
Y- you're giving someone permission to dive deep into your mind, so you wanna do some vetting and make sure that you, you feel intuitively good about what that person is teaching and saying, whatnot.
But, uh, man, I had a, I had this moment where I, I kind of, like, envisioned, I, after my, my hypnosis, I had, for one, an experience of being the color purple.
I know that's crazy, but I was like- ...
I became the color purple, I was like smoke and water at the same time and just really gave in to being the color purple.
Very healing, very, uh, uh, I felt really, really great afterwards.
And then s- wi- within minutes, I had a vision of my teenage self was there and I was hugging my teenage self and saying, "Thank you for everything you did.
I got it from here."
Mm-hmm.
And, I mean, it- it was, it's like a profound moment of my life and I think it probably-
Oh, yeah.
...
always will be.
And, um, it, it was huge, it was so healing for me, it helped me understand myself, I was able to really understand more about myself the following months afterwards and everything.
So, um, just, I, I, I don't know.
I kinda wanna ask you if you had any experiences of that similarity and if hypnosis or, um, I mean, even if- if you won't talk about it, even if you had any experiences with psychedelics in, in, in that world that might have helped you?
Um, there's my rambling question.
I'll hand it to you.
Okay.
Love it.
Um, as far as...
One of the things that I got very good at from the beginning in 2015 was meditating and getting into more of that theta state of mind.
And so, I was able to, uh, go through and work on a lot of the things that my therapist was telling me that I needed to change by doing that.
Um, I had, uh, I had always been fascinated with psychedelics as a kid.
I, I, in one, in one summer, I, I think it was my sophomore, between my sophomore and junior year of high school or somewhere along there, I discovered Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, and, um, Jefferson Airplane.
And I read all about the psychedelic scene in California and everything that was going on with Ken Kersey and The Merry Pranksters and all of that stuff, and their bus tours doing acid and I was thinking, "Oh my God.
Maybe acid would fix me."
Mm-hmm.
Um, I, that got me into a lot of trouble because I never, I never tried acid then, but I did, uh, write a paper in s- high school about it.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, the wonders of psychedelics and T- Timothy Leary and the whole California scene and everything.
Well, my parents were concerned that I, you know, I told them already that I was a girl.
Now, you write a paper and you're a drug addict and we get called into the high school.
Yeah, you're quoting Timothy Leary?
Uh-oh.
Yeah.
Back then, that must've been intense.
That was intense in those days.
But, um, I have tried acid.
Um, I survived the '80s on pot, vast quantities.
That was another way in which I suppressed-
Mm-hmm.
...
everything.
That and music.
Music has been my lifeblood from my early teens all the way through.
It makes me happy, it distracts my mind, it keeps me energized and there's so many things in a lot of the rock bands that I can relate to.
And I became a Deadhead.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
So, but, um, o- over the last 10 years, I focused more on the meditative states, getting into that theta state and really digging in there.
And my hypnotherapist tells me that she's amazed at how quickly I can go into that state.
Mm-hmm.
Well, I've been practicing.
And as Dr.
Joe says, when you get in there, you can start digging around in your own mind and changing those thought patterns and rewiring your brain.
And I thoroughly believe in that.
I've had those very profound experiences.
One of the other ways in which I meditate is while I'm walking.
Mm-hmm.
The physical activity, the earbuds and the music cranked.
I can zone out and be in a totally different place.
I'm aware of my surroundings, but I'm consciously processing a lot of other stuff that's going on.
Mm-hmm.
And that's how I've been doing a lot of my shifting of my beliefs and really expanding my mind to include doing other things and other possibilities.Um, yes, it-- it's a profound experience with a lot of doing this kind of work on yourself.
And with the hypnotherapy, it-- it does work and it helped me.
I found that really fascinating what you said, you lear- you found that you could actually hug your teenage self.
Oh, it was huge too.
It was-
Yes.
...
oh, I can't even put it in words how helpful that was for me.
Yes.
And recently, that's what I've gone through with letting my five-year-old, 10-year-old, 15-year-old self and my 20-something self know, "Hey, I'm a different person today.
Thank you for doing what you did, you kept me safe.
You kept me from doing all kinds of things that I could have done to myself," and suicidal ideation was one of them.
Mm-hmm.
"So, yeah, thank you for not killing me, making me a drug addict or an alcoholic."
Yeah.
"Yay."
Yeah.
"Hey, thank you-
"You've done a good job there."
...
thank you for the...
Yeah, thank you for the person I had to be," you know?
"Yeah, you got me to where I am today." "And for that, I'm eternally grateful."
Yeah.
Oh, I love Lynyrd Skynyrd too.
Yeah?
Why do you bring that in?
Why do you mention that?
I think I saw that on your back wall.
Oh.
Oh, junkyard, I'm sorry.
Junkyard?
Oh, no, I was- I was like, "What- what, uh, what correlation?"
I saw the A-R-D.
Yeah, yeah.
And immediately, that popped into my head.
It i- it is.
It's a- it's, uh, my secret correlation.
No, I got my little Junkyard Love poster back there, but I do like Lynyrd Skynyrd too.
Um, okay.
Well, so, I want to chime in to...
Say someone's listening and they are transgender, but they're not in a place where they're- that's who they're living as outwardly.
Um, what- what's...
Obviously they gotta find the- the next step that makes sense for them, right?
Mm-hmm.
What- what would you encourage though?
You know, say someone...
Uh, I'm sure you probably have this experience.
I'm sure say someone m- messages you directly and says, "Hey, you know, I'm comfortable talking about this with you, but I wouldn't want everybody else to know what I'm telling you.
Here's what I've got going on."
Right.
What- what is, like, the next best step?
What is something that is healing?
What is something that is in the right direction for them?
Um, what is something that, uh, I suppose, like, what would your response be?
Would it be, "Hey, you know, maybe you should try- try out meditation, um, start talking to a therapist, um, you know, try- read these books, check out these YouTube videos"?
What- what is kind of your first initial...
I mean, now we have your- your podcast, which is a great- great, uh, tool for them, you could send them, but what would be your response to them?
Um, one of the things that I know personally I didn't have, and most people, especially, uh, very early stages in this, a complete lack of self-acceptance.
Mm-hmm.
And that, again, stems from the beliefs that we hold.
So, what I would encourage is, uh, really start working on...
See a therapist, but they have to be a therapist who understands this, at least to some degree, and that people who have, uh, who are born this way, actually have no self-acceptance whatsoever of who they are.
They're re- too busy repressing it.
And so I would want them to actually make sure they see a therapist, and a therapist is one of the things that you need in order to go for any further treatments with surgeries and things like that anyway.
But I would be more than happy to talk with them about what it takes to change your internal belief system and basically start reconstructing who you are to where you have supportive thoughts going through your mind all day.
All day long, every day, there's all these doubts, fears, shame, guilt.
All of those things are swirling in people's minds every day, who are living and not- not expressing who they truly are, and it can affect every aspect of their lives.
And it's actually...
There's a belief in the community that transition is difficult and takes a long time, and my statement to that is, "If that's what you believe, that's exactly how it will be.
It will be difficult and it will take a long time.
It doesn't have to." Change your thought patterns, and that's something I'm particularly good at helping them do.
Change the thought patterns, change how you feel about yourself, and once you gradually start shifting those thoughts and those emotions, invariably people begin to see what's possible for them and then actually will start taking steps forward.
In my coaching work, uh, especially my one-on-one work, we meet weekly, they get homework every week, I expect to talk about the homework the following week, I hold them accountable.
This is not a game, we're going through this.
If you're committed to yourself to make these changes and to do what you need to do, I can help.
And one of the things that I've seen work beautifully is someone who's seeing a therapist and working with me at the same time, they just take off and it becomes fun, it becomes easy, and they actually enjoy it.
And I tell people at the...
W- when you're on the other side of this, there's nothing but joy for you.
Mm-hmm.
It's fin- you're finally free, and it's a very, uh, worthwhile experience to go through.
It really is.
It's- it does turn your life inside out and upside down to say the least.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I had one client who, um, uh, had a bunch of guy friends and they rode motorcycles, and I said, "Well, once you do this, they're kind of gone." "They're probably going to go away from you, but you're gonna meet other people." And, uh, I found...
In my own experiences, I found that, uh, women were far more accepting of me than men.
Mm-hmm.
By far.
Most, uh, heterosexual men would look and go, "Mm, I don't know." And off they'd go, and that would be the end.
But, um, uh, women, much more accepting and much more open to, uh, conversation and learning and all of that.
And then-...
all of my gay friends, men and women, very open, very accepting and, surprisingly, didn't understand this any better than straight people do.
It's...
But, yeah, changing your thoughts, changing your feelings, changing your emotions, and getting help to do that is the cornerstone of being able to find self-acceptance.
Yeah.
And then deconstructing all the male socialization or female socialization, depending which way you're going, deconstructing all that socialization and building it back up to match your authentic self.
Those are keys and, for people that are...
One of the things I've noticed too is people that are living full-time but haven't done the internal work to change their thought patterns and change who they are internally, done the mental work, um, they have...
They live in a different situation than I did.
They live with, uh, uh, being afraid most of the time.
Mm-hmm.
And their fear is not so much from outside as it's still inside, in their own mind.
They think of themselves as being different from everybody else because of how they were born with this transgender, uh, situation, and they feel and hold onto that sense of difference.
Mm-hmm.
That's something that needs to go too.
Um, I've had people tell me, "Well, I'm getting misgendered all the time out in public, running errands," doing this, doing that.
And I look at them.
We're on Zoom and I'm looking at them and I'm going, "Oh, you look fine." And then I'll ask them, I'll say to them like this, Jacob, "What are you thinking when you're out in public?
How are you feeling about yourself?
What's going through your mind?
Tell me." And they'll ramble on a little bit and then I'll hear the word, "Well, I'm a trans woman, so..." And I go, "Stop.
You just called yourself a trans woman.
I understand that.
You put a label on yourself.
Why?
Did you go through all of this work and completely turn your life upside down and inside out to be a trans woman or to be the woman you've always been?
Oh, lose the word trans.
You're not being dis- disloyal to the community.
You're being loyal to yourself." I always say I was born transgender.
I own that, and I am part of the community, but I don't identify as anything else other than a female, as a woman.
That's it.
So when I'm out in public, that's the energy I'm putting out.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
When people engage with me, it's a perfectly normal conversation they're having.
I'll talk with people in the supermarket about items they're selecting and stuff like that.
You know, I've had occasions where there...
Or I'll go into a bar and there's only one seat and it's between two guys, and I actually had this happen.
They're both on their phones.
Well, I go to a bar to have conversations, not necessarily to get drunk or anything, just to have conversation with people and see people.
I sat down, boom, I started a conversation with the guy on the left, just started a conversation, dragged the guy on my right into the same conversation, and the next thing I know I got the bartender involved too, we're having a great time, everybody put their phones down and it was a good time.
Mm-hmm.
But if that's the energy you, as a transgender individual, are putting out into the world, that's how people are going to receive you.
Mm-hmm.
If you are putting out there, "I'm different, I'm a trans woman, I'm, um, afraid of everybody in society," people are not gonna know that you're transgender.
And I'll tell, tell this to them all the time.
They're not gonna know that.
What they're gonna know and what they're gonna sense is there's this other energy about you that's very different.
They might pick up on the fear, they might pick up on the anxiety, but they're gonna sense it and that's going to color their relationship with you.
We're all about energy.
Mm-hmm.
And if that's what you're putting out, that's how they're going to see you, and then they're going to realize, okay, yeah, there is something different about you, and that's when they might pick up on some cue that says, "Oh, sir," and you get misgendered.
It's that simple.
As I tell everybody that I've ever worked with, your gender identity is formed instinctively within five seconds of someone seeing you or less.
From that point forward, it's up to you not to confuse them, and that's why I teach gender mannerisms and behaviors-
Mm-hmm.
...
all in this process.
It all comes together.
We are a total...
Our bodies and our minds are a total system and how they work together and get us through the world and everyday life works as a system.
Yeah, yeah.
It, it, it-
And one part of that system can't be screwed up.
Yeah, 'cause it's like, uh, uh, I like to say, you can lie, just not to yourself, you know?
Yeah.
There, there i- there is this...
And even when we do lie externally, if we know that there's a lie, there's a little bit of a frequency that other people are like, "Huh, that feels strange."
Mm-hmm.
That's-
So when you're able to just a- l-
That's the energy.
Yeah, yeah, a- and people pick up on that and then you're kind of like defending something you weren't even trying to, like, put out into the world, you know?
Right.
Uh, so, okay, so I, I, I really love the word awareness.
Uh, uh, there's this book called, uh...
I literally think it's actually just called Awareness.
It's by Anthony DeMaio, DeMello or whatever, but, uh, it was so good for me when I read it back in the day.
I, I love it.
I re- revisit it from time to time, but, um, it basically talks about just, just kind of the profound importance of initial awareness of, like, when you are at that bar, when you are talking to people, like, what is your thought process?
Like, there is this whole world out here and, like, I'm, I'm a person in this bar in this city and I'm talking to this person and they're wearing a red shirt and there's all that, but, like, what is your mind saying inside as you're in there?
Mm-hmm.
What's going on with that?
And, like, the importance of bringing awareness to that so you can really work with what's actually going on.
Mm-hmm.
So does that spark anything for you, the w- the word awareness and, and how important it is?
Oh, yeah.
I believe in three things, uh, that are fundamental to everything, self-awareness...That's, that's huge and has to be there, first and foremost.
Self-acceptance, that's key.
And if you have those two things and you're working on your thoughts and emotions and to be more supportive of you as a human being, you might actually start to discover you have self-love.
I can honestly say until 10 years ago, I had none.
Wow.
I hated myself.
I hated who I was, I hated everything about my life.
Was I aware?
Oh, yeah.
Very aware.
Mm-hmm.
And...
But self-acceptance, I had none, and self-love, zero.
Those three things are crucial to having a healthy, well-adjusted mental outlook as any human being would.
So it's beyond just the awareness.
So people-
Oh-
...
get the awareness and then they gotta take another step.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, so what i- so self-love, self-acceptance, what are your, what are your base level standards for those?
If someone's like, y- you know, that's where they need to start, it's something they could start working on, what's something that someone could do if they're, they're noticing they're in a spot right now that they're like, "Okay, I need to work on my self-love, my self-acceptance." What are, what are some actionable steps they can take?
In terms of self-acceptance, um, bas- make sure the self-awareness is there, otherwise you'll never find self-acceptance.
Awareness is very fundamental as a human being.
Mm-hmm.
And you're absolutely right to bring that up.
And in terms of, uh, working on self-acceptance, that again starts within the human mind, digging in there to actually change your thoughts and beliefs.
Um, when I'm working with someone, I'll put them through, um, I'll try different forms of journaling.
Some people don't like to write, don't like to type, whatever, you know, record it, record your thoughts.
Hmm.
Anything that will get you to actually record how you're feeling, how you're thinking at that moment.
You know, like, "Oh, my life is total shit.
I just can't believe I'm doing all of this and I can't believe I was born this way," and all.
Record all of that crap.
Write it down, put it some place.
Look at it later and keep looking at it.
Is that what you want?
When you make up your mind that you want to change that, that's when you can begin to actually do what Dr.
Joe says is rewiring your brain, and that rewiring process takes about three months worth of concerted effort in most cases to completely shift what you're thinking and that will change everything about your self-acceptance and self-love is something that gradually comes in time.
It can take anywhere from, um, well, I would say easily within about, uh, six months of work.
That's what I've seen in people that I've worked with.
It's, it's, it's not overnight but, uh, the self-love does come and it's totally dependent on self-acceptance and self-awareness.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And so it, so is it worth it, would you say?
Six months seems like a long time, Wendy.
Oh, no.
Is it worth it?
Compared to a lifetime?
Forget it.
It's nothing.
Seriously.
Right?
It's nothing.
Yeah.
And it's amazing how fast even, uh, the three months of work can go.
Um, my main one-on-one coaching program is 16 weeks by design so that I have the 13 weeks in there to actually help someone get through that whole process.
Mm-hmm.
And in addition to the mental work, the mindset work, the shifting of everything, all of that, that's when I start adding in all of the other steps and things they need to do this to survive.
Mm-hmm.
Um, a roadmap of all the things that you need to go through, um, which can be quite daunting, but the benefit of it is, is you get to check things off and, say, you're going through a, uh, difficult time where you're a little bit kind of weirded out by things that are happening and, you know, all of that, you can go back and look at this roadmap and say, "Oh, these are all the things I've already done."
Mm-hmm.
Progress, yeah.
Yeah.
And after every session, too, I like to have people, especially those who are, um, still not comfortable being out in public do life tests.
Go someplace as your authentic self, do something, be exposed to people, let people see you, and one little life test after another it begins to work, you begin to see that, "Oh, yeah." I went...
One of the things I did is I went pretend grocery shopping.
Mm-hmm.
After therapy, I went to the supermarket and I pushed a cart around for a while.
I love that.
Did anybody pay any attention to me?
No.
Yeah.
I was just another woman pushing a s- shopping cart through a supermarket.
Mm-hmm.
Cool, I can do this.
And I did another one where, uh, I s- I said to Stephanie, "I'm gonna stop for coffee at Starbucks." No, and, uh, it was Dunkin' Donuts.
Mm-hmm.
And it was a Dunkin' Donuts that didn't have a drive through 'cause drive through would be cheating.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I wanna stand in line.
The first time I tried it, I parked the car, I shut off the engine, I couldn't open the door.
Jacob, I could not get out of the car.
Dang it.
I walked into therapy, I looked at her and I said, "I failed." 'Cause I'd told her the week before I was gonna stop for coffee.
She looked at me and said, "No, you didn't.
You'll do it when you're ready."
Mm-hmm.
That was a huge lesson.
I thought about it the next f- uh, all the way through th- the therapy session, I told her at the end, I said, "I'm doing it next week." I did more meditations, I did more visioning, I, uh, really put some effort into shifting my own beliefs that I could do this.
The next week, I shut off the car, I opened the door, yeah, it opens.
Mm-hmm.
I...
And it was the, you know, again, it was like January, no, it was in February or so and, you know, I'm wearing a dress, I'm wearing heels, ba, ba, ba, you know, I hear all this going across the parking lot.
I walk in, I open the door and there's a line and I get in line.And so far, I'm-- nobody's paying any attention to me, everything's cool.
Two local police officers walk in, and they're standing behind me.
This triggered New York state and New York City, 1970s, where I would be arrested-
Right.
...
by these two cops.
And I go, "Ha," stop.
"No.
That's, uh, this is different.
You're a different person, this is a different time and place, they're just here for coffee, like you are." I actually turned, smiled, and said, "Hi." And, "Oh, hi," that was it.
Yeah.
That's all.
I went, I paid for my coffee, I...
That was the first time I actually had the experience of j- juggling a wallet, a purse, and everything else while I was doing this.
These are first time things that-
Right.
...
that you don't think of.
But...
And I made it over to the s- place where I put the, uh, cream and the sugar in, and all of that stuff.
And I'm looking around, is anybody paying attention to me?
No.
I walked into therapy, "Did it this week." "Yep, you're ready." And that was it.
I just knew that this was how it was going to be.
Hmm.
And it doesn't take that long to get there.
Um, I've put a lot of stuff on my YouTube channel, and now, um, my website has all my podcast interviews in my blog, all organized in there.
Great.
And anybody who hears this, uh, today is more than welcome to dig around, listen, learn, whatever.
I don't hide a thing.
I put all of my coaching stuff into that, and it all works.
Yeah.
Well, I will definitely...
I'm gonna include the links to all those things, um, your LinkTree and whatever will lead them to all of your work.
Um, so-
Mm-hmm.
...
anybody listening right now, please, there's links below.
Go click on those.
And, uh, just re- even if you're not w- wanting to listen to it right at this moment, go hit Subscribe and Follow and all that on her page so it starts coming up in your algorithm.
So, you know, maybe when you're in a, a different headspace or it's something that sounds interesting to you, you wanna explore more, it comes up on your feed.
So, I would like to encourage everybody to do that.
Um, Wendy, we are getting up here in time.
Um-
Yep.
I do want to...
I do wanna g-
I've enjoyed our conversation a lot.
Absolutely, me too.
I'm, I mean, I really enjoyed our phone conversation just a couple weeks ago.
I feel like I learned so much about you and, um, it, it was really nice to, uh, just, just hear you express yourself and, and hear about your journey and, um, just, just humanize you, you know?
And I love that.
Um, so, I've really had a great time.
Um, I do want to send us off with a little bit of a bow tie.
Um, okay, how do I phrase this?
I, I used to ask this question at the end of the podcast, like, what does the world need more of right now?
And it's such an open question that I feel like the...
It's, it kinda narrows you into, like, we need love.
This is the Junkyard Love Podcast.
But, um, with today's w-...
Like, r- like, really right now, you know, the middle of, uh, March 2025, keeping in mind everything that's going on, bringing in your entire history of who you are, you've lived h- however many years on this planet.
Bring all of it in to the present moment.
What's useful for people to hear right now?
Wow.
What's useful for people?
I would have to say it's all about possibilities.
People are...
Just need to be open to different possibilities and different ways of seeing things.
Um, we need to break loose from all the confines of our past, um, and a lot of these social norms that we have, uh, need to really shift and change.
And the only way that that can happen is if people become more open to what is possible.
Mm-hmm.
And learn to embrace that.
Yeah.
I think that is my new favorite word for the day.
That was so perfect.
Possibility.
I think that is an excellent answer.
Okay, well, I'm gonna let you go, Wendy.
I, uh, I wanna thank you again for your time.
I wanna thank you for just everything you're doing just for other people like you, you know?
Okay.
E- everything you're doing for, for the education of just all of our humanity and, um-
Right.
...
thank you for your bravery, really.
Okay.
And one of the links that I will send you is the link to, uh, for people, basically cisgender straight or gay people who are interested in learning more directly and having open conversations of forming this community.
We meet, we'll meet on Zoom monthly.
Uh, I put out a newsletter for the community and it's associated with the podcast demystifying the transgender journey.
And the whole purpose of this, uh, community is to inform people, help people have a framework for comprehending the transgender world, and, uh, hopefully f- have a network, form a network of informed allies.
Because one of the things we will n- A- we as peop- transgender people will not succeed in existing in society without allies.
It's allies that help the gay community, it's going to be allies that help the transgender community become more part of society.
It will take time, but I'm doing my part to actually try to make a difference and help people have a framework for comprehension and changing perspectives, and seeing what's possible.
Seeing what's possible, indeed.
Possibility.
Okay.
Excuse me.
Well, thank you so much.
Uh, those links-
That's my pitch for the community too.
No, it's a great one and I love it and I'm glad that you shared it.
Um, yeah, so all those links will be below.
Explore more of Wendy.
I appreciate everybody tuning into the Junkyard Love Podcast.
I hope everyone has a beautiful rest of your day.
If you have not stretched or drank any water today, you're outta your mind.
You need to do both.
Stretch.
I always have to remind everybody those two things.
Oh, absolutely.
Those are clear.
Or I would say, I'll add a third because I'm so with you on this one, my favorite things ever is go for a walk and listen to an audiobook.
I, I couldn't-
Mm-hmm.
...
be in more agreement with you on that.
I...
That is one of my favorite things ever.
Yep.
So, stretch, drink water, go for a walk, check out Wendy's links below, and, uh-
Yep.
...
Wendy, you have a good day.
Thank you so much.
You too.
Thank you.
I'll be in touch.
All right, you have a good day.
See ya.
Bye.
Bye, everybody.
Knowledge is power.
Reality is.
Junkyard Love Podcast.