Small Bites: Gallbladders, Imposter Syndrome, and No-Contact with Family

Show Notes

In 2022, what was something you did that you didn’t think was possible? In this small bites series, we sink our teeth into this question and more as we discuss overcoming imposter syndrome as a web developer (05:19), seeking answers through a faulty healthcare system (25:45), and the hard choice of going no-contact with a family member (54:16).


Resources and References:

• “War Isn’t Cancel Culture” – this episode of Cancel Me, Daddy tucks into the outlandish claims conservative media made connecting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with pronoun usage
• The Care We Dream Of by Zena Sharman

For questions, comments or feedback about this episode: [e-mail]

We’ve joined TikTok! You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram or at sgdinstitute.org

Host: R.B. Brooks, they/them, director of programs for the Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity

Cover art: Adrienne McCormick

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Creators & Guests

Host

R.B. Brooks

Director of Programs, Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity

Producer

Justin Drwencke

Executive Director, Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity

What is Take the Last Bite?

Take the Last Bite is a direct counter to the Midwest Nice mentality— highlighting advocacy & activism by queer/trans communities in the Midwest region. Each episode unearths the often disregarded and unacknowledged contributions of queer & trans folks to social change through interviews, casual conversations and reflections on Midwest queer time, space, and place.

For questions, comments and feedback: [e-mail]

To support this podcast and the Institute, please visit sgdinstitute.org/giving

Host: R.B. Brooks, they/them, director of programs for the Midwest Institute for Sexuality & Gender Diversity

Cover Art: Adrienne McCormick

RB:
Hey, hi, hello and happy new years, queers! This is R.B,. looking up from my 1,000 piece Stranger Things puzzle long enough to welcome you to Take the Last Bite, a show where we also see… that picture frame that’s hanging on the wall crooked so we walk up to it and straighten it out because that looks so much better…

Today’s episode is our year-end small bite segments– where I chat with members of the Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity team about major lessons from the full year. This is also our season closer, we will be back with Season Four so if you have any suggestions or pitches for guests, our inbox is open. You can contact us at [e-mail]

As we enter into planning our fourth season, I’d like to emphasize that the work of the Midwest Institute is completely volunteer labour, including the production of this podcast. While it’s our determination to bring stories of Midwest queer and trans communities to the masses that drives us, this work cannot be sustained on thoughts and prayers alone. I invite you to check out sgdinstitute.org/giving to learn more about Our Partners in Equity aka OPE! Giving Program and the benefits of setting up a one-time or recurring donation to aid us in this vital work. All of your support, whether it’s monetary, sharing our content with others, or participating in our programs, is greatly appreciated.

Before we get into the deep, critical conversations with my colleagues, let’s do a quick recap of 2022, huh?

Courtesy of TikTok, I was baffled to learn that it was in 2022 that we learned the perils of using Gorilla Glue in one’s hair. Also from TikTok, we were all gifted a glimpse into a young boys life who is infatuated with corn, and songs generated from his high-praise of the “big lump with knobs.”

Janelle Monae publicly waved her nonbinary flag loud and proud. And lesbians the world over gushed, probably literally, over the queer as fuck cast and storylines of the League of their Own TV show and bartenders made more Negronis than they can count. With prosecco.

Russia invaded Ukraine, which trans folks were somehow blamed for. Monkeypox, now called Mpox, reached significant spread, which queer and trans folks were ALSO blamed for. Not to mention accusations about queer and trans kids demanding litter boxes in the school bathrooms.

[long exasperated sigh]

Obviously there’s so much more, especially beyond the media-hyped, viral news stories or large-scale events. On a smaller level, 2022 was filled with queer and trans people continuing to reconfigure our lives around emerging political precarity, various health threats, a fucked up economy or the burden of being the creatives of our cultures.

The small bite segments in today’s episode showcase how in the last year, as we’ve all individually moved our first few steps from the initial strike of the COVID-19 pandemic, queer and trans folks are scrutinously examining their environments, their stabilities, their ecosystems. The stories shared here, vulnerably and gracefully, by my friends and co-conspirators are about hard choices, self-doubt, persistence, and taking cues from what life has laid out for us. And while the stories are specific to each guest, there’s a universalism and familiarity to the sum of the stories that ring true for many queer and trans narratives.

As we enter into 2023, we’re hopeful that these reflections, centered around the questions “What is something you did this year that you didn’t think you could?” and “Who taught you something transformative this year and what was that lesson?” will encourage y’all to also delve deep and consider what shaped your year, who served as a model or guiding light for you, and what are you leaving behind that no longer serves you?

Pop the cork, but point it away from people, on this episode of Take the Last Bite

[INTRO MUSIC PLAYING]

Why can't we be in space with hundreds of other queer and trans folks and having these necessary conversations?

When it comes to dynamics around privilege and oppression, and around identity. Well intentioned isn’t actually good enough.

How far is too far to drive for a drag show? I don’t know, we’re in Duluth right now, I would straight up go to Nebraska, probably,

If you are not vibing, or something’s not right, or also like there’s an irreparable rupture, you have absolutely every right to walk away.

Definitely going to talk about Midwest Nice and if that's as real as it wants to think it is.

Midwest nice is white aggression. That's what it is.

[END MUSIC]

RB:
To kick us off, this first small bite catches Andy sharing their experience of “Imposter Syndrome” as they sought out a new job as a web developer and landed one at a dream company.

You wanted to talk about something that you did this year that you did not think was possible based on the prompts that I gave you. So why don't you go ahead and lay out what that big deal item was for you.

ANDY:
Okay, so I am a web developer, and in my little section of the web developer universe, there is company called Tighten. So Tighten has always been, as long as I've been in this sphere of web, has been like the dream job. They treat their folks well. They're a tight knit group of folks, but it's also like the pinnacle. So, yeah, last year I accepted a job with them and that was super exciting. But it was also like a job that apparently they'd been like kind of tracking me for for years, but I never thought it was ready for. And then I got it and I was like, oh, wait, you all have been just like, wait, why the fuck did you not tell me?

But yeah, that was like a really rewarding experience because, my imposter syndrome was like, I'm never going to be good enough to work there. I'm never going to deserve this honor, or whatever bullshit my brain decided to come up with. And so I started the job in March. And it's been awesome to work in a place where everyone uses my pronouns correctly. If they mess up, they correct themselves unprompted. They actually see me for who I am. They treat me well, they treat everybody well. And so, yeah, I'm working with awesome devs from all over the country and even all over the world and learning so much too, and it's just great.

RB:
So in terms of reflecting on this kind of core question of doing something that you didn't think was possible for you to do, it seems like it's a combination of like you didn't think it was possible for you to enter into a role at Tighten because that was one of your kind of pie in the sky, dream locations. Was it also compounded by kind of the restlessness or kind of the uncertainty that comes with transitioning to a new job or just kind of leaving a previous job? Was that a part of it too?

ANDY:
No, I think I was pretty much done with my old job. They treated me well enough for what normal folks expect from an employer employee relationship, but it wasn't enough for me anymore. So I was pretty much like ready to go, but getting the timing right with Tighten because they technically didn't have a job posted. And I was like, hey, you know, this verbal thing that I kind of thought was bullshit when you said it, because I think everything is. My brain tells me no one is actually serious about anything or actually believe people when they say they like me or stuff like that was just great brain stuff. I don't know if fit.

It was a good timing. They were looking to grow and expand, and it worked out timing wise. And, yeah, I was ready to go from my old job and do something different than what I had been doing for, like, four years. And what's nice about Tighten is that it's a consultancy, so it's nice to work on a team. It's the first time in my professional career where I've actually worked on a team and had somebody to like, hey, I'm stuck on this. Can we chat through it or hop on a call and just pair on it for a bit? And it's just nice to have that camaraderie. I don't have to be the person who has all the answers. Even at a company where we market ourselves as subject matter experts, because we are, but also the understanding within our company that just because we're good at what we do doesn't mean that we know everything. Which is super refreshing.

RB:
So you've had the job since March, and it sounds like you were definitely at a place which I think a lot of us have felt of being ready to jump into a new job because things are fine enough if it not fulfilling in a previous job. So it sounds like you're still kind of squirming with the experience of, like, wow, I'm good enough to do this, or, wow, I'm being encouraged to actually own the fact that I'm capable and competent and excel at my job. What in the moment, though, of, like, maybe right before March of this year, when you started with Tighten, what clicked for you that allowed you to accept, even in a low key way, I am good enough, which is a shitty concept, but that's where this is meant for me. Even if I don't feel ready, this is meant for me. What clicked? What light bulb went off? Or what kind of encouragement do you think you got either externally to say, like, yes, I can step into this and I'm going to make it work.

ANDY:
So at last job, we actually hired Tighten to do some technical consulting. So I got feedback from a senior developer at Tighten that my stuff was good and I was like, Wait, what?

RB:
Not like your Institute folks don't tell you that all the time either.

ANDY:
Yes, but in a different way. Right?

RB:
Someone who does your type of work giving you kudos? Yes, because I, who don't know a damn thing about web development, can tell you, Andy, you're majestic at this, and you're like, Cool, thanks. And also, RB doesn't know jack shit about web development.

ANDY:
Okay? So let's put it this way. If I was to edit as a person who, at least in the Institute world, knows that I am terrible at writing and I am a terrible editor, I'm bad at grammar, I stink at spelling. Without typing it into something. Like me reading something of yours and being like, this is great, hits a little different than like an editor, like a really good, it hits different.

RB:
It do

ANDY:
We're like yes. External validation is unfortunately or fortunately, like, something that really is something that currently I need. But like, getting external validation from a person who's seen the inter workings of this thing I built and being like, I don't have much to critique here, was like, oh, cool, this is great, I can do this. I do actually know all of my stuff, like the things I've taught myself and learned and from the community and all of these various tidbits that I've been stuffing into my brain over the last five years actually has resulted in a product that is good inside and out. So, like, that was super fulfilling and helpful in encouraging me that I could do the thing.

RB:
Well it sounds like to what you mentioned just a bit earlier right, that like, in your previous role, the just general structure of things was that you were working mostly in isolation.

ANDY:
I was the only web developer.

RB:
Correct, right. And like, I can loosely relate to that because even within my larger office and my paid job, I am within my office kind of a party of one orchestrating my particular unit. And so sometimes it's difficult to really kind of be not necessarily confident, but just like assured in a choice or decision because you don't have a sounding board or you don't necessarily have a point of reference in the same way that you might working with other folks who are working jointly on a project. So I think that checks out. And I don't know where the thought was going, but just like I hear that. And also I'm curious too, is that par for the course and web development world where you're going to find less instances of kind of collaboratively working on projects or does it just vary across the field?

ANDY:
It varies. Usually at smaller companies, you'll have one or two web developers. In small nonprofit spaces, you will probably have one. But as you get into bigger and bigger companies, I don't know, twitter just laid off like a ton of people and I'm like, how did you employ that many people in this one sector? Much less than your entire company?

RB:
Capitalism. It always comes back to capitalism.

ANDY:
Yeah, it does. Yeah. Like, being a solo depth is not a unique experience.

RB:
I mean, even for you, you had been in a position where you were in that kind of silo and then kind of by having Tighten come in to work on technical assistance, you got a taste of what it looks like to have someone kind of review and give holistic feedback about, like, here's A+ for Andy in a way that you can kind of give yourself, but it doesn't feel the same. And that's what I'm hearing from you, of just like this person, this external person who has no obligation, theoretically has no obligation to be nice.

ANDY:
Yeah, no, exactly. He's a great human and is super nice and I don't know, but he was like, no, this is quality. And the stuff that you asked me to advise you on, here are a few ideas. Here are things that maybe you don't know about and this is why this works, or this is how, whatever. But it wasn't condescending, it wasn't mean. It was just like, hey, did you know this thing? This might be useful in this spot to achieve this goal. I was like, oh, cool. I hadn't learned that before.

And it's just like the whole vibe at Tighten is like, let's grow together. Let's share the tidbit that we're passionate about to everybody. So maybe more people become passionate about our little tidbit that we're excited about. We have Tighten talks which are like, I don't know, my friend Jamo is giving one on, like, urban gardening, okay, because that's what they're excited about. And I'm like, cool. Like, I'll get to learn about urban gardening in Colorado because that's where Jamo lives. But I don't know, it's just fun and cool.

Yeah, we have technical talks too, but it's a mishmash because it is understood that we're more than just developers. And I think that's the thing that I really needed was like, I am more than just this code puncher that's just like type type in like a hacker movie where you're in a cave and whatever. It's nice to be seen as more than an avenue to make more money and be seen as a person rather than a human that can do the thing that they need to sell more shit.

RB:
Well, I'm certainly glad that you have entered into a role that is refreshing, that is new, like newly.

ANDY:
It doesn't make me want to punch it all the time like that.

RB:
That's really good. And I think it seems like there's a theme even across just the small bites for this round of Danielle also entering a new job in this place of just like with everything else going on in life, just like this resounding, like, relief of kind of coming into something that even jobs come and go. But ultimately, if you can enter into something and feel excited about it and feel like at minimum you're going to be able to learn something new, you're going to extract lessons about like, here's what I liked from a previous job, here's what I didn't like. Here's what I can carry into something else. I think that's all really valuable.

ANDY:
You as my friend who have seen me, albeit mostly virtually this year. This time last year when we were recording a sound bite and the only thing I had positive in my life was animation. And there's that tie in, you found it. And now I'm like, no, I'm excited about all these things like 3D printing and, audience can't see there's like 3D printers behind me, and also web development. And I found a new passion about what I'm working on and working with and like, just an excitement for existence, I guess, that wasn't there last year. Sure. And yes, I still watch a shit ton of animation and it's great.

RB:
We'll almost surely talk about it next season, for sure. Yeah. So to officially wrap us up great. I asked this question of the others as well. What are you leaving in 2022 and what are you taking into 2023?

ANDY:
Which is funny because I literally just had this conversation with my parents of like, I'm done doing things that I don't want to do. I'm a little bit done with the familial obligation. If I'm not genuinely enjoying the time that I'm spending with people, I don't want to do it. I'm happy sitting at home watching animation, playing with our dogs, hanging out with people who actually see me for who I am as a non binary, trans, whatever, being around people who can't do me the courtesy of using my pronouns or at least correcting themselves when they fuck up. I don't know. I don't have patience anymore, I guess, for the folks in my life who are still lagging, I guess.

But yeah, I'm excited for band starting up in a few weeks. And I yesterday had this moment of panic realizing that my band concert is on the same day as my cousin's wedding. And I was like, but I have never wanted to go to this wedding. I really love my cousin, she's great. But do I want to go into a room with her to be husband who I know makes guns for a living?
Do I expect her and her to be husband to afford me and my spouse the same respect that my cousin's brother did for his wedding where he addressed us both on our little invite with Mx. and like, knows that my spouse Jess is vegetarian, but also, like sensory like, doesn't like a lot of sensory or textures in their food. And was like, this is what we thought for Jess. Will this work or is there something else on this menu that would work better? And it's like the fact that they cared that much to check in for their wedding. You've got all this other stuff to do, but they wanted us to enjoy ourselves, where I don't expect my other cousin to quite do that.

And I'm like something I really enjoy a band versus something that I'm going to dread the whole time. I'm going to pick the thing that I'm going to enjoy. Sorry, but no, I'm not sorry. Yes, I am, but also not. And I'm fighting with my brain to reconcile that.

RB:
Well, you heard it here first. Andy, who is a Cancer sun, which feels super relevant to this, is going to relinquish the familial obligation in 2023. So there is now public record of you asserting this for yourself, but I will be sure to remind you of this moment throughout the calendar year. The very next time you bring up some kind of familial obligation. So glad we have this. It's documented.

ANDY:
Yes. But I do want to qualify for when you call me out on shit later, which I will. I know you will. It's the familial obligations where I am not excited about. Yeah. It's not something

RB:
What is it? I almost said Mariam Cabo. I destroyed it. I ruined it. The minimalist cleaner, bring you joy.

ANDY:
Yeah. If it doesn't bring you joy, it ain't happening. Hypothetically.

RB:
All right, fam. Well, again, I'm glad we have this on record so that I have an accountability tool for you later. And I'm very glad. Yes, I have noticed a drastic difference, and I'm sure other folks on our team have as well about your general vibe and energy as you've been participating in this new job. And I hope that that continues for you. Yes.

ANDY:
And then we can do our animation episode probably after February when Owl House wraps up.

RB:
Beautiful. I'm sure there'll be other things for us to talk about, too.

ANDY:
Yeah. Okie doke. Bye, fam.

[UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS BRIEFLY]

RB:
For our next small bite, we get into Danielle’s firsthand accounts of navigating the dreaded healthcare system while desperately seeking answers for a debilitating ailment.

All right, fam, let's get right into it. We're going to take a small bite out of your essentially 2022 in a nutshell. You've been a busy human lately. You've got a new job, which is very exciting. You've been working on a show, which is also very exciting, so that you can flex that stage manager muscle. I'm assuming that's the role you have. I guess you could tell me if I'm wrong, but you're kind of on the track of ending 2022 in a way that looks a bit different than you started 2022, and that's what you wanted to talk about today. So what's kind of been your 2022 lesson that you want to talk about today?

DANIELLE:
Yes, I am starting my ending my year a lot differently than I started my year. So from about November of 2021 until June or July of 2022, I was very ill. I very suddenly developed a bunch of symptoms that revolved around my digestion and some gastrointestinal issues. I could not digest food for long periods of time. I was just TMI, but I was, like, constantly throwing up. It was awful.

RB:
Taking no bites, not even the last.

DANIELLE:
Right? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. No bites at all. And it started as a thing where I thought it was, oh, I have the stomach flu, and this will be over in a week. And then it wasn't. And it just kept going, and it just kept going. And I had to take time off work, and I had to basically just be confined to my house and not do any of the things I wanted to do. And when I could go out and do things, it was just very miserable to try and figure out, if we're going out to a restaurant, what am I going to eat at that restaurant that won't make me throw up? And the answer usually was nothing, unfortunately.

So that's what I was dealing with for the majority of the year was being ill and dealing with sort of the consequences of that. There was a long time where I just thought that, I am not going to get better. This is just how my life is now, and I'm going to be ill for the rest of my life, and it's going to just be this way. And that's a very hard mentality to live with, I think, at least for the short period of time that I did have to live with it, thankfully. And it sort of gave me this very interesting window into what it may be like or could be like for someone who is chronically ill in the way that I am not or that maybe I was for a period of time, but am no longer in that very privileged way that I am not consistently chronically ill. But I was chronically ill for a period of several months. And it just gives you a very interesting insight into the whole medical establishment.

There was a lot of times I was astonished by the amount of time that I had to wait to go to the doctor. I would make an appointment with my PCP and they'd be like, okay, well, the next appointment available is in three months. And I'd say, I can't wait three months. This is debilitating. The situation is completely untenable. I cannot go through every single day consistently throwing up my food and not having nutrition. This is not tenable. And there was just not an answer for me. They were like, well, that's how the scheduling works, so that's what you're going to have to deal with. Or you're being referred to a specialist, and then you'd get the bill for that specialist, and then it's out of network, and then you have to pay a bunch of medical bills that you didn't know that you needed to pay. And it feels like punitive almost. It feels like, ha ha. On top of being sick.

RB:
How dare you be sick?

DANIELLE:
Yes, right. Exactly. How dare you be sick? How dare you be sick? Also, from a corporate standpoint, I was working a corporate job at that point of like, you have this amount of sick days, and then after that, you're kind of screwed. I was on short term disability for quite some time, and even getting short term disability was an uphill battle. Having to constantly be on calls with my case worker of like, this is why I can't work. This is what I'm going through. And I felt like I was being interrogated all the time. I felt like there was constantly this question of the validity of my illness, not just from superior folks, as in my case worker, or as my doctor, but also from people around me who would see me and be like, oh, you say that you're ill, but you don't look particularly ill. At this moment. And it's like, well, no, I don't. But spend a significant amount of time with me and you'll see that I can't eat any food, which makes you quite ill.

And it's just this very interesting microcosm of what folks who are consistently chronically ill have to deal with in our society. And I'm glad that I no longer have to deal with that. Turns out my gallbladder was not working the way it was supposed to, got it removed, and all of my symptoms just went away, which is miraculous. But for a lot of people, the solution is not that easy. The solution is there is no solution. And you just have to sort of deal with what you deal with every day. And props to those folks, honestly, because I don't think I could deal with what I dealt with any longer than how long I dealt with it. So that's, I guess something I did in this year that I didn't think I'd be doing is all the stuff I'm doing now. Like you said, I have this really excellent job that I really like in a field that I'm very interested in. I am stage management, but I'm also assistant director, so that's also what I'm doing. Yes, it's great. Actually, the show closed very recently, so now I am having more free time, but I still have to get my whole life together.

RB:
What a concept.

DANIELLE:
Yes. What a concept. Indeed.

RB:
We'll use the word interesting. I don't want to because that's a very Minnesota way for me to phrase it. But I think about how at around this time last year, you and I were recording a previous small bite and we were focusing on your ferrets. But also, like, just by nature of talking about your ferrets, we were talking about your experience with COVID because we learned through that conversation that ferrets can get COVID, which was mind boggling and important to the story.

But I'm curious for you, navigating, your stint with trying to pursue an answer that just didn't seem to be achievable to figure out, ultimately, that your gallbladder was just not cooperating, with the context of this ongoing global health pandemic. Do you feel like that heightened or exacerbated some of your frustration and concern and questions and just kind of like trepidation around not being able to figure out an answer, knowing that you'd had COVID twice? Twice prior to this November to July, June, yes. All to summer, to try and figure this out?

Right. You had COVID twice. Let me lay that out again. You had COVID twice and then not too long after you're having these unanswerable symptoms that took a really long time to figure out what was going on, right? Like, what was there like a time or a continued internal questioning of like, are these related? Do you even still question if they’re related?

DANIELLE:
Yeah, it was really interesting because at the time when I first had COVID, I did have some gastrointestinal issues. So I was like, oh, maybe I'm getting COVID again. Maybe I have a stomach bug. Maybe I have the flu. Because it was November, it was also flu season. So I was like, okay, maybe this is something that's happening. But then after I took several COVID COVID tests and were asked by all of the doctors I went to, do you have COVID? The answer is no. But on that list of symptoms, that when you go to the doctor and they always ask you, do you have list of symptoms? And one of them is nausea and vomiting. So I'd always have to be like, oh, yeah, well, I do have that, but I have nothing else. And they'd be like, well, you have to get the COVID test. You have to go get a PCR test. It was like, okay, well, that's inconvenient, but I will do it anyway.

But, yeah, I do feel like seeking health care in the time of of the pandemic definitely exacerbates a lot of the inequities, shall we say, of our healthcare system in that. Like I said, I think if I had this problem like before, COVID it probably would have been solved earlier, because wait times for doctors would not have been so long and I wouldn't have been so trepidatious as well about going to the hospital. I only went to the hospital once in this whole course of everything when it first started. And it was really severe. It was severe the whole time, but it was just, like, very worrying when it first started happening. And then I sort of just had to get used to it, which is a terrible thing to have to do.

And I was very trepidatious to go to the hospital. When I was in the hospital, there's not a room for me to be in. Like, when I was in the ER, and the room that was I was in a hallway. And then the room that was like right kitty corner to me had a COVID patient in it. And I was sitting there and I was just like, oh, Lord, if I go to this hospital and they don't figure out what's wrong with me, and then I have to go home and I get COVID, that's going to be awful.

Yeah. So it brings up a lot of very I don't want to say interesting because that's an annoying word, like you said, but a lot of very things that you wouldn't have normally thought about in terms of the healthcare system with the pandemic. And also, I think it just it makes it so that there was a period of time where I thought that maybe I had long COVID, that I thought that these were just symptoms that were popping up several months after I had had COVID. And I was like, oh, maybe this is just that thing that everyone's talking about. And then I did a bunch of research on it and I looked up people, forums and stuff and people who were like, this is my experience with long COVID. This is my experience with long COVID. And God, it's so variable as well. People can get anything, it seems that can be related to long COVID, which is nuts.

But I didn't see anything that resembled what I was going through. And then again I did a bunch of COVID tests and I went to a bunch of doctors and they were all like, yeah, we don't think this is COVID related but it certainly doesn't help that you've had COVID because your immune system is all buggy. But I do think it definitely did affect the way that I sought healthcare and also the way that I was treated by the healthcare system in that way because looking back, it's so obvious. It's so obvious what was wrong with me. And I feel like they should have figured it out like several months before they did figure it out.

Which is very frustrating to just feel like you are not being taken seriously by the medical establishment and that you are I was told several times, like after they figured out it was my gallbladder, it was like, well, you're way too young to have problems with your gallbladder. It's like, yes, I realized that. Thank you for telling me, but that's not very helpful.

RB:
The curiosity I had was just kind of knowing that we don't know a lot about long COVID symptoms yet and that we have this very small sampling of understanding of folks who had COVID early enough to even start making slightly informed guesses about what the longer term implications of COVID is going to be. I know that I am on damn near my second anniversary of having COVID and I had COVID well before we had any vaccinations or treatments and I'm still experiencing noticeable long term symptoms with my taste and smell but I still don't know what some of the more kind of internal organ related long COVID symptoms are.

And so I think too thinking about a combination of experiences that queer and trans folks have especially right? Just kind of like the level of severity that I think any sniffle or cough has kind of reached in a time of a global health pandemic that it's really easy to jump to. Is this a COVID symptom? Because it has changed so significantly and frequently that there's just so many miscellaneous things that seem unrelated or that depending on the strain of COVID it's going to manifest differently. Right? Like one of the early symptoms of like COVID toe was, you know what I mean? Like that was a whole ass thing and it's like, what do you mean that things are happening to people's toes that is an indicator or an early sign of COVID contraction. Like that's just our bodies are so fucking weird. It's the moral of that story.

Just thinking about. Like for me. And maybe it's just because I have mildly managed anxiety and an overactive imagination of just. I think that what I've witnessed and what I've experienced is that queer and trans people who already are disproportionately excluded from proper health care are at a place where we're kind of overanalyzing ourselves because we have to. Trying to determine, is this a stomach bug or is this something that's actually going to be more severe or something that's going to require certain levels of treatment?

And to your point, right, the Disability justice folks have been doing this kind of rigmarole bullshit for ever, like literally forever. And I think that there's continued lessons that we're extracting as we continue to figure out what does it mean to have to navigate uncertainty and wariness about going to the doctor because of the possibilities of being mistreated or misunderstood or not taken as being an expert on our own bodies and own experiences and things that are happening to us. And also the continued structural pressure on our health care facilities where we still have right now, two days circa December 22, 2022, right, where the beds are full, that people are not able to get into a doctor's appointment within a couple of days. They have to wait several weeks and potentially compound or exacerbate things because they're being left unmanaged and unattended to.

We have at least in the state of Minnesota, and I'm sure this is happening in multiple states, but I am seeing it in my front yard where nurses are going on strike because of inappropriate care for them during the pandemic and inappropriate wages. There's all these compounding pieces. And so then you boil it down to the life of Danielle trying to just figure out what does this mean for me? And getting a front row seat to essentially this very globally shared experience of this is unsustainable and this is having significant impact on people's well being and their day to day lives and their ability to enjoy food. Right? I still can't eat peanut butter. I still can't eat milk chocolate. I know those are still things that are just impacting people and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Like, these are things that definitely have detriment to, you know, our lives. You not being able to eat and have having to take several months just because you're allegedly too young to experience that particular issue. And also, if you were a cishet white man, you probably would have been heard the first time and tangent.

DANIELLE:
Yeah, I agree. And part of it is what was really interesting to me is that because it was like in abdominal pain, I was subjected to a lot of stuff of like, are you pregnant? Is there a possibility that you are pregnant? And a lot of stuff with my reproductive organs. And it was like, can we not deal with this please? Because the dysphoria is bad and I was just like, can we not please talk about this? Obviously, it's a medical establishment. I'm not going to tell the doctors how to do their jobs. But at the same time, I was like, I am 100% positive. Like, I have an IUD. I am not pregnant. Can we please get away from this idea that this is somehow related to my reproductive organs and deal with what this actually probably is, which is something in my digestive tract. And they were stuck on that for quite some time. I'm sure they were.

RB:
To your point, though, of not telling the doctors how to do their jobs, sometimes they feel like you do have to tell the doctors how to do their job. From a place of basic human decency. I feel like I'm experiencing, during this global health pandemic. I've heard plenty of stories from folks for a variety of reasons, right? Either their own personal experience of having to go to a doctor or, like, a loved one who was experiencing a significant illness, who was hospitalized, all these instances of, like, having to advocate in this very stern and emphatic way lest they not get proper treatment. And I don't know where that lets up.

I think there's just some key pieces of, like, my brain is trying to say three thoughts at once. How do we slow things down to a point where folks' health needs get addressed, but where we can insert a bit more basic human decency? And communication skills also sometimes feels like the barrier to really lessen the bureaucratic and administrative stuff that takes the people out of it, because to your point, you were told, well, that's just how scheduling works, as though that's an answer that is supposed to satisfy you. Right? There's no in between. It's either you don't get an appointment or you wait three weeks for an appointment. Well, what are you supposed to do in the interim?

Why does the structure not allow or is not equipped with how to navigate in the meantime, right? How to navigate between seeing specialist number one and specialist number two? And we got a whole separate conversation about how our healthcare system has been segmented into these specialty areas to where no one has any answers that are actually going to be helpful, but we don't have to today.

DANIELLE:
Yeah, about the advocating for folks is like, I'm not good at that. I'm not good at advocating for myself, especially in a medical setting. So thank God my partner is amazing at that. Their mom was a nurse, actually, who quit during the pandemic because of the untenable situations with nurses, and so knows how to advocate for medical needs in that way, thank God, because I was not able to do that in any context. I feel like there has to be a class before you go to the doctor of like, okay, this is how you're supposed to talk to a doctor, and this is how you get what you need from a doctor. This is like the words that you use, like a little vocabulary sheet. Like you need flashcards. That's how I feel. That's how I feel. It has to be. Which is sad.

RB:
It is sad. And I also feel like it gets worrisome because I think that then there's kind of this choreography, especially for trans and nonbinary folks, to kind of have to figure out what is the appropriate usage of certain language to effectively communicate a level of severity or urgency to a health related situation. But to not overstate the severity as to then elicit a treatment or diagnoses that's going to have irreparable consequences for someone later, right.

Like, I think about the intersections and the interplay between queerness, transness and mental health to not have things off played because it's assumed that, well, that's just a symptom or a manifestation of mental illness or like a diagnosis of a mental illness that's going to then negate someone's experience as a queer and trans person to then say, well, that's because you're mentally ill. You need to go to a therapist. We're not going to treat you for maybe something that's affecting you bodily or vice versa.

I don't know where the thought was going, but I think that there could be a class. But it's also a matter of just like, how do you effectively communicate the urgency but then also not trigger something that's going to then cause you to be institutionalized or hospitalized in a way that's not going to be beneficial for you. And ultimately I think why we just avoid doctor's offices in the first place because we don't want to be sauntered into a situation we didn't ask for.

DANIELLE:
Totally.

RB:
I think we could certainly talk till we're blue in the face about all the issues with the healthcare system. But this worked out in a good way for you that, again, you started this year just wondering what the fuck was going on and how much longer were you going to have to endure through the loopholes in the obstacle course that is our healthcare system.

But here you are towards a couple of days until 2023. So just like in general, like a combination of your health questions being answered and all the other things, what are you taking into 2023 based on all those experiences for you?

DANIELLE:
I think gratitude would be something because I don't, I don't think I realized how much I took for granted, like my health. Because I am a young person. You just sort of think like, I'm healthy and I'm going to be healthy for forever. Obviously that's not true, but when you really take for granted your health and then you realize when you don't have it, when you are not as healthy as you could be or quote unquote, should be, then that is, it messes with your life. So I think I'm taking a lot of gratitude into the next year to just really take stock of what I have and be grateful for the people around me and the advocates I have and my body. Be grateful for my body.

RB:
That reminds me of a writing class I went to with Autumn Brown where she made a point, and I'll never forget it because I was like, that both scares me because it reminds me of, like, our impending mortality, but just, like, was also kind of, like, motivating and important and, like, offered a level of humility that I wasn't prepared for. But she said that all of us are temporarily able bodied, right? Like, for those of us who are able bodied, we are all temporarily able bodied.

And I was just like, wow. And so even just connecting kind of your extracted lessons from your experience, navigating the healthcare system and whatever additional interrogations that required of you with yourself, it's just that what are we doing in this current moment if we do have the privilege of being able bodied in any way or able minded in any way to kind of navigate right? Like, what is our preparedness? What are we aware of?

How do we understand the systems that exist for when there inevitably comes a time where we need to access it? Or what alternatives are there that we may be able to access to circumvent what is just a really treacherous and frustrating time consuming bureaucratic process in instances where we may need to take short term disability? How do we move to a place where that's not some shitty bureaucratic process that requires lots of documentation and time while we're trying to balance maybe the depth of a health crisis or just complexities with health or just trying to rest, right?

I feel like there's also this indication that you can only access your sick time or your other benefits that relate to your health and wellness in times of the most severe sickness you could possibly have. Minus I just need a day. I just need a day to be me and be free from the constraints of capitalism because it always comes back to that, right?

So I'm grateful to witness your gratitude and the fact that you are not in that sticky, shitty place of, I think, witnessing that for you, like, the wondering, the not having answers is just such this consistent factor that I experience in talking to people, especially queer and trans people and other marginalized people navigating healthcare systems is that we're just looking for answers, right? And like, how valuable it could be to have a connection with a healthcare provider who says, I'm going to partner with you to find the answers. I'm not just going to string you along or pass you off to the next person who's also not going to have answers for you.

And I think that part just adds so much frustration. So I don't know where that thought wanted to land and end, but just, again, we are all temporarily at the height of our health or at the place that our health decides we're going to be at this moment. And so we ideally deserve better health care systems and practices.

I'm reminded of a book that I'll definitely link in the show notes because it was very transformative for me called The Care We Dream Of by Zena Sherman. Sherman. Sherman. I don't remember exactly the last name, but just talks about, like, really needing to devise these better processes and systems for us when it comes to care and health and wellness and what that even means. And just thinking beyond improving our current structures, etc. Sure.

Is there anything else you're carrying into 23? What are you leaving? Better question. What are you leaving in 2022? We're going to end on that. What are you leaving? What is getting tied up in a fucking trash bag and left in 2022? What's in that? What's in it?

DANIELLE:
My gallbladder. Yes. I don't know.

RB:
Toodle oo, gallbladder. Bye bye.

DANIELLE:
Good riddance. Like, I don't know, not fully. But I think, like, self doubt a little bit because I think through this whole process there was a lot of time where I was like, am I really sick? Am I really that ill? Like, questioning a lot of myself and doubting a lot of my lived experience. And I'm done doing that. I'm really done doing that. So I'm hoping to bring into or leave behind, I guess, the self doubt leave behind a lot, if not all of that love that happy to help you stay true to that wish and that hope, because we don't need that here.

RB:
No, we don't.

[UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS BRIEFLY]

RB:
Our third small bite follows Michelle’s mental health journey for the last year, including therapy, going no-contact with a family member and taking stock of the community support they had to make hard decisions.

So based on the prompts that I offered out to our team to see who wanted to do a small bite, I gave those prompts out specifically several weeks before the winter holidays, which I think probably added an additional level of context to what you have chosen to bring to us to talk about today. So why don't you go ahead and give us a little bit of a starter pack here of what we're going to talk about for this small bite.

MICHELLE:
So for this prompt thinking about something that I never thought I could accomplish, I want to talk about my mental health journey in 2022. I did a speed run, as will be established throughout this podcast, there is also a neurodivergent diagnosis that occurred. So as you can imagine, I don't do anything half-assed. No, I decided I'm going to do therapy and I'm going to win. So I did a lot of stuff this year, so I just kind of want to share my experiences in case they're helpful for other folks who are going through as well.

RB:
Which I think I appreciate, I appreciate I think you taking the extra step to kind of lay out your personal narrative behind. Because I'd also add, right, that because I was shoulder tapping folks for these small bites right around the same time that you had actually suggested the idea for whether it was going to be a podcast episode or an article. We weren't quite sure yet. It ended up being kind of like a BuzzFeed style listicle that was community sourced from folks on our team of some kind of support guide for how to navigate the holidays.

And I think behind that suggestion for just some kind of resource that we could put out to all of our respective audiences, I'm assuming that it was also because you were in a very raw and current place of contesting with what does it mean to be a queer person navigating the holidays. And you have a very specific and kind of emerging version of that that is probably new this year because what you've already mentioned of starting therapy and also some other major mental health milestones, if you will, this year.

So why don't you start us off with just like, what was the decision about therapy? Like, what has that meant for this year? Especially going into some of the big things that you want to also mention came out of your mental health journey.

MICHELLE:
One, to throw a trigger warning on the top of the episode. I won't get into details of anything for folks listening, but I will tangentially mention some childhood trauma stuff. So basically, set up is I have always been a very high anxiety person, a lot of issues in social settings, things like that, primarily due to narcissistic abuse at home growing up. So I kind of leave it there. It's all emotional stuff, but just all of the gaslighting, all that stuff, all the you're never good enough basically that's my base level.

And shout out to my younger sibling who is the generational curse breaker. She gently, but assertively, for many years wore me down until I was ready to consider therapy. She had had a lot of successes and knew that I would as well. And so one, having people in your corner who support you is super wonderful and amazing.

Kind of thankfully her therapist took my insurance. I got to not have to explain the background, I got to jump right in because she had been seeing this therapist for years, so she already kind of knew the base level we were working with and so we just had to talk through my specifics and my actual situation because we're different people, we reacted differently. So that was super helpful. Not something that everybody can do.

But the real prompt for it was we were coming into Christmas. This is Christmas of last year, 2021. That is my highest stress day due to just the amount of pressure that we had to have a perfect holiday. You need to look a certain amount of grateful, all of those things that can come with holidays. I was really stressed out going into it. And so my sister is like, why don't we do one joint session. That's how she tricked me, one joint session.

So the plan was we're going to talk about how we can support each other through it, what we created. I put this actually in that blog post you mentioned about tips for the holidays. We came up with a system of camaraderie where if I need to get out of a conversation, we need to redirect, I can signal to her and vice versa and kind of have a system planned for navigating.

Worked pretty well. It honestly wasn't that bad of a Christmas compared to previous ones, but I think it finally put me in this mindset of like, I'm in my 30s, why am I doing this? Why do I have to have my body cropped out of the photos because I'm too fat? You know what I mean? That wasn't atypical behavior. It was nothing new. I wasn't surprised by it, but I realized I don't have to do that, anymore. So that kind of got me thinking, right? And I'm like, I guess I’ll keep going to therapy. So I kept doing it.

We were doing it fairly often, really regular cadence, especially at the beginning. So I got a lot of sessions in which was helpful and very thankful that I am privileged enough to have a job that covers mental health care and found somebody that was a good fit for me in my insurance network. So I do want to name that.

As we kind of got into it, I just realized that I've got so many people that I value in my life and that value me. I've got an amazing network of friends that live locally. I've got an amazing partner, I've got an amazing sister. I had all my amazing friends at the Institute who I can share community space with. I get along really well with my coworkers. I don't need people in my life that make me feel bad. Super simple, but it's not.

So it came up to my birthday being kind of the first family situation happening after Christmas. And I decided, no, it's my birthday, I'm not dealing with it. So that is I talked to my therapist in advance and that was when I decided no contact here on out, for my mother specifically. So the piece that's really complicated is that my parents are still together and I would like to maintain a relationship with my father. So that's the piece that has always held me back.

So I called him and I told him that that's exactly what's going on. So I had that conversation upfront. He said he's going to try and keep making it work. So I'm like, okay, I've got what I need, right? So, yeah, I went, no contact. The only attempts have been very vague reconciliation attempts of like, so why are you mad at me? Was one. And that was the only communication attempt I got. I didn't hear from her again until Thanksgiving, and it was, hey, what kind of pie do you want at Thanksgiving? That was the full context of that text. And then it happened again for Christmas. So those are the only three messages I've received from my mother in this entire year since I went no contact.

So that to say it really reaffirms my decision making. Right. Like, that is not how if I was I'm not a parent, but if I was, that's not how I would behave. So it really reaffirmed it and the amount of stress that has left my life is amazing. So that's like one of the things I want to convey to folks is like, is this going to make it worse for me? Is this going to make it better? I mean, you got to make your decision for you. But it has made my life so much better.

I don't have this sinking dread when I get a text message. I don't have this weight on my shoulders every day. That's kind of the initial long story short, that's the initial jump into why I started therapy and kind of the first thing I did was the hardest thing to set. The hardest boundary.

RB:
Yeah. I think the fact that you kind of had the opportunity to actually use your words and communicate the boundary is something that I genuinely don't know if a lot of folks get the opportunity to do when they especially queer and trans folks maybe make the choice, the non choice of doing a no contact with a family member of any kind. Right. And like, you know, I've got my own fair share of mama drama trauma, and there was never really a moment where I got to say with words like, I am intentionally not communicating with you, or I am intentionally not going to be around you.

And that, I think, holds a lot of power in just being able to say, like, I've very definitively communicated the boundary. It's less gray, it's less Midwest. Right. You have been told and you have been warned and that there's a boundary. So I think that that's a really important distinction hearing you talk to me about. Right. That when I think about my own experiences or what I've gathered from other friends that I have who have similarish experiences with maternal Birthgivers specifically, they don't really get that opportunity. The maternal birth giver just kind of keeps speaking into the void and there's no responsiveness, but that doesn't seem to deter them. They just kind of keep trying to communicate until they wear themselves out or they move on to the next, sometimes literally victim. But yeah, I think that's a pretty specific distinction that I'm glad in an unfortunate way that you had the opportunity to have.

MICHELLE:
So for me, it is slightly roundabout because the conversation that I had was with my father. Sure. So he more told her. I think that counts. Yeah, I think that counts. The thing is, I had been trying to assert boundaries my entire life, and she never listened. So this is one of the things I really debated with my therapist back and forth. Not debated because she's just giving me options, but I think just as a sounding board.

But I really went back and forth. If I wanted to formally say something to her or just stop speaking to her entirely, I knew I wanted to formally address my father because I still want that relationship. But with her, I'm like, okay, do I just ghost her? So I wanted that satisfaction. Felt like closure. I want to have a full I want to tell her.

But the thing is, she's got narcissistic personality disorder. She's not going to feel empathy or guilt. She may feel guilt for a second, but she's going to turn that into what I did to her. Yeah. Narcissists are in a state of arrested development. They have not developed emotional maturity beyond their childhood. Quick summary.

I'll say I'm not a mental health professional. I have done a lot of research for myself. Sure. And I'm doing things, but anyway, so basically, my therapist is like, she's not going to admit it. You're not going to get closure. She's not going to give it to you. So I decided not to spend the emotional energy any longer on her. I decided to spend it on my dad.

RB: I think that makes a lot of sense.

MICHELLE:
And she took the hint quickly. Like I said, I've gotten three text messages from her since, and they've been very weak.

RB:
I think what I'm, like, half baked thinking in my brain, like, just this formulating thought of just how it's already a really tumultuous situation for cishets who exist in these nuclear family spaces where a parental figure is either, abusive for whatever reason right. Whether or not they're a narcissist. And just then adding the additional layer of being queer and trans people, of trying to discern, would this be different if I was not some shade of queer? Or would this be different if my parent did not perceive me as a queer person? Right. Would this change? And I don't know that there's ultimately a question in there, but just I'm just kind of thinking about that added element of just kind of how complex as fuck it would be for someone to kind of internalize this message about their queerness under the auspices of someone who does not have their best interests cognitively, conceptually, mentally, emotionally, physically, like of any empathy whatsoever. Like you just kind of said.

MICHELLE:
Yeah, that is a complicated piece of all.

RB:
Can someone make that their dissertation soon? I would like to read that research. Thank you.

MICHELLE:
Because on one hand, you could argue it didn't factor in to their perception because I never came out to them. Sure. However, they have suspected I was some shade of queer since I was in high school. Exactly. And have made it very clear to me that that was not acceptable. So I never had the conversation with them, but I knew what the conversation would be.

RB:
Okay, so then, as it stands now, you have been on your no contact stream for how long?

MICHELLE:
Since my birthday, which would have been March.

RB:
March, yeah.

MICHELLE:
Yeah. Almost coming up a year on that, but a full year of therapy under my belt and still going. I have no intention of stopping. Just because I did as much work as I possibly could in a year doesn't mean I did it all. And it is always just helpful to have somebody just bounce stuff off of. I am very introspective, so mostly it's me talking at her, but that's her job too.

But yeah. Another big change for me in the last year is I also invited my best friend to come move in with me.

RB:
I love Dan.

MICHELLE:
Yes, I love Dan. Dan friend of the Institute. He volunteers at MBLGTACC sometimes, but, yeah, he was going through a tough time of his own, and I said, come move in with me and my partner and stay with us because we love you. And one, it ended up being the funniest fucking thing in the world. I was, like, a little nervous going in of, like, oh, we've never been around each other for more than, like, a few days at a time or whatever. It was the best. We had a blast. He stayed with me until he was able to he found a partner. They're super happy. They got their own place. It's great. But in that year, he pointed out some things I do because he has an ADHD diagnosis as well. And he said, you do these things, and I do these things. You might want to get that looked at.

RB:
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck. It might be a neurodivergent duck.

MICHELLE:
Yeah. So, of course I think this happens to a lot of people, but TikTok was already telling me, yeah, that how the algorithm is. So I already was getting all of these, and like, no, it couldn't be me. Yeah, I relate to some of them, but couldn't be me. So he's actually like, no, gifted kids usually do have some sort of neuro divergence. A lot of the time, I was like, oh, that burnout former gifted kid meme is real. Real. Which is also what causes folks to get missed, because if you can hope your way through school and do really well, nobody says anything.

RB:
And statistically aren't AFAB, folks also not diagnosed at quite the caliber. Right, exactly.

MICHELLE:
So that is another layer in there as well. A fab folks like you mentioned, because of the way that we're socialized, the behaviors that we might have as a neuro divergent person are what they want out of us.

RB:
Oh, you're such a good kid. You're so quiet.

MICHELLE:
Oh, so quiet.

RB:
I'm hyperfocusing on reading this hardbound dictionary for the 15th time. So, yes, I'm going to be.

MICHELLE:
So good at following rules and processes. Yeah. And then throw on parents that don't believe in that. They think that and I apologize to anybody, trigger warning on this one, they think autism is caused by bad parenting. They wouldn't have caught it. They wouldn't have noticed because they were emotionally neglecting me and more. The whole thing was trying to minimize me. It's all related. And there is a heavy overlap between complex PTSD, autism spectrum disorder and ADHD. There's a big overlap.

RB:
The Venn diagram is almost a circle.

MICHELLE:
I don't think that's coincidental by any means.

RB:
No, it's probably not.

MICHELLE:
Yeah, it totally got missed, but I went and got, oh here, this is a lovely thing about community space. I like this story. Okay, so the way that I found my doctor to do an assessment is the town that I live in has this really wonderful coffee and dry bar that is a queer community space. It's super cool. It's totally a dry hangout spot. So that way queer folks in the community have a space to go that doesn't have alcohol. They do all sorts of community events where they have game nights. They have regular different meetups based on interests. It's just a really dope place to hang out.

So I was there with my sister and one of our friends, and we were having some coffee and just chitchatting, and we were talking about this stuff. The person that we were with happened to be in health care. I was talking about, like, hey, I really think that I got something going on. Maybe it's ADHD, maybe it's something else. I don't know. And this person that I've never met, that I didn't even catch their name, unfortunately, I would love to message them, but this random person that was sitting by us was like, hey, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but I heard what you're talking about, and I know it can take a really long time to get into those doctors and find somebody and all of that. I just got an assessment and a diagnosis. Let me give you the contact information.

Sure enough, I contacted that doctor. He was able to get me in within a month, which is really fast for that type of assessment. And yes, he was able to get me through the full assessment, do the diagnosis, get me a note for my primary so I can talk about medication options and all that. Just somebody in the community was just looking out and actually helped me, and they might not ever actually know how much they helped me for sure.

RB:
Gosh, if only our healthcare systems were that simple. I don't have personal experience with taking those assessments, but everyone I've ever encountered was just like, oh, yeah, there's like a bajillion month wait time for me to even get in there and get the evaluation. Or they get the evaluation and it's like I had a student joking about it and they're like, they basically told me I had autism light. And I was like, what does that mean? And they're like, I don't really know. I just try to figure it out. I was like, that's not necessarily helpful when you get some version of a diagnosis and you still don't actually know what the implications are for what you do with that information. Cool.

MICHELLE:
Yeah. I'm really glad. I was so worried that, I'm a high masker, I would say, and that is because of my trauma. I had to learn to mask as a coping mechanism. That's another reason that it gets missed in kids that come from trauma situations that get missed because they're masking and AFAB folks, because we're always masking. We're always making ourselves smaller for society. So I was really worried I was not going to get an adult diagnosis, but I'm very thankful there was an actual test that was on a computer testing focus and I bombed it. So, I don't know if I would have done it with Interview alone, but with actual testing I was like, no. So very thankful I got a firm diagnosis and not like a maybe.

RB:
That's what I'm saying. What are you supposed to do with kind of the like you're on the cusp, like it's your astrology signs.

MICHELLE:
Yeah, exactly.

RB:
Okay, so I feel like the metaphor I made before I pushed the record button feels just very relevant still. So I want to tackle it again. I was naming that it feels like these small bites are trying to shove too much, too much pastry cream into the eclair and that it is just bursting at the seams with its fragile little casing. And I mean that in a way just to say that these are such abundant and expansive ways of kind of grappling with things that are technically very personal.

Like those things specifically happen to you, right? Like every single detail of that happened to you. But and also it just feels very familiar, I think, to just like so many ways in which I have heard from other individuals, especially queer and trans folks, talking about either their general navigation of mental health and our healthcare systems and then also specifically experiences with narcissistic maternal Birthgivers specifically, or maybe just abusive parents or caregivers in general. And just how much of that I think we still have left to start uncovering in our queer and trans spaces. Because I think there's so much attention we pay, rightfully so, to elected politicians or institutions or just like the Jeff Bezoses of the world that are just like, causing corrupt criminal mayhem.

And also, how much do we necessarily talk about the shared experiences of coming from familial places in detail? I think we all have the gist of it. It feels like this overtone in queer and transposes that, yes, everybody's probably strutting around with family trauma of some kind because of course we do and I don't know how much unearthing I've necessarily felt us collectively kind of grapple with how does that impact mental health? How does that impact the ways in which we come into relationship with other people?

I think there's some dotted lines that we have laid out very nicely. I think we would benefit from maybe doing more solid lines between those things to kind of keep doing the community work that enables the self work of all that.

So again, there's no question in there. But just like based on kind of this big picture you've laid out of all these really significant shifts and changes and choices that you've made personally, how would you like to wrap this up in a nice complicated, messy bow for this small bite package?

MICHELLE:
I think you hit the nail on the head definitely of like these are my unique experiences but they are not unique to the world. I'm not the only one and it's actually super common. I hit a lot of the classic check boxes for these things. So I would say finding community and being open and destigmatizing because one of the things that really helped me beyond just I did have trusted people in my life that helped me and said, hey, I'm noticing these patterns of behavior that seems like it might be this, you should think about it.

But also social media like TikTok people always are like quick to be like, oh yeah, TikTok diagnosis for ADHD and autism and make a joke of it. But social media is one of the ways that you can connect to other people that maybe aren't in your physical proximity but there are other people like you that are having the same experience. You don't have to go through it alone. So just like seeing all of these other people, especially AFAB people going through the same thing, I'm like, oh, that makes sense.

I guess, try and be a part of find your community as best you can. I know it can be really difficult depending on circumstances, but me having a good support network of people in my life, chosen family that I know are going to be there for me and kind of curating who I keep in my life and who I don't gave me a lot of support. And also just again, naming I've got a lot of privileges and that I was able to afford to go to the doctors and all that. Yeah, I just want folks to know they're not the only ones going through these things. There are other people too and we can lean on each other and learn from each other.

RB:
Absolutely. Well said my friend.

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R.B.
Our inbox is open for all of your insight, feedback, questions, boycotts, memes and other forms of written correspondence. You can contact us at [e-mail]. This podcast is made possible by the labor and commitment of the Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity staff. Particular shout out to Justin, Andy and Nick for all of your support with editing, promotion and production. Our amazing and queer as fuck cover art was designed by Adrienne McCormick.

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