Welcome to Balancing Life's Issues and Happy Pride Month everyone.
I'm your host Kai,
and as we look to celebrate the LGBTQ plus community themes across the
country, jump out strength and solidarity, rage and resilience,
peace, love, revolution.
And that is no surprise as Pride Month comes at a time where there are
491 anti L G B T Q bills at the state legislative level
according to the A C L U 491. One.
Minute to distinguish Gentle Lady from Washington, representative Jia Powell.
Thank you Mr. Speaker. I rise today in strong support of the Equality Act.
I am the proud mom of a trans kid.
I will fight every single day for every trans person,
every L g LGBTQ person, including my kid,
to explore and express the fullness of their gender without fear
or risk of being fired,
denied housing or refused service because of their sexual orientation or gender
identity.
And I chose this clip because it highlights how deeply personal these issues
are.
Anti L G BT Q legislation directly affects the nuclear family.
And right now the most polarizing of these conversations concerns the trans
community, specifically trans youth. And that's why it has gotten my attention.
Bills that attempt to limit the ability to update gender information on IDs and
records such as birth certificates and driver's license publicly puts this
community at risk as they look for jobs go through TSA or are
pulled over in a traffic stop.
Imagine if your ID didn't reflect who you really are,
especially how you present. What kind of harassment would you be subjected to
in schools and education?
It's limiting what kinds of activities this community can participate in
in public.
It's what restroom you can use or what business you can solicit services from.
With healthcare, it's about restricting medically necessary treatment,
especially for trans youth.
Balancing life's issues isn't about taking a stand politically.
And in our 30 years we have spoken to millions of people across the spectrum
about how you can strive for a better work-life balance,
because that's what this issue is really about.
It's a mental health conversation.
If a dear friend or loved one approached you about how they were feeling
depressed or thinking of harming themselves,
would your reaction be to call them crazy or take away their rights to the
medical treatment they needed?
Whether it's at home in your community or at work,
there is someone in your life who has come out as trans or soon will.
This is an issue that affects all of us and you need to know how to talk about
it. And to help me do that,
I've invited Nicole Madonna and Hayden Nielsen onto the show.
Nicole Madonna is a licensed social worker and clinical therapist with an
extensive background in program development training and therapy with adults.
For the past 20 years,
she received her master's in social work from Fordham University.
Her clinical focus has been in treating complex trauma,
including survivors of sexual and interpersonal violence, grief and loss,
intersectional identities in the trauma associated with this.
Hayden Nielsen is a trans man and licensed clinical social work associate.
He provides outpatient therapy to trans and gender diverse individuals.
Hayden received his bachelor's and masters of social work from Appalachian State
University.
Hayden is also a member of Charlotte Trans Health and their trans provider
committee.
Is that a cat?
Sorry, .
It's all good. It's all like I'm texting my pregnant wife. Hey,
please keep it down up there. . Uh, first Nicole Madonna,
thank you for being here.
Thank you so much for having me.
Of course, of course. And your, I guess I should say associate,
I'm not sure what your relationship is, you'll have to tell me,
but Hayden Nielsen is also joining us.
Yes. It's great to be here. Quickly.
Just tell me how do, how do you guys know each other?
So I'm a licensed clinical social worker in Charlotte and I have,
part of my business is providing supervision and support for newer therapists
who are just getting out of school and required to have a certain amount of
supervision hours to get his social work license in the state of North Carolina.
So I'm his supervisor in that space.
And then how often are you guys like in contact in a given week?
Uh, at least once a week. We have a face-to-face session. Um,
sometimes it's just checking in to say We had a crazy week .
Sure.
Which is how the podcast started when we weren't recording.
. Right. .
And Hayden, how's, how's it going,
kind of getting to that next step in your career?
Um, it's going really great. I couldn't ask for a better support system.
Um, I'm feeling very confident in, you know, moving forward, um,
from my L C S W A to my L C S W. Um, and I'm,
I'm really glad to have Nicole as my supervisor to help me get there.
Fantastic.
So what I wanted to bring you guys on to the podcast to talk about today
is just, you know, where are we at with the conversation, um,
specifically around trans youth?
Cuz that does seem to be the one that has been politicized. You know,
this isn't, this isn't a program about politics. This is a program about equity,
especially when we look to the workforce or being an employee or an employer
because this is such a deeply personal issue that affects so many people.
So, you know, I wanted to throw it over to you, Hayden. First,
just give us a little bit of your background, what your role is in,
in that community.
Yeah, so I myself, um, am a trans man.
I came out when I was about 18,
but I had struggled with gender dysphoria or some discomfort between,
you know,
my gender and my gender assigned at birth really throughout my whole life. Um,
and that was kind of when I came to accept that and really,
you know, decide to do something about it.
And I can tell you that since coming out,
getting the care, the gender affirming care that I need,
I cannot express how much it has improved just
overall wellbeing and comfort within myself.
So in my work with, you know, youth,
I am seeing not only youth,
but trans adults as well coming in and really one
being hurt by the fact that this is something that people feels can be
governed and that healthcare is something that some people think could be taken
away.
But also just a lot of increased experiences
of transphobia discrimination because of this anti-trans rhetoric
that's being spread.
So some people are being misled into services that are really trying to break
down their gender identity and that are really conversion therapy rather than
gender affirming therapy. Um,
really a big overarching issue with
the,
the talk and the legislation that's been going on is that there's been so much,
you know, sexualization of the trans community.
Now we we're relating that to, you know,
oh children and that's why they shouldn't be able to have access to these things
when in reality,
gender and sexuality are two different aspects of a person.
Yeah.
And then you kind of see like words like grooming get thrown out there and you
know, the fear of someone in drag, you know, reading books to kids. Um,
I think that's kind of the conversation you're, you're talking about.
And if you could help us kind of like break down some of the terms you kind of
threw out there, right.
Because I think that's where it gets really confusing for a lot of people. Um,
it just, if you could just start with gender dysphoria,
cuz that that was something you experienced.
So gender dysphoria is a diagnosis that you
can give somebody.
And what that is is a discomfort from incongruence
with gender and gender assigned at birth.
There's gender identity and gender assigned at birth.
So I identify as male, right?
But I was assigned female at birth. So that discomfort that, that brought me,
that's what is described as gender dysphoria.
Right? And that's the mental health conversation, right? Mm-hmm. .
Yes. Nicole,
if you could kind of jump in here just with the mental health piece of this,
right? This search for identity for like how I want to feel in my own skin,
how I want to be comfortable at school, at my place of work.
Can you talk to us about like what, what that conversation is like right now?
You know, it's been the trans community,
the transgender community and non-binary community has gotten so much beautiful
visibility, right? People like Laverne Cox and other actors and, and,
and, you know,
people in that kind of level of privilege to expose us to
people who may, may not have been exposed to before.
But with that visibility has come this uprising of
fear and distancing and dehumanizing. Um,
and so the individuals go through the gender dysphoria internally,
and not everybody, I would think goes to at the same like experience for sure.
Everybody's an individual with that.
And some folks experience it very young and some folks experience it throughout
their life.
Even once gender affirming care has been initiated and transition has started,
um, it's not always something that needs to be diagnosed,
it's something that mm-hmm. , you know, I think we,
we are very quick to put things in boxes and checklists.
What we know to be true is once people have kids, youth,
adults have a safe space with somebody to talk to about what they
experience in their mind and body and how it doesn't feel congruent and how it
feels uncomfortable and how they don't feel seen and heard
the other side effects of that get lifted, like suicidality, um, thoughts,
attempts and successful, um,
suicides have happened quite a bit at such a high rate with trans youth in
particular. Um,
so it's not necessarily something that people need therapy for.
I think I wanna be clear that identifying as a trans individual in the world
doesn't mean that there's something wrong that you need therapy for or something
that you have to like fix in therapy. For most folks that come to therapy,
and correct me if I'm wrong, Hayden, it's really about affirming. Like, this is,
these feelings are real, I exist, I I gotta figure it out.
What's my journey as a trans-identified individual,
which not everybody has Hayden's path or other folks' path or, you know,
Laverne Cox's path for that matter.
So it really is about helping people kind of put the puzzle pieces together for
them to figure out what they're,
how they're going to embrace that part of themselves.
Yeah. No, and I love that you added that,
that it's not something that is an issue. You know,
this identity is not the problem. The problem is, you know,
the stigma and discrimination and inequity and
all of that mm-hmm. that compiles onto a person with a,
you know, with a trans identity.
Yeah. Some states, and I know in North Carolina this is true,
sometimes you have, they require you,
a surgeon may require you or a doctor who's,
who's administering hormones may require an individual, um,
no matter the age to go see a therapist, to get a letter,
it pretty much stating, using more professional terms, yes,
this person is actually trans and please do the,
do the things to help them live in their authentic self.
And there's pretty much no other, I mean, to get, you know,
for a cis hetero woman to have plastic surgery,
you don't have to have a mental examination.
You don't have to have a letter of support mm-hmm. ,
you can go and do 50 surgeries with without anybody calling, you know,
raising an alarm and saying, you have to go to see a therapist for this. Um,
yet the gatekeeping that happens in the trans community,
and it's a huge barrier for some folks. I mean, there's a lot of therapists,
at least in our community that will provide that service, that letter and,
and initial assessment for free. But it's a real,
it's a real issue when we're looking at a huge high, high homelessness rate,
high unemployment rate, you know, where are we getting money for this?
How are we accessing this support?
So there's a lot of barriers in place for people to even push through the
gender dysphoria and just to, to be able to, to find the affirming care.
Yeah. And that gate keeping point you said, and like the hurdles required,
right. And the community, you know, with the,
with the legislation you're seeing it, it's, it's things as,
as small as your ability to change the information on your id.
So like when you're at tsa,
like how you are approached or how you're maybe even harassed, um,
when you're pulled over by police because you don't look
like what your ID is saying. Right? So mm-hmm. , it's,
it's things as small as that,
that are just making just the life of someone in that community, um,
so much harder not to mention the, the violence. Yeah. Right. Absolutely.
The continued violence, um, that we see against the community.
And just to kind of bring it back,
this is such a deeply personal thing for so many people and it affects members
of their family, people in their community. And, you know, Hayden,
I just kind of wanted to throw it over to you,
like as an immediate family member, you know,
what's your role when you know someone comes out as trans?
To keep it plain and simple is to be as supportive as possible.
You might have doubts, you might have worries,
and that's normal because this is a adjustment for you too, as a parent,
as a sibling, whoever it might be.
But this process is about that person.
So, you know, trying to cast those judgments aside,
wanting what's best for your family member, educating yourself and,
you know, meeting them where they're at and asking what can I do? What,
what can we change? And just kind of working with them to be able to, you know,
support them through this transition into, you know, their authentic self.
Yeah. And speaking from personal experience, there's a,
a family member of mine who's gone through this experience,
and I needed to be cut a little slack to kind of get to a place where
I wasn't screwing up the pronouns or wasn't screwing up the name Right.
And I appreciated that I, I had that grace, right. To make the mistake.
Um, can like, maybe, can you just talk to us a little bit, like what does that,
what's that reaction like right when the,
the wrong pronoun gets said or something like that?
Yeah. So I think, you know, like I was saying, you know, before,
this is an adjustment for everybody. So if, you know,
we've been using these pronouns since this person was born, there's gonna be,
you know, some time that it, you know, we might slip up a few times,
but making that effort is what's important. And I think, you know,
having some grace is awesome,
but also when that happens, you know,
trying not to make it about you, right? Like you slipped up,
but it's still about mm-hmm. that person, right? So saying, sorry,
correcting yourself and moving on,
rather than making it this whole big thing and I'm trying, and this and that.
Just to use Hayden and I as an example, if I mess up, you know,
even though I know and he knows that I know,
but if I mess it up and I make a mistake and,
and then I make it about me and how I made the mistake instead of about how it
impacted him, he's now has the burden to take care of me in that moment.
And it shifts and it recenters the moment on me, right?
And not on the harm I might have just caused.
And how I can remedy that and make up for it, which is possible to do. I mean,
you can always come back and because we care about him,
because I care about him and I'm, if I'm gonna make that mistake, it it, right,
I would need to go somewhere else to deal with the mistake that I made and the
shame and guilt that I might feel from that.
Not necessarily with hated in that moment.
No matter how close you are with somebody, by the way,
sometimes that's still not their job to take care of us as, um,
aspiring allies to that person.
Yeah. I appreciate you saying that. Don't make it about you , right? Uh,
it's still about that person. Um, and you know,
and speaking of that role in the workplace, right?
Because maybe it's an employee who's going through this transition or maybe it's
your coworker.
Um, speaking directly to those in positions of power in an organization,
you know, if, if this is sort of never happened before.
So what do you have in place that's affirming? Um, and if there,
if the answer is nothing, how can you create space for that?
The fir My first suggestion would be to,
to bring in somebody from the trans community to consult and pay them to do that
and pay them for their time and energy and effort because I don't pretend to
imagine what it feels like to walk around in that space and be visible
in that way. Mm-hmm. .
And so I could guess maybe what might be needed in a workplace,
but I also think that it's important to hear from the community themselves and
what they need. Mm-hmm. . Um, that's my first thought, right?
Is how do you create a safer space for folks to come out, um,
and to be more trustworthy. Um,
the other piece is what go talk to HR and figure out your health insurance.
Do your offerings allow people gender affirming care mm-hmm. , um,
because some insurances do not.
And some of those insurance companies are tacking it on now,
but you may not know it exists. So it's something that you can utilize to,
you know, let people know.
And that goes for colleagues as well as those with children who might be coming
out, right? Because if they cover them under their insurance, so much of this,
so much of these medical,
the medical side of the affirming care treatments are so expensive. Mm-hmm.
, it's really,
it is another one of the barriers to people being able to just be authentic in
their bodies. Um,
and it's something that you as a leader in your organization can help.
And if you do have somebody who has, you know, approached you and said,
I'm trans, I'm coming out, I'm going through transition,
I want to ask them what they need from you. Right? Yeah.
What do you need from me as your supervisor, as your colleague,
as your coworker, as your, you know, whomever to help you in the workplace.
You know, maybe it's somebody who's worked there for 10 years Yeah.
And it might be difficult for a lot of people around them to understand and
support. Yeah. Um, but we start with them first and foremost. Right.
And just making sure that support is, is from the top down.
Absolutely.
That coming out process could also be a wide spectrum, right? It could be, yeah.
A very private thing, but could also be a very public thing. Mm-hmm.
. Um, so your role as the employer is to Yeah.
To make it about them, um,
and make sure they feel comfortable enough to say something.
Because I think a lot of what we've seen, especially over the last couple,
few years is this normalization of the mental health conversation,
which is very much happening in the workplace. Mm-hmm. . Um,
you know,
the more that you can show that you are open to the mental health
conversation, the more it's normalized and then the more that someone,
an employee feels comfortable saying, you know what, I'm not doing too well. Um,
I have had these kinds of thoughts and your role as an employer in helping them,
and that same conversation happening when it comes to the trans community,
talking about it, normalizing it, and yeah. This,
this whole idea of confrontation. And I don't know, like the, the big,
big word that comes out to me is resiliency. Hayden and I,
I don't know if there's anything you wanted to speak to when it,
when it comes to like that word in, in the trans community and,
and the work you do?
No, I think, you know,
individuals in the trans community are incredibly resilient. Um,
there is constant messaging, whether that's,
you know, in media from people around us, from actions of,
you know, legislators that there's something wrong with us and that there's,
you know, issues.
But I see people every day using that resilience to take steps forward
to one, be more comfortable with themself and, you know,
live a healthy, happy, healthy life,
but also to stand up and advocate for their community
and, you know, make this situation better for those to.
Come. I was gonna say, you know,
those of us that are aspiring allies can do the same thing, um,
from wherever you sit mm-hmm. , right? Whether that's, as you know,
director of HR and you're on the phone with your insurance companies,
making sure that these things exist so that employees can access them without
having to go through you. You know,
trying to remove barriers is one of the pieces that allies and aspiring allies,
um, can do. But also we should be doing, whenever I'm asked why I,
I put myself out there in the space, it's, it's because they're,
because we're human beings and people deserve safety, security mm-hmm.
, internal, external in every space that we occupy.
And my privilege of being a cisgender heterosexual white woman affords me a lot
of privilege. I wasn't, I didn't ask for it, but we have it. So how do I use it?
I appreciate that. And, you know, there's so much to think about and, you know,
I just really, if we,
if we just look at pride month in the celebration of the community across the
spectrum, I'll ask you first, Hayden,
what do you think is one thing current ally or potential ally who are to hear
this could do this month?
Listen to people in the trans community.
Listen to people when they say that these
laws that are, you know,
being proposed and passed are going to increase suicide rates
in youth.
They're going to increase mental health concerns across the,
the community.
I think trying to take away the trans piece and just think of healthcare or
mental healthcare, like that's necessary. Educating yourself,
listening to those who are experiencing what's going on.
I'll throw the same question over to you, Nicole.
Something that's just on my heart is also believing, right? We have to,
those of us that don't right. Exist in that community and hold that space,
we have to just believe that this is their experience, right?
Like mm-hmm. , and then what do we do about it? Right?
So educating yourself and becoming very aware is really important.
And there's a lot of resources out there. Go to the source, right? Like,
if you're gonna learn about the community and what,
what actually is impacting them,
go to one of those places that actually serves the community. But really just,
this is hard work. Like, we have to hold a deep love mm-hmm.
for the trans community so that we can help uplift them and
support them.
Again, thank you so much for the conversation. I think it's really important.
Um, and you know, to what you're saying, Nicole, inform yourself. Um,
and to what, what you said, Hayden, just be empathetic. Believe listen.
It's a, it's a mental health conversation. So, um, I really appreciate it.
And again, thank you to you Nicole. Thank.
You for having me here. I'm excited to hear the episode, . Of course.
And thanks to you Hayden.
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
This has been a production of Balancing Life's Issues with your host,
Wendy Wilner, produced by me, Kai Sorenson.
Subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen and you'll get brand new episodes
as they drop. Got an idea for the show. Leave a comment or email Kai k a i,
balancing life's issues.com. Tom.