Parenting with Pride with Guest Heather Hester

This week the Mental Health Mamas welcome encore guest Heather Hester talking about her brand new book Parenting with Pride: Unlearn Bias and Embrace, Empower and Love Your LGTBQ+ Teen.  Excellent guest!  Excellent book!  Listen in!

Visit Heather's website for more content and resources at:  https://www.chrysalismama.com/

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Mental Health Resources:

Suicide Prevention Lifeline: The Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals. Visit https://988lifeline.org/ for a chat option or call 988 in the United States.

Crisis Text Line: Our goal is to help texters move from hot moments to a cool calm. Sometimes, that means we give our texters a resource – like a breathing GIF to help them slow down or a link to finding a support group near them.

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NAMI HelpLine: The NAMI HelpLine is a free, nationwide peer-support service providing information, resource referrals and support to people living with a mental health condition, their family members and caregivers, mental health providers and the public. HelpLine staff and volunteers are experienced, well-trained and able to provide guidance.

To contact the NAMI HelpLine, please call 800-950-NAMI (6264), Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., ET, or send an email to info@nami.org.

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Transcript

Serena:  Hey everyone, I'm Serena, 

Tina:  and I'm Tina, and we are the Mental Health Mamas.

Serena:  Welcome to No Need to Explain. We're so glad you're here. 

Tina:  First, as always, a quick disclaimer.

Serena:  We come to not as mental health professionals or experts in the field, but rather, as parents with lived experience who are on a mission to normalize the conversation around mental health.

Tina:  If you or someone you love is experiencing a mental health crisis, please seek professional support. You will find a variety of resources in our show notes, and on our website, www.noneedtoexplainpodcast.com. 

Tina:  Today, we are excited to have an encore guest. Heather Hester is the founder of Chrysalis Mama and creator of the podcast Just Breathe, Parenting Your LGBTQ + Teen.  She's a speaker, corporate consultant, and a coach. She was the original vice chair of the Young President's Organization, Parenting Networks, Subnetwork, LGBTQIA2+ Family Members, Allies, and Advocates, bringing education and awareness to the forefront. Her mission is very much like ours. She hopes that no one should ever feel alone on their journey. 

Serena:  And today, Heather is joining us with exciting news. She's going to share her new book, which is published by Familius Publishers, entitled Parenting with Pride, Unlearned Bias, and Embrace, Empower,

and Love Your LGBTQ plus Teen. Heather, welcome back to the podcast. 

Heather:  Thank you so much.  Thank you. Thank you for having me again. It is so nice to be here. It is so nice to talk with both of you. I'm just I'm just delighted to thank you. 

Tina:  Yeah, and we're so happy to have you back.  And as we mentioned, you're coming back and maybe people have listened to your previous episode.  Maybe they haven't. We wonder if you could just do a little rewind and share a little bit of your story. You begin this in your book, and kind of how you got interested in this area of we would call that your expert by experience area, your mama with lived experience area, all of our credentials that we list after our names, right? 

Heather:  Right, exactly. Well, I like to say that I'm not an expert. I'm just a little further on the journey than people that I may be talking to,

right? So we learn new things every single day. So yes, this beautiful niche that I'm in in my life purpose and all of those things started about seven years ago when my oldest son came out as gay. He's the oldest of four. We did not see it coming, and he did it in very dramatic fashion.

And it was not that we were like, oh my gosh, our kid is gay. It was everything that followed.  It was everything that came before, which is that he had known for three years. And this poor baby boy was just struggled so much with, is this actually true? Is this who I am? Many things that I write about kind of explaining that process he was going through. And then once he said it out loud, which took so much courage for him, he really struggled with a lot. He kind of everything

started coming out, which tons of mental health struggles and personal struggles and just you name it, he had it going on. And so it became very much in those first 18 months like we were scrambling to

figure out what kind of support he needed and what we needed to learn, like where to find accurate information, who we could talk to because of course we were afraid to talk to so many people.

And we didn't know who was safe or what was safe and we didn't want to make things more difficult for Connor. And so it was those first 18 months were really, really hard and scary in a lot of ways.  And once we kind of got to a place where we were like, okay, take a breath. I was like, there's no way that any other parents should have to go through this. I know there are thousands of people and parents and allies and humans out there that are feeling this way. And that is not okay. And so

what can I do to help? What can I do to even provide a little bit of help or support?  That's when I started the website and then from that, the podcast grew and everything just kind of has organically grown from that place. And it's just become my what I do and what my mission

and what I love. And two of my four kids are part of the community and all of my kids and my husband are super supportive and this is kind of a group effort and everything that we do.  So yeah, so there we have it. 

Serena:  Yeah, so so let's talk about your podcast a little bit.  Clearly you titled it from from your own experience because I heard you say, you know, once you're able to sort of take a breath. And the podcast is called Just Breathe, Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen.  And for anybody who hasn't listened to it yet, go give it a listen. You've got about 120 episodes.  So lots and lots of content and we'll link to it in our show notes. But tell us a little bit about your podcast and what you do with that. 

Heather:  Sure. Yes. So I've been doing it for about at four and a half years. And I publish every other Tuesday. That's kind of been my consistent thing since the beginning. And it is, you know, I started it out as something to just like get more information to people who wanted it and needed it. And I honestly thought, well, you know, podcast is a good idea. I'm going to I'm going to try a podcast and you know, I did a quick little online course and got my stuff and said it and I did not really think

about what I was getting myself into. 

Tina:  None of us do. 

Heather:  And then, you know, once the horses left the barn and you're kind of like, well, I'm doing it. So I'm going to figure this out. And honestly, I love it so much. Like it is still to this day. One of my most favorite things that I do.  And I'm sure like you, one of the reasons is because I get to meet so many interesting people.  And I've learned so much and I've been able to, you know, then give that to all of my listeners as well. And to me, that's just such a gift. And I share, you know, a ton of my own journey, our, my personal journey, my family's journey in there as well. So it's kind of a mixed, you know, solo and, and guest interview episodes. 

Tina:  I love that. We, yeah, we can totally appreciate that.  So, so you have shifted a bit and written this lovely book, which I cannot say enough about.  So let's dive in. I love that you describe this as part instruction manual and part warm hug.  I love that. We all need more of those things in our lives as parents and as humans, especially currently in our world. And so thanks for, for sharing this book with us. And I love

that it's easy to consume. The format's great. I love the flow. I love the ponder and reflect sections. I think that's such a nice addition to a book. I love so many things about it. So we've heard a bit of your story. So let's jump into the meat of the book. And you have what you call the four pillars. So outline those for us. 

Heather:  Yes. So the four pillars are something that came to me a couple of years ago. And I had started using them on the website and

just things that I was writing and just kind of playing around with. And I did an online course and that kind of helped me outline that. So then when I came to, you know, writing this book, I was like, well, this just makes so much sense to have these four pillars. I always think it's kind

of easier to remember things when you have something to kind of anchor it to. And so the four pillars are embrace, educate, and unlearn bias, empower, and love. And love is really the, even though it's the last one, it's kind of the one that encapsulates the other three. So

you can't have that love piece without the other three pieces. And over time, it's been really fun to build those out and to specifically, you know, who I'm working with. And we also, as I was writing this, realized that so much of what I was talking about was, you know, it was educational,

but it was also kind of taking that like those pieces that we've always had, like, we learned very young or, you know, as young adults or young adolescents. However, whether it was in school, or through our parents, or through different religious affiliations. And perhaps those biases don't serve us anymore. So how do we get rid of them? And so that's how that piece of the book and came to be, which I love to say. I love to point that out because I think people can look at that word bias and think, oh my gosh, like, is she pointing a finger? Is she judging? And I

am absolutely a thousand percent not. I have my own biases. We all have our own biases that we have to unlearn. 

Serena:  So yeah, so as you mentioned, the first pillar is about embracing. And there are so many things in that part that really resonate with us. So feeling all the feels, taking good care of yourselves, surrender. But would you talk a little bit about the surrender piece?

Heather:  Sure. Yes. Yes. That was a, if it was kind of a hard one for me, I think a really hard one for me, which is why I wanted to write about it because, and I think it's hard for a lot of people to be able to really just say, okay, this is what's going on. And I just have to let go, whether it's, I mean, everybody has their own flavor of surrender. So whether it's letting go, is it just allowing yourself to be completely vulnerable? So then you can move forward.  Is it really looking at whether it's the pain or the helplessness or the overwhelm that you're in and connecting with it and being like, okay, I need to again, let this go, surrender to it

and the ways to do that. And so that was really fun for me because I realized as I was writing it, like the things that I had not yet surrendered to or the things that I had and kind of backed myself up through the process of what I did. I'm kind of unwittingly dead. So, you know, one of my big, big things that I've, I talk about and that I think is so important is allowing grieving and kind of that, I call it the movie reel, the morning of the movie reel.  And just allowing yourself that space to be like, okay, this is what I had built up in my head and that is not the case anymore. And I'm going to let myself have, you know, a good cry, a good, you know, write it out in a journal, whatever you need to do to be like, okay, now I can move forward. 

Tina:  And you quote Brittany Brown, at least once I remember reading, right?  So, here's how I think of this, right? Is you are, you're giving people permission, you're writing them a permission slip, right? You're saying, here's the permission slip, you can feel all the feels, you can take good care of yourself and you can do all the things that you need to do, including the surrender, right? Yes, yeah, I love that. So, yeah, go ahead.

No, that's, I was just agreeing with you. 

Heather:  Yes.

Tina:  So, all right, so middle, the middle two are big and I don't want to gloss over them, but we don't have, we don't have a lot of time here and I want people to read your book because it is amazing. So, I want you to talk, give us the highlight reel of educate, unlearn bias and empower, knowing that it's a big section super important. Give us the highlights.

Heather:  Absolutely, yes. So, those two sections, especially the educated unlearn bias section, are very much like, this is instruction manual stuff here. This is like the, here's how this works.  So, I talk a lot about the coming out process, both for your child or your loved one,

and for yourself with a lot of people do not realize that you actually have a coming out process.  And you are, you know, get it's that permission. I love that you said it that way because that's

really what it is, is giving yourself permission to feel all the feels. I talk a lot about support, all the different kinds of support, where to find it, what to do. I talk an entire chapter on mental health and self harm, substance use, and then kind of how to make those shifts.  And then shifting into communication, your intuition, releasing fear, and just generally being empowered and how to empower another.  

Serena:  Yeah, so let's, let's bring up the tail end here, and in a place we like to be, and that is in a place of love. And it was particularly intrigued by chapter 16 and 17, not by the topic of by the order. So chapter 16 is called love yourself. And chapter 17 is called love your child, both super

important, but it seems like it was probably an intentional choice to put them in that order. So tell us why you did that. 

Heather:  Yes, it's really simple that we can't love anybody else unless we love ourselves. That's the most simple answer I can give. And, and it is, it is intentional. I mean, loving yourself is intentional, and learning to love another is intentional.  

Tina:  Well, and I think the idea that when we are faced, and Serena and I often say this when our child struggles, we struggle. And what we experienced over, you know, all the years we supported parents

was the idea that everybody wants to help the child. The child is in crisis. We want to help the child. And we don't first think ourselves. And so that idea that you again, right? The permission slip…. love yourself, right? Do that thing that's so important. I just love that about your

book. 

Heather:  Thank you. 

Tina:  Awesome. So I can imagine, first of all, I can imagine this. This is not a book that you read once. It's not a book that you need to read, cover to cover from beginning to end, although I would recommend that. At least the first time I mentioned to Heather on the call before

we started recording that I can imagine this being kind of a Bible of sorts and, you know, to refer to really a guide to keep handy, to be able to share with others, to be able to reread parts of and especially that heavy middle part, right, to unlearning bias and embracing and empowering are things that are going to take time and lots of energy and lots of reflection and pondering, right? 

Heather:  Yes. And it will shift. It will continue to shift as you continue to grow. So yes, I do envision that. It's funny. I have a couple of those books on my, you know, sitting right on my desk that I have like a thousand. I'm a tab person. So as I raise, I tab, you know. And I'm like, that is what I envisioned for this, too, that this would be that like, oh, there was that great paragraph with I need to do something or with the phone number or with a quote or whatever it is that helps someone

that they're able to like flip it open to their tabs. And I'm going to be, I think, sponsored by Post-it notes. 

Tina:  I was going to say thank you 3M and Post-it notes!  I am the queen of post it notes.

Heather:   Yes. Goodness, brilliant. 

Tina:  So I can imagine that people will want more and more and more and more of Heather Hester so where can they find you? 

Heather:  Well, the easiest place to find me is my website, www.chrysalismama.com. It is very easy to contact me through my website. If you just want to consume content, the podcast is a fabulous place to start. And I have lots of freebies on my website that

you can get. I have a couple of things on pronouns and helping your child when they first come out and then, of course, kind of flipping over to my organizational and corporate work. I do a ton of speaking as well. So again, easy to contact me right through the website. 

Tina:   Love that. And we'll add all those links that we talked about to the show notes and to our website on your episode page.  So Heather, such a pleasure to have you back. We are so thankful that you joined us today. You are amazingly connective. And we thank you. 

Heather:  Well, thank you both so, so much. I am telling you and you both know in a million ways. Thank you. This has been a journey and a half. And I'm so so lovely to talk to you, both. 

Tina:  And so podcast friends, we are as always grateful for all of

you listening and supporting us. You can help us out by visiting Apple Podcasts. Leave us a review while you're there. Please subscribe and share the podcast with others. You will find more content on our website www.noneedtoexplainpodcast.com. You will also find us on all the socials and we would love to hear from you. 

Serena:  And this is your gentle reminder to take good care of yourself while you're also taking care of your people. 

Tina:  Thanks so much for listening. 

Serena:  Bye.