Good Life Project - How To Be You | Jeffrey Marsh

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

Non-binary author Jeffrey Marsh shares their journey from childhood rejection to joyfully embracing identity. They explore finding life-changing language/community, the path out of self-hatred, and why pronouns matter for human dignity. Marsh dives into myths of control, self-acceptance beyond gender/sexuality, and actively cultivating happiness. Their hard-won wisdom offers an inspiring roadmap for living authentically from their groundbreaking book, How To Be You. An uplifting must-listen on belonging and being true to yourself.You can find Jeffrey at: Website | Instagram | Episode TranscriptIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Trystan Reese about living and advocating for your truth.Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the WheelVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What I am is a walking metaphor. I hope it's darn clear what I was told is wrong with me, and I hope it's also darn clear that I love that. I love that about myself. I celebrate it, I show it, I dance within it and have joy all around it. You can do the same. Hey there. So you may know my guest today, Jeffrey Marsh, from their spiritual and inclusive messages that have received over 1 billion views on social media. Jeffrey is a viral TikTok and Instagram sensation, the first openly non-binary public figure to be interviewed on national television, and the first non-binary author to be offered a book deal with any of the big five publishers landing at Penguin

Random House. And Jeffrey's bestselling Buddhist self-esteem guide, How to Be You, is this innovative category non-conforming work that combines memoir and workbook and spiritual advice, really inviting anyone and everyone into the conversation through a lens of kindness and inclusivity. And How to Be You, it topped Oprah's gratitude meter, was named excellent book of the year by TED-Ed. Jeffrey also has been a student and a teacher of Zen for over 20 years. And this practice, it's really been central to both their lens on life and capacity to do the work they do in a grounded, deeply present, open-hearted and joyful way. So excited to share this best of conversation with you.

And a quick note before we dive in. So at the end of every episode, I don't know if you've ever heard this, but we actually recommend a similar episode. So if you love this episode, at the end, we're going to share another one that we're pretty sure you're going to love too. So be sure to listen for that. Okay. On to today's conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him!

Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. There's so many different fun places that I want to go with you. I'm thinking almost like a bit of a three-act play, if you're cool with that. I'd love to take a step back in time, explore some of your early life. Then I thought it'd be interesting to dive into language and identity, because I think it's a really interesting conversation. And then I'd also love to explore some of the bigger ideas and concepts that you're regularly talking about that are from your book as well. Does that sound good? What if I was like, no, I'm out of here. Yeah, those are all my favorite things. So I'm ready.

That sounds great. So as we're having this conversation, actually, where are you right now? Where are you these days? In beautiful, sunny Los Angeles. Ah, nice. I was a New Yorker for many years myself. Yeah. Okay, so now I'm curious. Whenever somebody goes from New York to LA, I'm always curious what the motivation is behind that. Weather. Ah, all right. One word.

Well, that was partly it. I mean, I actually didn't think that the weather would affect me as much as it has, but it's 72 and sunny today and that doesn't hurt, but it was mostly for career, for making TV and doing TV stuff. Yeah. That still is where so much of the industry is. But you grew up not too far from New York. Well, geographically not too far, but it's sort of like a different universe in a lot of ways. York County, PA. For those who've never heard of that or have never been there, I'd love it if you could paint a little bit of a picture of what the area that you grew up in was farm, over 300 acres of a farm, church that I happened to attend during high school with my parents was also the Klan meeting house. So, the Klan would meet in the basement.

And we were not members, but that was going on in the building. So, it was a very, very conservative part of Pennsylvania. And a place, you know, I was growing up in a place where I wasn't even sure if there was anyone else like me at all. Tell me more of what you mean by like me. Specifically, in my head, as I said it, I meant non-binary, but beautifully rainbow LGBTQ imaginative. There were a couple of years where I really literally thought maybe I was born on another planet and was sent somehow to Pennsylvania. I don't know if you wanted to get this deep this quickly, but I have a bit of a reputation for doing that.

I was told basically in many ways when I was a kid that I was worthless. So, one of the narratives I had was, well, actually, I'm very special. And it took me many years to come to the realization that every single person is special. That specialness is something that includes everybody. When you get that message as a kid, which is a devastating message to get at any age, but especially when you're really young, when the likelihood of you having resources available for you to understand how to process that in a way that isn't any way constructive, that just doesn't exist in most kids, let alone most adults, right?

How does that land with you? How does that affect the way that you move through your life, the way that you see yourself, I imagined a beautiful, loving family. It's sort of like, I don't think it was exactly like this, but it's imagining the family I had where I was born on Mars, right? I just imagined this loving group of people who accepted me exactly for who I am and how I am. And I had enough agency as a kid to be able to imagine that. And so when I became an adult and literally found that through social media, through community, it had such a deep resonance for who I was as a kid. I had in a way trained myself to recognize who were the good-hearted people. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I mean, it makes a lot of sense, and it doesn't have to make sense to me, even if it didn't. This is your truth. It sounds like one of the ways that you also felt okay was effectively to create your own worlds. When you were a kid, your own experiences, I know you write about and you speak about, you talk about, you describe,

you know, effectively creating your own, your own world, your own theater, your own play acting in a barn where this becomes like your, your almost escape, like your place where you can be okay. But it also sounds like it was something

that existed only for you. You kept secret for a long time. Absolutely. And one of the hallmarks of it was always keeping an ear out for the sound of my dad's boots on the gravel that was outside the barn. This constant split in my soul of being totally free and playing and twirling and dancing around and wearing dresses that I had bought or that I had borrowed and kept in a trunk inside the barn. Literally playing dress up long after you're supposed to not do so. But also having part of my soul, part of my heart split off to make sure I wasn't going to get in trouble. And it took years and years for me to give up that second part to stop worrying about whether I would get in trouble and to fully embody who I am. This is why when I talk about inner child work, I talk about my inner child rescuing me.

A lot of people talk about parenting their inner child, which is lovely, but my inner child kept the innocence and the fun and the idea of joy that was really earned by that kid, you know, looking back. And that was kept in place as, you know, my inner child, to speak about it metaphorically, my inner child was a bookmark of that joy. And thank goodness, you know, that I had something to come back to and to reconnect with as an adult. Yeah, such a powerful way to look at that. When you use the phrase, get in trouble, you didn't want to, quote, get in trouble when you heard the boots of your dad coming. What do you mean by that? In your mind back then, what was getting in trouble to you?

It meant several things. On a practical level, there was no adult that I can remember in my life who didn't want me not to be me. And every adult, people at church, school teachers, parents, tried everything they could think of to get me not to be this beautifully LGBTQ. And that included withholding affection, that included violence, that included social hints, jokes at my expense, anything, anything at all. And on an even deeper level than those sort of tactics, I think what getting in trouble meant to me as a kid was that I would be even more isolated, that I would be rejected, left out of the group, left to fend for myself, that kind of thing. When you were that age growing up in that community, were there any other people that

you could look to? Were there any other role models? Was there anyone else where you could look and say, oh, there's someone I can relate to. There's somebody who seems like they're similar to me and living life in a way that felt good. Or was it something where you really had no access to other people like that? For years and years, I felt deeply lonely and didn't really have access to people like that. And then all of a sudden, you're a teenager and you see a picture of David Bowie. And you're like, what is that person doing over there? That's what I'm doing. Where did that person come from? And I guess it's deep and poetic and beautiful at the same time that one of David's personas was someone from outer space, right?

This kind of feeling of you're the only one. So David Bowie comes to mind. RuPaul was on TV. There is an author named Kate Bornstein who wrote a book called Gender Outlaw. And that book came out in 1996. It's actually, it gets even better. It's called Gender Outlaw on Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. And that came out in 1996. And I was on my way going off to college and that book changed my life. So a little bit later in those teenage years, I began to connect a lot of the dots and find a sense of community. But it does sound like a lot of that community, it wasn't local. It sounds like it was more, there were people in

the media. There were people out there where you saw, oh, okay, I can relate to them in a lot of different ways. I can relate maybe to the community that they seem to be existing within, but that's not here. That's not sort of like my immediate experience. If I have this right, your mom was also a Lutheran pastor at the time, right? Correct. Yep. what I'm feeling. I'm curious what was happening inside of you in the minutes, the seconds before you said those words where you said, you know, like, mom, this is what's happening. That made you feel like this is the moment, like I have to do this now after really secreting it away for all of the time before that. It felt like a pressure cooker. I mean, it was a jumbled mess, but the only way I could conceive of to be comfortable and to be happy was to inform the most important people in my world.

And my mom was obviously included in that. And at the time, all I could come up with was, I think I like boys, because that was the only reference point that I had. And I would end up coming out to her again at 16 and again at 18, and it would be a rolling process on into adulthood. When you use that language, and I guess as you just described, that was the only language that you had at the time. It's interesting, and I think this is probably a good transition into just really exploring language and identity, which has become such an emerging part of the conversation, the public conversation, I think over the last really five years or so.

But before we get there, now I'm really fascinated by this book that you say hits in 1996, right? Because literally having, if not the word non-binary, but the expression of that identity in the title or the subtitle itself in 96 is a profound act because that is not part of in any meaningful way, the public conversation at that moment in time. I'm curious now also, when you dive into that book, now a number of decades ago, what's that experience of- Thanks for the reminder. what's that experience like for you? Because I'm wondering, is that the moment where you start to say, okay, so I've been trying to figure out what is the language here for a long time, but not just the language. What is the sense of identification and who I am underneath it? And what was the role of that book in deepening you into that exploration? Well, to put it simply, the book saved my life. It was a process of starting to see myself less and less as a freak. And looking back, you know, for a book to have so much power, it wasn't necessarily, oh, there are genderastic people in the world. There are gender-delightful people in the world, right? Or whatever language you want to use. There is something beyond man and woman,

right? As the subtitle says. But it's not just that. It's not just technical vocabulary. It's the idea that I didn't have to fit into what I was told the only possibility to be a human being is. So there's something technical like, yeah, this movement exists. But it's also something mind-altering, that there are people who literally think differently on this planet. And I guess part of what was so transformative is I can go find those people. The 90s is also a really interesting time for you to be grappling with this and sort of like figuring a lot of these things out because this is a moment in time where HIV, where AIDS is this absolutely terrifying, terrifying thing that seems like it is overtaking communities. I literally just was watching the new piece, Tick, Tick, Boom,

on Jonathan Larson's life, the playwright behind Rent. And being a longtime New Yorker, I remember being in New York and being downtown and being in the East and West Village and knowing all the people who were in the play and also having friends and seeing so much addiction, so much loss. So this is all something that's going on as you're sort of trying to figure out who I am, where is my place? Is there a place for me? Was that a part of what was spinning around in your head during that whole sort of like 90s window as well? Yeah. I mean, I can remember being on the farm as a very young kid in the early 80s and seeing the news talk about the gay plague and seeing Brock Hudson die and all of this stuff that

as a very young person, when I was aware of who I am, that being associated with loneliness, being a pariah, rejection, death, it can get heavy. And at the time you know i'm glad you brought up jonathan larson because throughout rent especially is this lightness living for today is part of the message and i also got that it's hard for me to go back and piece together pros and cons list of growing up the way I did. You said, figuring it out. And I get asked a lot in interviews, when did you know you were different? Sort of this stock question. And I always give a very lovely slash sassy answer that I never felt different. What I did come to realize is that other people had a problem with who I am. But to me, that's not the same as feeling like I'm not a human being like they are. I don't have the same wants, desires,

need to belong, that sort of thing. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. devout, somebody who is a parent, somebody who exists in a particular community with a particular set of norms and beliefs. She's got all of those sets of concerns. And at the same time, she's got to be seeing all the news, also seeing all the same stories that you're seeing. And I'm wondering if in the back of her mind, part of what's going on is also, this is my kid. And is this the life that my kid may be stepping into? And I love my kid,

and I'm really just concerned for their well-being. I'm curious whether you've ever had that conversation with her. Why, as a matter of fact, we have had that conversation. And she, yeah, she was flat out. So when I told her at 11, she said, you don't know what you're talking about. You're too young to talk about these things. Don't ever talk to me about that again. And she was screaming and very upset. And what I received as an 11-year-old kid was, wow, this thing that is inherent that I can't change about me is awful, is evil, is my fault. I got to hide it for the rest of my life. Just the most terrible slamming sound of the closet door in my face. And years later, when we talked about it, she said, I was scared that you would get HIV. I was scared that you'd be alone for the rest of your life.

She said that her biggest motivating factor was fear. And at 11, I couldn't comprehend that. And, you know, I kind of wished, I don't usually ever talk about this, but I wish she could have told me that at 11 years old. It was nice to hear it at 30 or whatever I was when we talked about that. But in a way, the programming had already been done, and that's really unfortunate. Yeah, because then it doesn't land as there's, quote, something wrong with you, or quote, like all the other ways that it could land as a young kid,

and even as a young adult, it's more, I'm concerned. I'm concerned about you being okay as a parent, which is a profoundly different message. Yes. And I actually heard from both of my parents later in life, you know, after I had left home, that life. And it's hard to argue with that because that's what the culture was telling them. Yeah. And at the end of the day, it's interesting you ask the typical parent what they want for a kid and most of them will rattle off some variation of, oh, I want my kid to be happy. But the deeper truth is, even before that, what you really want is for them to be safe. You want for them to be okay. And sometimes that's how we map that is guided by the culture, the ethos, the philosophy that surrounds us.

It's all we know. And so it's like the intention is actually not a bad intention, but the way that we think is the appropriate way to go about it ends up causing harm that we don't even realize is being caused in real time and sometimes not until many years later. Yeah. A lot of parents come to me to ask how they can support their LGBTQ kids, which is a wonderful thing. I love always getting those messages. And I have a bit of a shocking need to love yourself. You need to accept all of the things that you find unacceptable about yourself and then demo what that integration is like for a young person. And I never, never wished that I had a perfect set of parents, but a more consciously loving set, and I mean loving themselves, to have seen that when I was a kid, I think would have been something quite magical for me. Yeah, it's doesn't matter what you say as a parent. It matters. The behavior that you model is what sends the most powerful message. And you can't walk around all day saying this, this, this, and this, and then do the exact opposite and move through the world in a different way.

It's like kids. You should love yourself. Right. It's like, yeah, and then go do all sorts of self-destructive things to yourself as a parent. Right. Exactly. You don't haveructive things to yourself as a parent. Right, exactly. You don't have a leg to stand on. Yeah. So when you move out into the world and you start to be able to actually say yes to your own community, say yes to your own sense of identity, say yes to your own language.

You described earlier that 11-year-old moment where you tell your mom, I think I like boys. That was the only language that you really had at that moment in time. But that's really, it's changed, it's evolved and it's expanded. And that language in the early days was really sexual orientation focused. But the language now, not just you, but sort of like that, there's been this really powerful evolution of language. And I don't want to say evolution of identity because we've always been what we've always been.

And there have always been people of all identities and all sexual orientations forever. But now it seems like there's been this evolution and granularity in language that allows people to really figure out what is the language that allows me to express myself differently. I'm curious how you have sort of explored the world of finding the language that felt like you. playground. It was a hodgepodge of trying different things. Yeah, I cycled through lots of different stuff. And I was on Vine and I was famous and doing videos on Vine. And the kids on Vine said, what are your pronouns? Are you non-binary? This was like 2013. And

I was like, what are these kids talking about? And so I went to the source, everyone at the time would go to tumblr.com. And I looked up, what are these kids talking about? And started reading personal experiences of people who were non-binary. And the light bulb went off. I felt so comfortable and at home and at peace with that. And because of the kids, as I like to say, I became one of the first public figures. I was the first person to talk about it on national TV, being non-binary and talking about this modern era of the pronouns and how to treat people like us with the most respect. Talk to me about the relationship between use of appropriate pronouns and respect,

because I think that's one of the things that people will sometimes struggle with. They'll think, oh, well, you know, like, quote, why does it matter so much what pronoun I use? But it's really not a language thing. It's bigger than that. Yeah. Is that a statement? Was there a period or a question? It's kind of like a little bit of a lingering question. Okay, good. My favorite kind. To me, it's about a human soul. So, a label is not the totality of a human experience, but it is a place for someone to land, to feel seen, to feel understood, to feel respected, to feel loved, to feel accepted, to feel the thing that I was craving the most when I was nine years old on the farm. Hmm. I mean, it occurs to me also language is, it's a way to communicate what's going on. It's a way to communicate your inner life, your inner experience, your inner sense of identity, of who you are. And when you don't have that language or when it

doesn't quite fit, it's almost like, and tell me if this is completely off or if it resonates with you, it's almost like you're 80% seen, you're 60% seen, but you're never quite fully seen or expressed because the language is never quite accurate. Does that in any way resonate? Yeah. And until circa 2013 on Tumblr, I didn't have that level of comfortability. It's kind of hard to explain if someone has been comfortable in their label their entire lives. And I think this is one of my favorite references. Gene Hackman is an actor,

and he has talked about in interviews about how he doesn't even think of himself as a good actor, just a comfortable one. That he's been in like 40 movies, and so his 41st one, he's just going to walk on set and know exactly what to do. And the concept of having language that truly sees a person is that level of comfortability. It's a level of goodness. It's a level of human relaxation that is hard to describe if you've never been through it. So it's not just respect. It's about, I mean, it's a yes and. It's respect and ease to a certain extent. Yes. That's the perfect way to say it.

Respect and ease, which as you're saying it, it seems a little ironic to me because people usually have a little time where they are not at ease trying to learn the new pronouns, right? So, it's a little bit of like bumps in the road until everybody is at ease. But that does eventually happen, and it's beautiful. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. So I'm 56, and I came up in a world where the teaching was there are these two things, and names were assigned based on that. And those two different states, you know, like male, female were assigned to a being at birth generally. And then you reference them throughout life that way. And it is interesting to me because we live in a very different world, which is an amazing

thing right now. Not that, again, not that people are different, but that there's an openness to actually acknowledging that there's more than this binary state. And that there's new language that really helps people step into and express, like whatever, wherever they are in the spectrum, in gender. And like you said, and yet at the same time, I still stumble on a regular basis. And I think a lot of folks listening to this have that same experience of stumbling. And the fear is always, I always want to lead with dignity. And so sometimes I will default to just not saying anything rather than saying the wrong

thing. And I often, I feel like there's that fear in so many people is that you don't want to do harm and that misgendering, it can really do harm. And I wonder if there's sort of like, I feel like we're in this moment right now where people are trying to figure out like, what is the way to step into the conversation on all sides where dignity and doing no harm are at the center of it all. And I feel like we're all stumbling in a really big way through that conversation in real time together. And thank goodness. Thank goodness. Because if we were unstumbling and if we were

comfortable when people were not being respected or included, then I think it's probably a good thing to be uncomfortable. You said it so beautifully that this is a process with an end end goal that is noble, that is beautiful, that is human connection. And it's such a delight to speak to you because so many people want to get bogged down in the rules and don't realize the spiritual aspects. Not that a person has to have a spirituality, but when I say spiritual aspects, like human dignity and respect, right? Because the danger has been, as non-binary folks, we've gone from people thinking we're absolute weirdos, not wanting anything to do with us, to now people being afraid to say the wrong thing around us. And in both instances, we are left off alone with nobody to hang around with, right? People are afraid of us because we're weird or people are afraid of us because they're going to say the wrong thing. And one encouragement I would give is

we have encountered this many, you know, if you're talking to an out non-binary person, we've encountered this many, many, many times. And yes, it is not pleasant to be misgendered. It's not pleasant when people forget. But you should be included in that common human dignity and respect as well. Meaning, I as a human being don't want you to spend three days feeling bad. Because you said he. That doesn't seem very productive to me. The behavior that you choose to adopt is just to opt out of the conversation entirely. You're doing harm by basically engendering isolation, by creating separate worlds, by almost implying like there is, I'm so uncomfortable with being wrong that I'm just going to opt you out of my experience of life, of community, which inadvertently is just an entirely different way of doing harm. Yes. And it's a repeat of what we might call the old days when people just purposefully cut us out of society and the conversation altogether. Right. It's like the net effect is the same.

The intention may be different, but the net effect is the same thing. Yeah. And I always like to remind allies that you will goof. It just is going to happen. And being able to do that and recover in as graceful a way as possible is part of being a warrior for equality on this earth. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required.

Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight risk. The other interesting evolution of language is I think gender has been really cool to watch how the conversation has shifted around it. And the other part of it is sexual orientation.

There are a lot of new phrases. There are a lot of new identifications. And I feel like there's kind of some fun being had with language along the way too. I think it's gender fun even sort of like part of the conversation. So there's so many variations now that I think you're talking about, and granted there's more than just male, female, and non-binary on the gender side also. There's a full spectrum of identifications. And now we're seeing that in sexual orientation also.

And I feel like a lot of times people also still conflate sexual orientation and identification with gender and make assumptions that if you're this in one of those categories, then you must be this in the other. And yet there is a beautiful amalgam of mix and match. Whatever tapestry you want to put together that feels fully expresses you, it seems like there's this availability to pick and choose the language that continues to evolve in a really beautiful way. From the outside looking in again talking to you as you know like a straight cis-gen midlife guy um does it does it feel like that um from your lens from your experience yeah are you talking specifically about the kids on tiktok that kind of vibe

that but also just like in common conversation these days, just like, I feel like there's been an expansion. Like it started, sure, in certain areas, but now even, you know, it's interesting, right? Because even the word queer, I think is really interesting because that word I'm seeing used in so many different contexts now, sometimes without even reference to sexuality. And I think it's just fascinating to see how people are playing with this language and just adopting it to mean whatever it is that they feel somehow just resonates with them. Yeah. And it goes to show you how woefully inadequate language is to describe human lives, let alone behavior. But, you know, the way you

encounter things and how you feel and all of that stuff, language is just not adequate. And you highlight the invitation. I don't know if you meant to do this, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but, you, but someone like me is an invitation to folks who have never thought twice about the labels they use. For example, you use the word cis, meaning cisgender, the opposite of transgender, and even to use the word opposite, like what am I talking about? But for someone who never even encountered the word cis because they just thought of themselves as a man from start to finish, and that's been their whole experience, the invitation for me to someone

like you, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, is your box doesn't have to be so small and proscribed either. That men don't have to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to be the mannest man, you know, or whatever the version of that is. that the comfort and play and genderqueer nature of human existence as a non-binary person can be, you know, you can come to this playground, you can come to this field over here and hopefully find some peace and expansion yourself. Hmm. I like that invitation. Yeah. And it's never, I never, so a teenager will, you know, comment on one of my videos and say, is it okay if I'm a non-binary lesbian?

And I say, of course, right? It's kind of like what you were saying before. It's like, we're making this up as we go along, and I been common your whole life. Even if that's the case for you, hopefully, you still find comfort in the idea that you don't have to have a standard. You don't have to meet a standard of who you are with sexuality or gender. Yeah. I mean, I think it's such, it's such a powerful invitation for everyone, you know, and, and I think it's, I love the reframe and I love you and you're like reflecting that back to me because I offered like this certain idea to you unwittingly kind of like opting out

of the same exploration. And so you reflecting it back to me is like, you know, right, right. No, I got it. It's all good. You know, it's like, we're all in this dance together, you know, and like, don't ever assume that you're on the sidelines trying to figure out like what quote they are trying to figure out. You just excited me so much because allies will ask me, how do I respect non-binary people? And I've started asking, well, what are your ideas? What are you coming to the table with? Because you're in this movement too, right? Of liberation, if that's what we're doing, you belong here too. You helped me just now, right here in this podcast recording, identify why I'm uncomfortable with

this kind of expert model of I'm supposed to tell people what's up. I don't like that feeling at all. I get that. I want to shift gears a little bit also. Maybe it's not a shift gears, but it's just another point of curiosity for me. You, at some point, and you probably picked this up because I used the phrase, do no harm earlier. There's a Buddhist side of you. I'm curious what brings you to that a bit further into life. Well, as a young person about, oh gosh, trying to do the math in my head, over 20 years now ago, I was so intensely devoted to self-hatred and self-judgment. When I say I did extra credit, I worked on it on weekends. I did everything that you could do as a young person in my 20s to hate myself almost out of existence. And so things got so desperate that I needed to move away to a monastery for a while,

a Buddhist monastery, and have a chance to look at what exactly we are doing here and what we may be trying to do and honestly why self-hate and other hate is such a huge issue. I wrote about this in How to Be You, but I happened to study with a person that first used the term self-hate in a spiritual context. And it was brilliant to study with her and take a deep look at why and how, more importantly, how that happens. Why Buddhism? I mean, there are... I'm lucky. Because there are so many places that you could have chosen to step into, so many different paths, so many different ideologies, philosophies. And I'm always curious why that, especially given the context of, you know, you grew up in a particular tradition, be a lot of friction there. When you're sort of saying, I'm in a really dark place, like self-hate has effectively become my religion, and I need to choose somewhere else to step into to figure this out. There are so many

different choices you could have made. I'm curious why that particular choice was made. It chose me. Self-hate had become my religion. Yes, thank you for that. Thank you for the gift of that beautiful phrase. It had become my religion and addiction, my family, my everything, my world. And I went into a spiritual bookstore in Philadelphia, and across the bookstore was a book, handwritten, this weird artsy handwritten font on the cover of the book. It said, There is nothing wrong with you. And it was written by the guide at the monastery that I would eventually go to and train within. But of course, I saw the cover of that book, There Is Nothing Wrong With You, and my brain started going, oh, yeah, right. I know this is wrong with me and this is wrong.

It started like, do you want the alphabetical list or order of importance of what's wrong with you? And as my brain is doing that, my feet are like, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk over to that book, cracked it open, and through whatever miracle was able to take in that message for at least a glimpse, just a moment in time enough to set me on that path. Do you know who Guan Yin is? What? Guan Yin as in the goddess?

The Bodhisattva, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This Buddhist figure. Right. Statues of Guanyin have had boobs, mustaches, sometimes both together, sometimes like this angelic being that has no gender. And a lot of the stories, depending on which country you're following that particular deity through in the history of Buddhism will take many forms, many genders to help someone reach nirvana or become more enlightened.

So there is this tradition already built into Buddhism that transcends, I don't need to tell you, transcends the identity, but also helped me to become much more comfortable in this gender transcendent space. Now, that makes a lot of sense. And that was actually one of my curiosities because there is, and it's not only in Buddhism, I feel like it exists more in various Eastern traditions than Western-based traditions. There is much more comfort with the idea of dissociation with any particular gender identity, almost shape-shifting. And it's just a part of the storytelling, the mythology, the ideology around it in a

much more natural way. And I also feel like it's also that way in the art and the culture of a lot more Eastern traditions as well. And it's sort of like Western said, we need to lock this down. And I'm always fascinated by that divergence in how people storytell about themselves and the world and how the traditions have evolved sometimes over thousands of years around that. Yeah. Another prime example is indigenous cultures in North America too. But yeah, I like how you said Western culture. What was the phrase you used? We need to lock this down. I think it is in large part. I don't know how philosophical about gender you want to get, but it does have to do with power struggles and hierarchies. And I didn't get to say this earlier, but the first

suggestion of using a gender-neutral pronoun came from women, from feminists in Ms. Magazine. So there is this concept in 1971. So there is this concept of undermining the power structures and the hierarchies by using more inclusive language that comes long before this language we're using now about non-binary identity. And to me, it's all of a piece. We're going for true equity for folks. When you decide to basically say, I'm going to step in the world as me, and I'm going to fully own it, and then step into social media, and then start to really storytell and share ideas and share who you are in a very bold public way, you also really start to develop a lot of your own ideas and share them. That leads to this fantastic book, How to Be You,

which is almost like, I feel it's almost like your 10 commandments. But I don't want to call them commandments because that would assume that they would always be static. And I feel like even that is sort of like not the intention behind it. Like this is a dynamic set of thoughts and let's have a conversation about them. So many fantastic thoughts around perfectionism and cultivating deep trust of yourself and really a devotion to self-knowledge, self-awareness, self-inquiry. Among the topics that you explore, which I thought was fascinating, was the relationship between punishment and control. Talk to me about this. Yes. I realized through my own self-hate journey that if I was always the worst person in the room, I was able to have some sense of control, some sense of normalcy, some sense of, if it was always my fault, then at least I knew whose fault it was.

And I don't know where it came from, bravery, gumption, desperation, to be able to step out of even the idea of whose fault is it. And the undermining of a sense of control or a sense of even consistency that you give up with that. Yeah, from one Buddhist to another, how do we know ourselves? Well, we're the people who are terrible, right? We're the people who are always striving to be better and self-improve. And, you know, well, if you have no self, that's not a problem, right? You talk about the myths of control also as part of that conversation. This idea that control is actually even a thing, that it's possible to be in control, that it's possible to be in control all of the time, that there's a should involved in it.

You actually should be in control all of the time, that there's something wrong with you. That if you're not, or if you can't constantly be in control, that you should do something to have more of it. And that other people have this magical state, which is a should, an aspirational state, and you don't. So much of this is built around this notion that we exist in a world that is, I'm going to go back to that phrase, lockdownable. And it's like the more that you assume that everything is within your control, it's almost like you are inviting suffering into your life. Because the reality of the world is it's not. And yet, and yet, this is our default approach to everything in life. And I often wonder why that is. Like, why do we seem to arrive into say, it's not what, it's how.

It's not the circumstances of growing up non-binary or not, or on a farm or not. It's how we build a life, how we are taught to treat ourselves. And I have never encountered someone who has not given the message in one way or another, there is something wrong with you. I mean, they don't call it intergenerational for nothing, right? So, happened to our parents, happened to their parents, happened, happened, happened, happened, happened. And I admire people like you and a lot of my spiritual heroes who say, well, the buck stops here then. I might not have been given those skills, but I sure am going to go find them somehow by hook or by crook to end this cycle somehow. I think it's one of the most noble things a human being can do. And by the way, I haven't yet opted myself out of that cycle.

I'm still struggling with all the same stuff as much as I read, as much as I know all the things, but I'm human and right there with everybody else listening. It's still a lot of life that I want to say, oh, I can map this. I can figure it out. There's control that I have over it. And for the most part, for me, in the context of my life, it's over the nature of the relationships with people that I can't imagine moving through this season on the planet without, you know?

Mm-hmm. And yet, like, the truth is always impermanence. And, you know, everything is sort of like in perpetual flux. You follow up in your book with, like, one of the other big ideas really kind of follows nicely with that, which is to get used to not knowing, which is that there is a certain freedom. Not only is there the renewal of spirit, there's a freedom in actually not having control, in not knowing all the answers, and just surrendering to the fact that, oh yeah, stuff's just going to happen. And I'm going to get asked something in a big meeting and have no idea what the answer is. And the notion that there's freedom to that is a little

counterintuitive, but if you kind of just sit with it, it's like, huh, well, what if there was? Did you say, I'm going to get asked something in a big meeting and not- Which is really funny because I don't have- Is that your big fear right now? I don't have big meetings. I'm sort of like, I'm, I'm postulating. How many zooms are you on? Yeah. Like I'll be in my suit and tie and all of a sudden I'll be, I think that would be fun to do a zoom like that with you as long as it was, you know, a game, a play. Um, yeah, no, that's,, no, that's, so first of all, it's true. You can't control anything. But second of all, once you give up on trying to, that's what you get. Freedom, happiness, ease, joy, jokes. I get a lot of hate, as you implied earlier. I am on social media,

and I am an LGBTQ person on social media. And I used to not be able to really, not shockingly, but it used to be very difficult, the kind of psychic weight of everybody really telling you the most awful things that you've ever heard in your life on social media. And one thing that really helped me is the realization that I do not want to control other people's reactions. I couldn't. But also, I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to be playing that particular game. It was really profound. Just a few moments ago, you reminded me that as a little kid, I had to use my smarts in order to survive. So one of the very first things we talked about,

being in the barn, having an ear out for my dad's boots on the gravel, I had to be highly intelligent and suss out how I could do a quick change or run to the other entrance of the barn and make it out. I had to use, let alone sussing out my parents' moods and being intelligent enough to navigate around all of that and not get in trouble like we talked about. But then you grow up and that intelligence that I used to survive has nothing to say about love, has nothing to say about being vulnerable with a partner, has nothing to say about death, loss. The intelligence I needed to survive is really not helpful in so many areas that we call human lives. Yeah. And at the same time, almost always bundled with that intelligence is a devotion, often unwittingly, but out of survival to hypervigilance. And the psychic weight of sustained hypervigilance year after year after year becomes

brutalizing. And at some point, on the one hand, if you're perpetually in environments and communities where you feel like it must be there for me to literally physically survive, it's something that maybe you say this is a part of the equation of the life that I'm choosing to live. But what if you could figure out a way to be in communities and conversations and in an emotional and psychological and cognitive space where you didn't feel like you needed to carry that burden, maybe not completely let it go, but not at that level. What would become available to you from a bandwidth standpoint for love, for connection, for devotion, for whatever it may be when you're not carrying the volume of that load anymore?

It's such a good question. I was shocked, one gajillion percent shocked when I learned that there are people in the world who are not part of communities and constantly trying to prove to that community that they're valuable. They just are part of a community and don't even think about it. It's like, wait a minute. I want that. So yeah, it's a really, really good, important question. Yeah. And it starts to bring it full circle also. One of the last things that you talk about in your book and I've heard you talk about elsewhere is this notion of being passive in your own happiness is deadly, of not sitting back and waiting for things to happen, of really being active in the exploration of how you want your life to show up. And I think that's such a powerful invitation for anybody. And almost everything that we're talking about, probably everything

that we're talking about, a lot of the context has been in your life, has been in the context of gender, has been in the context of sexuality. But the truth is, just like you just described, everybody has existed at some point in the community or wanted to be accepted by a group or a person or a community where they felt like they had to in some way hide or be someone else or carry a different identity and give up a certain amount of their agency in the quest to just live a good life, to be happy. So your invitation, in all the work that you do, I think it's so interesting that literally everything everything that you say every idea that you have is relevant in every person's life in every context oh good that's my global proclamation i have to um well that's funny i thought you were going to

um i don't know if you know the l phrase, to read someone, you know, like open them like a book and read them. And I really thought you, I think you did pretty well. You read me. What I am is a walking metaphor. I hope it's darn clear what I was told is wrong with me. And I hope it's also darn clear that I love that. I love that about myself. I celebrate it. I show it. I dance within it and have joy all around it. You can do the same. That feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So hanging out in this container of good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To talk well and often and kindly to yourself.

Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you'd love this episode, safe bet you'll also love the conversation we had with Tristan Angel Reese about living and advocating for your truth. You'll find a link to Tristan's episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Alejandro Ramirez, Christopher Carter, Crafted Air Theme Music, and special thanks to Shelley Adele

for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did since you're still listening here, would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favor and share it. Maybe on social or by text or by email, even just with one person. Just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen. Then even invite them

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