Life Will Be the Death of Me with Chelsea Handler - He/She/They with Schuyler Bailar

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Trans athlete and activist Schuyler Bailar joins Chelsea in-studio to talk about why simply believing trans youth is the most important thing, why language matters, and the truth about trans folx playing sports.  Then: A Florida teacher wrestles with how to talk to her students about a world outside their own.  A soccer wife struggles to find time away with her husband - that doesn’t involve cleats.  And a New Yorker wonders if it’s for real as they ponder a move to the countryside for their new beau. * Find Schuyler’s book here! * Get involved: Trevor project Folx health Black Trans Liberation * Need some advice from Chelsea? Email us at [e-mail] * Executive Producer Catherine Law Edited & Engineered by Brad Dickert * * * * * The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the Podcast author, or individuals participating in the Podcast, and do not represent the opinions of iHeartMedia or its employees.  This Podcast should not be used as medical advice, mental health advice, mental health counseling or therapy, or as imparting any health care recommendations at all.  Individuals are advised to seek independent medical, counseling advice and/or therapy from a competent health care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issues, health inquiry or matter, including matters discussed on this Podcast. Guests and listeners should not rely on matters discussed in the Podcast and shall not act or shall refrain from acting based on information contained in the Podcast without first seeking independent medical advice.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. Oh, hello, Chelsea.

Thanksgiving. I was going to say Thanksgiving's over, but I meant to say Halloween is over. Thank God. You are not a person who dresses up, right? No. Hello. Please. My roommate that I'm living with right now said to me, he said, I just want to live in a neighborhood where there's not going to be any trick or treating. And I was like, oh my God, that's exactly how I feel. I am such a Halloween Scrooge. There's nothing more insulting to me than adult Halloween parties. See, I love going to my friend's house who's in Burbank. Burbank goes crazy because it's all the like people who work for Disney.

So they've got these crazy yard displays and like give out tons of candy. I love giving out candy. I think it's so fun. That sounds right, Catherine. I can see you enjoying that. But Chelsea, speaking of fun things, I have an update for us that's actually really exciting. Good. I like updates.

They're positive. Well, we don't get a lot of negative ones, I guess, obviously. Why would they call and be like, you ruined my life? chelsea this update is from d and she called in a while back and she was really stressed about her a while back a while that's me emphasizing so you understand to say long while but she was dating her boyfriend for like seven years he hadn't proposed and she was like super duper stressing about it he'd kind of given her a timeline sort of but she says dear chelsea I wrote in 17 months ago, expressing agony, waiting for my boyfriend to propose.

Well, you were right. Just one month later, he did propose on a sweet trip to beautiful up north Michigan. Flash forward to our wedding this summer, which was stunning beyond words. It was a musical backyard wedding where the love of our closest friends and family surrounded and lifted us. It's silly I was ever impatient because the day was perfect and came at the exact right time. Your advice was to have the hard conversations.

Since then, we've had a few. We learned more about communication and each other. And now when I'm feeling anxious before a serious talk, I remind myself that it's worth sharing instead of dwelling all alone in my head. Attached are a couple moments from our day. We're a family of musicians, but that was my first time performing, and it was all at once terrifying and so, so fun. Thank you for taking my call.

Another unforgettable experience. I look forward to Dear Chelsea every week and will forever admire and aspire to be more like her. Strong, voracious, intuitive, and funny. Cheers to you and hashtag problem solved. And here is a cute picture of her on her wedding day. Oh, that's so cute. Look at that. Oh, that's cute.

I'm happy for them. I know. I just thought that was so lovely. Yeah. So thanks for letting us know, Dee, and congratulations. conversations. Everyone needs to not rush everything. No rushing. Don't make things happen. Let them happen. Yes. And having good hard conversations, I think, is a great lesson as you go into your marriage as well. There will be lots of hard conversations, and I think it is

worth having them the right way. Yeah. Who knows what I said to her about that, but it sounds like it worked out. Some great wisdom, I'm sure. Great. Well, so, Chelsea, we have an awesome guest today. So welcome to the podcast, Skylar Baylor. Thank you for having me. Yeah, yeah. Chelsea Handler. Yes, yes. Chelsea Handler, Skylar Baylor. Here we are together. The book is called He, She, They, How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters.

I found it so informative because you really break down a lot of things that I think people who aren't open to transness or have experienced transness in their lives or anyone who's gone through this, there's so many different angles. It's such a spectrum of a different experience for everybody. Now, you transitioned how many years ago? Eight. Eight years ago. And you're an athlete and you were swimming on your college team. Yes. Yeah. I think first what I want to talk about is, because there's a lot to dive into on that front, but I want to talk about how, you know, there's something in your book, the simplest way for you to explain that transness is not the sum of someone's external parts. How married we are to the idea that if you have a

vagina, you're a girl, and there's nothing in between. Can you speak to that? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think there's a fundamental lie we've all been told, which is that how our bodies look at birth is equal to our gendered experience in the world and our gender identities. And even our biology isn't that simple, right? We're told that biology is either penis or vagina, either XX or XY, but there's so much complexity even within biological sex. There's chromosomal diversity, hormonal diversity, and other types of genitalia diversity. So even if we look at the quote, basic biology, even that is diverse. And so people have this, again, fundamental belief that is from a lie that's told to us when we're kids that this is only two categories. And the

reality is it's far more complicated than that, as pretty much everything else in our lives are. Exactly. And it's interesting that this conversation is so prevalent now. So please enlighten my audience and tell us about your experience. And let's start with the sports. Let's start with you and competing on a male team from being a female. So this is kind of the opposite of the arguments we're facing right now, or we hear a lot of. I shouldn't say we're facing, but we are as a society that a lot of people have a big problem with men transitioning to females and then competing in sports. And you did the opposite. Right. Yeah.

And how did that work out for you? Yeah. Well, I want to go back just a little bit, a couple language notes. So what I always recommend people say is what somebody is assigned at birth. Right. So I was assigned female birth and I am a man. People that you're talking about, you said men transitioning to female. We would say people assigned male at birth who identify as women or just calling them trans women, trans feminine folks. That's just a little language shift. Right. And I talk about why in the book so people can check that out. So, yes, people much more focused on trans women, trans feminine folks. People have this belief that there's something unfair about that. the sort of translation to my situation is that people then think that I wouldn't possibly be able to compete against cis men, right? That somebody like me, a transgender man, wouldn't be able to compete against cis men because they expect that I would just lose. And it turns out that I ended up doing okay. I didn't lose to everybody. I actually was in the 85th and 87th percentile. So it's faster than 85 and 87% of all men in the NCAA at my events. So I didn't win

everything, right? But I also didn't suck. And I think that's an important note. And there's other trans men like me, who've also not only lost, right, who've also done okay. We've got some trans athletes out there who are trans men who actually have beat almost all men in their categories in their sports. So I think that sort of ruptures this idea that everybody assigned male at birth, such as cis men, such as trans women, is automatically better than anybody assigned female at birth, such as me as a trans man or a cis woman. And so was there any pushback at your school when that was publicly known that you were going to be competing on the team? as a transgender man? On my team specifically, I experienced actually quite an overwhelm of

support. So I went to Harvard and my coaches were very supportive. They actually were the ones that came up with the idea in the first place. They said, if you identify as a man, why don't you swim for the men's team? Because I had been recruited to swim for the women's team. And they were just trying to find what would make me happiest. They said, you know what? We want you to be happy and we want to do whatever it takes to create the space for you to be happy, just like any other athlete. I think when we talk about sports, there's a hyper focus on trans people trying to transition for a purpose, right? Transition to win, transition to get access to the bathrooms,

transition, whatever, to hurt children. There's a very demonized view of trans people. And the reality is we don't transition to play sports. We transition because we're trans and we want to live, right? And we happen to be athletes. And I think my coaches and my teammates actually saw that in some really actually impressive ways where they put my humanity first. And how older were you when you transitioned?

I realized I was trans right after my 18th birthday, a couple months after, and then I began to shift how I was presenting in the world somewhere around 18, 19 in that space. And when you realized this, what does that realization look like? I mean, there are pictures in the book of you as a female. So how did you feel as a woman until the age of 18 when you had that realization? Like as a girl growing up, what was your thinking? Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting because language and how we talk about these things to me is really important. I don't think I ever felt like a girl. So I always like to offer, again, a shift of language and that it was when it wasn't when I was a girl, but when I presented myself as a girl, when I looked like a girl, when other people thought I was a girl, because I didn't wake up one day. you know you asked me what does it feel like to realize that I'm trans what was my childhood like I didn't wake up one day and oh my god now I'm trans right I've always felt this way about my gender similar to I think I would I would expect you've always felt a specific way about your gender and you've always had a specific feeling about your womanhood that equals your womanhood right and so I've always had a feeling that is my gender and experience it is my gender but I

haven't always been able to express that so I think for a lot of my childhood that was a conflict for me because everybody gave me the word girl and I was like, that doesn't fit. But I didn't have other words. I didn't have other community. I didn't have people to say, oh, if that doesn't fit, well, here's all these other identities that you could have access to. I just was handed tomboy. And so I was religiously attached to the word tomboy. If people asked me who I was, I would say, hi, I'm Skylar. I'm a tomboy, right? That's the first answer I would give them. And I was very connected to that word because that's what was closest, right, to my identity. For a out of my childhood, I really struggled because I think I was bullied a lot for looking different,

acting different. All the girls would say, well, you're not a real girl. And the boys would say, well, you're not a real boy. So that was a very difficult space to be in. I was bullied in bathrooms, harassed in bathrooms, thrown out of bathrooms. So I couldn't even pee in peace. And so I tried really hard in high school to be that girl. The pictures that you saw in the book are pictures of me in high school when I really tried to conform to whatever it meant to be this woman. And it made me miserable. I mean, I was struggling with an eating disorder, with depression, suicidality, self-harm. I was really struggling, even though externally I was doing all the things everybody wanted me to do. Yeah. Which I think is the most common theme when people don't

understand the struggle that anyone questioning their sexual identity has to deal with and the suicidal thoughts that come with it and how much pain it can cause to not feel like you're living your truth. Yeah. Well, I think that that is actually a universal experience. People who don't have an experience with transness or know people who are trans might not understand. I think you're right. But the reason they don't understand is because they're not extrapolating the same emotions that they could have, right? We've all felt like we didn't belong. We've all felt like a part of ourselves wasn't accepted to somebody else. We've all, I think, hidden pieces of ourselves in some social situations. And if we can extrapolate to living your whole life like that,

having your whole society believe in this lie that you're, for me, supposed to be this girl and you're not, I think there's actually a lot more empathy we can strike with others. Yeah, there seems to be a real dearth of empathy with regards to other people's choices. But also, it's just such a representation of otherness, right? Like people can't understand something that they haven't been through. Right. And when you hear people ask questions, I find myself always we're in such a divisive time already as a society, you know, and then all of these conversations, it's just like there's like a boiling point that it feels like we're at. You know what I mean? Like almost on the brink of enlightenment, but not quite there. And who knows if it will happen in our lifetime, but almost, you know, like, because there's so many feelings about this and so many opinions about what's, I mean, especially in our country with everything that's going on with legislation alone, you know, it's really frightening to know that little children are being denied their own existence. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about emotionally what it means to you to be living your truthfulness now, what it means. And also, I do want to get into a little bit. This is something I've said before on the show, but I don't think people realize how difficult like you said, you know, like as if you're going to transition to be on a sports team. It's not that fucking simple to transition. It is an arduous, arduous process that takes years of counseling.

It's not like you go in one day and you come out and you're the opposite sex. People who are doing this, there are less than 1% of people that have any regret about doing the surgery. There are more people who get breast reductions or plastic surgery who go in and try to reverse things than there are people who get transitioned. By a lot, not like a little bit, right? Yes. By like 30 times more kind of amounts, yeah. So talk to me a little bit about that journey for you and your happiness, your self-esteem, and all of the things that developed by becoming, by stepping in the shoes of the real person that you are. I mean, I can tell you that I'm happier than I ever was before my transition, and I think I can say that with so much conviction and peace.

and people who have tried to challenge that by, you know, if I ever say that I'm struggling with any kind of mental health, anything, people are like, see, trans people are mentally ill. And I'm always like, well, I'm a real person, right? And I do experience difficulty here and there in my life. But there's a weight that I'm no longer carrying, which is this weight of being somebody I'm not, right? I'm not carrying around this fear that I'm a fraud,

that I'm not who I say I am, that there's this other part of me that I wish I could show the world, but I can't, right? I don't have to do that anymore because I get to be all of myself. I will say, though, there is a deep grief that I experience in being able to be myself now watching the amount of anti-trans legislation that's going around the country. I get access to my hormones. I can take my testosterone. I've had my top surgery.

Most of the people in my life respect me for who I am. And I have a home, a partner, right? Like I have a life that I really like. And there are so many trans people that don't have that right now. And so every time I take my shot, my testosterone shot, which I just did yesterday, I think about that. I think about how much of a privilege it is for me to be able to have access to my life-saving medical care. And I don't ever want to see that as something that I take for granted. But I also

sort of make a resolution to myself every time I do my own shot and say, this is me also fighting for other people to be able to have the same access. So there's this dual duality to it. I feel this peace and this happiness, this immense gratitude. But I also feel grief and anger and frustration because while I get to live as myself, there are so many others who can't. And are there any organizations that you work closely with that people who are listening can support, donate to? Like, can you shout out some places that you've worked with or that you have experience with? Well, you've heard of the Trevor Project, I'm sure. So the Trevor Project is a LGBTQ plus suicide hotline.

They think they do amazing work that's supportive of the community. I also think there's Folks Health I work with. Folks Health is a telehealth company that serves trans and queer community. I get my testosterone directly from folks. Their providers are queer and trans. And it's a way to actually get access to health care, specifically gender-affirming health care, that doesn't go through avenues where the doctors might not understand us as trans people, right? There's a lot of discrimination in health care elsewhere. So I love Folks Health.

There's a lot of really great location-specific places, Equality Florida, Equality Texas. Is there Equality in Florida or Texas? The company. I guess that's where they have to start, right? Florida and Texas. They are fighting for. I think it's parentheses fighting for, right? Right, right.

But yes, yeah. So there's a lot of really great grassroots organizations that I think are awesome to support. There's the Black Trans Liberation is one out of New York City, actually, with an amazing activist, Queen Jean. And she works to provide better care for black trans folks that live at the intersections of many systems of oppression. So I could spend all day on you. I don't want to take too much time. Well, I'm glad. No, I thank you.

The more information we have, the better. Talk to me a little bit about your book and your family dynamics and how things shifted or didn't shift with your family, how they received this information and what kind of support you were able to get from them? My parents did a really amazing job showing me love and they struggled on the understanding. So when I first, I'll just sort of like a summary, when I first came out to both of them, they were kind of like, okay, now what? And there was this sort of, I don't want to say nonchalance, but not sure what to do and not wanting to say something bad or make me feel sad. And so there was an acceptance in that moment. But then when I decided that I wanted to move forwards in terms

of transition. I wanted to get top surgery. I was considering testosterone. That was much more difficult for them. And I think especially for my mom, there was a resistance of, you know, why change your body? There's nothing wrong with it. And the very loud, very common, what if you regret it, right? What if you don't want this actually? And so there, I had a lot of really difficult conversations, some screaming matches, wouldn't recommend the screaming, of course, but you know, difficult times with both my parents trying to get them to understand. And I think the moment where things began to shift was again a screaming match so again don't recommend the screaming where i said to them i'm not asking you to understand me actually i'm just asking you to

trust me and i think there's a crucial switch we often experience people in a way that makes us think we have to understand right i have to understand i don't get it and therefore it's not real or therefore i can't support it but we actually can support and love people we don't understand we can support and love and validate entities that we don't understand right i don't know how a microphone works i'm sitting here i know it works but i don't know how it works and it's still very real right just as an example we can translate that to transness we don't have to understand the inner workings of transness or trans people yeah for them to be real right and i think when my parents understood that there was actually more space to love me more space to trust

me more space to hold my hand as i walked down this journey on my own with their support right and i think that that has been a crucial theme in our relationship yeah because as a parent i mean i can't imagine what it must feel like to a you you know it must feel like a loss in some sense and then such a gain when you're out on the other side of it but also such a fear of what could happen and what you could be subjected to in terms of other people bullying and discrimination and as a parent i just nobody ever wants their child to be subjected to any sort of pain which is obviously an impossible task or ideal i mean everyone's going to experience it but i think yeah i can't imagine how difficult that must be for some parents but again at the end of the day it is

like you want your child to be whatever they're supposed to be and realize their dreams that's all you could ever want is your child to be happy that's the most important thing yeah and but there is letting go and so one of the things i coach a lot of parents through their child's transitions they reach out to me and i i you know i see the kid and i see the parent and a lot of times there is a lot of grief about their kid and there's sort of two main categories of grief one is I thought I had a daughter or I thought I had a son and now I don't and I'm sad. And the other is I don't want my kid to be hurt in the world, right? I know that them being openly trans is going to cause them pain. And I think there's a good response to both. The first, in terms of

them being bullied, yes, your kid is going to be bullied by other people for being trans. I have no doubts because the world we live in, there's going to be transphobia. But if you bully your kid, then you are contributing to that, right? It is unequivocal that other people are going to do so. But do you want to create your home as a place where they're going to be bullied too, Right. Your only decision is actually, do I also bully my kid or do I protect them at home? So that's the first thing. The second one is grieving who you thought they were. I think that parents grieve who they think their kids are every day. Right. If we're actually letting the kid grow up and be their own self, regardless of whether or not they're trans or queer, there's always little things we're letting go of unless the kid becomes 100 percent our expectations. And if they do, they're probably not themselves. Right. So I think there's actually a fundamental realization for parents to have. And again, I've watched parents go through this as I've coached them, where they're actually realizing they have to let their kid grow up as themselves, transness involved or not. And they have to let go of their expectations for who they want the kid to be, again, transness or not. Yeah, that's a great point. Very salient. You're going to be really good at giving advice to people. Yeah, no, it brings like tears to my eyes because I this is why I'm not a parent. It's so painful to see anyone you love go through anything difficult. Like, imagine, you know, like what you're saying is so true. Your kid is never going to be exact. You're always mourning what they were or their age or them being little and then growing up and they don't need you as much. And, you know, so it's a great way to frame that conversation.

OK, well, on that note, we're going to take a break and we'll be right back. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. but these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality,

welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

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And we're back. Catherine, what did you drum up for us today? So many things. that i think he's gonna be skyler's gonna be no pressure skyler but skyler's gonna be really good at this so i can't wait with all of your zillions of degrees from harvard i think you will be just fine i only have one just one he only has one degree from harvard okay just to be clear but on different times okay can you can you tell us what your degrees are in because reading your book i was like wait not only does skyler have this experience as a

trans man and an athlete he also has this amazing education like that's why this book is so good Oh, well, thank you. I focused in cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, which is in the psychology department. Awesome. So like the science-y version of psych. So you transitioned while you were at Harvard or do you went to? I mean, I think I was still sort of in the process of transitioning, but I got top surgery and started testosterone before I began. So I took a gap year between high school and college.

And that's where I learned about myself. I was in actually a residential treatment center for my eating disorder at the time and just sort of like doing a lot of introspection because I was really sick. but end of high school and you and your eating disorder was related to you you know I it wasn't it wasn't you know I think mental health can be really complicated for me I had a lot of childhood stuff I was also working through and who's to say you can't you can't distinguish it completely from my transness because I think my transness was a big part of my childhood trauma as well right it's just really involved but I think a main driving factor to my discomfort in my body was my transness yeah it's interesting to think about all those eating disorders whenever they say oh

it's about control it's like well it is a lot about control but it's also about a bevy of other things eating disorders are not simple it's not just that's one of the realms of i'm actually on the eating disorder coalition board and so i do a lot of work in the eating disorder space and they're very complicated disorders and i think people think you know it's just about women wanting to be thin you know and it's it's really not it can present that way sure but it is it's about control as a part of it, but it's also about sort of dissonance with one's self and how one shows up in the world. It's about self-worth. It's about negative schemas. There's a lot of underlying factors that contribute to eating disorder risk. There's a very high percentage

of LGBTQ plus people compared to non-LGBTQ plus people who have eating disorders. And a lot of that is if you look at the risk factors, social isolation is one of them. Bullying is one of them. Gender ideals and body image ideals are one of them. And if you think about how queer people and trans people are treated all of those are like heightened risk factors for us okay so yeah so our first email comes from dane and this is actually a follow-up from our dylan mulvaney episode dane is a trans man who was struggling with his relationship with his mom but also through our conversation we realized he didn't really have any trans community around him uh so we really encouraged him there and even some dear chelsea listeners wrote in to get connected with

him. So Dane says, hey there, just wanted to check in and let you know I'm doing a lot better than the last time we spoke. Andrew, who was someone we connected him with through Dear Chelsea, who had written in, Andrew and I have become great friends. We hang out a lot. It's been great to become friends, especially from sharing such a vulnerable part of myself so publicly and having it turn out like this. We're planning to get tickets to see Chelsea's show together in Portland in November. Can't wait to laugh it up and cheer for her. Thanks again for everything, Dane. Oh, that's heartwarming. Yeah. Isn't it nice? I mean, friends make all the difference. Yeah. You only need one friend sometimes. You just need one. I mean, you'll get more.

But you know what I mean? It's like you only need one person to believe in you when you're a kid. There are times in your life where you feel so lonely and all you need is just like one person, you know, to make you feel so much less alone. That's nice. I love that. There's actually really interesting research that supports that if a trans kid has one supportive adult in their life, they have a dramatically reduced rate of suicide. So that one support, that one friend can really change somebody's life. And I think we all I think about that fact all the time because one person being nice to one other person is a really small ask. And I think any of your listeners, anybody can be nice to one trans kid, one person and truly save their life. Yeah. And I think that applies to, you know, any person when you see somebody going through something or you can you can sense somebody's alone or feeling lonely or sense that there's a sense of hopelessness about them.

You know, it's always important, even if you don't know that person, to just like reach out and grab their hand and say, are you OK? Like, do you need help? Do you need support? You can change people's lives all the time by just being sensitive to the people that are around you because people are always going through shit. And I know when that's happened to me and someone's noticed, like, oh, your energy's off or something's going on with you, it's so meaningful that somebody even takes the time to address it. Imagine what you could do for somebody who's in a tremendous amount of pain or discomfort or doesn't feel seen or doesn't feel heard. So I want to always encourage all of our listeners to really, you know, reach out when you feel or you see somebody that needs help. Please, you're never going to regret that. And it can be something really small, right?

just saying i see you like i i was at a speech recently and i was talking about what i would tell a trans kid in this specific there was a specific scenario they'd give they gave me and i was like actually it's very simple all i would say to that kid is i believe you i believe you for who you are you tell me who you are you tell me what your pronouns are and i believe you and that's it and this kid started bawling in the audience like just crying and his mom was there too and the mom was crying and they came up to me afterwards and both of them are crying and then i was crying and it was all just because i said i believe you you know and i think we don't do that enough we don't tell people i believe you i hear you i believe your experience is real to you and

therefore it's real to me yeah and i think we need to do that more yeah for sure yeah i like that yeah well our first caller is sloan she's 31 okay i just want to say that skylar and sloan were two of my cabbage patch names growing up they were sisters and skylar sloan and gretchen were the three girls. I wish I had a Gretchen calling in today, but no dice. Sloan's email, the subject line is how to stop arguing with fifth graders about Trump. And Skylar, I know you talked in your book about, you speak to a lot of kids and you talk about what kids have taught you about transness. So I thought this would be a good email to share with you. Dear Chelsea, I'm a school librarian and I'm very passionate about my work. I've been in education for seven years now. I used

to be a classroom teacher as well. And the past few years have been tough for many reasons, but also because of the politics seeping into our school culture. I teach in the South, so I think we can all make an educated guess who many of the families around here voted for. I feel like a fish out of water in the area I teach. I try not to let their comments and strong beliefs bother me, but damn, it's getting really hard. And to be honest, I hate confrontation, but when people are saying openly racist, homophobic, anti-trans, and politically ignorant things, it makes me my heart rate speed up and I find it hard to bite my tongue, especially when the students are saying all kinds of things. I mean, seriously, what six-year-old actually has an opinion about a

wall being built? However, when I do speak up, even in the least confrontational way I can, it ostracizes me from the community, which is a crappy feeling. Whether it's my principal making an insensitive joke or the parents trying to ban books with queer characters, it's all just exhausting. I could move schools, but it would mean a pay cut. How do I stay professional at work and not let things bother me while still sticking up for what I believe? Sloan. Hi, Sloan. Hi. How are you? Hi, cutie. Look at you. Hi, cutie. How are you? Sloan, I was just telling them Skylar's our special guest today, Skylar Baylor. And I was just telling our audience that my Cabbage Patch Kids growing up were Sloan, Skyler, and Gretchen.

So we just need to get a Gretchen in here and then we're all set. Perfect. Do you live in Florida? Basically. Yeah, basically. That's an interesting way to put it. Yeah, it sounds like it. Do you want to start this? Because I have to think. I feel this. I don't know how you could even live there. So I have to think about what advice to give you because I have such an intolerance for intolerance. It's rough. Oh, gosh. Yeah, Sloan, nice to meet you. You know, my first thought is a lot about how you are centering yourself outside of school, which might sound kind of funny. But I think a lot of what we do in our jobs or in difficult situations are reflections of how much energy we have elsewhere. So my first thought is like, where can you find space that you do have

community? Where can you find space? We are not fighting people, fifth graders on Trump's wall and what have you. That's important. Yes. The consideration at school, though, when you're actually doing these these tasks, trying to have these conversations, a couple of thoughts. The first thing is that you said not having a tolerance for intolerance. I think somehow I have learned some sort of tolerance for intolerance. And a lot of it comes from trying to actually dig into empathy. And I think I've interfaced with so many people who deeply don't believe that I exist. They like will stand in front of me and absolutely say, we don't believe in trans people. I don't believe in actually the newest one.

People are now going back on mixed race marriages, right? Anti-miscegenation laws. So like, I don't, I shouldn't exist in that front either as a mixed race kid. Like people will take apart my identity and say, I'm not Korean. I'm not this. I'm not trans. I'm not a man. I'm whatever.

Right. And they'll stand in front of me trying to deny my existence. And what I see is a whole lot of systems that have lied to them that cause them to believe these things and then hold onto them because it's their reality. And so when I interface with kids who are stuck here, I have to first understand that they're just repeating with what their parents have said, which you know. But what do I do with them? I like to ask them questions. And it's actually a lot less energetically draining to say, no, you're wrong.

Instead, I say, why do you say that? Where did that come from? Where did you learn that? And if you really press, especially you said coworkers making racist jokes, if you press them, hey, I don't think I – you can play dumb, right? I don't think I understood what that meant. Like what does that joke actually mean? you can get some really interesting places with that and I think I like to dig at the core right by asking questions like that and if anything you'll make them think right and at the worst

case you won't get anywhere they'll be like it's just a joke and they'll move on right but I think it's easier at least for my system to do that to be like why are you talking about this why do you care about this what do you mean by this instead of trying to tell them that they're wrong so that's sort of my approach and it hinges on empathy that says I understand why you are this way right Especially with the fifth graders. Right. They're not actively hateful. They're repeating what their parents are saying because they want to belong. Right. They want to belong with their parents. And so they're saying the thing that allows them to belong with their parents. And that is the most basic human thing to do. So I also that helps me have more tolerance for those moments. I also, you know, I mean, you're in the education system. I think I love everything that Skylar just said, because I think that is the right way to get, you know, to be a little bit smarter than than your emotions. Right. To get rise above the situation. And since you are in the field of education, you know, it is important to point out to the adults within your school system who make those comments in a different way than it is with children. Because in children, it is good to probe them to make them think about why they're saying something or why they may think they have the mental framework for something, you know, because then that really pushes you beyond the surface. And what do you really think about this?

But also with regard to adults, you know, I call it the miseducation of America. They want everyone just to be so stupid and dumb and not educated, which is so ironic, you know, in the field of education that people support this book banning and this anti-trans legislation. but it also just is very uneducated to not know more about these issues. It's always, you know, there's always more to learn and there's more to know. So when I think when you're dealing with the adults, you don't want to lose your temper. You don't want to lose your shit. You seem like, you know, you have a very good disposition.

In the two seconds I saw you, I mean that I'm looking at you and on camera and your energy, like, I don't see you as somebody who's doing that anyway. And I think there's a very joyful way for you to express yourself without being so threatening to the other adults that you might feel or that you know that you have different views and value systems, you know, and beliefs while remaining true to who you are. I think that's always a challenge that we face as adults is to figure out the most reasonable way to go through life while not selling your soul. Like

you don't ever want to pretend you believe that or that you agree with them, but there's a way for you to handle it with a plum, you know? I kind of have a good example of where it just gets so sticky is last week I had a six-year-old girl like looking to check out a book and we were running out of time. And I was like, what about this Clifford Halloween book? Cause it looked awesome. And she was like, oh, I can't get that. My mom doesn't let me watch Clifford. There's two moms in that show. And I was like, what? And then I was like, and I just, I get stumbled. Cause I'm like, I don't want to be the woke agenda indoctrinating the children and trying to push my beliefs on them. But at the same time, like, okay, there's two moms in it. That's normal.

but I can't, it's just hard. You just get stuck. You're just kind of like, whoa, you are six years old and you just said that. And so you get kind of stuck on what to say sometimes without pushing your beliefs or whatever. Right. And I don't think you necessarily have to push your agenda though on a six-year-old, but what you can do is what Skylar was talking about, which is actually ask questions about it without impressing your agenda on them, you know, asking questions like, oh, And that, you know, you don't have to do that every time. You know, I don't want you to get in trouble and get fired at work because I know that's a thing in Florida, too. It sure is. But, you know, I love the asking questions like, oh, you've never seen a family with two moms or, you know, maybe not in that moment, but down the road, knowing what kind of frame of mind you're dealing with and possibly probing it in more, you know, in ways that aren't directly related to her not getting the book Clifford. I think it's also like inviting the kid to think on their own, right? Like, I know there's a very large amount of people trying to push like, oh, it's pushing an agenda. Trans people don't have an agenda. We just want to live, right? That's really our agenda. And I think that's important to recognize. But the narrative is strong that that's the agenda. I think you can talk about these topics and let the kid actually think for themselves.

And I think that's what I would do in that moment if the kid said to me, oh, I can't get that. There's two moms. I'd say, oh, that's interesting. I'm just curious. Like what do you think about that? What is your thought? Is there something – I'm just curious, right? And I would just like ask them that question, if anything, not to get them to check out the book or to go against what their mom has said,

But just to invite them to have their own opinion about do you think anything about somebody having two moms, right? And I think that critical thinking is actually – there's a bigger problem with our education system, which is that we're not inviting critical thinking. We're not inviting kids to think a little bit further than whatever they're told. And that's a huge problem. And the whole indoctrination messaging that trans people or queer people are trying to indoctrinate kids, it's completely the opposite, Which is that these systems that are trying to ban books, that are trying to stop education about black people, about trans people, about queer people, about our history of systemic racism, right? All of that is indoctrinating the kids to not think, right? And to just accept whatever's put on the page and let it be there.

And that's really dangerous because we want kids that think. Who doesn't want kids that think? People who are controlling the country. What do you think about that, Sloan? Yes, definitely. I think I just need to, sometimes I just, when I hear that stuff, I go to like emotional reaction mode and I need to just, I love the asking questions and just kind of almost playing dumb and just be like, oh, what, what do you mean? Why do you think that? And also putting it in your back pocket.

So, you know, for later when there's an opportunity for another question that can probe their thinking and open their mindset, you know, you think of it as like you're gathering information. And that way you don't have to be reactive in the moment. you can actually react or respond down the line with some other, you know, in a different way or on a different subject matter, but knowing the kind of kids' parents you're dealing with. I have one other tool for you, which is something I talk about in my book. So I hope you can check that out. But there's this one kind of idea I learned earlier in my career with people who didn't agree with me. And I figured out that if I tried to enter the conversation trying to change their mind, trying to change their perspective, trying to just say, you're wrong, I'd get

nowhere right and similarly if somebody tries to enter a conversation with me and their whole goal is to say that i'm wrong i don't really want to have that conversation if i instead enter the conversation trying to add perspective and try instead of trying to change it so again it's adding perspective instead of changing it then i'm actually more likely to be successful because my goal in that conversation is to get the other person to walk away thinking gosh i hadn't actually considered that before and now that i've considered this maybe maybe that influences my conclusion instead of coming to the conversation being like this person thinks i'm wrong and i'm right and you're wrong and i'm right and you're wrong that's not the that's not a conversation that's

a confrontation you said you didn't like confrontation here's a way to shift it instead of trying to change their mind what can you give them that might be additive right how can you widen their perspective and say oh there's also this thing over here that you hadn't considered does that help your consideration of your conclusion i'm not giving you the conclusion i'm just giving you a fact you might have missed yeah love that love that i do too i'm really impressed with you. You're really smart. Juliana Margulies, you better watch up, okay? I mean, you better, sorry, watch up. You better wash up and watch out, okay? There's a new sheriff in town, Juliana. I know she's listening. I think that's great advice. And I'm even more excited

that I wasn't the one to give it. So there you go, Sloan. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Well, thank you for being a teacher and doing it in Florida. Absolutely. You're doing the Lord's work. Or basically Florida. It's been interesting. That's for sure. Never a dull moment. It's just, yeah.

Think of it as a nice big challenge. Yep. Definitely. And also make sure, I just want to double back on something Skylar said is like that community, which I'm sure you have, you seem like you have your own thing going on privately is so important so that you are able to be around people who are like-minded and have the same value system. 100%.

My tribe saves me for sure. Yeah. Great. Okay. Thank you so much. That's the kind of teacher I always wanted, somebody nice and young. Right, right. My teachers were always like 80.

Well, they weren't. Those are more congressmen and senators. But my teachers were always older. They were never young, you know. Not that it matters, but, you know. Well, sometimes it's nice to have people who can relate to you a little bit more. Yeah, like a little. It's just so much more energy sometimes, yeah.

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When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Well, our next caller is CJ. CJ uses they, them pronouns. CJ's email starts, help me, CNC Advice Factory, which I thought was clever.

Dear Chelsea, I'm 45, recently diagnosed autistic, live in NYC, and single for 20 years. I identify as trans femme, non-binary, and started my physical transition about a year ago. In 2021, I met a man on OkCupid. From his profile, I thought he was a handsome AF cis single guy. During our first conversation, he revealed that not only was he in an open marriage, but he's also trans. Even though I wasn't looking for a hookup, we met for coffee, figuring it would be great to have a good trans friend.

For me, it was love at first sight, and it's been difficult for me to think about anyone else since that moment. Flash forward, he's now in the process of his divorce. I helped him get out of NYC to find his dream job of working on a farm in North Carolina. During that time, we became extremely close. Regular hangouts and sleepovers, but no hookups. Although he knew of my feelings, he insisted he didn't see me as anything but a friend. A few months ago, our entire dynamic shifted.

We had a long, frank discussion, and he opened up emotionally in a way he never had before. As strong as my feelings were before, my entire heart is open to him now, and seemingly I'm happy to report his is to me. Because these feelings are impossibly rare for me, I'm having a hard time with my insecurity and self-doubt, worrying about absolutely everything. He's 12 years younger and far more attractive than me. He lives in another state. I'd love to move to be with him, but I'm in a long-term NYC rental paying just $1,100 a month, so if I give it up, it has to be the real deal. He's only just realized his feelings for me, whereas I've been struggling for almost two years with mine for him. What if his aren't real? I don't date frivolously.

And although I've had a lot of first dates and four times as many sex partners, my heart is alive for the first time in two decades when I had resigned myself to being alone forever. I'm equally excited and hopeful and nervous as fuck. Help me, Chelsea. You're my only hope, CJ. Hi, honey. Hi, CJ. Hi. Hey, everybody. Thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it. Oh, thanks for coming on. And you're visiting your fellow right now, right? I'm in North Carolina right now. He's right outside.

Should we get him on and just ask him what his intentions are? I actually asked him. He was like, I can't talk to Chelsea. I'm so scared. No, I can't. I can't do it. So not an option. Well, send our love.

So how long? What's the duration of time that you guys have now been together? Are you together now? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're officially together. it's been at this point officially it's been about four or five months but like i said we've known each other and had this sort of like weirdness for probably the last two years

we're very close friends well this sounds like a love story my big thing is like he's ready when i come down here i'll spend probably two to three weeks at this point with no issue um you know no fighting. We just get along. And it all seems so easy and simple, which is the weirdest thing for me because it's never been easy or simple. And he's sort of ready for me. He's like, why don't you just come down here? Why are you still in New York City? My big thing is I've been in New York City for 27 years now. I've been in the same apartment for 20 years. My rent is $1,100. So if I leave New York City, it's got to be for good. It's got to be for keeps. And I just don't know that I'm ready to do that yet. I have a thought. Well, I have a couple of thoughts.

There's a practical side of my brain, and then there's the part of me that loves love stories part of my brain, which is going to lead the charge. One of the thoughts I'm having is that a lot of trans people, in my experience, are resistant to ease. And the reason is because we're so not used to it right when we when we experience it we're like wait this isn't it like that we can't i can't have this i don't deserve this i'm not ready for this what if it breaks right what if it isn't what it looks like and i heard a lot of that through your email and also as you were talking and one of my favorite quotes from a friend of mine who's a black trans woman who's also an advocate she's an artivist she does a lot of amazing work her name is mila jam and she

said to me her wish for the world is to have trans joy be familiar right and i think that you're unfamiliar with trans joy i don't know you all that well but my guess is that you're unfamiliar with it because most of us are and in that we often will reject things that seem too good so i think that's like the love side of of me and like the wanting you to like dive into that trans joy and just whatever joy you have and let yourself be loved and let yourself love and there's a practical side of me that's like you also are allowed to be calculated but with how much risk you take right how much risk you accept because i think all relationships have the potential to fail regardless of how good or honest they are so instead of instead of seeing it as like this is

real versus not because it sounds real and i don't know if it's worth categorizing it as not it's how much how much risk do you want to like assign it does that make sense like instead of real versus not it's like how much do i do i gamble on this right you will always be able to find another apartment, maybe not one for $1,100. Is there a scenario where you can go down there and just keep your apartment here for six months or something? I like that idea. As far as what I'm aware of, and again, I'm not a legal expert on this, from what I've heard, there's some law in New York City where if you are away from your apartment for greater than six months out of the year, they can legally take it away from you. Just go back a couple of times. Yeah, I know.

That's who cares. First of all, you don't need to do it for six months necessarily. Like you just want to go down there for a good duration of time. It could be three months and then you could be like, yeah, I'm staying. You don't have to give up your apartment to go experience this, especially when you're paying eleven hundred dollars a month. If you can afford to pay that, just keep your apartment. Who cares about the laws or the rules?

You guys can come to New York for a weekend. I mean, you know, it's going to take a long time for someone to prove that you haven't been in your apartment for six months. And that person has nothing else going on. also oh and the good news is he he lives rent free because of his job so this is perfect i don't know what the problem is i really don't i think you need to go down there dive in this is a love story i'll be the romantic one in this situation and fucking go for it hold on to your apartment and that way you're and don't hang it over your partner's head you know don't be like i can go

home anytime i want don't be like that person but i think what you just said what skylar just said about trans joy you said it yourself like it's too easy well maybe that's the way it's supposed to be haven't you had enough to deal with i mean come on maybe you're being rewarded you know maybe this is your golden ticket and this is your life of ease and with somebody that sees you and loves you and that you feel the same way about i don't think there's a lot of risk involved in this you know i think you you might just be creating you know like little hurdles because that might be your pattern. And that might be what you're used to. Yeah, I think because we're both in therapy, you know, we don't obviously tell each other exactly what we tell our therapists and everything

that our therapists tell us as well. But my therapist has been like, go towards the joy. If you're feeling joy about something, go towards it. If it's not hurting anybody, go towards that joy. Stop second guessing everything that's going on because it seems crazy. Just really go with it. The one thing that he and I said to each other very early on is we've never felt this safe with somebody before, both mentally, physically, everything. It just feels safe to be ourselves, share our thoughts, share our feelings. And that's just the most powerful thing that I've ever experienced in my life. I think you're writing your answer for us you have your answer you just needed confirmation and also focusing on the joy that

is something you should write down and remember because when you do focus whatever you're going to focus on becomes greater and bigger so if you're going to focus on all of the things that may or may not be wrong then that's what becomes bigger but when you allow yourself to be in a joyful place to enjoy this love to enjoy the joy that is the word of the year is joy joyfulness How much joyfulness you're going to bring to people because you're experiencing joy. Focus on that, what you just said, because that's powerful. And your whole life can continue to be that way when you have that as the baseline. That sounds amazing.

I feel like this is all coming together. I work from home, so that's why I'm able to come down here as much as I want and just work from here. And it's, yeah, as usual, everything you said is spot on. Thank you. I think also like the feelings that you've got of like but what if it doesn't work but what if I regret it but what you know all the what-ifs like you can also answer the what-ifs one of the things that I always teach people and I try to myself is if my brain is going what if what if what if what if answer it what is what is the answer to the what what if it doesn't work out well you know

very well how to be on your own you know how to take care of yourself in this in this like plan of keeping your apartment you'll go back to your apartment right you'll be able to figure it out because you're a grown adult that has a lot of great coping mechanisms, clearly, right? So like answer the what if. It's gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay. Will it be sad? Sure, but I think it's also worthwhile

to just be like, I actually have the tools to figure out how to move forwards if this doesn't work and so why not go full into this? Because otherwise anxiety's gonna be dragging you the whole time. So have anxiety sit there, answer anxiety's questions and be like, look, anxiety, I've got it, right? I'm gonna be fine and you're gonna be here

advising me along the way and I'm not gonna yell at you because I'm not gonna belittle myself but I am going to say, you're here. I've got you. I answered your questions. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah. That's been the biggest thing is like separating what's anxiety and what's logic. Like, is this logically an issue or is this just my anxiety giving me shit? And I just, you know, you can go away logic. Let's deal with logic and see if I can figure a way around the logic. Well, everything is pointing for you to move there. So just do it and hold onto your apartment

for as long as you need to, to make you feel okay. And then you can give it up or maybe I'll rent it from you you're welcome to move in it's fucking amazing i've been dying to move to new york you can sublet it you know there's lots of there's lots of solutions yeah who wouldn't want me as a tenant that's a good question okay you have your marching orders thank you so much go be happy yeah i will do that absolutely have a great day everybody thank you you too bye Aw, I love them. I love a love story. I know.

I'm like, the person you've loved for two years? I mean, I don't know statistically what there is, but there is some sort of data that backs up. If you know somebody for a period of time and then become romantically involved with them, there's a greater chance of success. I'm sure that's true. In that relationship. That makes sense. You have a years-long friendship with somebody. Those relationships usually tend to work out.

Yeah. Let's take a quick break, and we'll be right back to wrap up with Skylar and Chelsea. Great. there's no shortcut for saving time but saving money is simple just combine your car and home insurance with bel-air direct and save get a quote at bel-air direct.com when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart And these are the survivor files.

I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts see you between the pages and we're back we are back with skylar baylor and our last question comes from angela angela says

dear chelsea i recently married my husband who happens to be one of the most incredible humans on earth my problem is this we met through our soccer community both of us love the sport and played at the collegiate level while i'm ready to hang up the cleats he isn't he plays in three major men's tournaments a year, and those all take us out of state for four days at a time. I do love watching him play, and I enjoy the trips, but because he owns his own business, any time he takes off is unpaid, and because of that, the only trips we take together are for his soccer tournaments. How do I continue to enjoy watching his games and traveling for his tournaments when we don't take any trips, just the two of us? How do I get him to understand that I

need a trip with my husband, no soccer schedule to abide by, no other friends around without making it seem like those tournaments are out the window you're the best angela and skylar i mean you're the sports guy i'm just gonna give this podcast to skylar and let him deal with all of this because he's got better answers than i do skylar why don't you go first um yeah that's a so in my relationship i'm like this person's husband in that i'm always busy i'm self-employed and large a lot of the travel that me and my partner do are because of the work that i do and time that I take off is often for work and difficult to find time for us to do things on our own. It's actually been, this is me disclosing a lot about my life, but it's been a big endeavor

for me in the past like several years to figure out how to shift so that I can both make money, right, which is important for me to live and for me and my partner to have our life. But it's also really important for me to take time for just me and just me and my partner. And it's hard. So I want to first validate that it's hard. And it sounds like Angela really understands that. I think that the conversations that me and my partner have had about this have been really powerful of her saying like you need to find time for you which does mean time finding time for us together and I've had to carve that out and I don't know if this is like advice or if this is just like me relating and trying to provide some similarities here but for me I really had to

decide like what kind of life do I want to live do I want to live a life where I'm constantly saying well when I have time we'll do the thing when I have time we'll go out to dinner when I have time we'll take a trip to wherever we take a trip to right or do I want to live a life where like I'm actively doing the things that I want to do in my life and I decided that I want the latter I don't want to be constantly saying when I'm not busy you know next year when the book is done when whatever and and and I have lived my life like that for probably more than a decade as an elite level athlete as you know I gave 102 speeches before I graduated from from college from Harvard so I was doing a lot of things and I've always done a lot of things and my wife has said but

what about you, right? What about your life and what you enjoy? And so now we actively have to look at the calendar and say, where can I put in time that's just us? And that does mean also budgeting appropriately. It means carving out the time. But most importantly, and this is where I think the advice comes into Angela, it actually requires both people being really committed to doing that. And I will disclose again, my wife has had frustrations with me where she said, you aren't as committed to this as I am, right? You aren't making the space and the time to do these things and when I she said that I it really hit me because I was like wait no that's not my priorities aren't actually what my actions are declaring so I have to figure out how to adjust

my actions so that they align with my declared priorities which does involve my own joy and my partner together right yeah and creating joy and compromise yeah obviously there's sacrifices to be made in all relationships and it's about you know you going the only time you and your partner are going on vacation together for his soccer games, it doesn't sound like a compromise on his behalf. You know, it sounds like you're just, you know, whatever. She's along for the ride. Yeah. So he's going to have to meet you somewhere like halfway in the middle. And you guys have to figure out a system where you're getting your needs met and he can still play soccer, but maybe not four times, you know, not four games or however frequent, you know, a weekend. That's

just that's not fair to you at all. So I went through something similar when Brad and I were first dating after we've been dating about a year you know he was playing music every weekend and so all of his evenings and weekends and holidays were spent working and I was finding that like I was left without a date to every wedding and every everything and so we sort of worked out a deal where like I got three days a year that I could ask him to cancel work and you know obviously he wouldn't be getting paid for that time, but he would accompany me to the event of my choosing. And so maybe there's something similar for you guys. Maybe it's, okay, for every two days we spend on a soccer trip, I get one day of vacation with you. Those accumulate over time. You might

make a little game out of it. People's interests also change and develop over time. And the whole idea of being in a couple is to grow together and to evolve together. You don't stay the same forever and so it's about what you're willing to do in terms of compromise and sacrifice and that has to be part of the equation in a relationship i think it's also about you know asking him what his priorities are and do they align with yours i mean i think like that some of the most difficult conversations they're not actually about the actions right people don't get into fights because a specific action is is a problem it's a repeated issue or it's a repeated tension because there's something underlying that and so in you know in my life that in my current relationship it's been

that my actions weren't aligned with my declared priorities of i want to spend time with you but then i'm not actually making time and so when i realized that i've been like okay let me shift right my actions so they align but if somebody's not willing to make that shift so that your priorities can be somewhat in alignment then that's a big that's a big problem and i think it would be about really asking angela's husband you know are you willing to make these adjustments so that we can be here together? And Angela, are you willing to actually share what the feelings are that you're having?

Because a lot of people will come to these conversations being like, you aren't doing enough for me. You know, you don't make time for us to go on trips and you are playing too much soccer. Instead of saying, I feel neglected. I don't feel like I have enough time with you. I would like to go to Phoenix or to, I don't know, that's where I want to go clearly,

but wherever you would like to go, right? Can you say what you want? Because maybe there are other ways that, you know, you two could meet those needs together that would be a collaborative effort. Yeah, I love that. I love that. You've given such good advice today.

I mean, honestly, it's really impressive. I guess I'm really missing out on a Harvard education because you're just great at giving information and also it's very empathetic, everything you've said, you know, and you look at it from like two different angles. I like the way that you think and address things. Thank you. So I appreciate having you here today.

Thank you. I appreciate you having me. And I'm going to see you in Boston at one of my shows. Yes, I would love that. We're going to hook you up with some tickets. Catherine, we'll handle that. Yes, please. For sure.

That would be amazing. So I can meet your wife. Yes. And this was a great episode. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Thank you for all the work you do. Amen.

Amen, everyone. That's how we're going to end this from now on. Amen. Okay, second shows have been added. For those of you coming to see my new stand-up tour, which you have to come because I'm having the best time. We added a second show in Cincinnati in the daytime at 5 o'clock p.m. I'm doing my first show because I don't have a night where I can go back. So we added a second show at 5 p.m.

And the original show is at 8 p.m. Original show is sold out. Second show, tickets are available, Cincinnati. I'm also coming to Chicago, the Chicago Theater, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco. They're both almost completely sold out. And you can go to ChelseaHandler.com for other tickets and other information. And if you want to buy some of our merch, that's all available on ChelseaHandler.com. and yeah guys i'll see you on the road if you'd like advice from chelsea shoot us an email at

dear chelsea podcast at gmail.com and be sure to include your phone number dear chelsea is edited and engineered by brad dickert executive producer katherine law and be sure to check out our merch at chelsea handler.com i survived nine months in captivity and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally

important to your personality welcome home pro society is a weekly podcast that's part book club part group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse each week we're connecting the dots between books the internet and pop culture with your favorite writers book talk creators and plenty of overthought opinions yeah i'm obsessed i'm obsessed listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hoda Kotb, host of the podcast Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and

space. You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.