We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - Love and Transition, a story from The Moth

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

We're excited to bring you a beautiful story from The Moth, as told by storyteller and activist, Tiq Milan. In this story, Tiq explores themes of love and transition, all while keeping a very important secret from his mom. You can hear the extended version of this story and more heartwarming, funny, true stories on Tuesdays and Fridays on The Moth podcast. Since its launch in 1997, The Moth has presented thousands of true stories, told live and without notes, to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. Moth storytellers stand alone, under a spotlight, with only a microphone and a roomful of strangers. The storyteller and the audience embark on a high-wire act of shared experience which is both terrifying and exhilarating. Since 2008, The Moth podcast has featured many of our favorite stories told live on Moth stages around the country.

Hey Pod Squad. We're excited to share something a little different with you today. It's a beautiful story from The Moth podcast, which I love and I think you're really going to enjoy. You are probably familiar with The Moth. It's just the longstanding critically acclaimed event series where storytellers stand alone under a spotlight with just a microphone in a room full of strangers. Every week, the Moth's podcast feed presents stories that are funny and strange and heartbreaking and above all true. So today you're going to hear a story from storyteller Teak Milan. Teak is a writer, speaker, activist, and beloved Moth storyteller. This is an abridged version of a favorite Teak story which explores themes of love and transition. If you like what you hear, you can find

the expanded version of the story and many more beautiful, funny, human stories from the moth right now, everywhere you get your podcasts. Take a listen. I was my mother's fourth daughter. And when I was 15, I sat my mother down and I said, Mommy, I got something to tell you. And she said, oh, shit. And I said, Mom, I'm gay. Now, she was shocked, but she became my fiercest ally. And when I moved to New York City, we talk daily. And one day she called me and she said, Tegaboo, why you got to be so mannish?

Why can't you be a soft butch like Ellen DeGeneres? Now, as a transgender person, what we know is that we may lose everybody that we think. loved us. And I was scared that I was going to lose her. But a few days before I was to have my top surgery, I called my mother and I said, Mommy, I am having a double mastectomy at chest reconstruction. I'm a man. She said, what the fuck? But on the day of surgery, there she was, Miss Mary, at the hospital. And she had this Ralph Lauren robe and a blue teddy bear for me. And afterwards, she cried and she said, it felt like her daughter died. You know, because my transition wasn't just mine alone.

And I said, Mommy, I'm still yours. And I think it was in that moment that she started to accept me as her son. And she would call me and she would say, oh, Tika-Bow, you'd be so proud of me. I've been practicing my pronouns and your name. You'd be so proud of me. And I said, Mommy, I'm always so proud of you. Now, the years passed and mom got cancer and it metastasized. And so I rushed a hospice to see her, and she was in and out of consciousness.

And my sister was there. And my sister says, here Tic is, here she is. She finally got here. And my mother opened up her eyes, and she whispered he. And that was one of the last words that she spoke. My family had it set up to where she wasn't alone. So we all had a shift, and I had the morning shift. And I went in that morning, and I climbed in bed with her just like I used to do when I was a little kid.

And when I put my lips right up to her ear, and I said, Mommy, you could go. You've done such a good job raising me, you could go. And I fell asleep. And when I woke up, my champion had died right there in my arms. My mother was my guiding light. And I realized that she was raising me to live in this world without her. And not only am I living, but I am thriving because I am the man that she raised. That was Tick Milan, telling an abrid.

version of one of our favorite stories. Catch the full version told before a live audience and many more stories on the Moth podcast. New episodes every week.