Episode 23: Flint, Renewal through Self-Discovery

In this insightful episode of the Queer Divorce Club podcast, Flint candidly shares their experiences with two different queer divorces, discussing the emotional challenges and the journey of reconciling their identity within societal expectations. Flint emphasizes the importance of therapy, community support, and rediscovering personal interests as crucial elements of healing and rebuilding life post-divorce.

This conversation delves into the complexities of emotions during life transitions, offering listeners mindfulness practices and self-care strategies, especially beneficial for queer and trans individuals. Flint's story highlights the path to contentment and a fulfilling life, focusing on living intentionally and finding peace in everyday activities. Tune in for a heartfelt discussion that provides valuable insights on resilience, healing, and self-discovery.

Music in this episode is from Bungalow Heaven. You can find more music from Bungalow Heaven and singer/songwriter Gretchen DeVault at gretchendevault.com.

Flint

Flint (he/him) is a former teacher and current content creator/novice chicken farmer who spent over a decade in the classroom. Over the last few years he’s built an online following north of 330,000 on Instagram and TikTok, where he makes videos about trans life and history, education, and queer relationships. His content has been featured in places like USA Today, The Daily Dot, and Newsweek, and he’s a frequent partner with organizations such as the National Education Association and The Human Rights Campaign. He has also been divorced twice, and is currently living in the California High Desert with his partner and a menagerie of rescue animals

You can find Flint online on TikTok and Instagram.

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Show Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, Flint. Welcome to the Queer Divorce Club. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm so excited to talk today and get to know your story a little bit more, and I appreciate you sharing it with everybody. To get us started, can you give us a glimpse of just where you're at today? Well, physically, I'm on a farm in the middle of the California high desert.

And I'm, we've been out here for a few months and yeah, it's great. I, we've been keeping chickens and just got a new dog and it's just a, a general funny farm of animals and people and mentally I'm doing great. My divorce is finalizing in eight days, so I can imagine people who are listening to this podcast are generally familiar with how long and arduous that process can sometimes be.

And so I'm feeling very relieved that it's almost Completely closed. So close. That's so close. It's awesome. I have to ask, do you have a favorite chicken? Like you, you've only been a few months [00:01:00] with them, but have you gotten a favorite one already? Yeah, I mean, I absolutely have a favorite chicken. I, I, there's only one who's producing eggs for us right now.

And so I think Sharon gets a leg up on everyone else because she's pulling her weight. And nobody else's. But if I'm completely honest, the very smallest chicken who's got a really wonky twisty beak is very affectionate. Her name is Mrs. Puff and that's my favorite chicken. Adorable. Adorable.

Chickens are adorable and so messy and I love it. Oh yeah, and smelly. All right. So you're eight days away from your second divorce, right? Can you explain a little bit of that journey and both divorces 

and how each one was different? Sure. Yeah, my, my divorces couldn't have been more different. And when the second one was rolling around and I saw it coming, I started feeling a little bit like, Ross from friends, right?

Like I felt like I was just collecting divorces. But they all happened at completely different times in my life. The first one I got married when I was 22 before I understood [00:02:00] myself as queer really in any way. I married a guy right out of college and we were together actually Starting when I was 15, so our relationship lasted almost 15 total years, and he's still my best friend.

I, I love him very much, and he's a huge part of my life. And so that divorce was really painful, right? When, when you're going through a divorce, especially for the very first time. This is my, not only my first divorce, my first big breakup. Because we'd been together since I was teen we were both teenagers.

And it was devastating, but it felt like I had a partner through it, right? I had someone who understood. I got divorced specifically at that time because I knew that I was queer, and our relationship wasn't feeling authentic anymore. And it wasn't fair to keep him in a relationship where I wasn't, you know, authentic.

And so because that was the reason it was, it was pretty clean. It was clean and it was it was really friendly. The second one was not that way, right? The one that is finishing up in the next eight days. I think a lot of times when people think about queer relationships, that they are like more [00:03:00] genuine or more true love, right?

We don't talk really about queer divorce. I guess here, here's where we talk about queer divorce, but in general, we don't talk that often about how heartbreaking a queer divorce is for a lot of reasons. But yeah, that one, we are not friends. We do not talk, right. I'm, we're, we're, I have her blocked on all my social media platforms.

It was, it was really, really terrible. And I'm, I couldn't have had a more different experience between the two of them. Yeah, well I'm so glad it's so close to being done and I know there's all these emotions and we'll talk about that too, like what it takes to rebuild after that and what steps you're in.

I'm wondering, you said, you know, we don't talk about queer divorce, like why do you think we don't in these spaces, right? Like, divorce is so different too for every single person, like whether you're coming out, whether you're already in a queer marriage, you know, all these things. Why don't we talk about it?

I think we don't talk about queer divorce for the same reason we don't talk about really a lot of problems within the queer community because we fight so hard [00:04:00] just to be seen at the same level, right, as as heterosexual couples, and we are already working so hard to be seen and valued as equals that if we admit even a little bit, That we have that we have problems or issues, right?

Then we feel like we're giving up some of the, but he's a sports metaphor realizing that I don't understand sports. I probably shouldn't have gone there. We're, we're giving up some of like what we've earned, right? We, we feel like it's going to, to knock us down in the eyes of the people who already want to put us really low.

If they already see us as, as beneath them, it's going to be something they can use to continue to prove their own point about how we don't deserve. Whatever rights or whatever space. Yeah, yeah, and I think it's disappointing, like, that we feel like we have to be equal when it's so different to be a queer person.

And it's, you know, frustrating that we have to build up to that system, right, and then we have to get divorced like a heterosexual. We have to do all these things, and, ah, I feel like queer divorce is, you know, you know, as hard and [00:05:00] good as it can be. Maybe it's a better process. I don't know. I mean, I can't say necessarily queer versus heterosexual.

I mean, I had both, right? So now I can tell you as someone who's gone through both of them, I think, I don't know if it's, I think that it is a more emotional process for me the second time, because it feels like I am reckoning also with a divorce from an identity. A married queer person, like a happily married queer person, is such this, it's this ideal, right?

You lift it up, and you use it as a way to show people, like, look, like, I'm healed, and I'm I've made it, right? I have this love that all of us, right? Even during Pride Month, we talk love is love and love is equal and you should love whoever you want. That love, that, that bond that we have with another person is actually part of that identity.

Being partnered is core to who you are, right, as a queer person. Like, a lot of times families won't accept you. Until they [00:06:00] see you partnered, they'll think, right, it's just a phase or, you know, maybe this is just a feeling that you have, but once you're dating or married, then they might see you as more legitimate.

I definitely felt that way. I felt more legitimate when I was in a partnership. And I know that I, I rushed into my marriage, my second one, because it was right after. They had struck down Roe v. Wade, and there was talk in the Supreme Court about also then reversing marriage equality. And so my then partner at the time and I were both feeling like a lot of pressure to get married quickly just before that right got taken away, right?

And no heterosexual person has to worry about that. That's never something like, am I even going to have the right to get married? isn't on their radar. Yeah. Yeah. And then yeah, it's so true as you were talking, I was thinking about all the different layers that it takes to be queer and to be in a queer divorce.

And the emotional part, I think is something that surprised me too when I got divorced. Like I was in a heterosexual marriage and got divorced and came out at the same time too. So it's like [00:07:00] this opportunity to, Like see who I am and be who I am. And then there's all so much loss and grief about like who I thought it was supposed to be, but also so much excitement about who I get to be.

And that processes can be excruciating in that middle space. Right? Like, I think that, yeah, I think you're right that there's some level of that and heterosexual divorce where you obviously like I've been married for 20 years, I have kids and so you're losing what you thought you would have your life to be.

And then as a queer person, it's that plus the shift in your identity and being seen as somebody who's legit, like, in the eyes of society, right? Like, I legitimately love, you know, whether I'm divorced or not, I'm still a queer person. I love how you said about the connection between partners and how that's central to being queer.

Yeah, and as, as you're talking about it, I'm thinking, you know, why was it so much more emotionally devastating for me the second time in the first and I think the first time it did come with that side helping of liberation of [00:08:00] feeling like I finally had the room in the space to be who I am. And that was.

That was wonderful, right? And as much as it was horrible, and it hurt so deeply, and there were a lot of things I didn't know how to do, right? I started my relationship with him when I was 16. I didn't know how to file my own taxes. Like, I didn't know how to do a lot of things by myself, because I had been partnered for so long.

But yeah, that liberation of being able to be my own person, and find my identity as a queer person. I didn't get to experience that the second time, right? I already was who I was the second time around, and so I was only left with the lack of community, right? Feeling completely divorced not only from a person, but from all the support structures that we had built together.

That's something that was, that was really, really hard, because for a lot of queer people, your community is so small, right? It's so small and so tight knit, it is, feels impossible to unweave it after a divorce from a person in that same [00:09:00] community. Yeah, community is so important. I think there's this loss in divorce too.

You think of family or your other person's family. And then a lot of time, like you're saying in a, in a queer relationship, your family is that extended group of friends. And, you know, it really seems that people feel like they have to take sides and you can't do it together. And it's just so complicated.

Also, as you were talking, thinking about there's this idea that I don't know if this is in the gay community as well, but in lesbian, a lesbian culture that you get to be friends with your ex, and so there's, like, sort of this pressure that you have to be friends with them forever, and they have to be part of your community forever, and that is really so much pressure when there's so much pain in, like, the community splitting up and the, your relationship splitting up.

Yeah, that, that is an expectation. You know, you say within the gay community, I, I'm only pretty new to the gay community as an out trans person, right? My relationship with my last partner, right? Like we were, you know, for, for a long time, both, both women. And so, like, I am very intimately familiar with I [00:10:00] actually don't know how to say WLW in a way that rolls off the tongue.

And I'm used to typing it out, right? And like, WLW, the WLW community was. It was yeah, really tough. There is this expectation that you have to stay not just friendly, but friends in those spaces and you just You just don't know, right? You don't know what's happened in someone's relationship. The idea of ever being friends with that ex, ever, is like nauseating.

Like, that's not gonna happen. And those spaces still exist, right? They're still there. They still anticipate both of you being there. Yeah. Like, how do you square that circle, right? How do you figure out how to continue to be social and have these support systems if you can't even be in the same room as another person?

Yeah. Yeah. Why do you think we've created that expectation? Is it because of the tight community space or? Yeah, I just don't think there are very many of us. I think, you know, I was a high school teacher for for a decade, right? Most of my career has been built within public [00:11:00] education. And so even before I came out as, as anything A lot of teenagers understood and recognized me as being queer, and so I was the advisor for the, the Gay Straight Alliance, right?

And it has been equal parts horrifying and comical watching the social structures of queer teenagers over the last 10 years. And one of the things that anybody who's been around queer teenagers can tell you, there are like four lesbians in the whole school, and they've all dated each other, and it's just like this and we have like a bigger version of that, right?

Where we, if you break up with someone and they're one of six lesbians, right? Like if you're in one of the, if you're lucky enough to be in one of the 15 cities that still has a lesbian bar, then that's right. Then you maybe have a couple more. But for the most part, right, there are just not that many options.

And if you can't be around someone every single time, there's a queer event. You're going to see them. They're going to be there. The same 20 people are going to be at all these different events. And so you have to figure out either how to live there, how to deal with it, or you have to be somewhere else.

Yeah, yeah. This is just a higher [00:12:00] demand because, right, there's less people, there's less, at least openly queer people in most communities. Yeah. Now that we're talking about this like post divorce space and this post breakup space what, what do you feel like are the core pieces of what you've needed as you rebuild your life post both of your divorces?

I mean, I, I'm going to tell you the, some of the darkest times and some of the darkest moments in my life have been in the months after the initiation of my most recent divorce. I I not only stopped talking, right, to, to my ex wife, I stopped responding to text messages as a whole, right? I just did not know how to talk to people because all of our friends were joint friends.

And it didn't feel like I knew who I could talk to honestly and openly. And so I think the first thing I needed when I was rebuilding my life was A support structure of friends that I knew I could count on, [00:13:00] that I knew I could just say anything that I was feeling and they would be there to listen and support me, because that was the thing I didn't know if I had, I didn't know who was going to be there for me.

And so that was critical. That was really important, which again is complicated by the shared spaces I had right without getting too specific I had a couple of community spaces that I had to leave. And so I wish I could have retained at least one of them. At least one space that I could have gone to regularly and counted on a routine because all of a sudden your routine is blown up.

You don't have breakfast the same way. You don't come home from work the same way. And I was also going through a really big transitional period at work because I was leaving teaching after two years of dealing with really, really disgusting harassment for being a trans person, right? And for having queer books in, in a library in, in my classroom, the harassment got so intense that I had to leave and both of those things were happening at the same time.

And so it felt like my entire world, right, was crashing. Every [00:14:00] wall was coming down. And you know, you would get a text, someone would say like, Hey, I haven't heard from you. How you doing? I have no idea how to answer that text, right? How do you open the door into that conversation? And so a lot of those conversations just stopped.

They didn't continue. And so rebuilding people I can trust has been like, I think the foundational part of finding a life again. Yeah. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I feel like they're even no matter what grief you're going through. There's this loneliness space, right? Like you're transitioning and then on top of that losing your entire community.

I totally connect with that. I lost my whole community when I got divorced too and left my house with my kids and moved to my mom's basement. Like I was transitioning jobs. It's like it's intense. So many intense transitions at once. Why do you feel like we transition everything at once? It does all happen at once.

It does. And this, you know, honestly, I was, I had a conversation recently with a friend who is about to go through this process, who is right at the edge. of, [00:15:00] of ending their marriage. And it's right as they're figuring out other stuff about themselves too, right? Trans related things, like all of that, when you start to understand yourself or the way, the way I've talked about it before is when you stop practicing self denial, right?

So much of our lives is self denial. As a teacher, I was in self denial where I worked really hard on everybody else's needs and completely forgot that I had any or willfully them down. The second you let them start to peak up, right? You start to Accept yourself. Embrace yourself in a little way. It's gonna cause a chain reaction that does it in every other corner of your life, too.

Right? I changed a lot. I stopped being vegan when I got divorced. I, instead of being rigid in my eating structure, I added fish back into my life. Which seems small, right? But it's this, it was this huge choice that came at the same time that everything else did. Because once you stop denying yourself in one part of your life, everything else gets clearer, which is a blessing, but it also means that your entire life [00:16:00] explodes.

Right, right, you have to heal every single thing, and work through every single problem, right, and you, I feel like there's a space where I say a lot, like, I'm never going back, I can't go back, right, like, once you know, going back seems impossible. Yeah. That inner knowing it takes over everything else. It does.

Yeah, it really does. So there's that time right after you got divorced. I totally feel that like the beginning of like breaking up of the relationship. I know we talked, the divorce structure is, you know, this legal process could take forever, but it's really like that splitting up, that breaking up point that makes that shift.

Now past that time as you're starting to rebuild, how does that Change your outlook on like what you want in relationships and what you want for your future. It's definitely made me less focused on marriage as an end goal. That was something that I felt in both of my last relationships, right? That it was something that would lend legitimacy to my partnership.

And I don't feel that way anymore, right? There's, there's nothing that feels legitimate about being married [00:17:00] anymore than just being in a good, honest, hardworking partnership. I'm in therapy, which I highly recommend for anybody, right? Friends are great. I love having a social structure. It's my family is really important to me.

I have, I have a partner, right? We're living out here in the desert. But man, having a neutral third party outside perspective keeps you from feeling crazy as you're going through this process of someone who has no skin in the game, right? Who has nothing to gain. But just wants to listen that that has been invaluable.

And so I would say that if anyone's thinking, should I have a therapist? Yes, yes, I'm sure. Yeah, that, that, that has changed my, my primary outlook, right. Is that marriage is not my end game anymore. I'm working so much more on my own ability to process my feelings and the events in my life. I'm slowing way down too.

I had a life that was completely crammed with, with social events. I didn't have a free evening ever. And I don't know if it, but part of it was just trying to not have to think or feel [00:18:00] about what wasn't right in my relationship. And now that I am not there anymore, and I'm completely separate from, from that relationship, I'm able to like slow my life way down.

And spend more time just making art and cooking and, and being with myself. What does that process look like for you in that, like slowing down and being yourself? Like, how did you decide, like, what things you wanted to do? Did you go through this process where you tested out a bunch of stuff and then you're like, okay, now I'm buying chickens and doing art, or did you, what did that process look like?

Yeah. I mean, I, I think I did test some stuff out. Right. I talked earlier about how when you're in a queer partnership and that person is in all the same social spaces, you can either deal with it or leave. I left. Like, I, I decided that it was not worth trying to untangle, right, the messy cord of that relationship.

And it was, it was very fortuitous, I think, that it happened at the same time that I was leaving this job. And so I just literally left the county and went somewhere completely different and new. And [00:19:00] very isolated. We, we live in the desert, right? Which is not a very populated area. And so having this space, like having a big empty house to fill with things and then to figure out how I wanted to spend my, my time as I was figuring out what comes next, I did.

I cycled through a bunch of little hobbies to see what I enjoy doing. And we've settled on art, which I already knew was a huge part of my my process emotionally. That's what got me through the lockdown when I was teaching from home. And cooking. I'm back into baking a lot of things and cooking and chickens.

Yes. Raising chickens has been very rewarding. And then most recently a dog wandered onto our property. And so now I'm training a Husky with no experience. In a rogue husky that's already proven that he can survive on his own in the desert. So it's a tough, it's a tough sell. Tough sell. I think I connect a lot with that idea of like trying things out and seeing how it works and how it feels.

How did that work for you in the community building? Like you're, [00:20:00] you're building up these new relationships and trusts. Like what things did you look for in new friendships? Like what signs were you like. That's a good one. That's not a good one. You know, what, how'd that work for you? Well, I, in the past have built my friendships from community spaces, right?

So I would join something or start something. And then there would be a lot of people there and I would kind of pick right from the group, just figure out who you vibe with. And out here, you can't really do that. There aren't community spaces like that. And so it's been a lot more singular, right?

Some of it has been rekindling old friendships. So friendships that I've had for a long time that were either superficial or we had not had a lot of time together, really, really reinvesting in those. And then in, in this space, honestly, has been letting go of only having queer friends. That was something that was true for me as I was understanding myself, right?

When I first started learning who I was, it was so important to me to have almost exclusively queer Or more specifically, trans friendships, because I wanted to build up those spaces. And I still do. I [00:21:00] still want to have a queer and a trans family. But letting go of that, and just being open to making friends.

wherever they are and whatever experiences they've had or they have. My, my two favorite examples of that is that I'm really good friends now with our neighbor, who is a, you know, north of 70s old hippie living with his wife out here. Like, he is so fun and I love making that friendship. And then we also have some new art friends who are also much older than us and I'm living.

In the small mountain community about 20 minutes away. And so finding friendships with other people who are in our like same physical space but aren't necessarily a part of the queer community has really freed me up. into having a more well rounded social space. Yeah, it sounds like you're doing the work to understand who you are as a whole and who can be around you as a whole and that one identity is overcoming, right?

I was thinking [00:22:00] about the difference, and we've talked a lot about this, like, how we're rebuilding and how our queer identity affects us. How have you, in that space too, like, as you embrace yourself, like, also embrace your trans identity and, you know How you're feeling and how do you, yeah, you talked a little bit about that, but how do you balance those two and how are you working towards embracing that?

Well, what's happened with my, my trans identity recently is something that I never thought would happen, right? I started testosterone about a year ago and for a long time I thought I would never pass. Right? And so passing, if anyone who's listening doesn't know what passing means, it's when you're trans and you're far enough along, right, in your medical transition journey, that people who meet you have no idea they're talking to a trans person, right?

And that was never a goal for me when I first started, right? It was all about understanding my own sense of myself and in my own internal identity. But the more. I started transitioning passing became very, very exciting. It was something that I realized people who meet me now, [00:23:00] being trans isn't the first thing they learn about me.

It's not something they already know. And so, that has been wild. Like I told you I made friends with my neighbor. He found out I was trans, like, a week ago, right? We've been here for months. And so, this new part in my trans journey does feel very aligned. With the ending of my last marriage, right? And the moving to a new place, and the leaving of my job, right?

We talk about the entire life flows up at once. Getting to understand my own identity almost outside of being trans. Like who, who am I if I'm just me, right? Instead of being a person who whose identity is, is so central, right, to who they are. And so, that process, I feel like, has become more possible.

Because I'm outside of that marriage now, because, because all my community isn't around being queer, because I'm in a place where people don't know who I am. It feels like I've been allowed the [00:24:00] opportunity to figure out what the next stage of my life looks like. Yeah. Yeah. I feel as you're saying it, I feel like I can feel the freeness in that, right?

Like the freeness and like becoming whole and being able to find that space. And yeah, we're all more than one part. And like, I feel like divorce, you know, any type of big transition offers you that opportunity to find your whole parts, all of your parts. And I feel like you're embracing that as you leave your divorce and finding your new space.

Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's as, as wonderful and joyful as it is, it's also right. It's. There's some mourning involved as well. We've talked about that with, with divorces that you have this new liberation. So in passing, that's very liberating. I can go to Lowe's and not worry about outright getting, getting clocked by, by some guy buying wood in the lumber section.

Right. But at the same time, that means also I feel a little disconnected from queer people in the wild. And like, I just went camping. We were camping over the weekend. [00:25:00] And we saw a lesbian couple that had a queer flag on the hood of their car. And I realized I was not visibly queer enough to yell as I was passing by, right?

Like, that might be seen as like, aggressive. And I didn't want to make them feel unsafe, so I didn't. And so there was this moment of connection that passed. That I wasn't able to grab onto because I'm not visibly queer anymore. So there's There's this excitement and exhilaration that's mostly to do with safety, right?

I don't have to worry about someone immediately recognizing that I'm queer. But at the same time, that was something that was so connective for so long that allowed me to find so many people that have been an integral part of my life. And so, it's both things. Just like divorce. It's both things. You can, you can find that joy and that liberation, but it's also, it's also sad.

Yeah. Yeah. I think through any transition, both of these things exist and it's wild. And some days where you can feel happy, then you're sad, then you're feeling disappointed, then you're feeling great. You know, there's like, and every time I talk to anybody about this, we're like, it's a rollercoaster and all these things.

I think we [00:26:00] need to remember that. I feel like as a human, we're embracing the idea that we can have more than one emotion at a time. And as we rebuild, it's important to. Identify that, and I feel like that's a new trend, honestly. Like, hopefully it's not a trend, but we didn't talk about emotions like that growing up, right?

Like, this is a whole new world we're existing in, and a whole new free, amazing world when we start talking about our emotions and identifying and existing in all the spaces. Yeah, and embracing the, the oxymoronic quality of some of those emotions, right? They feel like you can't have them at the same time.

They feel contradictory. You couldn't possibly feel both things. But not only do you feel both things, things, you feel them at the same time and you feel them in the same part of your body. And it's very confusing. Which is why art and baking and chicken rearing are highly recommended. Yeah. Yeah. Those moments of mindfulness and connecting with your body and yourself.

Yes. Exactly. Wonderful. So in this stage of your life, what is next for you? Like what things are you excited [00:27:00] about, hopeful for, you know, all those things. I feel like I've been asking myself that question for like six months. What's next, right. What's the next thing. And I'm. Honestly, I'm trying so hard not to think so far in the future that I don't appreciate where I'm at right now, like, I'm in such a good spot right now, where every morning, right, is slow, and I can make breakfast intentionally, and I go outside, and I can wander out there with my dogs and my chickens, and I can just feel comfortable.

Present. And so this what's what's next. There are a lot of things right that I'm that I'm working on that I hope will work out, but I'm trying so hard not to root myself in them anymore because I think that being afraid of the future or being to living too much in the future is what got me into my first two divorces, which is, you know, being so worried about how people are seeing the experience that I'm having, right?

Or, or how I'm feeling in that space that I need to push into the next thing. So [00:28:00] I'm, I'm trying so hard to slow down and stay here, right? Stay in this moment where I'm making little videos for the internet, and I'm making lemon meringue pies, and trying to stay still. That's beautiful. Really seriously.

Also thinking about like all of the stuff it takes to get through this moment, like contentment sounds like the best goal, right? Like contentment and being present. And then from there, it's easy to then be like, okay, what is next? Right. Because you can see physically what's next from that space and you can know what feels good and you can be present in your body.

And that is an amazing goal. An amazing goal. I think, right, making plans too, right, is something that has caused so much anxiety for me for so long. And even as you asked that, right, what's next? I had like six million things that I was thinking about, like so many different pokers in the fire that I'm trying to make into something.

And I'm like, why am I working so hard on the next thing [00:29:00] when I'm, when I'm happy now, when I'm happy and content and good right now. When my morning was really soft and really slow, and my partner and I had chai tea in our kitchen and danced to the new Hosier EP, right, like, why not just live in that space, instead of worrying about the next thing that I'm going to do.

Yes. Yes, I can. That's amazing. Yeah. I don't know what else to say to that. So well said. I feel like that sounds like a glorious space. I want to be in that space. There's guilt in it. There's guilt, right? There's a guilt that comes with being happy. If you've spent so long right back in the space of self denial, where you think that you're going to improve other people's lives, there's by martyring yourself, right?

Or by or by suffering like, Oh, if I just suffer through this relationship to make this other person happy, or if I just suffer through this job, or if I'm, if I'm happy, that means [00:30:00] I'm not giving up enough of myself to somebody else. And that's not true. You don't actually serve anybody by being miserable.

No one is benefited by, by you, you know, giving of yourself so much that there's nothing of you left. And I, even right now, right, as I'm describing this happy life, I know I'm living it. I know I'm having a good time and I still feel that tug of guilt. That someone won't have that opportunity, right, can't just slow down, can't just not be in a job, can't just get out of the space that they're in.

And I'm trying to remember that just because not everybody has access to peace, that I should deny myself that that fleeting opportunity to be content. Yes, that. That culture of martyrdom and especially in relationships and partnership. And yes, I love how you said that, like denying yourself doesn't bring anybody else peace.

You're just denying yourself. Right. And really our goal, especially I know everything I'm like, go back to the patriarchy. But if you think about it, like the idea of like how we rebuild [00:31:00] society is all of us feeling whole and content. And then from there using our power, because we now have some power.

Because we understand ourselves to connect and build community outside of that. And I feel like that is an amazing spot we could all work from and, you know, rebuild from. Yeah, this is, I mean, that's something I've been thinking about recently when it comes specifically to trans spaces. I had a bad experience recently going to a speaking event where I was not treated especially well by the people who were putting it on, and other trans people who were there did not have a really great time.

It was rough. And then, a week later, I went to an event specifically for trans people, like, in West Hollywood, right, which is, like, queer mecca. So it was in West Hollywood. And the event was so centered around, lifting up trans people in the smallest ways. It wasn't about political overhaul. It wasn't about like long term liberation from capitalism.

Those things are important. It's hard to do that in two hours right at an event. And so the event had massage tables and food and had resources [00:32:00] for mental health, right? It had the things that queer people need to survive and to be happy right now, because that is the thing. Right. Long term that is going to make our identities and our lives survivable is feeling cared for by our community in a larger way.

So if you're asking right long term plans, like 10 years down the line. I would love love love love to have a retreat center very specifically for like right people who are getting out of divorces are getting out of bad situations right who need a caring space to just exist and to live in that contentment and that peace for a little while and to feel cared for and safe.

Oh, yes. It's everything starts with. Us in the moment of feeling care and you know, that really heals and repairs the loneliness feeling we have, the grief we have. And yeah, you're right. There's not like one big solution or fix that we can, you know, that we can connect with, but really that solution and that fix, you know, even me just saying that there's not one, but it is, it's like [00:33:00] that contentment, that care, that finding yourself in that space.

Yeah. So beautiful and lovely. Like, I can't stop saying that enough. It sounds so peaceful and amazing. So good. I mean, there's Probably one of my most popular recent videos I did, I was talking about you know, having left teaching and now taking care of chickens on a property. People ask if I'm okay, right?

They're like, are you okay? This is so different, right? From what you were doing before. I found fulfillment in the classroom. I'm going to carry that fulfillment with me forever. But I said that. You know, now I'm living one of the three primary queer fantasies, right? Most queer people either want the coffee shop slash performance space slash bookshop that they can run, or they want the homestead or they want the commune, right?

Where all their friends can come and live together. And the thing that, that binds all those fantasies together is that we just want peace. We want to be cared for. We want to be in community. We want to feel soft, right? We want to have days of warm sunshine with nothing. in front of us that we have to accomplish.

[00:34:00] We want to just feel connected to each other and safe. And so, right, like, that's, that's what this is. This is a place where you can plant things and watch them, like my wildflowers are growing. Cilantro is just poking up through the soil right now. And there's a kind of fulfillment in that. That you can't have really anywhere else that being able to, to rest and to grow in, in peace.

So as you're thinking about all of that and finding this space, if you're talking right now to somebody who is either just thinking about divorce or isn't that messy time that we talked about that feels so lonely and so hard. Like, what do you feel like is the. The best advice you could give them. Well, I mean, I had to give this advice pretty recently, right?

I said, I was talking to, I'm at, I'm at that point in my life too. And my, my early thirties were a lot of us are right on the edge of, of big major life changes. We always think things are going to last forever. If you'd asked me at 21, if I was the person I'm going to [00:35:00] be at 40, I would have said, yeah, like, of course I'm finally figured out and we don't, we don't plan for how much our lives are going to change and how often that will happen, I'm sure I will go through.

More transitions as I, as I get older, but I think the advice is that once you, once you have that internal knowing and you act on it, right, once you say the thing that feels unsayable, and you look at your partner and you say like, this, this isn't right. We shouldn't be together anymore. Everything afterward, at least from my perspective was easier because even though everything was challenging, right?

Like, even though splitting up your stuff and figuring out where you're going to live, like all of that stuff is hard. Nothing felt harder to me than just reckoning with the inner knowing because at least I had the relief that I was carrying through, right? Everything else will sort itself out. You will figure it out.

You will be a happier, more connected person on the other side. But once you say it, right, once you say the thing that feels unsayable, [00:36:00] Everything else falls out in the way it's supposed to. Reckoning with your inner knowing love that statement and that idea. And you're right. It's so much like, I feel like I connect with that in my experience so much.

Like every time somebody asked me how you're doing, I was like, the work I'm doing is to heal and define my authentic self. The work I'm doing is to heal and find my authentic self. And in order to do both of those things learned over time is that I cannot do that unless I trust the truth. My intuition, once I trust my inner knowing and finding that space.

And yeah, I feel like that's so right on. It's this love that we're bringing it down to the basics, right? Like it's not the basics because it takes a fucking long time to get to that space. And it's not part of our culture to understand our inner knowing or to like connect with it. But it really is the piece that You know, helps you feel less lonely helps you feel like you got what you need and you know you're heading in the right direction.

And that that inner knowing right that intuition that's a muscle, right it's [00:37:00] not something that you're born. Having exercised you your inner knowing is something you have to develop and trust in little bits. As you get older and older right and it slowly builds up into something that you can rely on.

And so it's hard if you're not used to using it. If it's a muscle that's atrophied, right? Or you've been ignoring it for so long. You don't know if it can hold up the weight of what you're about to put yourself through, but you, you can, and it'll get stronger. Yeah, you can do it. We can do it. And if you're listening to a podcast called the Queer Divorce Podcast, you're probably on your way.

First step, you're listening. You're here. Yeah. Well, thank you for being here and for sharing your wisdom and your story and being so vulnerable. And I appreciate so much. I've gleaned so much out of this conversation and I'm sure everybody who's listening will as well. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

This is my first time really talking about this. And it was a great space to get to talk through these feelings. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that with us. And [00:38:00] if listeners, as if you want to find more Flint videos on Instagram go to just Flint is fine. That's your Instagram. And yeah, I hope everybody connects and I appreciate you so much and I hope you enjoy the rest of your soft, amazing day.

Thank you so much.

Hi, Flint. Welcome to the Queer Divorce Club. Thank you so much for having me on. I'm so excited to talk today and get to know your story a little bit more, and I appreciate you sharing it with everybody. To get us started, can you give us a glimpse of just where you're at today? Well, physically, I'm on a farm in the middle of the California high desert.

And I'm, we've been out here for a few months and yeah, it's great. I, we've been keeping chickens and just got a new dog and it's just a, a general funny farm of animals and people and mentally I'm doing great. My divorce is finalizing in eight days, so I can imagine people who are listening to this podcast [00:39:00] are generally familiar with how long and arduous that process can sometimes be.

And so I'm feeling very relieved that it's almost Completely closed. So close. That's so close. It's awesome. I have to ask, do you have a favorite chicken? Like you, you've only been a few months with them, but have you gotten a favorite one already? Yeah, I mean, I absolutely have a favorite chicken. I, I, there's only one who's producing eggs for us right now.

And so I think Sharon gets a leg up on everyone else because she's pulling her weight. And nobody else's. But if I'm completely honest, the very smallest chicken who's got a really wonky twisty beak is very affectionate. Her name is Mrs. Puff and that's my favorite chicken. Adorable. Adorable.

Chickens are adorable and so messy and I love it. Oh yeah, and smelly. All right. So you're eight days away from your second divorce, right? Can you explain a little bit of that journey and both divorces and how each one was different? Sure. Yeah, my, my [00:40:00] divorces couldn't have been more different. And when the second one was rolling around and I saw it coming, I started feeling a little bit like, Ross from friends, right?

Like I felt like I was just collecting divorces. But they all happened at completely different times in my life. The first one I got married when I was 22 before I understood myself as queer really in any way. I married a guy right out of college and we were together actually Starting when I was 15, so our relationship lasted almost 15 total years, and he's still my best friend.

I, I love him very much, and he's a huge part of my life. And so that divorce was really painful, right? When, when you're going through a divorce, especially for the very first time. This is my, not only my first divorce, my first big breakup. Because we'd been together since I was teen we were both teenagers.

And it was devastating, but it felt like I had a partner through it, right? I had someone who understood. I got divorced specifically at that time because I knew that I was queer, and our relationship wasn't feeling authentic anymore. And it wasn't fair to keep him in a relationship where I wasn't, you know, authentic.[00:41:00] 

And so because that was the reason it was, it was pretty clean. It was clean and it was it was really friendly. The second one was not that way, right? The one that is finishing up in the next eight days. I think a lot of times when people think about queer relationships, that they are like more genuine or more true love, right?

We don't talk really about queer divorce. I guess here, here's where we talk about queer divorce, but in general, we don't talk that often about how heartbreaking a queer divorce is for a lot of reasons. But yeah, that one, we are not friends. We do not talk, right. I'm, we're, we're, I have her blocked on all my social media platforms.

It was, it was really, really terrible. And I'm, I couldn't have had a more different experience between the two of them. Yeah, well I'm so glad it's so close to being done and I know there's all these emotions and we'll talk about that too, like what it takes to rebuild after that and what steps you're in.

I'm wondering, you said, you know, we don't talk about queer divorce, like why do you think we don't in these [00:42:00] spaces, right? Like, divorce is so different too for every single person, like whether you're coming out, whether you're already in a queer marriage, you know, all these things. Why don't we talk about it?

I think we don't talk about queer divorce for the same reason we don't talk about really a lot of problems within the queer community because we fight so hard just to be seen at the same level, right, as as heterosexual couples, and we are already working so hard to be seen and valued as equals that if we admit even a little bit, That we have that we have problems or issues, right?

Then we feel like we're giving up some of the, but he's a sports metaphor realizing that I don't understand sports. I probably shouldn't have gone there. We're, we're giving up some of like what we've earned, right? We, we feel like it's going to, to knock us down in the eyes of the people who already want to put us really low.

If they already see us as, as beneath them, it's going to be something they can use to continue to prove their own point about how we don't deserve. Whatever rights or whatever space. Yeah, yeah, [00:43:00] and I think it's disappointing, like, that we feel like we have to be equal when it's so different to be a queer person.

And it's, you know, frustrating that we have to build up to that system, right, and then we have to get divorced like a heterosexual. We have to do all these things, and, ah, I feel like queer divorce is, you know, you know, as hard and good as it can be. Maybe it's a better process. I don't know. I mean, I can't say necessarily queer versus heterosexual.

I mean, I had both, right? So now I can tell you as someone who's gone through both of them, I think, I don't know if it's, I think that it is a more emotional process for me the second time, because it feels like I am reckoning also with a divorce from an identity. A married queer person, like a happily married queer person, is such this, it's this ideal, right?

You lift it up, and you use it as a way to show people, like, look, like, I'm healed, and I'm I've made it, right? I have this love that all of us, right? Even during Pride Month, we talk love is [00:44:00] love and love is equal and you should love whoever you want. That love, that, that bond that we have with another person is actually part of that identity.

Being partnered is core to who you are, right, as a queer person. Like, a lot of times families won't accept you. Until they see you partnered, they'll think, right, it's just a phase or, you know, maybe this is just a feeling that you have, but once you're dating or married, then they might see you as more legitimate.

I definitely felt that way. I felt more legitimate when I was in a partnership. And I know that I, I rushed into my marriage, my second one, because it was right after. They had struck down Roe v. Wade, and there was talk in the Supreme Court about also then reversing marriage equality. And so my then partner at the time and I were both feeling like a lot of pressure to get married quickly just before that right got taken away, right?

And no heterosexual person has to worry about that. That's never something like, am I even going to have the right to get married?

[00:45:00] Yeah, yeah. And then yeah, it's so true. As you were talking, I was thinking about all the different layers that it takes to be queer and to be in a queer divorce. And the emotional part, I think is something that surprised me too when I got divorced. Like I was in a heterosexual marriage and got divorced and came out at the same time too.

So it's like this opportunity to, Like see who I am and be who I am. And then there's all so much loss and grief about like who I thought it was supposed to be, but also so much excitement about who I get to be. And that processes can be excruciating in that middle space. Right? Like, I think that, yeah, I think you're right that there's some level of that and heterosexual divorce where you obviously like I've been married for 20 years, I have kids and so you're losing what you thought you would have your life to be.

And then as a queer person, it's that plus the shift in your identity and being seen as somebody who's legit, like, in the eyes of society, right? Like, I legitimately love, you know, whether I'm divorced or not, I'm still a queer [00:46:00] person. I love how you said about the connection between partners and how that's central to being queer.

Yeah, and as, as you're talking about it, I'm thinking, you know, why was it so much more emotionally devastating for me the second time in the first and I think the first time it did come with that side helping of liberation of feeling like I finally had the room in the space to be who I am. And that was.

That was wonderful, right? And as much as it was horrible, and it hurt so deeply, and there were a lot of things I didn't know how to do, right? I started my relationship with him when I was 16. I didn't know how to file my own taxes. Like, I didn't know how to do a lot of things by myself, because I had been partnered for so long.

But yeah, that liberation of being able to be my own person, and find my identity as a queer person. I didn't get to experience that the second time, right? I already was who I was the second time around, and so I was only left with the lack of community, right? Feeling completely divorced not only from a person, but from all the support structures that [00:47:00] we had built together.

That's something that was, that was really, really hard, because for a lot of queer people, your community is so small, right? It's so small and so tight knit, it is, feels impossible to unweave it after a divorce from a person in that same community. Yeah, community is so important. I think there's this loss in divorce too.

You think of family or your other person's family. And then a lot of time, like you're saying in a, in a queer relationship, your family is that extended group of friends. And, you know, it really seems that people feel like they have to take sides and you can't do it together. And it's just so complicated.

Also, as you were talking, thinking about there's this idea that I don't know if this is in the gay community as well, but in lesbian, a lesbian culture that you get to be friends with your ex, and so there's, like, sort of this pressure that you have to be friends with them forever, and they have to be part of your community forever, and that is really so much pressure when there's so much pain in, like, the community splitting up and the, your relationship splitting up.[00:48:00] 

Yeah, that, that is an expectation. You know, you say within the gay community, I, I'm only pretty new to the gay community as an out trans person, right? My relationship with my last partner, right? Like we were, you know, for, for a long time, both, both women. And so, like, I am very intimately familiar with I actually don't know how to say WLW in a way that rolls off the tongue.

And I'm used to typing it out, right? And like, WLW, the WLW community was. It was yeah, really tough. There is this expectation that you have to stay not just friendly, but friends in those spaces and you just You just don't know, right? You don't know what's happened in someone's relationship. The idea of ever being friends with that ex, ever, is like nauseating.

Like, that's not gonna happen. And those spaces still exist, right? They're still there. They still anticipate both of you being there. Yeah. Like, how do you square that circle, right? How do you figure out how to continue to be social and have these support systems [00:49:00] if you can't even be in the same room as another person?

Yeah. Yeah. Why do you think we've created that expectation? Is it because of the tight community space or? Yeah, I just don't think there are very many of us. I think, you know, I was a high school teacher for for a decade, right? Most of my career has been built within public education. And so even before I came out as, as anything A lot of teenagers understood and recognized me as being queer, and so I was the advisor for the, the Gay Straight Alliance, right?

And it has been equal parts horrifying and comical watching the social structures of queer teenagers over the last 10 years. And one of the things that anybody who's been around queer teenagers can tell you, there are like four lesbians in the whole school, and they've all dated each other, and it's just like this and we have like a bigger version of that, right?

Where we, if you break up with someone and they're one of six lesbians, right? Like if you're in one of the, if you're lucky enough to be in one of the 15 cities that still has a lesbian bar, then that's right. Then you maybe have a couple more. But for the [00:50:00] most part, right, there are just not that many options.

And if you can't be around someone every single time, there's a queer event. You're going to see them. They're going to be there. The same 20 people are going to be at all these different events. And so you have to figure out either how to live there, how to deal with it, or you have to be somewhere else.

Yeah, yeah. This is just a higher demand because, right, there's less people, there's less, at least openly queer people in most communities. Yeah. Now that we're talking about this like post divorce space and this post breakup space what, what do you feel like are the core pieces of what you've needed as you rebuild your life post both of your divorces?

I mean, I, I'm going to tell you the, some of the darkest times and some of the darkest moments in my life have been in the months after the initiation of my most recent divorce. I I not only stopped talking, right, to, to my ex wife, I stopped responding to text messages as a whole, [00:51:00] right? I just did not know how to talk to people because all of our friends were joint friends.

And it didn't feel like I knew who I could talk to honestly and openly. And so I think the first thing I needed when I was rebuilding my life was A support structure of friends that I knew I could count on, that I knew I could just say anything that I was feeling and they would be there to listen and support me, because that was the thing I didn't know if I had, I didn't know who was going to be there for me.

And so that was critical. That was really important, which again is complicated by the shared spaces I had right without getting too specific I had a couple of community spaces that I had to leave. And so I wish I could have retained at least one of them. At least one space that I could have gone to regularly and counted on a routine because all of a sudden your routine is blown up.

You don't have breakfast the same way. You don't come home from work the same way. And I was also going through a really big transitional period at work because I was leaving teaching after two years of dealing with [00:52:00] really, really disgusting harassment for being a trans person, right? And for having queer books in, in a library in, in my classroom, the harassment got so intense that I had to leave and both of those things were happening at the same time.

And so it felt like my entire world, right, was crashing. Every wall was coming down. And you know, you would get a text, someone would say like, Hey, I haven't heard from you. How you doing? I have no idea how to answer that text, right? How do you open the door into that conversation? And so a lot of those conversations just stopped.

They didn't continue. And so rebuilding people I can trust has been like, I think the foundational part of finding a life again. Yeah. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I feel like they're even no matter what grief you're going through. There's this loneliness space, right? Like you're transitioning and then on top of that losing your entire community.

I totally connect with that. I lost my whole community when I got divorced too and left my house with my kids and moved to my mom's basement. Like I was transitioning jobs. It's [00:53:00] like it's intense. So many intense transitions at once. Why do you feel like we transition everything at once? It does all happen at once.

It does. And this, you know, honestly, I was, I had a conversation recently with a friend who is about to go through this process, who is right at the edge. of, of ending their marriage. And it's right as they're figuring out other stuff about themselves too, right? Trans related things, like all of that, when you start to understand yourself or the way, the way I've talked about it before is when you stop practicing self denial, right?

So much of our lives is self denial. As a teacher, I was in self denial where I worked really hard on everybody else's needs and completely forgot that I had any or willfully them down. The second you let them start to peak up, right? You start to Accept yourself. Embrace yourself in a little way. It's gonna cause a chain reaction that does it in every other corner of your life, too.

Right? I changed a lot. I stopped being vegan when I got divorced. I, instead of being [00:54:00] rigid in my eating structure, I added fish back into my life. Which seems small, right? But it's this, it was this huge choice that came at the same time that everything else did. Because once you stop denying yourself in one part of your life, everything else gets clearer, which is a blessing, but it also means that your entire life explodes.

Right, right, you have to heal every single thing, and work through every single problem, right, and you, I feel like there's a space where I say a lot, like, I'm never going back, I can't go back, right, like, once you know, going back seems impossible. Yeah. That inner knowing it takes over everything else. It does.

Yeah, it really does. So there's that time right after you got divorced. I totally feel that like the beginning of like breaking up of the relationship. I know we talked, the divorce structure is, you know, this legal process could take forever, but it's really like that splitting up, that breaking up point that makes that shift.

Now past that time as you're starting to rebuild, how does that Change your outlook on like what you want in relationships and what you [00:55:00] want for your future. It's definitely made me less focused on marriage as an end goal. That was something that I felt in both of my last relationships, right? That it was something that would lend legitimacy to my partnership.

And I don't feel that way anymore, right? There's, there's nothing that feels legitimate about being married anymore than just being in a good, honest, hardworking partnership. I'm in therapy, which I highly recommend for anybody, right? Friends are great. I love having a social structure. It's my family is really important to me.

I have, I have a partner, right? We're living out here in the desert. But man, having a neutral third party outside perspective keeps you from feeling crazy as you're going through this process of someone who has no skin in the game, right? Who has nothing to gain. But just wants to listen that that has been invaluable.

And so I would say that if anyone's thinking, should I have a therapist? Yes, yes, I'm sure. Yeah, that, that, that has changed my, my primary outlook, right. Is that marriage is not my end game anymore. I'm [00:56:00] working so much more on my own ability to process my feelings and the events in my life. I'm slowing way down too.

I had a life that was completely crammed with, with social events. I didn't have a free evening ever. And I don't know if it, but part of it was just trying to not have to think or feel about what wasn't right in my relationship. And now that I am not there anymore, and I'm completely separate from, from that relationship, I'm able to like slow my life way down.

And spend more time just making art and cooking and, and being with myself. What does that process look like for you in that, like slowing down and being yourself? Like, how did you decide, like, what things you wanted to do? Did you go through this process where you tested out a bunch of stuff and then you're like, okay, now I'm buying chickens and doing art, or did you, what did that process look like?

Yeah. I mean, I, I think I did test some stuff out. Right. I talked earlier about how when you're in a queer partnership and that person is in all the same social spaces, you can either deal [00:57:00] with it or leave. I left. Like, I, I decided that it was not worth trying to untangle, right, the messy cord of that relationship.

And it was, it was very fortuitous, I think, that it happened at the same time that I was leaving this job. And so I just literally left the county and went somewhere completely different and new. And very isolated. We, we live in the desert, right? Which is not a very populated area. And so having this space, like having a big empty house to fill with things and then to figure out how I wanted to spend my, my time as I was figuring out what comes next, I did.

I cycled through a bunch of little hobbies to see what I enjoy doing. And we've settled on art, which I already knew was a huge part of my my process emotionally. That's what got me through the lockdown when I was teaching from home. And cooking. I'm back into baking a lot of things and cooking and chickens.

Yes. Raising chickens has been very rewarding. And then most recently a dog wandered onto our property. And so now I'm training a Husky with no experience. In a [00:58:00] rogue husky that's already proven that he can survive on his own in the desert. So it's a tough, it's a tough sell. Tough sell. I think I connect a lot with that idea of like trying things out and seeing how it works and how it feels.

How did that work for you in the community building? Like you're, you're building up these new relationships and trusts. Like what things did you look for in new friendships? Like what signs were you like. That's a good one. That's not a good one. You know, what, how'd that work for you? Well, I, in the past have built my friendships from community spaces, right?

So I would join something or start something. And then there would be a lot of people there and I would kind of pick right from the group, just figure out who you vibe with. And out here, you can't really do that. There aren't community spaces like that. And so it's been a lot more singular, right?

Some of it has been rekindling old friendships. So friendships that I've had for a long time that were either superficial or we had not had a lot of time together, really, really reinvesting in those. And then in, in this space, [00:59:00] honestly, has been letting go of only having queer friends. That was something that was true for me as I was understanding myself, right?

When I first started learning who I was, it was so important to me to have almost exclusively queer Or more specifically, trans friendships, because I wanted to build up those spaces. And I still do. I still want to have a queer and a trans family. But letting go of that, and just being open to making friends.

wherever they are and whatever experiences they've had or they have. My, my two favorite examples of that is that I'm really good friends now with our neighbor, who is a, you know, north of 70s old hippie living with his wife out here. Like, he is so fun and I love making that friendship. And then we also have some new art friends who are also much older than us and I'm living.

In the small mountain community about 20 minutes away. And so finding friendships with other people who are in our like same physical space but aren't necessarily a part of the queer community has really [01:00:00] freed me up. into having a more well rounded social space. Yeah, it sounds like you're doing the work to understand who you are as a whole and who can be around you as a whole and that one identity is overcoming, right?

I was thinking about the difference, and we've talked a lot about this, like, how we're rebuilding and how our queer identity affects us. How have you, in that space too, like, as you embrace yourself, like, also embrace your trans identity and How you're feeling and how do you, yeah, you talked a little bit about that, but how do you balance those two and how are you working towards embracing that?

Well, what's happened with my, my trans identity recently is something that I never thought would happen, right? I started testosterone about a year ago and for a long time I thought I would never pass. Right? And so passing, if anyone who's listening doesn't know what passing means, it's when you're trans and you're far enough along, right, in your medical transition journey, that people who meet you have no idea they're talking to a [01:01:00] trans person, right?

And that was never a goal for me when I first started, right? It was all about understanding my own sense of myself and in my own internal identity. But the more. I started transitioning passing became very, very exciting. It was something that I realized people who meet me now, being trans isn't the first thing they learn about me.

It's not something they already know. And so, that has been wild. Like I told you I made friends with my neighbor. He found out I was trans, like, a week ago, right? We've been here for months. And so, this new part in my trans journey does feel very aligned. With the ending of my last marriage, right? And the moving to a new place, and the leaving of my job, right?

We talk about the entire life flows up at once. Getting to understand my own identity almost outside of being trans. Like who, who am I if I'm just me, right? Instead of being a person who whose identity is, is so central, right, to who they are. And so, [01:02:00] that process, I feel like, has become more possible.

Because I'm outside of that marriage now, because, because all my community isn't around being queer, because I'm in a place where people don't know who I am. It feels like I've been allowed the opportunity to figure out what the next stage of my life looks like. Yeah. Yeah. I feel as you're saying it, I feel like I can feel the freeness in that, right?

Like the freeness and like becoming whole and being able to find that space. And yeah, we're all more than one part. And like, I feel like divorce, you know, any type of big transition offers you that opportunity to find your whole parts, all of your parts. And I feel like you're embracing that as you leave your divorce and finding your new space.

Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's as, as wonderful and joyful as it is, it's also right. It's. There's some mourning involved as well. We've talked about that with, with divorces that you have this new liberation. So in passing, that's very liberating. I can go to [01:03:00] Lowe's and not worry about outright getting, getting clocked by, by some guy buying wood in the lumber section.

Right. But at the same time, that means also I feel a little disconnected from queer people in the wild. And like, I just went camping. We were camping over the weekend. And we saw a lesbian couple that had a queer flag on the hood of their car. And I realized I was not visibly queer enough to yell as I was passing by, right?

Like, that might be seen as like, aggressive. And I didn't want to make them feel unsafe, so I didn't. And so there was this moment of connection that passed. That I wasn't able to grab onto because I'm not visibly queer anymore. So there's There's this excitement and exhilaration that's mostly to do with safety, right?

I don't have to worry about someone immediately recognizing that I'm queer. But at the same time, that was something that was so connective for so long that allowed me to find so many people that have been an integral part of my life. And so, it's both things. Just like divorce. It's both things. You can, you can find that joy and that liberation, but it's also, [01:04:00] it's also sad.

Yeah. Yeah. I think through any transition, both of these things exist and it's wild. And some days where you can feel happy, then you're sad, then you're feeling disappointed, then you're feeling great. You know, there's like, and every time I talk to anybody about this, we're like, it's a rollercoaster and all these things.

I think we need to remember that. I feel like as a human, we're embracing the idea that we can have more than one emotion at a time. And as we rebuild, it's important to. Identify that, and I feel like that's a new trend, honestly. Like, hopefully it's not a trend, but we didn't talk about emotions like that growing up, right?

Like, this is a whole new world we're existing in, and a whole new free, amazing world when we start talking about our emotions and identifying and existing in all the spaces. Yeah, and embracing the, the oxymoronic quality of some of those emotions, right? They feel like you can't have them at the same time.

They feel contradictory. You couldn't possibly feel both things. But not only do you feel both things, things, you feel them at the same time and you feel them in the same part of your [01:05:00] body. And it's very confusing. Which is why art and baking and chicken rearing are highly recommended. Yeah. Yeah. Those moments of mindfulness and connecting with your body and yourself.

Yes. Exactly. Wonderful. So in this stage of your life, what is next for you? Like what things are you excited about, hopeful for, you know, all those things. I feel like I've been asking myself that question for like six months. What's next, right. What's the next thing. And I'm. Honestly, I'm trying so hard not to think so far in the future that I don't appreciate where I'm at right now, like, I'm in such a good spot right now, where every morning, right, is slow, and I can make breakfast intentionally, and I go outside, and I can wander out there with my dogs and my chickens, and I can just feel comfortable.

Present. And so this what's what's next. There are a lot of things right that I'm that I'm working on that I hope will work out, but I'm trying so hard not to root myself in them anymore because I think that being [01:06:00] afraid of the future or being to living too much in the future is what got me into my first two divorces, which is, you know, being so worried about how people are seeing the experience that I'm having, right?

Or, or how I'm feeling in that space that I need to push into the next thing. So I'm, I'm trying so hard to slow down and stay here, right? Stay in this moment where I'm making little videos for the internet, and I'm making lemon meringue pies, and trying to stay still. That's beautiful. Really seriously.

Also thinking about like all of the stuff it takes to get through this moment, like contentment sounds like the best goal, right? Like contentment and being present. And then from there, it's easy to then be like, okay, what is next? Right. Because you can see physically what's next from that space and you can know what feels good and you can be present in your body.

And that is an amazing goal. An amazing [01:07:00] goal. I think, right, making plans too, right, is something that has caused so much anxiety for me for so long. And even as you asked that, right, what's next? I had like six million things that I was thinking about, like so many different pokers in the fire that I'm trying to make into something.

And I'm like, why am I working so hard on the next thing when I'm, when I'm happy now, when I'm happy and content and good right now. When my morning was really soft and really slow, and my partner and I had chai tea in our kitchen and danced to the new Hosier EP, right, like, why not just live in that space, instead of worrying about the next thing that I'm going to do.

Yes. Yes, I can. That's amazing. Yeah. I don't know what else to say to that. So well said. I feel like that sounds like a glorious space. I want to be in that space. There's guilt in it. There's guilt, right? There's a guilt that comes with being happy. If you've spent so long right back in the space [01:08:00] of self denial, where you think that you're going to improve other people's lives, there's by martyring yourself, right?

Or by or by suffering like, Oh, if I just suffer through this relationship to make this other person happy, or if I just suffer through this job, or if I'm, if I'm happy, that means I'm not giving up enough of myself to somebody else. And that's not true. You don't actually serve anybody by being miserable.

No one is benefited by, by you, you know, giving of yourself so much that there's nothing of you left. And I, even right now, right, as I'm describing this happy life, I know I'm living it. I know I'm having a good time and I still feel that tug of guilt. That someone won't have that opportunity, right, can't just slow down, can't just not be in a job, can't just get out of the space that they're in.

And I'm trying to remember that just because not everybody has access to peace, that I should deny myself that that fleeting opportunity to be content. Yes, that. [01:09:00] That culture of martyrdom and especially in relationships and partnership. And yes, I love how you said that, like denying yourself doesn't bring anybody else peace.

You're just denying yourself. Right. And really our goal, especially I know everything I'm like, go back to the patriarchy. But if you think about it, like the idea of like how we rebuild society is all of us feeling whole and content. And then from there using our power, because we now have some power.

Because we understand ourselves to connect and build community outside of that. And I feel like that is an amazing spot we could all work from and, you know, rebuild from. Yeah, this is, I mean, that's something I've been thinking about recently when it comes specifically to trans spaces. I had a bad experience recently going to a speaking event where I was not treated especially well by the people who were putting it on, and other trans people who were there did not have a really great time.

It was rough. And then, a week later, I went to an event specifically for trans people, like, in West Hollywood, right, which is, like, queer mecca. So it was in West Hollywood. And the event was so centered [01:10:00] around, lifting up trans people in the smallest ways. It wasn't about political overhaul. It wasn't about like long term liberation from capitalism.

Those things are important. It's hard to do that in two hours right at an event. And so the event had massage tables and food and had resources for mental health, right? It had the things that queer people need to survive and to be happy right now, because that is the thing. Right. Long term that is going to make our identities and our lives survivable is feeling cared for by our community in a larger way.

So if you're asking right long term plans, like 10 years down the line. I would love love love love to have a retreat center very specifically for like right people who are getting out of divorces are getting out of bad situations right who need a caring space to just exist and to live in that contentment and that peace for a little while and to feel cared for and safe.

Oh, yes. It's everything starts with. [01:11:00] Us in the moment of feeling care and you know, that really heals and repairs the loneliness feeling we have, the grief we have. And yeah, you're right. There's not like one big solution or fix that we can, you know, that we can connect with, but really that solution and that fix, you know, even me just saying that there's not one, but it is, it's like that contentment, that care, that finding yourself in that space.

Yeah. So beautiful and lovely. Like, I can't stop saying that enough. It sounds so peaceful and amazing. So good. I mean, there's Probably one of my most popular recent videos I did, I was talking about you know, having left teaching and now taking care of chickens on a property. People ask if I'm okay, right?

They're like, are you okay? This is so different, right? From what you were doing before. I found fulfillment in the classroom. I'm going to carry that fulfillment with me forever. But I said that. You know, now I'm living one of the three primary queer fantasies, right? Most queer people either want the coffee shop slash performance space slash bookshop that they can run, or they want the homestead or they want the commune, [01:12:00] right?

Where all their friends can come and live together. And the thing that, that binds all those fantasies together is that we just want peace. We want to be cared for. We want to be in community. We want to feel soft, right? We want to have days of warm sunshine with nothing. in front of us that we have to accomplish.

We want to just feel connected to each other and safe. And so, right, like, that's, that's what this is. This is a place where you can plant things and watch them, like my wildflowers are growing. Cilantro is just poking up through the soil right now. And there's a kind of fulfillment in that. That you can't have really anywhere else that being able to, to rest and to grow in, in peace.

So as you're thinking about all of that and finding this space, if you're talking right now to somebody who is either just thinking about divorce or isn't that messy time that we talked about that feels so lonely and so hard. Like, what do you feel like is the. The best advice you could give them. [01:13:00] Well, I mean, I had to give this advice pretty recently, right?

I said, I was talking to, I'm at, I'm at that point in my life too. And my, my early thirties were a lot of us are right on the edge of, of big major life changes. We always think things are going to last forever. If you'd asked me at 21, if I was the person I'm going to be at 40, I would have said, yeah, like, of course I'm finally figured out and we don't, we don't plan for how much our lives are going to change and how often that will happen, I'm sure I will go through.

More transitions as I, as I get older, but I think the advice is that once you, once you have that internal knowing and you act on it, right, once you say the thing that feels unsayable, and you look at your partner and you say like, this, this isn't right. We shouldn't be together anymore. Everything afterward, at least from my perspective was easier because even though everything was challenging, right?

Like, even though splitting up your stuff and figuring out where you're going to live, like all of that stuff is hard. Nothing felt harder [01:14:00] to me than just reckoning with the inner knowing because at least I had the relief that I was carrying through, right? Everything else will sort itself out. You will figure it out.

You will be a happier, more connected person on the other side. But once you say it, right, once you say the thing that feels unsayable, Everything else falls out in the way it's supposed to. Reckoning with your inner knowing love that statement and that idea. And you're right. It's so much like, I feel like I connect with that in my experience so much.

Like every time somebody asked me how you're doing, I was like, the work I'm doing is to heal and define my authentic self. The work I'm doing is to heal and find my authentic self. And in order to do both of those things learned over time is that I cannot do that unless I trust the truth. My intuition, once I trust my inner knowing and finding that space.

And yeah, I feel like that's so right on. It's this love that we're bringing it down to the basics, right? Like it's not the basics because it takes a fucking long time to get to [01:15:00] that space. And it's not part of our culture to understand our inner knowing or to like connect with it. But it really is the piece that You know, helps you feel less lonely helps you feel like you got what you need and you know you're heading in the right direction.

And that that inner knowing right that intuition that's a muscle, right it's not something that you're born. Having exercised you your inner knowing is something you have to develop and trust in little bits. As you get older and older right and it slowly builds up into something that you can rely on.

And so it's hard if you're not used to using it. If it's a muscle that's atrophied, right? Or you've been ignoring it for so long. You don't know if it can hold up the weight of what you're about to put yourself through, but you, you can, and it'll get stronger. Yeah, you can do it. We can do it. And if you're listening to a podcast called the Queer Divorce Podcast, you're probably on your way.

First step, you're listening. You're here. Yeah. Well, thank you for being here and for [01:16:00] sharing your wisdom and your story and being so vulnerable. And I appreciate so much. I've gleaned so much out of this conversation and I'm sure everybody who's listening will as well. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

This is my first time really talking about this. And it was a great space to get to talk through these feelings. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that with us. And if listeners, as if you want to find more Flint videos on Instagram go to just Flint is fine. That's your Instagram. And yeah, I hope everybody connects and I appreciate you so much and I hope you enjoy the rest of your soft, amazing day.

Thank you so much.