Paul Honeycutt on Embracing Authentic Self After Jehovah’s Witness Upbringing

  📍 I'm Beth Huddleston, host of the World Circle. My guest today is Paul Honeycutt. Paul is the CEO of The Creation Lab, a leadership consulting business. In today's interview, we discuss his childhood growing up as a Jehovah's Witness, how he came to terms with his homosexuality in the midst of his strict religious upbringing, and the ways in which he uses what he learned through the years to make positive change in his work and life today.

Hi, Paul, it's so nice to have you here today. Thank you for being here. Hi, Beth. Thank you so much for having me on. Well, we have a lot to talk about today, but I want to start first with the fact that you grew up within the Jehovah's Witness religion. And I want to get later to your personal experience with that and your reaction to that.

But first, I want to ask, what was the religion like? What was the doctrine? What was expected of people and you? What were your parents kind of imprinting on you? Let's start with that. All right. Well, that's a, that's a great question. A lot to kind of delve in there. I would say that ultimately, with Jehovah's Witnesses, that their main beliefs were that, that they translated, first of all, they translated their own Bible called the New World Translation.

So they had spent a lot of time researching and created their own version of the Bible that they felt was most true to the original. I'd say their very fundamentalist and cult like, but I'll talk a little bit about why as I learned from that standpoint. But the main tenets of theirs beliefs would come down probably to the fact that as opposed to many people who believe Jesus or Christians who would believe that Jesus was God, they believe that Jesus was just the son of God, that he was not actually God himself, and then they believe in Jehovah or God.

This monotheistic God is Jehovah. And then from that standpoint, the next couple beliefs about theirs that really probably stand out that maybe most people are somewhat aware of is the lack of celebrating any holidays, any birthdays. Christmas, anything that would have been considered pagan, the only celebration, so to speak, would have been Passover, or what they call the memorial.

So it would happen right around the time of the Jewish calendar, when Passover would happen, or Easter would happen, and even that was a really solemn occasion. Their biggest push or tenet was that we are born with original sin and that we are basically here to pray that away and then to do anything we can to, to be as perfect as we can in this life with the hopes of everlasting life on earth, that there's only 144,000 that will rule in heaven with Jehovah and with Jesus at his right hand. So like 144,000, everybody else would be at a time of Armageddon. So I really grew up, everybody grew up with this real. Heavy sense of doom that this world was doomed to Armageddon this holy war that was going to come about and because of this holy war that There would be a judgment time that would come and if you were judged righteous and you were still alive You would then move into this paradise on earth and any of those that had passed They would come back from the common grave.

Not a hell like the Christian religion believes like this damnation and how they just believe that there's a common grave Or death like you don't really go anywhere. There's not really a soul kind of it's convoluted and then they would come back into physical Manifestation and live forever on earth.

They would inherit the earth. And so the real goal then was to proselytize And go out minister and speak the truth and so they call it the truth that they are the one true religion. So this is sort of an overview. So if I could step back to the part where there's the hundred and forty four thousand that would be sort of ascending.

Then there's the common grave is everybody else. That's not a hell. Is that, was that right? Not hell right, but it's everybody else and then they also if you can sort of save them and teach them the truth then they can also join somehow into this or join into the everlasting light? If other people are judged as righteous or good that then they would be okay like they would be able to live forever, then we would have everlasting life.

So yes, this 144,000 has been amassing since the time of Jesus. So there are these special people who allegedly, you know, are these ascended beings and even some into the modern day that are these ascended beings that get a calling and they're going to be called to heaven when they die, and then that they will rule with Jesus and all these other folks that have made it up there and anybody over time that has passed that was judged, you know, has died and not come back.

Everybody will be judged at this day of judgment or this time of judgment. And those that turn their backs on God chose to go against his word would never come back like that. They would just cease to exist. And then everybody else would be given a thousand years to live perfectly on earth. We would come back into perfection.

You have a thousand years that everybody's living in perfection, and then there's a final judgment, and all of those that are found to be judged worthy, essentially, then will live here forever. So it's, it's not really like a sense of a soul, it's a sense that we each have this one identity. And that that identity will be judged.

Well, I guess you could say that's a soul as well, but you know, that the personhood that we know now would come back or would would ascend, but there's not a sense that we have a another identity other than the personhood we have right now. Right. So, like, there would be, God would be able to remember what your imprint was.

Like, let's just say it that way, right? The soul, they believe that the soul dies at death, that it's not like reincarnated or that you go, right? Like, you just die. You live in God's memory as is basically. And then you come back at this time of once Armageddon happens. And, and you've been judged and then they, they will be resurrected and from that resurrection, then you have a thousand years and everybody else that was deemed, not really ever use the word evil, but wrong and sinners that would not repent from their sins would then pass away forever. So within that doctrine, you also had your family life. So what was that like from your parents? What kind of messages were you receiving? Were they very, very strict about all of this?

Oh, yeah. I mean, so granted my story, I look at my life differently now, but for a long time, Beth, I really looked at it in a very different manner. From the time you're really young, you are Indoctrinated with the fact that you are wrong and that you're not like everybody else. So, the first memory of mine that I have where it was a real drastic change that was when I went to school.

It was like my first day of kindergarten. Because that day specifically happened to be a kid's birthday. And I was told and had been told, like, you're not allowed to celebrate birthdays if you eat cake, if you have cupcake, if you celebrate birthday, like any of the holidays, that's evil, you're a sinner, then you have sinned against God, like, that is a sin.

And so, the first day of school, there was a kid's birthday, his mom was bringing in cupcakes, and I was... You know, I had to be, the teacher was like, Hey, we're going to go, you can't be here. Your mom said you couldn't. And, you know, five year olds like trying to figure out like, okay. And I had to sit outside the classroom while they all sang happy birthday and had cupcakes.

And so, that's just one of the things where my parents didn't have to go through that because they chose into being Jehovah's Witnesses, right, as adults. So, I think from their perspective, Beth, they did not have a clear understanding of what it was like to be a kid. My mom was from a prominent family, popular, they were the popular family.

Got to go to the dances, celebrate all the holidays, get gifts, celebrate their birthdays. My dad was the captain of the football team. All the very traditional holidays, family things, you know, taking place. But us on the other hand, that was not it. We were having to take a stand. I had to take a stand very early on.

One of the other things were we didn't pledge allegiance to the flag because Jehovah's Witnesses remain neutral to any government and so, I'm having to take a stand at 5 years old. And this is in like Central Texas in the 80s and where, you know, like patriotism. It's a big thing. My parents were Yankees.

And Jehovah's Witnesses. So that was already on the outside. And in fact, I had a teacher that would paddle me because I wouldn't salute the flag. So just alone. And from that standpoint. I'm having to take a stand very early on with concepts that I'm not really capable of totally understanding and then also like looking at everybody else's bad associations.

So anybody that was not a Jehovah's Witness, you did not associate with them. It could be, you know, at school or what have you, but I had no friends. All of our friends were insular in the community. That was who you could hang out with and then it was exhausting because when I look back, because as I got a little older, what Jehovah's Witnesses do really effectively is keep you very, very hyper vigilant and busy and I had.

So our family, we had Monday night was a family Bible study. And my parents would sit down and we would do some sort of Bible study in the evening. Tuesday night was a thing called Bible study that was hosted at our home and other small homes, but it was hosted at ours and a smaller group of Jehovah's Witnesses would come over every Tuesday and we would do a Bible study and then Wednesday was our family had to prepare for our Thursday night meeting. So we spent Wednesday night going over and preparing for that meeting and they call them meetings. They don't call them services They don't call them church any of that. It's meetings and we went on Thursday That was a two hour basically meeting.

So we had that, and then Friday nights usually the, the good thing, my parents were very social, so we had people over all the time, but Friday nights we had, again, preparing to go out and the ministry on Saturday. So usually people come over and we would either do the Watchtower study, which maybe a lot of people have heard about the Watchtower and Awake, or at least if you've ever had a Jehovah's Witness knock at your door, they're trying to give you some sort of pamphlet. That's what it is. And so we would prepare to go door to door. So it was Friday night was usually yes, social, but it was always tied around the Bible or you know, like that kind of topic. Saturday we had to get up and go knocking on doors. Even as a kid, I mean, it was so rare Beth that we didn't have to do it.

And I just hated it. I hated it. It was yeah. Like as a kid that grew up in, we moved to New Mexico, thank goodness, when I was, I think maybe nine or 10, but we lived in a small rural community. And so I still knew, like, we knew where all the other kids lived and we would get forced to go knock on their doors on Saturday mornings.

They're watching cartoons. And here we are peddling the Bible. Hi, you're a sinner. Would you like, would you like the truth? So, and then Sunday was always a two hour meeting, and then sometimes my parents would have us go out and service after. So there was very little time to do anything outside of religious practices.

And in school, we weren't really allowed to do anything considered extracurricular because if it took away from any of those meetings, then that was wrong. So I got really good in orchestra, and I got pulled out of that because I couldn't perform on well, you know, all the extracurricular things that happen on evenings and weekends and Friday nights and what have you.

And we were not allowed to do any of that. You know, and I used to be really bent out of shape about it. But I have a very different perspective about it now, but that gives you a little bit of view of like, like, at least my family. Most families were like that. It was really intense. It's a constant keeping you in fear because everything is always bad and that this is the end.

This is the end. So as a kid, that's, I grew up with so much stress and fear about the world and society and other humans. And the other piece that I would say that where a lot of people maybe don't understand because they are, Jehovah's Witnesses are very lovely people, they are good people, they're good people, they just have been brainwashed, and kind of, I mean truly, they have been, if you look at from a culty cult perspective, um, there's a lot of shunning.  I think the other thing that's really sad, to see is that you're always on the lookout for what others are doing, because you're doing your duty.

If you see them misstepping, you're to have a conversation or basically to report them because that's the loving thing to do. So everybody's always kind of on edge, like. Keeping an eye on each other. So there's this hyper vigilance and this like just constant pressure . You had to turn in time, like every week, turn in time how much you were going and knocking on doors, how many publications were you placing, how many Bible studies did you have all sorts of things.

I mean I can continue to go on. There's a lot of really funny things too that they say or do. And you're just like, well, this makes no sense, but they have a very strong belief system. 

And now I've been out of it 20 years. I got kicked out because I'm queer and that's a whole other thing of things that have happened as being a Jehovah's Witness, if you want to get into that, but they build community. And I will say this, that from a standpoint of a kid, outside of all of that, we had a really rich community of people to do things with.

My parents, like I said, were very social. People were over all the time. And anywhere we went, if you found that there was Jehovah's Witnesses, you were always connecting with other Jehovah's Witnesses. So we knew people across the country. And I think the other piece was that in most of the, they call them congregations.

Like racism, I'm sure in some places, maybe racism was there, but it was more that a lot of people came together because it was we're  Jehovah's Witnesses first. So racism was not. So from a very young age, I was very used to a very diverse group of people. So when you're talking about that going to school, and I honestly, I was a little surprised.

I guess I thought maybe that you had to go to certain Jehovah's Witness schools. But if you're just going to just a general school in Texas, but let's say that you've met somebody that you did like at school, or something, a friend, what was your mindset? If you can go back to it, was it,  I got to shut this down right now? It was just a non sequitur.

You just never even thought about it. Because you just knew it was wrong. Now, I grew up with people that I was very friendly with and I knew them, but I would never be invited to things. We would never invite them over. It was just this known thing of like, you can't hang out with them. They're a bad association, bad association, bad association.

Any kid that's not a Jehovah's Witness, bad association. And in fact, as a Jehovah's Witness, like as a kid or as any adult, if you were considered what's called a publisher, or baptized. There's two differentiators, but a publisher would be like, you kind of ask, it's like a junior step into being...

baptized. But if you had been recognized or taken a step towards dedicating your life to Jehovah, if you did something wrong, you had to go before a committee and they would get up and on stage and they would announce you as bad association and people would then not talk to you typically for six months or sometimes longer.

You were shunned. Wow. Yeah. It was, I mean, that happened to me. And so, yeah, yeah. I just didn't even think much about it because as you are aware and I'm sure your listeners our brains 50 percent of everything we learn, our belief structures and the way that we view the world is built by the time we're five.

So neurologically, we're just taking in all sorts of information and a child's brain is so open that then those becomes beliefs in our subconscious. So you're moving through life, making decisions and living your life, but based on things that have happened since you were five, you know, or from the age of zero to five.

So it was just kind of normal, and I had plenty of Jehovah's Witness friends. So it wasn't like I lacked there from, having people, there were people at our house all the time, Beth. In fact, for me, there was almost too much at times. Like I would go try to get away. What was it like in your house when people were socializing a lot? Is it subdued or were people allowed to sort of be more comfortable and laugh with each other and all that. Oh, I mean people were very social and had a good time and would laugh and joke they...again from a social standpoint, it was fun I mean we had...I grew up in a big home. My parents loved to host people and when I say people were at our house people were at our house all the time like all the time. They would just stop by and my parents would put dinner on or food. People were over all the time. So they were jovial.

The thing is, is you just never really knew people. I talk about this with a lot of ex Jehovah's Witnesses and a lot of ex Jehovah's Witnesses struggle with being social or figuring out the world after because they removed the sense of self. So what's really interesting is you don't really know anybody.

You don't know the person. I wouldn't know Beth. I would just know Beth as a sister that was like, oh, talking about, you know, oh, yeah, we went out in field service and we had this great call or this talk or, oh, here's what's going on within the organization. So everything is very much around the religion, not the person.

So I wouldn't know who Beth is, like what's Beth's story, what is Beth really going through, what is Beth experiencing in life. Nobody ever talked like that. It was just very surface, everything about the community. Well, that makes sense too, because you could get in trouble too. I mean, if, if people were ever having doubts or if they were struggling with it, they're probably not going to tell somebody else because you're going to get yourself in trouble.

Correct. No, you, you don't talk about those things at all and you don't want to share those things because you would get in trouble even if you had a bad thought. You know, it was, well, you need to go talk to the elders, or you need to, you know, beat yourself up, basically, that you're this sinner, and so, I think that everybody has a really good social, a tight knit community, but it is a thin veil between who we are as humans, and just having people that you go knock on the doors, you talk about the latest publications, you talk about world events that are proving that this is the end of the world. So you mentioned that your parents chose this in their adulthood, it sounds like.

How do you think that happened? How do you think they ended up there? This is a kind of the story I've been told and I have my own feelings about it now, intuitively. My mom had been married before, and had three kids and her husband had left. He, uh, I don't know if the story why he left or whatever, but he left her in California.

So she was a single mom trying to figure out life. She lived in the L. A. area and where she lived, I guess, in her apartment building or whatever, it was people from all over the world, a lot of immigrants or what have you. And she made friends with him. And this one woman, from my understanding, was studying with a Jehovah's Witness.

And so my mom got introduced to this woman who they all call aunt like my mom and my older siblings. They call her, they all call her aunt. They're very close to her and she, what they say, brought my mom into the truth. My mother's family from my understanding of the stories. Again, you know, it's like telephone, but that her family was very upset.

They did not like this at all because partly too, then she, the kids wouldn't come out for Christmas. My older brothers and sisters couldn't come out for Christmas, birthday, you know, like everything was shifting and I think that they were worried about this cult. So my mother's brother and my father were really good friends and they thought if they introduced my mom to somebody, maybe that would save her or bring her back to Michigan and get her away from that.

So my mom and dad met. And I guess my dad fell in love with her pretty quickly, and they were dating, and my mom, and he wanted to marry her, and my dad had been married previously too, and had two kids, and he was divorced, and my mom said, well, if you want to marry me, you have to become a Jehovah's Witness, you have to study.

And so it backfired and he studied and became a Jehovah's Witness. So I think a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses, when you really look at them, they really have a lot of people that are in that, and I call it a cult very directly, because, and there's some specific reasons why, and I want it to be sort of clear to listeners, because a lot of people will be like, oh, it's just a religion.

But there's a real difference when it comes to the kind of programming that happens, and especially the shunning that takes place, and the covering up of a lot of sexual abuse that happens within that organization. But I think ultimately, when you look at a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses, they have a lot of immigrants and a lot of poor people and, I think a lot of people who see the world differently, they just see the world differently, or they felt that normative society just isn't right, and this gives them a real hope and a place where they can go, and it's loving, and, or it feels loving. It keeps you busy. It keeps you geared into a purpose.

Yeah,  there's structure. I think sometimes that can be appealing to people, is this strong sense of structure. And this is right. And this is wrong. And this is what I do each day. I can see how that would be appealing sometimes to people. And I want to ask with your then reaction to it, as you aged and you were following these, you know, not having the cupcake, well you had no choice there, but staying away from people without kind of even thinking about it, staying away from people who are not Jehovah's Witnesses.

What would you say your evolution was through that as you got older and dealing with your sexual orientation within that? How did that all play out? Yeah, I think I've always been a little different than the rest of my siblings. So there's 8 of us. And I think we're all pretty unique and individual just as I believe every human is.

But I think for me, because my older siblings, what I had experienced were when my parents got married, my three older siblings, who are great people, but they were going through a lot of change and turmoil because my parents had moved them from Michigan where all their family and friends were to Texas, which just sucked.

I think it was really rough. And so they really struggled with that. And what I saw was that one of my brothers really, he took a real left turn and walked away when he was 18 from the religion. And that put a lot of impact on my parents. And I was eight years old and I, at least from my perspective now, when I look at things, I felt this real sense of like I needed to step up.

I've always had a real sense of responsibility, and that's kind of an older child mentality anyways, because I'm the eldest of my parents marriage. But I knew pretty early on, I actually knew really, things were very different early on and it started in Texas where I just was never really, I had a couple boys that I was friends with and that that's who I was like attracted to.

But I knew it was, I, you're not conceptually at 8 years old or 8 to 9, you're not really...there's no wording. You don't know, oh, you're gay or queer or whatever. You're just like, this seems kind of normal. We moved to New Mexico, and I was so glad I was so glad it felt such a relief to get there.

And we lived in the mountains, and I just loved it. And in school, I pretty quickly knew that I was different because I started getting called fag a lot and teased. And so I was already teased about being a Jehovah's Witness. I had really red cheeks. I got teased. Like it was just constant teasing.

And  I just kind of sucked it up and was pretty quiet. I'm a really funny person and just really can get along with anybody, but for me, school was really boring because I just conceptually, I just got it so quick. I just was really bored and I was not being stimulated. And my parents, any time I would get anything where I could start to achieve, I would get pulled out of that because it was taking away from the Jehovah's Witnesses.

So that sort of set this program of like, who cares about this? What your most important thing that I thought was to be the best Jehovah's Witness, I wanted to go to Bethel, and Bethel is their worldwide headquarters. Which it was at the time in Brooklyn and you would serve there. You took a vow of poverty and you would serve.

They would, you know, they took care of all your stuff, but then you would serve in these roles. But ultimately, Beth, I really wanted to become a missionary because and I remember this very specifically, there was a Sunday in Texas. I don't remember what age, but I just can remember sitting there and like tuning out.

Like I just tuned out what they were saying from the stage and I found these articles in the back of The Watchtower and Awake that would always be about like other countries and what was taking place and from an early age I have always loved travel and other countries. But I think probably about maybe even as early as six or seven, but probably seven, eight, I just went into my imagination because I could not handle...it was so boring.

I didn't get it. I didn't care. I knew that things were wrong, but I sort of, I've always had that attitude of like, well, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to be the best at it. So I'm like, I'm going to be the best that I can at this Jehovah's Witness thing. And I'm going to show everybody how good I can be.

We moved to New Mexico and about at age 11, I made the decision to get baptized. Which was, now had I really known the consequences of that, Phew! But, so you, when you wanted to get baptized, you had to go through sitting with the elders. And go through a list of questions and you had to do it with three different elders to be qualified.

And the reason I did it 11 was because I wanted to be the 1st of all the kids in the congregation. I want to be the youngest like I wanted to be that. And this is the part of my personality that I love about myself now. I realize that there was an easier way to get through those questions than having to like actually go do all the research because they wanted you to research and study the Bible and then be able to come and answer these questions about Bible verses and doctrine.

My dad was an elder and he had an elder bag that was locked all the time. Only elders could look at it. And that's a whole other story. But I figured out the code because in that was this book that had all the answers to the questions and I memorized them because I was, yeah, it was just like, this is just makes sense.

So I memorized them and I went through the process, and I remember we would have this every summer you had these district conventions, so they would be like all the congregations would converge. We had to go to Amarillo. So there was roughly between 5 and sometimes 10,000 people and I got baptized there, which was a big deal.

So there's a celebration. You go to dinner. Everybody's really excited and all that, like, but I made that decision. And by then I had already been on stage speaking, so I was being taught how to public speak, and it just kind of continued, but really around the time of puberty when that really hit, not long after I was baptized, I started getting really sick and really stressed out because at school, like I was just getting teased. I had to give a talk, and so you would do these 15 minute talks, and they had this book called Questions that Young People Ask, Answers that Work, which is silly.

It's like, I look at it now and I'm like, how silly. But anyways, so they have this book for youth, it's called The Youth Book, that's supposed to help you be a good... Christian or this good witness and to be able to answer all these questions. And I had to do this talk. And so I'm preparing this talk and the talk was on why homosexuality is wrong.

And I had to talk about it. And I knew that that was me, like, I knew it was me. And so I was doing everything to try to, like, cover that up, but also like figuring out those words ...Nowadays, kids and humans have a lot more access because of the internet to what homosexuality...all sorts of things right we have access to that.

Well, there was nobody, I thought all the...Literally Beth, I thought all the gays lived in San Francisco I mean, I just thought that that's where all gay people were and I thought that they kind of came from there. Like, that's where they were just born. Because I didn't know, like, I'm trying to figure this out, but I thought that, and even when we would take road trips, we did road trips all the time, which is why I love road trips.

I would see California plates. And I had learned somewhere somebody had said, the flag, the pride flag, if you saw that bumper sticker, I would look. And if I saw a California license plate, I was super keenly interested if they were gay. Like, I was trying to be like, oh, no, that's a family. Oh, there's two guys in there.

Maybe they're gay. Because as a kid, you're trying to understand who you are up against culture already. So, I mean, culturally, at that time, being queer was wrong. It was at the height of the AIDS Pandemic and then you're in a culture that where it is absolutely wrong and filthy and so you're just lost of like, who am I?

And you're trying to figure that out. So I just kind of dived into like...well, I will tell you like probably one of the most transformative things. I don't think I've shared this but I feel okay sharing it.  I got a car when I was 14 because I had to work. I had to drive to school But I worked really hard and I bought a car and again, I'm super curious.

So I figured out that there was this gay coffee shop, and I don't remember how I found it, but there was this gay coffee shop in Albuquerque. It was kind of back off a normal street back in the day, right? They had to be more hidden. And so I went in... Well, I drove by a couple times, and then I finally got the courage to go in, and when I went in, it was just like, oh, look at all the I'm sure that they were like, who is this young kid?

Like, what is his deal? But, you know, I ordered, like, a coffee, and I sat there, and, nervous. I can't even tell you all the different things and super curious, like I wanted to ask questions and understand. Well, one of the other things I figured out was that there was cruising, so people would cruise along that street.

And so, I, one night after work, because I was working down in the city, and we lived in the mountains. And I lied to my parents that I was going to be late because we had to do inventory or something. So, I got really effective at lying. Jehovah's Witnesses teach you to be a really, really great liar.

Or at least, you know, you gotta be effective because you gotta figure out, like, how to live life and get around all the rules. I ended up putting myself in a really dangerous situation. I did not understand that at the time. But I went there at night, and then I got picked up by a guy and things took place and my concept was that like this was gonna be love. Certainly not. And from that point then I really started beating up on myself because I knew like I have sinned, God is gonna punish me, and I'm dead. Like there's no way I'm gonna get back. Like I am going to go to hell. And not long after that one of my older friends had gone to Bethel to visit and he had been accepted and we were having a party at the house to celebrate his acceptance and going to Bethel.

And he handed me an application for Bethel and was like, I'm giving you this Bethel application so that when you're 18, you can come to and you can have it. And I was excited and everybody leaves. And I was looking at the application and it asks, like, have you ever had homosexual thoughts?

I'm like, yeah. Have you ever performed homosexual acts? All of those things. And I knew like this whole dream that I had had, I had ruined it and what was I going to do? And my mom came into the family room and I think she could tell it was really something was wrong. And she sat on the couch and asked me.

And I told her what had happened. I did lie. I was smart enough to know to say that I did not go to that street. I just said it was a kid from school because I was like, I can't get my car taken away and I can't have them know that it's an adult. That is like dumb. So I'm not going to do that. I'll just lie and say it's a kid from school.

And I broke down in tears and my mom just sat on the couch. And she didn't, she just, from what I remember, looked at me and said, I had to talk to my dad and I was just like breaking down and I talked to my dad and he told me I had to talk to the elders. So I, at 14, almost 15, had to go in a room with three adult men without my father there and probably for two to three hours, they asked me in detail what happened. And Beth, when I say detail, I mean detail. They wanted me to explain everything, paint the picture, and then pick up the Bible and tell me why I was wrong. I had never, I have never been more humiliated and terrified of men from that point on. I think if any human had to do that, any kid, no matter straight or gay, had to really sit there and I mean, if we really look at that, like from that standpoint of like how unloving and...that messed with me for a long time, now it doesn't.

I mean, I do look at it in a different light, but it was pretty tough. Yeah, I have often thought about exactly what you said in terms of your isolation, because if anybody feels different in any way, particularly if they're isolated, I do think there's a lot of bad things about social media and the internet, but I also think there are good things and that, say, you know, if someone's in a rural community or in your case, you were isolated, you had a couple layers of isolation and it's like you expressing that sense of trying to figure out your identity within this when you have no reference points.

So that is something that can be positive out of social media and the internet I hope for young people to find some sense of where they fit in when there's such isolation. And so when I think about your experience that level of isolation and that level of self flagellation or that beating yourself up that you must have experienced and then on top of it the humiliation of having other people pile that on, and I do understand you look at it in a different light today, but yeah, it's pretty traumatic, I would say.

Yeah. I'm saying it lightly. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean it's, it was, it was traumatic, and then after, because of that, I was reproved, and so I couldn't talk to anybody for six months, outside of my family, and I couldn't participate in anything, so everybody knew that I had done something. At 14, 15, you know, like 15 years old, so the shame and guilt.   My parents, especially my mother laid on a lot of guilt and shame around that part.

And so I'm in high school, I remember I had a sophomore teacher, and Mrs. Smith, if you ever listen to this, I'm so sorry. She was a lesbian, and I know that she knew that I was gay, and I know that she was doing her best to like, cause I was getting just hammered at school. Being teased. I didn't think I looked gay, and I look back at my pictures now, and I'm like, oh, definitely, I'm a fag, and I say that funny, like, I will use that word, like, I, oh yeah, that was very, yeah, I could see how they, I get it, yeah, I, I looked gay, whatever that means, but at the time, I thought I was like, super straight. In fact, I don't know, this may be inappropriate, but there was this kid, and I was trying to act...they were asking me if I'd ever slept with a girl and all these guys and they were, I think they knew, but I was like, yeah, I went on this date with this girl and they're trying to make me explain like what happened and like her parts and stuff. And I had no clue. So I'm like trying to make up what I think goes on.

I did everything to kind of resist and push away anything that was tied to me being gay. And Jehovah's Witnesses, you're not supposed to date when you're a teenager. And so like girls or whatever, I was a very eligible brother. So a lot of girls and their families would be like, they were, because most Jehovah's Witnesses do get married very young, like at 18, 19, because that's what you do.

So it was very easy for me to always be like, no, I can't, you know, that's not right. We shouldn't date. You know, we're not blah, blah, blah. And I threw myself into being a Jehovah's Witness. So I went to school, I worked and then I volunteered as a pioneer. So a pioneer is at the time you would put in 110 hours a month in ministry work, so I went to school, worked and put in the time, but the whole time Beth, I continued.

I just kept slipping up or was trying to, like, figure myself out. When I was 18, I moved out of the house pretty quickly. I had really wanted to go to Europe for a year. I wanted to go to college, and I wanted to go to Europe. College was absolutely out. You were not allowed to go to college, and that was like, when I told my parents that I wanted to go and I had actually applied, that was a no go.

They had asked me for my graduation, what I wanted, and I asked them for round trip tickets to Europe, like an open ended, because I really wanted to go travel, and that was also not acceptable, because I would miss the meetings, and, I had to put Jehovah's first, but that's what I really wanted.

Instead, my graduation gift was a paid vacation tour of Bethel and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D. C. At 18. How exciting is that? That was the approved graduation gift. That's what my parents gave me. Yeah. And you know, there was some good stuff out of that. But ultimately, I would say, through the better part of my being raised in the house,  I started working at 14, I did anything I could to just kind of be away from the house and separate from them, but still had to go to all the meetings, you know, do all of the things. And then when I was 18, I moved to Colorado and remained a Jehovah's Witness until I was about 26. But that period was also really, really just tough.

And I had a real massive breakdown and considered taking my life right around 9/11. Just after. I was actually had been home when 9/11 happened. I just didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew that I was gay, I was trying to figure that all out and sometimes meet guys like my age and then I'd freak out or then I would go into this tailspin of feeling bad and guilty, and I was still pioneering and then I was a ministerial servant and on my way to being an elder.

Well, there was a whole process and it's a long story. I'll try to keep it short around me coming out. But essentially what happened was that I got moved with a job to Fort Collins and that job was my first job where I was really getting promoted and I had bosses who were like they looked at me as an adult, went hey, here, we're gonna help you've got these talents and skills, and you know, they're in the corporate world, they wanted to pull that out of me, and we had to do a lot of social things, and I started allowing myself to do social things because a lot of their meetings would be around social things, and we did things together, and I suddenly started to see that people who were not Jehovah's Witnesses or unbelievers were actually really nice people.

Like really nice people, like I really liked them. There wasn't anything evil about them and they really liked me and they actually really cared about me and they all found out it was my birthday and they knew that I hadn't grown up celebrating birthdays. And so they went all out on this big birthday thing, which was hard for me.

But at the same time, it was really nice to be the center of attention when everybody giving you gifts. And so I just started kind of drifting away and leading a double life. Like I just, I did my best. And then really where I finally accepted myself, and I think most queer people share the same story of a moment, even though you always know you're gay, but this moment when you accept it yourself happened in South Dakota and the Black Hills.

But the night before I had taken people out for work. , all my employees. And there happened to be this guy at the bar or at this restaurant bar and he kept looking at me, he was very very attractive and I thought he was looking past me because there were these beautiful women just right behind me and he finally looked at me.

I think he could tell because I got out of the way. I was like, you can look at them. Like, what are you doing? And he just kind of was like, look like you and I freaked out and then he was like disappeared. And then the next thing he's right next to me and he put a note in my hand It was like, please give me a call.

I think you're cute. And I'm just like like excited all sorts of different things, you know, like It's exciting. And the next day I had to go to South Dakota with one of my buddies because he was getting engaged. He was a Jehovah's Witness too, he was marrying a Jehovah's Witness up there and they were celebrating that evening and they had a trampoline outside and they were in the mountain, you know, they're out in the country and I walked outside because all I'm doing is thinking about this guy, Tom, and I just laid on the trampoline and I looked at the stars and I was like, I really only have two choices in life.

It's either I accept who I am and I take this path and I go this way. Or I deny it, and I stay a Jehovah's Witness, and I get married, and that's that.  I just saw it as really two choices, and I knew that if I chose to just be myself, that I would lose my family, and friends, and community, which ultimately did happen.

But I chose myself, and that next morning, we all went to breakfast, and that morning, they looked at me, and they, even Caleb, he said, You just look so different. You look happy, and I was happy. I was happy for the first time because it was this weight, that this one thing of weight that had come off of me, of me finally accepting me, a part of me, finally showing myself enough love, of like, no, this is me.

And I don't need to tell anybody right now, but this is me. And I just felt like a fierce warrior, and I immediately started working out. Dropping weight, just taking care of myself. Yeah, and a whole lot of else has happened since then, but that was probably one of the first times where I really felt the sense of putting myself first and accepting myself.

Yeah, it's really, really powerful. And I just, even when you're telling those stories of the times when you did like feel excited that the man is looking at you and all those things, I just feel so happy for those moments. And although it was complicated, I feel happy for the you inside there that just wanted to be able to express yourself and live your true self.

After all of that, you were working in the corporate world and then you started to move further into that. Tell me a little bit about what that's been like for you and where you've taken that now as the years have gone on. Yeah, so not long after when I kind of accepted myself, a whole string of events happened where I got outed, so I didn't have the opportunity to come out.

I was outed and then shunned and cut off from my family and everything and all community. So I really didn't know anybody. I mean, I did not know anybody. I didn't have anybody really. But I had a job and I was doing well and I started to really hang out with those people.

And I just loved it. And I was in banking and finance and not long after that company, another company had reached out, another bank, and wanted me. And I actually scored a really big job. And was making really good money at the time, so I didn't have anybody in my life, but I had money and had a job and I'm like, okay, well, I guess now I work because my whole sense of what life was supposed to be has now gone.

You know, it's like, well, I'm going to die and I'm going to go to hell, so I guess I'm just going to work and get money and buy things and do life, like this is where I'm going to pour myself into. And I did. And I had a really great employee who, just like happens to many gay people or queer people, they're like, Hey, I have a gay friend. By the way, we all know that, so we don't need to be hooked up usually. But anyways, she had a friend, a couple that were gay and she introduced me to them and Paul and Mark kind of became my family. They just, I think they understood, I mean, a lot of gay people understand this or queer people that we've been kicked out of families.

We've been kicked out of seats at the table. We just have not been accepted typically. And even nowadays still, that does not,  it's still a felt experience, but they really introduced me to a lot of friends and they gave me a safe place to be friends and to talk to. And yeah, they just cared.

And so that was really a beautiful experience. And I threw myself into work and I just continued to work myself up the ladder. I was doing really well at that job. And then I got fired and I've only ever been fired once. And I still, to this day, have no clue why I got fired and that's okay. I think I now look at...everything happens for me, not to me. Everything is a gift. And that was a real gift because Mark and Paul happened to be in banking and they were like, they got me a job at another small bank. And within less than a year, there was this job that was coming up and I scored it. It was a big job where I would be moving into like a statewide position.

And I loved it, Beth. And so I just found that I was really good at leading people. I have a really good understanding of reading the room. I've always had to read rooms to feel like if I'm safe, and I got really good at asking people a lot of questions, and I love listening to people's stories, and I for sure understand that, man, everybody's going through something that I will never understand, but I can because I'm going through something that they will never understand.

So I just got a good read on people and I started moving up and ultimately what happened is I got moved from Denver to Arizona. And in Arizona was really great. I loved that job. I expanded and started to learn so many new things and realized that I was really talented, that I could move myself up. I had always wanted to go to school, but at that point, too, I had looked at going to college and I was just like, I really don't like doing things the way anybody else tells you you have to do things. I just have never done that. And I'm not going to. And now I was making more money than most college people, so I was like, I don't need that. And I'm learning and I'm growing. And from there, I got promoted and I ended up in Southern California. So a lot of the things that I really learned from being a Jehovah's Witness of like public speaking.

In fact, one of the job interviews and this one boss that he could be on a movie called Horrible Bosses. I needed to do public speaking and I think he thought he was going to get me. Cause he's like, well, now tell me, you know, this is going to require a lot of public speaking and being up in front of groups and such.

And you don't seem to have that much experience. So how are you going to overcome that? And I just looked at him and I was like, Jeff, I've been on stage since I was five years old. And I said, and the most people I've spoken to is over 100,000 people for an hour. And I woke up every Saturday and went and sold the Bible at people's doors.

So I don't think that that's going to be a problem. I think I've probably been on stage more than you. I just found a confidence in myself, Beth, where I had given my power to my parents, to a belief structure, and even in the corporate world, can become culty, where... That same boss. You had to wear blue because the bank's colors were blue.

How silly is that? Like people have a problem with drag nowadays. Everybody's wearing drag, folks. Everybody's wearing drag . A corporate suit is a drag. It's a costume. And so I think that this really intuitive common sense Like cut through the bullshit, seeing around all the lies of things, because I started questioning everything.

So anybody that was saying, Oh, this is truth. I'm like, no, I grew up being told that I had the truth. So that is not true. And I think I just approach things from a really human standpoint. I think humans deserve to be treated as humans. That's all I've ever wanted was to be treated for the worthy being that I am, but I realized that I had to find my own worth.

Good leaders help people find their own worth. And I just saw that a lot in corporate America where that didn't happen. And when I got to Southern California, I was now in charge. It was all on me and the boss who promoted me. His name's Eddie, and he just fought for me. He knew that I deserved it, and he gave me that job even though Jeff didn't want me to have it.

And I say those names because I do hope they listen to this at some point. That's my little bitchy side coming out. But ultimately, when I got there was this place to like craft and create. And I screwed things up. You know, I went in with certain things of the way I thought like leadership was meant to be.

But I always took an approach of like, I want to have fun and my teams had fun and we produced really well. In fact, that first year, Jeff had to  hand me out the annual, like, I won the first place for my job family and he was on stage and had to give that to me. And it just felt so good because I've had so many people telling me I'm wrong.

And I'm like, no, I know I can do this. And my confidence built over time and trusting myself, and I think when I look back over my life, everything again happens for me, but had I trusted myself, I probably would have just been like with my parents. Sometimes I think. What if I had just said, F you guys, I'm not going to Bethel, I'm gonna, I had all the money because I had, I was a saver and I was making good money, I could have paved my way, but I held myself back on other people's beliefs, structures that they had chosen that they were maybe not even aware of why they did it, because it's probably far more from a felt experience or whatever trauma they've gone through, and I think that that's what's happening in the world is, everybody is running around on beliefs that they want to say is the truth when none of it is. Question everything. And as I got further along in my career at about 40, my dad passed away and mind you from the time I was 26 till I was 40, I had no relationship with him. I maybe spoke to him on the phone once and I don't think I had seen him the whole time. So I get a phone call that he is sick and that he's going to be dying and pretty quickly and I had a big trip planned to New Zealand I was gonna be gone for five weeks and I found out on Halloween so on Thanksgiving I flew back home to see him.

There was a lot of people around and all my family And I got a few hours with him alone, and it was the first time I got to ask him just some questions about who he was, and he was never a big talker anyways, big sharer, but at the very end, it's like, I can cancel my trip. I can be here. I can do whatever.

And he looked at me and he's like, I just, I love you and you go live your life. As beautiful as that was, like, I went to New Zealand, I had a great time, it was New Year's, and not long after that, he passed, and so I flew back, they waited for me, they flew back, I got to New Mexico for what Jehovah's Witnesses consider a memorial, and got to be around my family really for the first time.

It was the first time my mom admitted that she knew that I was gay from the time I was a baby. She's like, I just knew and I don't know why I could never be there and support you. And she broke down and I thought maybe that would open things up.

And when I got back to California, maybe about six months later, it all really hit me of suddenly like, what's my purpose in life? I'm going to be turning 40. I have a house. I have a partner. I have this great job. I look at my peers, my peers who have been doing this job. I was the youngest one or one of the younger ones.

They had been doing this job 20, 25 years, desperate to prove their worthiness still, you know, to be relevant, worried that maybe they would get cut. Hating their job. My dad had died. All of a sudden, I had this death stuff that was happening. My relationship wasn't working well. It just turned a bunch of stuff upside down.

And I thought, what am I going to do? Like, I can't do this job forever. The company wanted to promote me, but they kept wanting me to do jobs that I didn't want to do. And I would have to move to like Birmingham, Alabama or Houston, Texas. I was like, I'm not going to do that. And so I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I thought. You know, I really wanted to do coaching and motivation because that's a lot of what I did, and people would tell me all the time, you should be a public speaker, those things. And life just presented an opportunity and it was one of my next biggest learning lessons that left me, you know, I didn't again follow my intuition.

What I really wanted, I didn't follow because it was, I was a little scared. I didn't fully understand how to maybe pull that business together. And so I chose a safer path and I left the bank, joined a business with two gentlemen that I knew that was a financial services business.

My gut the whole time was like, don't do this. But I did it because I was like, no, this is safe and I can make this work. I can make it work. I'm that strong. Well, now I've learned, like, you know, listen to your intuition. And here comes a really, really great bit of contrast and learning for me. And in that time, my partnership was ending with my partner that just was failing.

And a lot of it was because I hadn't done the work on myself. I had been doing therapy, but I had never addressed the underlying roots of what it was to be raised in a cult and how that was impacting me. And so we had split up and then six months later, I moved with a new boyfriend to Colorado.

I loved him. It was the first time I'd ever felt really loved and seen. And I was just so excited. Like somebody who I really felt connected to, this new business is going to be great. Financially ended up totally broke. They embezzled, money was lost. I didn't listen to myself and I was left wondering what the hell to do with my life.

And from there, over time, Beth, what I will say is that I learned, I started really, really listening to myself and saying, you knew better. You knew, you knew. Why did you not listen to that? Because I had never thought I could trust myself, thought that I had the choices that even maybe I made these decisions that I thought were forever, like this is you just power through this.

I'm going to effort through this. That no, there's still a choice. And if it doesn't feel aligned, you don't have to do it. And so although I had started doing a lot of personal development stuff, I think what really shifted things was when I found a cult recovery therapist. And within the first two sessions of going with her, it was like that relief that came from when I recognized and acknowledged that I was gay.

That really came forth in that standpoint because she helped me understand exactly what the Jehovah's Witnesses did, what they do to build in this hypervigilance and to remove the sense of self she explained neurologically and the belief structure in the systems and like I couldn't even utter the word cult like I thought that was still gonna get me in hell.

She did this exercise where I had to like yell, it's a cult, it's a cult, and it took me a bit, but as I started to move that energy through, it was like this relief started coming in the world to open up more and more, and ever since then, so for the last really six, seven years, but last six years, I've been hell bent on understanding who I am and removing those belief structures and systems and coming back into a greater sense of who I am.

And right around COVID, I packed up everything, threw it in storage, jumped in my car and for 40 days I went camping in nature and in really that stage I really connected with the beauty of who I am and a true acceptance of the man that I am, the human being, the soul, the spirit that I am. And what my purpose, what I feel is my purpose here, and I think also just opened up that that camping trip taught me, and well before this, one of my coaches had said, it was like, it's really basic.

This is about you experiencing yourself. So really, what do you want out of this trip? And I said, I just want to know more of who I am. That's it. And every moment I turned around, I was learning new things and I was seeing the guidance I was getting, trusting that everything was always going to work out.

And because things have always worked out for me, ultimately, and what a gift all of this was for me to be able to be doing this. And so being really solo, intentional, I thought I was going to journal a lot, meditate, and I was going to, you know, do all of these things. And I spent just a lot of time building a relationship with myself, learning and feeling in and thinking about and dreaming and in my imagination again of what could life really be like, and I remember walking along on a path and I don't know if you've ever had this experience. Again, I was like, well, what do I want out of life? What's life asking of me? Like what? Like, screw everybody else and what everybody else has told me I needed to do in society and even where I'm at currently, but what do I really want to do? And I started to come down to some real basics that have always been in my life, and when I look over my life and a lot of the work I do is like kind of looking at a life print of what are the things that have always been there.

Lessons learned, things we've always been interested in. So I know like travel and food and speaking, those are really important. Those are things I love. Motivating, helping people feel seen themselves. I don't know the answers. Do you know the answers? But I just love helping people dive back into their imagination and intuition and learning to trust themselves again, because I'm doing it every day. So that's a lot of what has gotten me to where I realize now is every experience is simply me getting to experience myself doing something new even doing these podcasts and interviews. How do I tell a story from a positive standpoint? And how do I show others, like you can transform, there's trauma, but it needs to transform. There's pent-up energy that can be released.

You have the right to ask yourself What do I really want? And if you look around your surroundings and what you have is really what you don't want, whether it be a partner in your life or a business or a job, you have the right to change. And so in your professional life, are you now working with people on those kinds of things? Yeah, what I realized was so I have two things that are really important to me that I focus on. Speaking I do because I just love it and I love telling stories, and if I can get across the messages of like we need to step back and actually understand the beliefs and the structures, especially in the corporate world that had been built for a long time that people think are the way things need to be done that it doesn't have to be. The Creation Lab is one where I started looking at leadership and leadership development and having done a lot of it and working with consultants.

And first of all, everybody was told, like, do this checklist. Then this is going to make you a good leader. Well, Beth, yeah, I don't like checklists. Do you like checklists? And do you like being told this is exactly how to do things? No, no, no, who does. And second of all, I know for a fact, all of us have unique perspective and unique gifts that have led us to where we are right now, and I think most companies and consultants, what happens is they, we give them a formulaic, we love boxes and we love to just be like, even in, you know, people take personality tests and, oh, the Enneagram or Myers Briggs, or we continually trying to put ourselves in boxes as opposed to opening it up and saying, if I want to grow and continue to enjoy my experience in life, I should always be growing.

Things were always going to be changing and shifting. So that's what I love to do with corporations, if anything that I could do is help leaders come back into their intuition, their power of imagination, but for corporations to really switch and understand that the well being of your employees is the most important resource and it's flipped and we all know it. There's nothing wrong with having an abundant society. There's nothing wrong with profits. In fact, if we push against it, I think that will only do worse things. We need to play with it. And so, I think back about that time when I'm like, Okay, I want to get baptized.

Everybody tells you, You gotta go research this Bible, you gotta spend all of this time learning that. No. I found the answers. What did it matter? But people look at like, Oh, taking an easy way or shortcuts. But intuitively, we're being guided on paths that help us to achieve what we want if we listen to ourselves. And then the other business that I have that I'm really passionate about is called Q'd and it's going to be an online platform for queer businesses with an extension of in-person events and one that I'm really excited about. And this is out of my imagination. So this is why imagination is so important and being in nature and walking because one day it was like, I love food. I love travel. I love meeting new people. I love inspiring and hearing about other entrepreneurs and professionals wanting to like, how can I do this all in a business?

Like, how can I do this? So I came up with this idea called queer table and it's going to be events where we go and we bring people together. It's like a big pot luck. No electronics. We don't talk about work, but we invite people to have a seat at the table to get to know each other outside of those basic topics and to see that we have a real collective harmony when we get to know each other.

Doesn't matter what political party, race, religion, any of that. So, yeah, it's like fricking fun to start to look at life and be like, how do I create it and do it the way I want? And when you listen to your intuition, I'm sure you know this, it will guide you. Right, like when you chose to go to that one business with those two other guys.

And you felt like this wasn't right. You still learn from it. That's great. But it's going to be a longer path to what you want if you're not following that, that intuition. I want to ask you about when you stated that you now look at life as happening for you and not to you. What does that mean to you now, looking back over what's happened to you in your life?

It's all a gift and to look at that from a standpoint of my belief is as a soul, as a higher entity, that I chose into this life to live experiences and to expand. And so when I look at, like. Why would I choose to be gay or experience that well because I think a lot of society has been told that there are specific ways that even partnerships or marriage or families are supposed to work and it wasn't how it worked before Constantine and before the Catholic Church, like families and villages and things, it worked differently so it can change again. So when I heard that, I think there was two things somebody told me, you are where you are and it's perfect. And I thought bullshit. Why would I want to be in? Why? Why would I want to be where I am right now? But when I started to look at the gifts and everything that I received from it and what I was learning. I'm like, everything is teeing up for what I want to do, because my story, the things I've been through, my experiences, being on stage speaking, going and knocking on doors, living in a culture and society that was so different already, and then being different within that community, and then being different within the gay community as well, all of that has taught me, like, I think there's that Maya Angelou poem where it's like, I belong everywhere and nowhere, and I kind of maybe butchered it, but it's this realization of like, I belong, but I don't belong in anybody's boxes .

So when I shifted that, it also took me out of victim to responsible. It took me to be able to sit there and look at and say, look at all the gifts I got, and to then see my parents of, I don't understand what they were really going through. They never shared, I could not imagine the things that they were going through as a human being.

The challenges, the experiences and realities that they wanted to create. Nor is it my responsibility. It's not my responsibility. I get to be responsible and look at my own transformation and doing the work too of understanding that, and especially in a lot of psychology and therapy, and which is a great place to start, but sometimes where there's this rut, because I went to a therapist and it was always, we were talking about the trauma and it was like, kept being the trauma.

Well, that trauma can be transformed. And when I was like, Oh,  I don't have to, like, I can totally change my perspective on this and actually change my beliefs and reprogram. Hell, yes., It's empowering. Yeah, totally. I'm like, okay, now I understand, or this is showing up in my life. Let me figure out.

Let me let that go. What was that belief? And certain beliefs where I'll be like, oh, that's why that was coming through. That's just something I heard as a kid.  I get to change that.  

And then the final question, I wanted to ask you if you could tell me about when you did ultimately leave the Jehovah's Witness.

I think you said you got kicked out. What was that experience right then? I know you talked about when you really took hold of your identity. But then what happened after that? When I had come back from that trip, I realized like I was out of shape. I wasn't feeling good. There was a lot of different things.

And I just started working out and I started getting physical and I was always a hiker and love being in nature, but I just went full force. There was this relief because I immediately stopped going to meetings, pretty much. And I was lying. I was telling everybody that I was going to stuff in Fort Collins or Boulder.

I was just keeping them all spun up, but I just kind of really went at my life and I met a guy. We started dating. He was an ex Jehovah's Witness, and that was really comforting because it was like, oh, he understands what it's like and what happened was not intentional at all, but we had been dating.

He told somebody he knew that was an ex Jehovah's Witness. That person happened to be a family member of a family that I was super close with and it got out and it was my older brother who called me first and, right when I picked up the phone, he was just like, he said a couple of expletives. And he called me a fuckin fag and...

I knew like, Oh, they, they found out. I knew. And from that point on, he was like, you can't talk to your nieces. You can't talk to us. You got to talk to mom and dad. You need to talk to the elders. My parents kept calling. The elders kept calling and I just ignored. I went into avoidance. I'm not sure maybe necessarily that that was the right way, but at that point, that was my best way of being able to deal with it.

My parents kept trying to get a hold of me and the elders, because I needed to be talked to and saved. And I told my employees, like, please screen all my phone calls. I think my parents were trying to call, and one day somebody said, hey, there's a customer on the line for you, and I picked up, and my dad had faked being a customer.

It was just like, you need to talk to the elders, and I said, that's not going to happen. He's like, well, you know that your mother and I can't talk to you. And he's like, we've told the elders. I never talked to them, but they announced from the stage that I was no longer good association and was excommunicated from the community.

So I knew that was going to happen. It just happened more quickly than I expected. But it was, it's really kind of like pulling the bandaid off too. I'm really glad it happened. It all happened the way that it needed to. And I think maybe that that's a little bit of my work now, why I care so much about community and especially like the queer community is finding spaces and deeper connection in a sense of so many people that feel unseen, I think, even in the cisgender straight world, because I have a lot of straight friends that just don't feel seen because they're not seeing themselves, but to have spaces where we start to honor that and give people space to really be celebrated for who they are and the beauty of their unique journey probably comes a lot out of that experience and that, that desire to not just say community, but to actually have an authentic, felt, seen, honored, loving society.

Well, thank you so, so much for being here, for talking with me. This has been really great. Yeah, my pleasure. It's always interesting to go back through some of those stories. If anything, I would leave on this note, one of the biggest things that I tell people now is like, you're free to dream again. You're free to dream again, and if we could get there, we'll do some amazing things.

I love it. I love it.