Two Milwaukee parents, Diana and Joy have children who are transgender. They both supported their children’s transition in early elementary school. Now, they want to offer support to other parents with children who are trans. They started the podcast, Transparently Speaking to help other parents and guardians learn how to help their children be their authentic selves. Ultimately, they want other parents to know they’re not alone and that they’re learning together.
The hosts of the podcast, Diana and Joy, don't use their real names to protect the identities of their children.
Transparently Speaking was born after Joy was searching for more information for her then transitioning daughter, Samantha. Diana rememberers how things started, "For me, I had considered writing a book, I've helped lots of families navigate their children's transition. And I had so many, like, little pieces of advice on different aspects of the journey that I thought, well, I'll write a book to put all this kind of advice and knowledge into and I'm just more of a speaker than a writer. Then at some point, I was like, forget that let's just do a podcast first."
The podcast covers how Joy and Diana navigate various situations. When Diana's son Clark began to express that he might be trans, Diana knew she had to make school a safe place for her son. "So for families that have been in his class, I reached out with an email to give them space to kind of read it, process it and react in their own time and not worry about, like, what are they saying or doing in front of us?" Diana recounted. "I wrote the email to reflect what was going on in the sense that I told them that Clark was more confident than we had ever seen him."
Joy and Diana say they are both constantly learning as parents of transitioning kids and want to share what to expect with other parents on their journey with their children. "In this process of transitioning and supporting my child, Samantha through this, it really is this kind of ongoing process of learning new language to use, that concept of the pronouns, and even using a new name is something that takes repetition, and it's a habit to build." explained Joy.
Joy and Diana want others to know that they're not alone navigating their children's identity. " The greatest advice I can give a parent is keep having a conversation with it."
