Tonight was the first time I’ve invited guests onto the I Write Out Loud podcast, because it seemed important to have multiple voices weighing in on such a weighty topic.
The conversation began with my essay, It Took Only 8 Days Till He Came For Our Trans and Nonbinary Kids, written just eight days after Trump first took office and newly republished after the murder of Juniper Blessing, a 19-year-old trans UW student killed here in Seattle. I discussed what it felt like—as the mom of a child who’d gone through a gender journey, and the founder of Pink Hair & Pronouns, a publication for parents of gender-nonconforming kids—to be in the Seattle Adolescent Care Clinic when news of the first Executive Order against trans youth dropped.
TL;DR: it was surreal.
Then I was joined by Rachel @ This Woman Votes and Chris Resists and the discussion widened quickly into something bigger: what it means to raise vulnerable kids in a country becoming openly hostile to them, how much fear parents quietly carry, and the strange illusion of safety many of us in blue-state bubbles have been clinging to.
We talked about gender journeys, parenting without roadmaps, the emotional complexity of loving your child enough to let them become fully themselves, and the reality that trans kids often encounter violence and fear long before parents even realize what they’re carrying. Chris shared the story of his daughter eventually trusting him enough to come out after years of quietly trying on identities among friends and classmates, while Rachel talked about building a home that became a refuge for queer kids in Florida before eventually relocating to Oregon.
I noticed a connective thread running underneath all of it: midlife itself. Reinvention. The collapse of old assumptions. Parenting older kids while simultaneously trying to figure out our own next phase. The conversation opened with me talking about “life in mid-flight” — this idea that many GenXers no longer experience midlife as arrival, but instead as continued becoming. And that feeling wove directly into the larger discussion about identity, safety, family, autonomy, and what kind of world we are collectively building for the next generation.
What a show. Huge thanks to Rachel and Chris for being my first guests here on I Write Out Loud. I’m sure they won’t be the last ones.
You can read my essay here:
Thank you Ellie Leonard, Harry Hogg, Elizabeth Silleck La Rue, Esq., Ashleigh Alauren, Pamela, and so many others for tuning in.
Special thanks to my Founding Members: Pietra Shirley, Suzanne Whitaker, Karen Marie Shelton, Mason/She/Her🩷💜💙, Alan Wiley, Craig Weissman, and Shālah B Pookie. You’re the very best and I’m so grateful for your support.
Thanks for listening.
I’m Dana DuBois, an essayist and GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest — and founder of I Write Out Loud and co-host of The Daily Whatever Show.
Through memoir writing, audio storytelling, and community spaces, I explore the larger cultural forces shaping relationships, feminism, parenting, media, modern dating, and life in mid-flight.
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