Interview: Kansas City’s CAMP Magazine

I was honored by being interviewed in Kansas City’s LGBT magazine, Camp, and was absolutely flabbergasted when they said they wanted me to be on the cover as well.

The interview is called “The Camp 10” and is ten questions long. Here are the first two:

1. Like many of our readers, I first learned of you from the powerful video recorded of you speaking about your transgender daughter in May 2014 at the Listen to Your Mother live reading show at Kansas City’s Unity Temple on the Plaza (Listen to Your Mother). How have things changed in your life since that video went viral?A better question is almost what hasn’t changed. Before, I had a very small group of supportive friends around us … actually, only two people knew about our daughter at all, so I rarely talked about any transgender issues. Once the video was out, everyone in our circle knew, and people started finding me on Facebook from across the globe. I received about 5,000 messages in less than a month from people on six continents! People shared with me how inspired they were by me, how they used the speech as a way to come out to their families, and how they changed their perception of their kids after watching it. I realized there was a huge need for people to connect with someone with a shared experience, so I decided to be as open to talking to other people as possible. I still get private messages from people in places like India and Pakistan at all hours of the night. They need someone who will listen to them, who they can confide in, and I try to offer them hope and reassurance. That’s certainly something I never expected to be happening in my life.

2. How has your family adjusted to all of the changes with your activism that this past year has brought?We juggle a more active calendar, but otherwise the adjustment has been fairly easy. I have a lot of meetings to go to, a lot of conference calls, time on the phone or Skype for interviews, and I’ve started traveling to speak. So I cook a bit less and the kids have learned that when my earphones are in, I’m probably doing an interview, so they stay quiet. They get more pizza and movie nights with my husband as I run all over town.

To read the full interview, visit Camp’s website!