More Human. More Kind. | Parenting LGBTQ Kids, Unlearning Fear, Becoming More Human

In this episode, Heather Hester interviews Diane Becker. She is a nationally certified juvenile treatment specialist, a licensed clinical social worker, licensed continuing education provider for social workers and professional counselors, and has been connecting with families and professionals for over 30 years. Diane and Heather have been friends for more than 15 years.

The main topic of this two-part interview is the subject of boundaries - what are they? how do you set them? what do they look like in different environments? Diane emphasizes the importance of connectedness, health and safety, and family.

Below is a list of the resources Diane mentions in the interview:

National Crisis Hotlines

International Association for Prevention of Suicide:   https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline  https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

Domestic Violence:  https://www.thehotline.org/

Find a health care provider:

GLMA:  health professionals advancing equality:  www.glma.org   

Connections:

Parents:  PFLAG  www.pflag.org

Youth to 25y:   Trevor Project:  www.thetrevorproject.org

Information:

American Academy of Pediatrics:  www.heatlhychildren.org 

Strong Family Alliance: www.strongfamilyalliance.org

It Gets Better Project:  www.itgetsbetter.org

NAMI: National Alliance For Mental Illness:  www.nami.org

Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!

Feeling uncertain or overwhelmed? Stay informed - visit my website

Join the Conversation on Substack

Read my book, Parenting with Pride.

Support the Show - Learn more here!

Watch on YouTube

Listen * Share * Review *NEW* episodes every Tuesday and Friday!

This is a place to feel messy while you're figuring it out.

At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and grow their capacity for courageous connection.

For parents, allies, and those pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heartwarming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.

Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in, I see you. And I’m so glad you’re on this journey with me.

More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast in a heartfelt and empowering space where a mom and advocate offers the wisdom of lived experience and practical guidance and education to parents and allies, teaching empathy, kindness, love, and strong boundaries while supporting LGBTQ teens and the diverse LGBTQ community, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, transgender, and queer individuals, through conversations about mental health, grief, gender identity, sexual orientation, human rights, social justice, parenting, parent support, and meaningful LGBTQ allyship and allyship in action.

In this episode, Heather interviews Julie Ferwerda, researcher and author of Raising Hell - Christianity's most controversial doctrine put under fire. This is an absolute must-hear if you've ever questioned the existence, possibility, or reality of Hell.

As parents, allies, and advocates of LGBTQ kids, teens, and young adults, if we've been raised in any kind of religion, one of the first fearful thoughts that pop into our heads when our kids come out is - are they going to hell?? And for all of the LGBTQ listeners, this fear is likely times a thousand!

Julie spent well over a year researching the Greek and Hebrew texts and interviewing dozens of experts to offer "compelling evidence historically, philosophically, and scripturally as to why the doctrine of hell is the biggest and most damaging deception of the modern church."

Here are the links for this episode:

Book - Raising Hell

Julie's website

Spiritual Terrorism by Boyd Purcell

Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!

Feeling uncertain or overwhelmed? Stay informed - visit my website

Join the Conversation on Substack

Read my book, Parenting with Pride.

Support the Show - Learn more here!

Watch on YouTube

Listen * Share * Review *NEW* episodes every Tuesday and Friday!

This is a place to feel messy while you're figuring it out.

At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and grow their capacity for courageous connection.

For parents, allies, and those pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heartwarming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.

Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in, I see you. And I’m so glad you’re on this journey with me.

More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast in a heartfelt and empowering space where a mom and advocate offers the wisdom of lived experience and practical guidance and education to parents and allies, teaching empathy, kindness, love, and strong boundaries while supporting LGBTQ teens and the diverse LGBTQ community, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, transgender, and queer individuals, through conversations about mental health, grief, gender identity, sexual orientation, human rights, social justice, parenting, parent support, and meaningful LGBTQ allyship and allyship in action.

In this episode, Heather interviews Debbie Reber, NYTimes bestselling author of Differently Wired, and the creator of the Tilt Parenting Community and Tilt Parenting podcast. She is a speaker, mentor, educator, and book coach.

Debbie has created 18 shifts, or what she calls tilts, to help parents navigate parenting a child who is differently wired. Although her parent audience differs in some ways from Heather's, the tilts work brilliantly whether you are parenting a child who has ADHD, sensory issues, anxiety, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning.

"...we want to form, what I call, an uneasy alliance with that fear...so we can say, I see you, I know what you're trying to do, I appreciate you're trying to protect me - I've got this - and we want to come up with evidence for how that fear may not be true. We're trying to loosen up the grip of fear and open up to the possibility of what might be..."

Debbie's website, Tilt Parenting Community, and podcast are FILLED with extraordinary resources, and her Tilt Together Facebook group is an excellent place to connect with parents. Here is the link for Todd Rose's End of Average, which Heather and Debbie discuss in detail.

Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!

Feeling uncertain or overwhelmed? Stay informed - visit my website

Join the Conversation on Substack

Read my book, Parenting with Pride.

Support the Show - Learn more here!

Watch on YouTube

Listen * Share * Review *NEW* episodes every Tuesday and Friday!

This is a place to feel messy while you're figuring it out.

At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and grow their capacity for courageous connection.

For parents, allies, and those pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heartwarming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.

Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in, I see you. And I’m so glad you’re on this journey with me.

More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast in a heartfelt and empowering space where a mom and advocate offers the wisdom of lived experience and practical guidance and education to parents and allies, teaching empathy, kindness, love, and strong boundaries while supporting LGBTQ teens and the diverse LGBTQ community, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, transgender, and queer individuals, through conversations about mental health, grief, gender identity, sexual orientation, human rights, social justice, parenting, parent support, and meaningful LGBTQ allyship and allyship in action.

In this short but powerful episode, Heather talks about two feelings that almost every parent of an LGBTQ child/teen/young adult experiences at some point or another - "when it feels scary" and "caring what others think."

She shares personal experience and wisdom that has helped her family and her over the past three years.

Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!

Feeling uncertain or overwhelmed? Stay informed - visit my website

Join the Conversation on Substack

Read my book, Parenting with Pride.

Support the Show - Learn more here!

Watch on YouTube

Listen * Share * Review *NEW* episodes every Tuesday and Friday!

This is a place to feel messy while you're figuring it out.

At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and grow their capacity for courageous connection.

For parents, allies, and those pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heartwarming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.

Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in, I see you. And I’m so glad you’re on this journey with me.

More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast in a heartfelt and empowering space where a mom and advocate offers the wisdom of lived experience and practical guidance and education to parents and allies, teaching empathy, kindness, love, and strong boundaries while supporting LGBTQ teens and the diverse LGBTQ community, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, transgender, and queer individuals, through conversations about mental health, grief, gender identity, sexual orientation, human rights, social justice, parenting, parent support, and meaningful LGBTQ allyship and allyship in action.

In this episode, Heather Hester interviews Jen Slumac, author of Soul Not Skin. She is a mentor, educator, performer, and producer, and is known as a hope dealer. 

"...care about ourselves, cherish ourselves, and learn how to honor other people's journey..."

Jen is in long-term recovery from alcoholism, a coping mechanism she used to survive as a queer woman in a world that told her she didn't belong. Her captivating storytelling exudes, as well as inspires, courage.

Jen's website is filled with incredible resources, and her new podcast, Just Say It, is raw, vulnerable, and real. Jen is truly engaging and refreshingly no BS!

She will also be doing virtual healing circles with Susan Cottrell (episodes 11 and 12), so be sure to check those out!

Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!

Feeling uncertain or overwhelmed? Stay informed - visit my website

Join the Conversation on Substack

Read my book, Parenting with Pride.

Support the Show - Learn more here!

Watch on YouTube

Listen * Share * Review *NEW* episodes every Tuesday and Friday!

This is a place to feel messy while you're figuring it out.

At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and grow their capacity for courageous connection.

For parents, allies, and those pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heartwarming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.

Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in, I see you. And I’m so glad you’re on this journey with me.

More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast in a heartfelt and empowering space where a mom and advocate offers the wisdom of lived experience and practical guidance and education to parents and allies, teaching empathy, kindness, love, and strong boundaries while supporting LGBTQ teens and the diverse LGBTQ community, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, transgender, and queer individuals, through conversations about mental health, grief, gender identity, sexual orientation, human rights, social justice, parenting, parent support, and meaningful LGBTQ allyship and allyship in action.

In this episode, Heather Hester returns to basics and discusses ways to protect your energy no matter what may be going on around you - a pandemic, a crisis with your child, or just the usual day-to-day ups and downs of raising teenagers!

Heather first looks at identifying the different ways your energy gets sapped, and then details tips and tools for strengthening your reserves and protecting them.

This resource lists five tools to help you "fill your cup" and keep it full.

This article explains the science behind visualization.

Here are five of Heather's current favorite affirmations (adapted from a Gabby Bernstein meditation that she loves):

1. All is well.

2. I am open to creative solutions.

3. I am guided. I am protected. I am loved. I am safe.

4. I move through my day with grace, wisdom, and light.

5. I choose to see joy.

Meditations:

Freedom from fear (Heather)

Positive Energy (Gabby Bernstein)

Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!

Feeling uncertain or overwhelmed? Stay informed - visit my website

Join the Conversation on Substack

Read my book, Parenting with Pride.

Support the Show - Learn more here!

Watch on YouTube

Listen * Share * Review *NEW* episodes every Tuesday and Friday!

This is a place to feel messy while you're figuring it out.

At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and grow their capacity for courageous connection.

For parents, allies, and those pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heartwarming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.

Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in, I see you. And I’m so glad you’re on this journey with me.

More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast in a heartfelt and empowering space where a mom and advocate offers the wisdom of lived experience and practical guidance and education to parents and allies, teaching empathy, kindness, love, and strong boundaries while supporting LGBTQ teens and the diverse LGBTQ community, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, transgender, and queer individuals, through conversations about mental health, grief, gender identity, sexual orientation, human rights, social justice, parenting, parent support, and meaningful LGBTQ allyship and allyship in action.

Heather Hester interviews clinical psychologist Melanie McNally in this episode which is loaded with great tools and unique approaches to helping your teen or young adult manage their anxiety.

In addition to working with adolescents face-to-face, Dr. McNally utilizes a unique online platform of her creation called Destination YOU. Check it out HERE!

She is also the author of a coming of age novel, Counting Dragonflies, that beautifully weaves family and mental health struggles and triumphs throughout.

Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!

Feeling uncertain or overwhelmed? Stay informed - visit my website

Join the Conversation on Substack

Read my book, Parenting with Pride.

Support the Show - Learn more here!

Watch on YouTube

Listen * Share * Review *NEW* episodes every Tuesday and Friday!

This is a place to feel messy while you're figuring it out.

At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and grow their capacity for courageous connection.

For parents, allies, and those pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heartwarming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.

Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in, I see you. And I’m so glad you’re on this journey with me.

More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast in a heartfelt and empowering space where a mom and advocate offers the wisdom of lived experience and practical guidance and education to parents and allies, teaching empathy, kindness, love, and strong boundaries while supporting LGBTQ teens and the diverse LGBTQ community, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, transgender, and queer individuals, through conversations about mental health, grief, gender identity, sexual orientation, human rights, social justice, parenting, parent support, and meaningful LGBTQ allyship and allyship in action.

This episode is the conclusion of Heather Hester's interview with Susan Cottrell, founder of Freedhearts.org. More incredible information is waiting for you! 

Susan's message crosses all faiths, as every one of us regardless of church or cultural tradition has received messaging in our lives about LGBTQ people.

Listen in with an open mind and open heart!

Here are the links mentioned in the show:

www.freedhearts.org

Tedx Talk

Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!

Feeling uncertain or overwhelmed? Stay informed - visit my website

Join the Conversation on Substack

Read my book, Parenting with Pride.

Support the Show - Learn more here!

Watch on YouTube

Listen * Share * Review *NEW* episodes every Tuesday and Friday!

This is a place to feel messy while you're figuring it out.

At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and grow their capacity for courageous connection.

For parents, allies, and those pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heartwarming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.

Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in, I see you. And I’m so glad you’re on this journey with me.

More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast in a heartfelt and empowering space where a mom and advocate offers the wisdom of lived experience and practical guidance and education to parents and allies, teaching empathy, kindness, love, and strong boundaries while supporting LGBTQ teens and the diverse LGBTQ community, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, transgender, and queer individuals, through conversations about mental health, grief, gender identity, sexual orientation, human rights, social justice, parenting, parent support, and meaningful LGBTQ allyship and allyship in action.

In this episode, Heather Hester shares an insightful interview with Susan Cottrell, founder of Freedhearts.org, mother of 5 (2 of whom are queer), advocate, and beautiful human being. Susan shares stories with authenticity and depth of knowledge that makes you want to learn more!

Susan's message crosses all faiths, as every one of us regardless of church or cultural tradition has received messaging in our lives about LGBTQ people.

Listen in with an open mind and open heart!

Here are the links mentioned in the show:

www.freedhearts.org

Tedx Talk

Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!

Feeling uncertain or overwhelmed? Stay informed - visit my website

Join the Conversation on Substack

Read my book, Parenting with Pride.

Support the Show - Learn more here!

Watch on YouTube

Listen * Share * Review *NEW* episodes every Tuesday and Friday!

This is a place to feel messy while you're figuring it out.

At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and grow their capacity for courageous connection.

For parents, allies, and those pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heartwarming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.

Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in, I see you. And I’m so glad you’re on this journey with me.

More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast in a heartfelt and empowering space where a mom and advocate offers the wisdom of lived experience and practical guidance and education to parents and allies, teaching empathy, kindness, love, and strong boundaries while supporting LGBTQ teens and the diverse LGBTQ community, including gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, transgender, and queer individuals, through conversations about mental health, grief, gender identity, sexual orientation, human rights, social justice, parenting, parent support, and meaningful LGBTQ allyship and allyship in action.