Queerly Beloved

Send us Fan Mail

What if casting your vote could be an act of love? And what if the same collective power that fueled the Gay Liberation movement could help us transform our world today?

In this episode of Queerly Beloved, host Wil Fisher welcomes Murray Edelman, a pioneering gay liberation activist, Radical Faerie elder, election polling expert, and founder of Circle Voting, for a fascinating conversation about the intersection of politics, spirituality, love, and community.

Murray has spent more than five decades witnessing and participating in extraordinary social change. He helped launch the Gay Liberation movement in Chicago in 1969, played an important role in the early Radical Faerie movement, and spent much of his professional career analyzing elections and helping major news networks project their results.

Now, through his initiative Circle Voting, Murray is inviting us to reimagine our relationship with democracy. Rather than seeing voting as an isolated act driven by fear, anger, or frustration, what if we approached it as an expression of love for our communities, our planet, and future generations? What if casting a ballot could also mean casting an intention—or even a spell—for the world we want to create?

Wil and Murray explore how conversations within our social circles can help us reclaim our collective power and why bringing politics out of the shadows and into community might be more transformative than we realize.

The conversation also takes us on a remarkable journey through queer history. Murray shares firsthand stories of the early days of Gay Liberation, the creation of intentional queer spiritual communities, and the groundbreaking rituals he helped facilitate in San Francisco bathhouses during the 1970s. These experiences helped inspire the early Radical Faerie gatherings, where sexuality, spirituality, and authentic connection could be explored in revolutionary new ways.

Together, they explore:

• How voting can become an act of love rather than fear.
• The inspiration behind Circle Voting and the power of our social connections.
• Bringing sacred ritual, intention, and even a little magic into political participation.
• Murray's firsthand experiences at the birth of Gay Liberation in Chicago.
• The early Radical Faerie movement and the integration of sexuality and spirituality.
• The importance of community in a culture increasingly defined by isolation.
• The wisdom of queer elders who have witnessed and helped create extraordinary social change.
• Why the political, personal, and spiritual aspects of our lives are inseparable.

At its heart, this conversation is a powerful reminder that transformation doesn't happen in isolation. It happens when we come together, open our hearts, and remember the power we have to create something new.

Connect with Murray and explore Circle Voting:

• Circle Voting: https://circlevoting.com/
• Murray's interview about Gay Liberation, Radical Faeries, and Circle Voting: https://circlevoting.com/blog/an-interview-with-murray-edelman-faerie-elder
• Murray's LGBTQ oral history: https://www.lgbtqhp.org/post/murray-edelman

Connect with Wil and Queerly Beloved:

• Coaching, retreats, and more: https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wilfish99/
• More episodes: https://queerlybelovedpodcast.buzzsprout.com/

If this conversation inspires you, please subscribe to Queerly Beloved, share this episode with someone who might appreciate it, and leave a review. Your support helps these stories and conversations reach more beloveds!

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Originally released in October 2022, this re-released episode is a conversation with Clyde M. Hall which remains one of Wil's all-time favorite interviews on Queerly Beloved. Four years later, he's bringing it back to share the wisdom of a man he deeply admires and whose perspective on Indigenous traditions, Two-Spirit identity, and the spiritual gifts of queer people feels as meaningful as ever.

Clyde M. Hall is an enrolled member of the Shoshone-Métis tribe, an esteemed authority on Native American culture, tribal arts, and traditional ceremonies, and a pioneering figure in the contemporary Two-Spirit movement. He was recognized by OUT Magazine as one of its OUT 100 and later as one of the 1,000 most influential gay individuals of the 20th century. Through his lifelong dedication to preserving Indigenous knowledge and ceremonies, Clyde has helped carry forward traditions and perspectives that colonialism sought to erase.

In this fascinating, heartfelt, and sometimes hilarious conversation, Clyde shares stories from his extraordinary life, including his involvement in the early Gay American Indians movement, the emergence of the term Two-Spirit, and his adventures bringing together gay Native Americans and gay cowboys at a rodeo. (Yes, really!)

Together, Wil and Clyde explore how Indigenous understandings of gender, sexuality, and spirituality challenge many of the limiting beliefs inherited from Western culture and organized religion.

In this episode, they explore:

• 🌈 The origins of the Two-Spirit movement: Clyde's firsthand experiences helping build a movement that celebrates the identities, traditions, and spiritual contributions of LGBTQ+ Indigenous people.
• 🪶 Honoring each person's spiritual vision: The importance of respecting the unique ways individuals experience and express their connection to Spirit.
• 💗 The sacred roles of gender-diverse people: How different Indigenous cultures have recognized people whose identities and gifts extend beyond conventional gender categories.
• 🔥 Colonialism, Christianity, and shame: How the introduction of Christian concepts of sin influenced Indigenous attitudes toward sexuality and spirituality.
• 🤠 Gay Indians meet gay cowboys: A delightful story about bringing seemingly different communities together through connection, celebration, and a gay rodeo.
• ✨ Awakening our spiritual potential: Clyde's inspiring belief that queer people are like sleeping spiritual giants, possessing extraordinary gifts and capacities waiting to be awakened.

Perhaps the most moving invitation from this conversation is to imagine what might become possible if queer people fully recognized and embraced their spiritual gifts. What wisdom, creativity, healing, and transformation might we bring into the world?

Whether you're hearing this conversation for the first time or revisiting it four years later, may it inspire you to honor your own spiritual vision and recognize the sacred gifts you carry.

Learn more about Clyde Hall:

Clyde Hall — LGBTQ Religious Archives Network

Connect with Wil and Queerly Beloved:

🌐 Website: https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wilfish99/

🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@willfullyliving4357

If this conversation moves you, please share it with someone who might benefit from hearing Clyde's wisdom. And don't forget to follow Queerly Beloved and leave a review to help more people discover the podcast.

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

What happens when you intentionally ask life for “warrior training”… and life responds by putting a 50-pound backpack on you and sending you straight up a mountain?

In this solo episode, Wil shares the story of an eight-day, 32+ mile backpacking journey through Sequoia National Park that became one of the most physically demanding experiences of his life.

Going into the trip, Wil set an intention to discover more deeply what he was capable of. That intention was tested almost immediately: steep climbs, intense knee pain, blazing sun, thousands of feet of elevation gain, exhaustion, and one particularly brutal 13-hour day that ended with him slowly descending a mountain alone in the dark.

And yet, somewhere inside the experience of having absolutely nothing left, Wil discovered that somehow… he could still take another step.

But the warrior training wasn’t only about individual strength. It also became a lesson in receiving help, generosity, vulnerability, brotherhood, and the extraordinary intimacy that can emerge when people move through something difficult together.

In this episode, Wil explores:

• The fears he carried into the wilderness
• A sacred (and somewhat silly!) dream involving “mall angels”
• What a grueling day in the mountains taught him about perseverance
• Discovering strength beyond the mind’s declaration of “I can’t do this anymore”
• How shared hardship created profound brotherhood among the nine men
• Finding joy in skinny-dipping, mud, ramen, creek water, stars, and simple acts of service
• Improving his relationship with meditation and stillness
• How eight days almost entirely without a phone changed his experience of presence
• Encountering Shiva through the themes of dissolution, transformation, endings, and renewal
• Holding grief and heartbreak alongside the possibility that endings can also contain mystery, sacredness, and meaning

Ultimately, Wil returned home with a deeper knowing: I can do hard shit.

And that knowing isn’t just about hiking mountains.

Most of us have some metaphorical mountain waiting in our lives- something uncertain, uncomfortable, or frightening that asks us to become bigger than the version of ourselves we currently know.

Maybe you don’t have to know that you can make it all the way to the top.

Maybe you only need enough courage to take one step.

And then another.

And another.

Sometimes we have to climb the mountain to remember who we truly are.

Connect with Wil:
wil-fullyliving.com
Instagram: @wilfullyliving

Check out Inirly (the group that organized the trip):

https://www.inirly.com/

If Queerly Beloved speaks to you, subscribe, share the episode with someone you love, and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode of Queerly Beloved, Wil speaks with Emily Greenway, a former clinical researcher who now works as a burnout and stress coach, energetic reader, and teacher of ritual and energetic mastery. Through Rise to Her and the ROOTED community, Emily blends her research background with archetypal wisdom to help spiritually conscious entrepreneurs and leaders question inherited systems and build lives rooted in their own power.

Emily shares her journey from growing up in a working-class Southern Baptist family in rural South Carolina to gradually dismantling the religious, patriarchal, and cultural expectations that shaped her understanding of who she was supposed to be. Through education, travel, spiritual exploration, and embracing her queerness, she learned to recognize when an old structure no longer reflected her truth, it was time to find the courage to let it fall.

Together, Wil and Emily explore how desire can become a compass when it’s separated from shame, morality, and the pressure to prove our worth. They discuss Emily’s concept of the “soul code”: the deeper themes, values, joys, and patterns that continually guide us back toward who we are beneath our conditioning.

The conversation also turns toward joy as a form of rebellion. Emily explains that joy doesn’t require bypassing pain or ignoring injustice. Instead, being willing to experience grief, pleasure, desire, and the full range of human sensation can help us stay connected to our creativity and power within systems that profit from our disconnection.

Together, they explore:

•  Distinguishing authentic desires from desires shaped by capitalism and patriarchy 
•  Releasing shame and rigid ideas of right and wrong 
•  Understanding the difference between core human needs and a personal soul code 
•  Breaking structures that no longer support our truth 
•  Emily’s journey through religious deconstruction and queer self-discovery 
•  Why joy and grief belong on the same emotional spectrum 
•  Reclaiming the senses as sources of wisdom and discernment 
•  Working with the Wheel of the Year and nature’s cycles 
•  Disentangling our energy from grind culture, urgency, and endless productivity 

This episode is an invitation to remember that we aren’t merely caretakers of the Earth—we are the Earth—and that our joy can help make us burn-proof in a culture determined to burn us out.

Connect with Emily

Visit Rise to Her
Explore the ROOTED Community

Connect with Queerly Beloved

Wil's Upcoming retreat in Costa Rica- 

https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/awakened-hearts-nye

Willfully Living
Follow Wil on Instagram

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

What if the thing you reach for dozens or hundreds of times a day isn’t simply a tool?

In this episode of Queerly Beloved, Wil sits down with psychotherapist, author, and teacher Shannon Algeo (he/him), MA, AMFT, APCC, author of Trust Your Truth and the new book The Power in Your Hands: Liberate Yourself from Attachment to Technology.

Shannon’s work offers a fascinating lens on our increasingly intimate relationship with technology: the connection of compulsive smartphone use with insecure attachment patterns. Our phones can become something like surrogate attachment figures- reliable places to seek stimulation, soothing, connection, validation, or escape when being present with ourselves or another human feels harder. 

Wil brings his own recent exploration into the conversation, sharing discoveries about the ways his social-media algorithm seems to hook different “parts” of him- parts afraid of missing out, being manipulated, or not being enough. Together, Wil and Shannon explore a deliciously provocative question: What might your algorithm reveal about you? And if the things that repeatedly capture your attention are pointing toward unmet needs, fears, desires, or wounds, could noticing those hooks actually become part of a healing practice? 

They also explore how social media can interfere with the very capacities human beings need for deep relationship: sustained attention, spaciousness, solitude, emotional presence, and the willingness to tolerate the glorious inefficiency of another human being.

Together, they explore:

•  How attachment theory can help explain compulsive smartphone use 
•  Why intermittent rewards keep us checking apps over and over 
•  The difference between having a desire and having an algorithm manufacture one 
•  What our personalized feeds reveal about our fears, fantasies, wounds, and needs 
•  How phones can become an escape from uncomfortable emotions 
•  Why real human relationships require friction, inconvenience, and vulnerability 
•  The importance of reclaiming solitude, creativity, wonder, and unstructured time 
•  Practical tools like one sec, app blocking, digital sabbaths, and simpler phones 
•  The possibility of joining a growing renaissance of rehumanization

Near the end of the conversation, Shannon offers perhaps the most hopeful reminder of all: this way of living is remarkably new. We are not permanently wired for endless scrolling. Our relationship with technology can change.

When we reclaim our attention, we also reclaim room for what matters: creativity, intimacy, embodiment, purpose, play, and the messy, inconvenient, miraculous people right in front of us. 

Connect with Shannon

Shannon Algeo: shannonalgeo.com
The Power in Your Hands: https://www.shannonalgeo.com/book
Trust Your Truth: http://www.trustyourtruthbook.com/

Resources Mentioned

one sec: one-sec.app
The Light Phone: thelightphone.com
Brick: Get Brick
Strother School of Radical Attention: School of Radical Attention
The Offline Club: The Offline Club
Johann Hari / Stolen Focus: Johann Hari

Stay Connected with Queerly Beloved

Website: https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wilfish99/

If this conversation moved you, please subscribe to Queerly Beloved, leave a review, and share the episode with someone who might be ready to reclaim a little more of their attention—and their life.

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

What if the things that hook you on your phone could actually teach you something about yourself?

In this solo episode of Queerly Beloved, Wil shares insights from a recent intentional MDMA journey that led him into a deeper exploration of his relationship with technology, emotions, and different “parts” of himself.

Through Internal Family Systems (IFS)–inspired parts work, Wil meets Ping Pong, a busy-body, stimulation-seeking part that wants him to experience everything life has to offer while also protecting him from difficult emotions. As well as Shy, a part that fears what might happen if Wil becomes too visible, successful, connected, or happy.

As these parts begin to soften, a bigger realization emerges: the algorithms on our phones may be especially good at identifying—and hooking—the vulnerable parts of ourselves.

What if the reels that trigger our envy, FOMO, desire, insecurity, outrage, or need for validation aren't just distractions? What if they can also become trailheads—opportunities to get curious about what is happening inside us?

In this episode, Wil explores:

• How parts work can help us relate to ourselves with more curiosity and compassion
• The connection between busyness, stimulation, and avoiding difficult emotions
• Why reaching for our phones can sometimes be an emotional protection strategy
• How social media algorithms can hook and feed different parts of ourselves
• Creating greater sovereignty and intentionality in our relationship with technology
• Allowing sadness, anger, and fear to actually move through the body
• The unexpected freedom that can come from realizing we don't have to fill every moment
• Four messages Wil has been carrying since the journey:

It is safe to be here.
It is safe to feel.
It is safe to shine.
It is safe to connect.

This episode also offers a personal prelude to Wil's upcoming conversation with Shannon Algeo, author of The Power in Your Hands, exploring our individual and collective relationship with smartphones and technology.

The next time you find yourself compulsively reaching for your phone or getting hooked by something in your feed, consider pausing before judging yourself.

What part of you is getting hooked? What is it looking for? What might it be protecting you from? And what does it actually need?

A note about this episode: Wil shares personal experiences with psychedelic medicines and altered states of consciousness. This conversation is offered for educational and personal-reflection purposes only and is not medical, psychological, or legal advice, nor is it intended to encourage anyone to engage in illegal activity.

Learn more about Wil and his work here- https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode of Queerly Beloved, Wil is joined by Rev. Yolanda Mapes, a trans femme genderqueer actor, singer-songwriter, performance artist, and interfaith minister. Yolanda is currently working on her tenth studio album and recently released the singles “Did Ya Know” and “Sparkle.” She also guest-starred in episode six of Ryan Murphy’s television series The Beauty.

Yolanda shares her journey of gender expression, spirituality, and artistic self-discovery from growing up as a feminine child in Alabama to finding freedom and affirmation within the Radical Faerie community. She reflects on the limitations of binary gender and the importance of creating enough safety for each person’s unique expression to emerge.

The conversation moves into Yolanda’s longtime practice of A Course in Miracles and its teachings about forgiveness, ego, nonattachment, and remembering who we truly are. Yolanda also speaks movingly about her relationship with her late husband and soulmate, Rev. Glen Ganaway. His unconditional love helped her feel at home in herself, and their shared spiritual practice became a foundation of their life together.

After Glen’s sudden death, Yolanda experienced a profound shattering that eventually opened into what she describes as a second awakening. She shares how grief, spiritual community, and experiences of Glen’s continued presence have deepened her trust in the eternal nature of love—including an extraordinary experience while filming her role in The Beauty around the first anniversary of his passing.

Together, they explore:

•  Growing up gender-nonconforming in Alabama before language for trans and nonbinary identities was widely available 
•  Finding affirmation, freedom, and possibility through the Radical Faeries 
•  How unconditional love can create safety for our authentic identity to emerge 
•  Moving beyond binary gender and releasing judgments that block connection 
•  Building bridges of compassion through music, performance, drag, and ministry 
•  Using A Course in Miracles to recognize ego-based thoughts and return to love 
•  What it means to be sustained by the love of God 
•  Grief as a second spiritual awakening 
•  Trusting the ongoing connection between souls beyond physical death 
•  Letting things be exactly as they are instead of resisting life’s natural changes 

This soulful conversation invites us to welcome every moment—whether it contains grief, fear, anger, joy, or infinite love—as part of our healing and spiritual unfolding.

Connect with Rev. Yolanda

• Website, music, and upcoming offerings
• Yolanda’s Louise Hay-inspired affirmations
• Learn more about A Course in Miracles

Connect with Wil

• Website
• Instagram
• YouTube

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode of Queerly Beloved, Wil Fisher (aka. Sylvia Wil Gather Rainbor) sits down with the legendary John Cameron Mitchell, the actor, writer, director, singer, and cultural icon best known for creating, directing, and starring in Hedwig and the Angry Inch. John also wrote and directed Shortbus, directed Rabbit Hole, co-wrote and directed How to Talk to Girls at Parties, and created the podcast series Anthem: Homunculus and Cancellation Island.

In this rich, funny, provocative, and deeply human conversation, John shares reflections on the 25th anniversary of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and the ways this beloved story continues to offer queer people a sense of complexity, liberation, and hope. He and Wil explore Hedwig not simply as a story about trauma, patriarchy, identity, survival, and the longing to become whole.

John also speaks about his relationship with Catholicism, ritual, queer spirituality, and the way queer people often learn early how to live inside nuance and contradiction. Together, explore humor as a queer survival tool, the limits of labels, the Radical Faerie community, psychedelics, dancing as medicine, AI, punk, and the sacred importance of staying human in a time of fear and disconnection.

They also discuss:

• John’s first remembered role as the Virgin Mary at a boys’ boarding school in Scotland
• Catholicism, ritual, theater, and queer complexity
• The danger of reducing people to labels or stereotypes
• Radical Faeries, Harry Hay, queer magic, and non-corporate expressions of queerness
• The difference between substances that expand connection and substances that deepen isolation
• AI, creativity, heartbreak, and why human art still matters
• Punk as kindness, courage, DIY action, and real-life connection
• The importance of feeling fully instead of letting fear shut us down

This conversation is a beautiful reminder that queer wisdom is often found in the in-between places, in humor, contradiction, grief, glitter, resistance, ritual, and the courage to keep becoming.

John Cameron Mitchell on Instagram here:
https://www.instagram.com/johncameronmitchell/?hl=en

Learn more about Hedwig 25 here:
https://www.hedwig25.com/

Learn more about Wil Fisher and his work here:
https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/

Please subscribe to Queerly Beloved and leave a review if this episode moved you! 🙏

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

Today’s episode is an encore/ re-release from the Queerly Beloved archives. Whether you’re hearing it for the first time or returning to it with fresh ears, we hope it meets you in exactly the way you need. 🤗

In this special Pride Month solo episode, Wil Fisher honors Pride by reading his Queer Manifesto essay titled, "Queer Love is the Medicine the World Needs Now," featured in the upcoming queer anthology Spirits Queer, Spirits True.

Wil explores queer love as a sacred, rebellious, and deeply healing force. Through poetic reflection and bold truth-telling, he invites listeners into a space of radical inclusion, where love transcends binaries, borders, and outdated beliefs.

This episode dives into:

- What makes queer love so powerfully unique.
 - The societal barriers that get in the way of fully embodying it.
 - How rituals, community, and self-acceptance help us access queer love’s full magic.
 - Why this kind of love might just be the medicine our world is craving right now.

Enjoy this episode as a celebration of Pride Month in the form of a living prayer. 

Mentioned in this episode:
📖 Spirits Queer, Spirits True – Coming soon! Stay tuned for release info.

Connect with Wil:
🌐 www.wil-fullyliving.com
📸 Instagram: @wilfish99

Support the show

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode of Queerly Beloved, Wil is joined by Tina “Kat” Courtney, a plant medicine pioneer, author, traditionally trained Ayahuasquera, psychedelic integration coach, and CEO and Co-Founder of Plant Medicine People.

Kat has spent two decades in deep relationship with plant medicines, and in this conversation, she shares how ayahuasca first came into her life, how she came to understand this work as a calling, and why creating safer, more affirming medicine spaces for queer and trans people matters so much.

Together, we explore plant spirits, queer healing, authenticity, ego death, actual death, integration, and the power of learning to trust the ride. Kat also offers beautiful reflections on nature as a teacher of fluidity and diversity, and why the medicine often invites us to become more fully, audaciously ourselves.

In this episode, we explore:

• How ayahuasca first came into Kat’s life more than 20 years ago
• What it means to be called into relationship with plant spirits
• Why queer and trans people need safer, more affirming medicine spaces
• Nature as a reflection of queerness, fluidity, and authenticity
• The healing power of being loved exactly as we are
• Ego death, death, rebirth, and unity consciousness
• Why bigger doses are not always better
• Sovereignty, sensitivity, and self-trust in medicine spaces
• Integration as embodiment
• How to let ceremony, grief, breakups, and life experiences actually change the way we live

Learn more about Kat and her work:

Plant Medicine People: www.plantmedicinepeople.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plantmedicinepeople/

Connect with Wil:

Learn about the retreat in Costa Rica- https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/awakened-hearts-nye

Website: https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wilfish99/

Support the show