Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - August 21, 2026


Ep 1387 ｜ Mormon to 'Trans' to Christian： How the Gospel Changed Everything ｜ LaRell Herbert


Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 6 minutes

Words per minute

161.87

Word count

10,718

Sentence count

484


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 I've learned that being trans is a very selfish thing. It's all about me and my needs and you
00:00:05.160 forget the people around you. My wife and I, we met with the therapist. That therapist ended up
00:00:10.860 telling her, hey, you better support your husband in transitioning to be a woman because if you
00:00:15.500 don't, he's likely to end his own life. When I was baptized, the whole room said, behold a new
00:00:22.100 creation. And I felt that even though I have to live the rest of my life with the consequences
00:00:27.680 and missing my body parts, I can live in peace with it, knowing Jesus now.
00:00:44.100 Laurel, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. All right, you're a Christian evangelist,
00:00:48.940 but for several years, you identified so-called as a woman after growing up Mormon or LDS.
00:00:57.680 So let's just go with that first.
00:01:00.400 How did you end up here where you are?
00:01:03.200 That's a really good question.
00:01:04.680 And it's been a long journey and yeah, grew up in the Mormon church.
00:01:10.840 I was born into the Mormon church when I was, well, yeah, born into the Mormon church.
00:01:16.240 My family goes way back in the church.
00:01:20.100 Brigham Young's brother was my fourth great uncle.
00:01:23.620 and wow so yeah it's a long history in the church and i've come to learn that there was a lot of
00:01:35.720 programming that happened to me as i grew up in the church and it happens to every person that i
00:01:41.180 see grew up in the lds church and it's a lot of programming around identity and naturally as we
00:01:50.080 You know, I grew up believing myself to be in the wrong body, and it was largely the teachings of the Mormon Church that instilled in me this belief and this feeling that it was possible to be born in the wrong body, at the same time being told that it was not possible.
00:02:07.260 it like i was raised to believe that if i was male on this earth that meant i was male in the
00:02:16.180 pre-existence and would be male for all of eternity after this life and my poor little
00:02:21.420 child mind could not wrap around that concept i thought that is that seems like such an injustice
00:02:29.860 i feel like i'm a female in a male body yet i'm being told that if i'm male in this life that
00:02:36.600 means I've always been male and always will be male. And it was so confusing to grow up with
00:02:42.700 that. And I didn't get exposed to the concept of what it meant to be trans till way later in my
00:02:49.900 life in my twenties. And okay. You said something interesting. You said that simultaneously,
00:02:55.700 like you were taught that you can't be born in the wrong body, but also that you could.
00:03:00.500 And one time I was engaging with a Mormon who made a comment about having gendered souls
00:03:07.800 in pre-existence.
00:03:09.860 And this was actually her justification for the idea that you could be born in the wrong
00:03:14.920 body, that you could identify as something other than what you biologically are.
00:03:19.880 So I'm kind of just throwing this at you as I'm thinking about what you're saying, but
00:03:24.320 could you break that down from a Mormon perspective?
00:03:27.080 How did you feel that simultaneously you're being told, no, you've always been male and
00:03:31.120 will always will be, but also maybe your soul ended up in the wrong place?
00:03:37.500 Yeah, I feel like it was probably my own personal interpretation of what I was being taught,
00:03:42.980 because I definitely was not taught in the Mormon church that you could be born in the
00:03:46.780 wrong body.
00:03:48.340 But I had to make sense of it somehow as I was growing up and to understand the permanence
00:03:55.700 of what I was being told and align that somehow with this weird sensation I had that I was in
00:04:02.940 the wrong body and that I was really supposed to be female and that God somehow made a mistake.
00:04:09.620 And I would, every single night of my life, I would pray to God because I was a believer for
00:04:15.560 most of my life growing up in the LDS church, even though Mormons have a very different perspective
00:04:20.660 and belief of, of Jesus and God and things. I was still a believer and I believed very strongly
00:04:26.880 that when I was praying, I was talking to God. And so every night I would beg him either remove
00:04:32.640 this feeling from me. That's making me feel like I'm in the wrong body or allow me to wake up in
00:04:38.320 the right body. I saw only two choices, two possible outcomes. Yeah. You know, I've heard
00:04:44.760 that very similar story from someone that we just talked to a few weeks ago, who said the same thing.
00:04:50.660 that every night he would pray that God would change his body or change his mind. So you felt
00:04:57.420 like this from a very early age. Do you remember any moment when you first had this kind of
00:05:03.660 overwhelming sense of, I don't think I'm supposed to be a boy? So my earliest memories are about
00:05:12.800 four years old. And I, I recognize that most trans people say it was about three or four
00:05:19.600 years old when they first had this realization but it also so happens to be that it's also at
00:05:24.860 four years old that you first start to realize that there is a difference between boys and girls
00:05:30.080 so just because I started to have those feelings at four years old doesn't necessarily mean
00:05:35.260 obviously that that was right that that was what those feelings meant but yeah from about four
00:05:42.740 years on I started to notice that there is a significant difference between boys and girls
00:05:48.540 not only in physical appearance, but in how I was treated compared to the girls,
00:05:55.380 what the girls got to do. I would always imagine myself being with the girls at church and the
00:06:02.860 girls' classes at church and things. And it stuck with me. You know, they have this saying,
00:06:11.400 if a kid is insistent, persistent, and consistent or whatever, that that was a sign that they were
00:06:18.260 really trans. And those are the kids that need to transition. And I have people tell me all the
00:06:22.220 time, well, you just weren't really trans. If you detransition now, it means that you weren't trans
00:06:27.680 to begin with. But when you look back on my life experience, I have a very similar experience from
00:06:34.100 a very young age that carried with me throughout my whole life that was very persistent and felt
00:06:40.220 like it was undeniable that I had a female soul, but a male body.
00:06:46.380 And did you tell anyone, I'm assuming this was probably the 80s, and as you said, you
00:06:50.980 had no sense of kind of like what trans was, so were you talking to anyone about your feelings
00:06:57.280 as a child?
00:06:59.020 Absolutely not.
00:07:00.160 In fact, I wrote in my book about an experience when I was four years old when I put on one
00:07:09.120 of my mother's nightgowns, and I went running out excited to show her.
00:07:13.780 and my memory I can't remember exactly what was said at the time but I know all of a sudden
00:07:19.680 I felt shame for wearing it like there was this recognition that it is not okay for boys to dress
00:07:26.200 that way and and that was so clear to me growing up in the environment I was in that you just don't
00:07:31.760 mix those lines you don't cross those boundaries boys don't wear girls clothes and you just don't
00:07:37.820 ever do that. And so I lived for much of my life with this feeling and belief about myself deeply
00:07:44.840 locked inside. And it was so painful to know that if I talked to anybody about it, I knew I would
00:07:51.020 be seen as mentally ill. And no kid wants that. No child wants to be seen as wrong or broken or
00:07:58.260 mentally ill. And I felt like this was something that was broken about me, perhaps. And perhaps
00:08:05.080 when I was younger, if I felt safe to talk to someone about it, maybe I might have gotten the
00:08:10.140 help I actually needed way back then to steer me away from those feelings, but I didn't. I kept it
00:08:15.520 deeply locked inside and carried that secret for well into my 30s. And what was your upbringing
00:08:24.980 like, your family life? What was it like being raised in the Mormon church, especially in a
00:08:30.760 family that was so connected even to Brigham Young? I definitely felt like I had a good
00:08:37.940 childhood. I had good parents that loved me and my sister and wanted the best for us, provided us
00:08:45.440 everything we needed as we were growing up, paid for our schooling and things.
00:08:50.400 my parents did have some marital issues. There was a lot of anger and fighting,
00:08:59.960 mostly from my mom's side. My dad was more quiet and distant. But yeah, when you look back at my
00:09:06.860 childhood and see that for the most part, it looked like it was a good childhood. And I lived
00:09:13.220 my whole life telling everybody I didn't have any trauma. I don't know what could have possibly
00:09:17.380 caused this because I, I recognized on a, on a large scale that trauma is often the cause of a
00:09:25.820 person not being able to be who they are, not, not being able to be okay with their own body.
00:09:31.200 And so I, looking back on my life, I thought surely there was some trauma I experienced,
00:09:35.540 but for the most part, my childhood was just happy and, and loving. And like I said, I had
00:09:42.140 my needs met. There were definitely some attunement needs that were not met, where my mom and dad both
00:09:51.600 had their own childhood traumas and inability to show up for me in ways. But for the most part,
00:09:57.620 they showed up pretty well, other than the fighting and anger and certain typical issues
00:10:05.440 that happen in families.
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00:11:35.780 You've talked about your struggle with pornography at some point in your life and how through
00:11:43.040 pornography and what you saw there, you actually were able to recall
00:11:47.440 sexual abuse that you endured when you were young. Can you talk more about that?
00:11:53.400 Yeah, so this has been a really complex thing for me to unravel, and it kind of has come together piece by piece over years of therapy and self-reflection and self-healing work.
00:12:06.580 but essentially what I realized was so when I was a teenager and got the internet and started
00:12:15.160 to explore what was available out there the teachings of the Mormon church instilled in me
00:12:23.300 that viewing pornography was an absolute sin was something you should not do whatsoever and
00:12:30.460 I had this weird experience where I, when I started exploring pornography, I realized that
00:12:38.060 there was a very particular flavor of pornography that was my poison, you might say. Everybody has
00:12:46.600 what works for them the best. And this happened to be BDSM pornography. And I didn't understand
00:12:55.660 why at the time but the more i looked back on my childhood and did self-healing work
00:13:02.200 i had this repressed memory from when i was five years old come up where i was restrained
00:13:10.600 as just a child restrained by this electrical cord and violated sexually and because the
00:13:20.340 memories weren't super clear I just kind of pushed it to the back burner for the longest time but the
00:13:26.400 more I looked at fascinating things in my life like my trans identity believing myself to be a
00:13:33.420 female and this weird attraction to BDSM porn that I couldn't explain it all kind of came together
00:13:42.900 and I realized what was driving that what together with the teachings of the Mormon church that made
00:13:48.900 me feel like it was wrong to have sexual feelings for someone I wasn't married to. Yet here I was
00:13:54.880 a young man and into my teenage years when I discovered pornography and I discovered that
00:14:00.420 it did excite feelings in me. Yet the church is telling me that my eternal salvation is on the
00:14:06.400 line if I pursue such a thing. But the feelings were so strong and I was a teenager and I had to
00:14:14.060 do this weird psychological dance in my mind to figure out how to make it okay. And so not only
00:14:20.600 was I attracted to BDSM pornography, but I also would specifically search for fully clothed BDSM
00:14:28.340 pornography, which does exist, believe it or not. And because that was my way of getting around
00:14:35.220 the fact that that I was told I shouldn't be viewing it, yet I had these feelings making me
00:14:41.540 wanted. And then my feeling like I was a female in a male body played into that as well, that
00:14:52.500 I started envisioning myself in the shoes of the women in the pornography. And that was the only
00:15:00.620 thing that would do it for me. And also it felt like a victimless crime. If I could pleasure
00:15:07.780 myself to the thought of me being in their shoes in the scenario, then it wasn't a sin in my mind.
00:15:15.860 It was the craziest thing that I had to do. Yeah, that is actually, it seems very common,
00:15:23.580 the connection between BDSM and men identifying as women and connecting female identity. And I,
00:15:31.220 you know, can't speak for your psychology on this, but connecting the female identity with
00:15:36.800 humiliation and with torture and placing yourself in the position of being a victim of degradation,
00:15:43.100 there is some strange connection to the sexual arousal with that. And this idea that you were
00:15:50.520 born in the wrong body. I've actually seen that over and over again in the so-called trans
00:15:56.920 community. And I'm curious if you think that that and your addiction to that kind of, I mean,
00:16:04.400 all porn is really dark and it's all simple and it's all wrong, but that very dark and violent
00:16:08.960 form of pornography, do you feel like it exacerbated and even empowered some of those
00:16:15.540 feelings that you had? Did it make it worse, your struggle of feeling like you were born in the
00:16:20.860 wrong body? Absolutely. And this is one of the things that I like to teach people now is that
00:16:27.560 sexuality can be programmed. We, of course, all are born with the biological sex
00:16:34.800 tendencies that are in us because we're male or female and attraction to the opposite sex is
00:16:42.000 natural to one's biology. If that differs at all in your psyche, in your system, that means that
00:16:49.520 something happened, some sequence of experience happened to you as a child, or you were exposed
00:16:55.400 to things in a certain sequence that made you develop the perspective you have now and i
00:17:00.720 recognized that my own sexuality was very much programmed by viewing that pornography by
00:17:08.700 repetitively exciting those feelings in my body that's attached to the thoughts that would come
00:17:15.240 up it absolutely concreted in my system this identity as female as i continued to pleasure
00:17:25.020 myself to the thought of that it became my identity and i know not everyone will agree
00:17:32.220 that that was their experience not every trans person could say they have that same experience
00:17:38.380 but what my experience made me aware of is that i'm not unique there are many out there that have
00:17:45.740 the same or very similar experiences me and that's why i like to do what i do and share my story
00:17:52.140 so that in the hopes that I can reach the hearts of some who are struggling with similar things
00:17:57.980 that I did. Yeah. And okay. So you struggled with this. You felt very strongly, especially
00:18:04.920 as you became addicted to this kind of pornography. And by the way, the point that you made about
00:18:09.440 sexuality, that it can be programmed. I also think that can be true, not necessarily in your case,
00:18:15.780 but it also can be true of so-called gender identity. I do think that there are some men
00:18:21.400 that start to watch this kind of pornography
00:18:23.720 who didn't feel those consistent, persistent feelings before,
00:18:27.900 but it started to be programmed into them,
00:18:30.820 when you start picturing yourself as a person
00:18:32.960 in these kind of depictions,
00:18:35.540 of course, you're going to start feeling like,
00:18:38.240 well, this is really me, this is who I am.
00:18:41.080 So such an important point that you make
00:18:43.140 that goes against the sexual ideology
00:18:45.840 of our secular culture today,
00:18:47.840 which says that you're born with all of your sexual feelings,
00:18:51.840 with all of your identity feelings, they're completely innate.
00:18:56.180 You cannot change them.
00:18:58.540 Especially if you're like part of LGBTQ, those cannot be changed.
00:19:03.660 But what you're saying is that, well, actually what you watch
00:19:08.300 and what you imbibe can determine how you feel
00:19:11.880 and then who you think you are, right?
00:19:14.460 Absolutely.
00:19:15.020 Yeah, I've recently been messaging someone who thought he was a female trapped in a male
00:19:23.160 body because every time he would try to have sex with his girlfriend, the only way it would
00:19:29.720 work for him was to put himself into the mentality that he was a female in the scenario.
00:19:35.440 And so I explained to him this concept that sexuality can be programmed and that the more
00:19:41.420 you recite in your mind the truth of who you are, a man, and allow yourself to be excited
00:19:49.060 to those thoughts, the more it will reprogram you. And he has reported back to me consistent
00:19:54.420 improvement. And he has thanked me so much for helping him recognize that. And he feels
00:20:01.280 like his sex life is so much healthier now. And now he doesn't feel like he needs to be
00:20:06.360 a woman anymore. It's the craziest thing what can happen with repetitive programming of our mind
00:20:13.880 and psyche. And that is absolutely what happened to me. I mean, some people like to hear me talk
00:20:20.200 about that and then tell me, well, you were just an autogynophile. And that's different than being
00:20:26.560 trans. But I kind of have both. I had that experience, but I also had the insistent,
00:20:32.320 persistent feeling ever since I was a child that I was in the wrong body. So it's also so confusing
00:20:39.540 to try to sort out. I mean, there is no one thing that I could look back on my life and say that
00:20:46.540 that was what caused these feelings and nobody really can, but there are certain things we can
00:20:53.740 look back on that we can definitely say that definitely had a contributing factor. And when
00:21:00.400 everything is brought together then it results in a concrete identity yeah um and also just to
00:21:10.780 note obviously on this show we talk a lot about biblical sexuality and we would never encourage
00:21:15.760 someone to be having sex outside of marriage like with your girlfriend your sex life should
00:21:21.720 be contained to your marriage but obviously it is a good thing if someone is realizing that okay
00:21:27.560 they can't identify as woman, they can't identify as the opposite sex. But of course, I just wanted
00:21:34.920 to clarify our position on that, that sex should only be within marriage. And for you, you did get
00:21:40.160 married. And even though you had these feelings, and you were confused, you got married to a woman
00:21:47.620 and she didn't know who you felt like you were on the inside. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah, my whole
00:21:54.260 life, even though I felt like I was a girl myself inside, I always had an attraction to women,
00:21:59.920 which was my natural male biology coming into play. And even though I struggled with this
00:22:07.800 feeling that I was perhaps female, there was part of me that thought maybe somehow this is my
00:22:13.160 psyche's way of me wanting to be with a woman that somehow confused it and turned it into me
00:22:21.520 wanting to be a woman. And so I met my wife and we fell in love. And the trans feelings kind of got
00:22:28.740 put to the side. And I thought that perhaps marrying her would allow those feelings to
00:22:35.860 dissolve in me. Because like I said, maybe it was the desire to be with a woman that made me feel I
00:22:41.840 was a woman. But then shortly after I got married and was with my wife for a while, it became very
00:22:48.420 clear that those feelings were absolutely not going away, that they were just as strong and
00:22:53.480 present as they ever were. And so then, yeah, I had to one evening break the news to her that
00:23:01.580 I've been carrying this my whole life, the secret that I want to be a woman and that I really feel
00:23:10.180 like I am a woman. It's not that I wanted to be a woman, it's that I honestly felt like I was and
00:23:16.580 that I just needed to align myself with the truth of who I really was.
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00:24:32.360 How did that develop when you were married? When did it come to a head and you felt like, okay,
00:24:39.300 I got a I got a letter now that was in the early part of 2017 I think we got married
00:24:48.540 in September of 2016 and so we had been married for a little while and then we were sitting at
00:24:57.780 home and the show gender revolution with Katie Couric came on the tv and we watched it because
00:25:08.620 it was fascinating to us. And it was, of course, was very fascinating to me because I identified
00:25:13.620 with the people that were in the show. My wife has always been interested in psychology and went
00:25:18.380 to school to be a therapist and things. So she was interested in it for that aspect, I think.
00:25:23.320 But at one part of the show, it showed this husband and wife who the husband transitioned
00:25:28.820 to be a woman and they continued to live life happily together. And I think it was at that
00:25:34.740 point of the show that my wife paused it and she turned to me and asked, is this what you want?
00:25:40.140 Do you want to take female hormones and actually live as a woman? Because at this point, she knew
00:25:45.840 I liked to cross-dress. She knew I liked wearing women's clothing, but she didn't know just how
00:25:50.900 deep that went until this moment. And sorry, just to clarify, were you still a Mormon at this point?
00:26:00.540 I had just left the Mormon church just right before she and I got married.
00:26:08.440 I was still Mormon when we met, but wasn't really active in the church.
00:26:13.520 I was active right up till before we met.
00:26:16.700 And when I met her, my intention was to convert her and baptize her into the Mormon church, actually.
00:26:23.020 Okay.
00:26:24.160 So you had left.
00:26:26.780 And I guess before we get into the rest of your transition process,
00:26:31.260 we should pause and talk about that for a second.
00:26:33.940 The fact that you left the Mormon church and why you decided to leave.
00:26:37.460 Did it have to do with your confusion about gender and sexuality?
00:26:42.060 Perhaps.
00:26:42.780 I think maybe that was the only way I could make sense of it.
00:26:46.680 Because as long as I was in the church,
00:26:48.260 obviously the church's doctrine was telling me that that was not possible.
00:26:53.400 that if I was male here, I was always male. And, and so I think it began when I went inactive,
00:27:02.540 when I stopped going to church as much, it allowed me to open my thoughts a little more.
00:27:09.620 And then my uncle shared with me a book called The Changing World of Mormonism.
00:27:15.560 And when I read that book, it blew my mind because here I'd lived my entire life in the Mormon
00:27:22.120 church with every perspective and belief system in my entire being was formed around the doctrine
00:27:29.180 of the church. I was just born into it and knew not to question it, was told never to read any
00:27:35.380 materials that disagreed with the church. We didn't even read Christian authors because a
00:27:42.620 Christian author was not LDS and therefore would have a tendency to teach things we didn't believe
00:27:48.960 in and would take us away. And so, my whole identity and reality and everything was built
00:27:54.720 around the doctrine of the LDS Church. So, when that dissolved in 2016, my whole world fell apart.
00:28:04.540 I felt so lost because everything I knew was based on the doctrine of the church,
00:28:10.780 and all of a sudden, it just dissolved and fell out from under me. And it was while I was still
00:28:16.860 in the church that it kept me still living as a man. I had the feelings that I was a female inside,
00:28:22.880 but as long as I still was in the church, it had that foundation for me to believe that perhaps
00:28:29.820 it is true that I was always male and always will be. But as soon as that dissolved my belief in
00:28:36.820 the church, then all of that went away. And now all of a sudden I saw myself as a human being,
00:28:42.740 as just a product of evolution. And once I saw myself as a product of evolution, then that
00:28:49.160 allowed me to take on this belief system that maybe it really is possible that there was a
00:28:54.760 mistake. And now I didn't believe in God anymore, but I thought maybe there was just some biological
00:29:01.940 mishap that happened in me, and it allowed me to go full speed ahead with my trans identity.
00:29:10.100 that's so interesting um and what did your wife think about it when you turned to her I guess
00:29:20.680 when you were watching this in 2016 and you kind of confirmed yeah that's the direction
00:29:26.040 I might want to go it rocked her poor little world she she was not a lesbian she married a man
00:29:37.360 It was always her dream to marry a man.
00:29:39.840 And we had a wonderful wedding, wonderful honeymoon.
00:29:44.060 She married me as a man.
00:29:46.400 And now here I am telling her I can't be a man.
00:29:49.300 And it was very, very difficult for her to hear that.
00:29:54.300 And of course, we were scheduled to be flying to Florida the next morning.
00:29:59.020 And so we did not get any sleep that night as we stayed up all night talking about this
00:30:05.000 and what it meant, what it meant for our future together, it was, it was quite the disruption in
00:30:11.080 our marriage for sure. Yeah, I can imagine. So what happened from there after that night?
00:30:17.580 So we continued to talk about it, but I could, I could tell that it was really causing her a lot
00:30:26.960 of distress and I didn't want to cause her distress, even though I felt like I had to
00:30:31.140 pursue being a woman in order to be happy I at some point told her basically I can't go on living
00:30:39.180 if I can't do this and so she and so I knew I needed to seek out a therapist for one because
00:30:48.140 I wanted a therapist that would help us I think it was largely for selfish reasons at the time
00:30:53.740 I've learned that being trans is a very selfish thing it's all about me and my needs and and what
00:30:59.540 can I do for myself to be happy? And you forget the people around you. Your partner becomes the
00:31:05.480 forgotten partner and often referred to as a trans widow when they can't stick it out with the
00:31:12.140 person that transitions. And my wife, she loved me so much and it just, it caused her so much
00:31:19.660 distress that I eventually told her, okay, I'm just going to continue being your man. It's going
00:31:26.800 to be okay. We're not, I'm not going to transition. But then when I realized, no, that's not going to
00:31:32.480 happen, that's not possible. I have to transition. So I sought out a therapist. We met with the
00:31:38.960 therapist, both my, my wife and I numerous times in hopes that the therapist would kind of talk her
00:31:46.260 through it and help her understand it. That therapist ended up telling her the same thing.
00:31:50.220 Hey, you better support your husband and transitioning to be a woman, because if you
00:31:54.700 don't, he's likely to end his own life. And so she was put in this position that because she
00:32:00.740 loved me, she had no choice but to support me, even though she knew it was not right, was not
00:32:07.260 good. But I feel like after a while, she kind of learned that she had to support me in order to
00:32:14.800 keep me and our love together. She had to be supportive. Okay. And then tell me about your
00:32:22.100 transition process about the hormones, about the surgeries and really feeling like, okay,
00:32:29.280 I'm manifesting this lifelong desire. I'm finally going to feel reconciled internally.
00:32:35.820 Yeah. So we, I started seeing that therapist in 2017 and I knew that it, that was a necessary
00:32:45.000 step to getting a letter of support for the female hormones that I wanted to start taking
00:32:52.000 and so it was after just a couple couple sessions with her with this therapist the therapist
00:32:59.020 identified as non-binary by the way and so the therapist really quickly wrote me a letter
00:33:06.140 for female hormones as could be expected if she didn't she would be denying her own existence as
00:33:13.160 a trans person. But so I got that letter after just a couple visits. She determined that it was
00:33:20.240 medically necessary for me to transition, that it was in my best interest. And so I remember taking
00:33:28.420 that first estrogen pill and how euphoric it was because after all my life years up to this point
00:33:35.620 that I had been dreaming about this day, went most of my life thinking it was never going to be
00:33:40.720 possible for me to transition because I thought the testosterone caused me to be too much of a
00:33:46.360 man. It's never going to happen. But when I took that first estrogen pill, I was so happy and
00:33:52.220 euphoric. And then I was excited for the changes because I had spent a lot of time on YouTube
00:33:58.220 watching other trans people and the progress videos they would post. And I got myself all
00:34:04.480 hyped up and excited about the changes that would happen to my body. And I started noticing my
00:34:09.540 breast tissue started to grow. My body hair went away. My face started to soften a little bit.
00:34:16.560 And I loved those changes. It felt so right and real. I was still living as a man in the world
00:34:23.920 for the most part. And then towards the end of 2017, after I had been on female hormones for a
00:34:32.120 period. My wife and I went up to Denver and got me a wig because I've been bald since my early
00:34:39.980 20s. I couldn't grow my hair out. So getting a wig was a huge step that we took to my female
00:34:46.480 presentation. But even after getting the wig, I continued to live as a man for a while. And it
00:34:52.120 wasn't till towards the end of 2017 that I finally made the decision, okay, I've been on the hormones
00:34:57.360 long enough. I'm seeing enough changes. I'm feeling good about this. Now it's time to go
00:35:02.880 full time. And so there was a very particular day where I decided, okay, from now on, I am going out
00:35:09.240 as my female self, never again as my male self. And that was quite the step to reach. I knew I
00:35:16.540 didn't pass. I've never been one of those trans people with a passing privilege, but I also knew
00:35:21.820 I couldn't keep that from letting me live my life. I had to get used to the fact that people
00:35:27.840 were looking at me funny and I was able to get to where I could just ignore their looks and just
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00:36:59.800 chief related bro too. We love Jevity. Go to gojevity.com slash Allie for 20% off gojevity.com
00:37:06.980 slash Allie. And I was living as a woman for two years. And then 2019 came and I had satisfied the
00:37:19.740 requirement of living in role for two years. That was the Kaiser Permanente insurance is who I
00:37:26.420 went through at the time. And that was their requirement that I live in role for two years
00:37:31.900 and taking female hormones for that long and so I worked with them to schedule my surgery because
00:37:38.280 some trans people are fine without having the surgery I can't personally understand that
00:37:44.280 because if you fully identify with the opposite sex then that means that you want your body to
00:37:50.440 align with that belief and perspective about yourself so in 2019 that surgery that I was
00:37:57.320 having was like an absolute dream come true. It felt like the most right thing I could possibly
00:38:04.540 have ever done for myself. And it was in July of 2019. I had the surgery, woke up feeling ecstatic
00:38:13.140 to finally be in the right body. And for four additional years, I lived perfectly happy thinking
00:38:18.940 it truly was the best thing I ever did for myself. Wow. Okay. So just to clarify, you had top and
00:38:26.280 bottom surgery? Luckily, no. I mean, luckily. I never had top surgery, only bottom surgery.
00:38:35.300 So yeah, I say luckily because that would have been an additional thing I would have had to undo.
00:38:40.080 My breast tissue did grow on the hormones. So I still to this day have more breast tissue than
00:38:46.460 I would like, but not enough to justify having surgery. And your wife for this period through
00:38:53.420 2019, she stuck by you. Yes. There was a lot of struggles in our marriage during that time.
00:39:01.500 I slept in the basement a lot, especially after surgery, because it brought up a lot between us,
00:39:09.620 but she still loved me and stayed by my side. We didn't have any period of separation even
00:39:15.940 during that time other than just me sleeping in another room.
00:39:19.520 And did the surgery and its effects have the, have the outcome that you hoped emotionally?
00:39:26.800 Did you feel a sense of, wow, I am finally who I've always wanted to be. And at what point did
00:39:33.720 you stop feeling that way? Because clearly here you are sitting here, you are a man. And so at
00:39:39.720 some point you must have realized, okay, all of that euphoria that I had been feeling from
00:39:45.000 identifying as a woman and trying to even surgically change my appearance to be a woman
00:39:49.160 it's not getting me where I wanted to go.
00:39:54.640 Yeah. Like I said, for four years, it did remain something I was absolutely ecstatic about. It did
00:40:02.420 make me feel emotionally good in my body. I was so happy to be rid of what I saw as a growth or
00:40:10.480 tumor on my body. And I was just living my life. Everything was great and wonderful.
00:40:16.940 but i believe in always growing learning and growing and bettering myself and that never
00:40:25.480 stopped even though i transitioned to live as a woman this this desire to continue learning about
00:40:32.040 what makes me tick what makes anybody tick continued in me and so in 2023
00:40:39.820 three I had been living perfectly happy as my female self and and the surgery was great except
00:40:49.420 for the fact that it the opening had closed because I couldn't keep it open if if you know
00:40:55.900 the the graphic nature of the surgery is it's basically an open wound that you have to keep
00:41:02.340 open but I ended up not keeping it open and so there were certain aspects of it that ended up
00:41:08.340 not being true to what i thought it would be in the end and but in 2023 i continued to look back
00:41:16.580 on my life and still trying to understand okay what maybe there was something that caused me to
00:41:22.740 to do this whole thing i still believed i was born with it i believed i had been born with
00:41:27.940 this identity but at the same time i was curious i like to remain curious about things and so i was
00:41:33.700 curious about what made me go down that route and so i started researching psychology my wife
00:41:40.500 being into therapy had introduced me to to these certain authors like dr richard schwartz and
00:41:46.580 internal family systems therapy and i started doing ifs therapy myself receiving ifs therapy
00:41:56.580 from therapists and i became so fascinated by it and felt like it was making such a difference
00:42:01.860 in my life that i decided to take a training in it myself i still was very happy as a woman
00:42:07.460 mind you and i'm taking this ifs training course to learn how to do internal family systems or
00:42:13.860 parts work therapy myself and during the course one of the other students who was taking the
00:42:19.300 course asked the instructor so what about a trans identity is that a part as in one of these parts
00:42:27.700 parts of her internal system or protective parts. And the instructor said, yes, Dr. Richard Schwartz
00:42:34.420 does believe that a trans identity is a part. And as soon as she said that, my whole world began to
00:42:42.000 spin. Because if that was true, all of a sudden that meant that all of my surgery, my transition
00:42:49.480 and everything was based on trauma, was based on past experiences and this part trying to do
00:42:56.640 something for me, trying to protect me from something. And when that happened, I had to
00:43:02.840 take an honest look at my female identity and with curiosity recognize that what if it was
00:43:09.680 caused by something from my past? What if this was not something I was born with? And in a matter
00:43:16.980 of days, everything I had learned about myself and psychology and God just kind of synthesized
00:43:25.800 into this clear picture where all of a sudden I found myself sitting there realizing I cannot
00:43:31.560 continue living as a woman. This does not make any sense whatsoever. And it was at the same time,
00:43:39.080 I simultaneously came back to a belief in God, which I had not had for many years at that point.
00:43:45.240 But once I allowed myself the faith that perhaps God does exist, then that was one of the things
00:43:52.740 that allowed me, it was actually looking at a flower. I looked at a flower and how delicate
00:43:57.300 it was and how the petals were so perfectly matched. And then I looked at a whole field
00:44:01.760 of flowers and I thought there was something behind that. That was not by chance. And then
00:44:07.260 it caused me to look at myself. Well, I wasn't by chance either. I, I'm not, I wasn't just born
00:44:14.160 this way. Every personality trait that I have, every personality trait anybody has is driven
00:44:20.280 from past experiences and interactions that we've had and how we relate to other people and so yeah
00:44:27.000 long story short it just within a matter of days my whole gender identity just dissolved right
00:44:32.360 before my eyes and this was something i was so sure about that i had permanent surgery to my body
00:44:38.680 to align with it and so it it was totally devastating that my whole identity just
00:44:44.680 completely disintegrated. Wow. And what came first? Becoming a Christian, because you said
00:44:51.680 that you started believing in God, which is obviously not the same thing as becoming a
00:44:54.960 Christian. And at the same time, you're kind of deconstructing what you thought was an immutable
00:45:00.980 part of your identity. So tell me about kind of like the timeline, how those things broke down
00:45:07.060 when you actually believed in the gospel, met Jesus, and how those things kind of played out
00:45:12.560 together. Yeah. Yeah. So, as you acknowledge, being a Christian is very different than my
00:45:18.440 belief in God at that time. I was just coming out of New Age spirituality. And so, my belief in God
00:45:26.000 shifted from this universal consciousness belief where I believe that we are all basically what
00:45:33.820 Jesus was and that we all had access to the same consciousness He did, but it was still a very
00:45:41.720 non-personalized. It was a very non-personalized belief in God. Like I saw God as more of this
00:45:50.040 energy or pattern. But that was my gateway really back to Jesus, because that was what allowed me
00:45:59.920 to shift my perspective from Christ consciousness or universal consciousness to the fact that maybe
00:46:05.640 there really is an entity a god that has more of a organized intelligence than just this
00:46:15.160 universal consciousness and once i allowed myself that belief then
00:46:22.680 my wife had an experience where she met jesus in our house my wife was never christian
00:46:28.280 she wasn't a believer she wasn't even asking for it but one day jesus just showed up to her
00:46:34.920 and rescued her. And I'm watching this still unable to accept Jesus myself. And I basically
00:46:42.220 told her, well, that's great for you. I'm glad you have that. But I just, I can't. And so this
00:46:48.000 went on for a number of weeks. This was after I detransitioned, of course. I had been living as
00:46:54.100 a man for quite a while, for a year and a half, actually. I detransitioned and was living for a
00:46:59.900 year and a half and my wife had her Jesus coming to Jesus moment and I watched that couldn't get
00:47:08.340 on board but then one afternoon I came to the realization that faith is very much a necessary
00:47:15.400 part of a belief in God there's I'm the kind of person that always wanted proof and those kind of
00:47:23.580 people who want proof and demand proof, they don't give themselves the grace to have some faith.
00:47:30.960 And throughout the Bible, it talks about how necessary faith is. And so, I said one time,
00:47:37.660 okay, I'm going to have the faith. I'm going to ask Jesus to show me your love for me. And that
00:47:45.080 was the exact statement I asked him. Jesus, show me your love for me. Because I was struggling
00:47:51.340 with a lot of feelings of shame for having done what i did to myself damaging my body permanently
00:47:58.140 something i could never undo and i just wanted to feel the same love of jesus that my wife was
00:48:03.260 feeling and when i asked that jesus show me your love for me all of a sudden i felt myself just
00:48:10.460 just enveloped in this incredible feeling of warmth and love and then from there he showed me
00:48:19.020 a vision of a tree and that the tree represented my life and all the scars that the tree had was like
00:48:27.100 my life and the things that happened to me body parts cut off that then healed over but weren't
00:48:34.940 replaced and remained as a reminder of my past experiences and it was such a profound experience
00:48:42.300 experience that I had never had before. Growing up in the Mormon church, I'd hear people talk
00:48:48.980 about their spiritual encounters with God and things. I never experienced such a thing until
00:48:54.240 this day, a year and a half after I detransitioned and I was struggling so much, finally to a low in
00:49:01.100 my life, I guess, where I was humbled enough by God and the experiences I went through to finally
00:49:07.660 reach out to him, say, Father, show me your love for me. And like I said, it was such a profound
00:49:13.980 experience that I came out of it unable to deny it anymore. I could no longer deny the existence
00:49:20.660 of Jesus and what he did for us. And it has been so amazing to come back. Well, like I said,
00:49:32.060 I never actually had the belief in the first place, but to come to a belief and knowing Jesus
00:49:37.820 the way I do now has been absolutely profound. And it has been instrumental in me being able to
00:49:45.780 live a happy life now, having made the decisions I did. When I was baptized, the whole room said,
00:49:54.300 behold a new creation. And I felt that in all of my being, like I, I had to behold a new creation
00:50:03.720 because I am a new creation. And now I am able to not hate myself for the decisions I made,
00:50:09.960 even though I have to live the rest of my life with the consequences and missing my body parts.
00:50:16.020 I can live in peace with it knowing Jesus now. Wow. And tell me what it was like going to church
00:50:23.480 and that experience going to a non-Mormon church,
00:50:26.940 which I assume was a pretty novel experience for you
00:50:30.060 and how that contributed to your faith.
00:50:32.960 The church that we became a part of,
00:50:37.520 it's a small house church.
00:50:40.120 It's non-corporate.
00:50:42.600 And the members of this church were in our community.
00:50:47.040 They would work often in this coffee shop
00:50:49.840 that I would frequent.
00:50:51.000 I would go to this coffee shop.
00:50:52.340 It's Christian owned.
00:50:53.480 But even when I was in my trans identity, I would go there knowing it was a Christian-owned coffee shop and that I was likely going to be judged by the people there.
00:51:01.700 I thought I would be.
00:51:03.140 Come to find out these are true Christians, the people that were there at this coffee shop that I would interact with.
00:51:09.660 And I interacted with them for years, having no idea who they were, other than just acquaintances I'd see at the coffee shop.
00:51:17.980 Well, years after interacting with them and going there and realizing they just are so
00:51:24.120 loving and kind, even though I'm clearly a man in a dress, they're treating me loving and kind.
00:51:31.740 And it confused me because I always believed that Christians were closed-minded and judgmental.
00:51:37.720 And some can be, but I learned that these people were very open-minded and loving and friendly.
00:51:44.460 they had their convictions, their faith convictions. They knew what I was doing was
00:51:48.860 wrong, which is why they began praying for me. They together would pray for me to come out of
00:51:55.880 this delusion. And I didn't know that until after I returned to living as a man. And they told me,
00:52:02.560 oh yeah, we were watching you all along and we're praying for you and your wife.
00:52:07.200 And it was only then that I realized that I felt those prayers. They were so powerful. They helped
00:52:14.080 me so much through that time and feeling of their love, their love of Jesus and their
00:52:19.980 love for me, despite my clear being dressed as a woman, when my wife and I realized that
00:52:29.600 these were the people that had this small house church, it just felt so right to do
00:52:39.440 life with them to fall into their their church and yeah wow interesting so you actually knew
00:52:47.780 these people before you detransitioned before you became a christian and it was only after
00:52:53.120 you detransitioned and then a year and a half later became a christian after detransitioning
00:52:59.200 that you realized oh these people who had been praying for me that i knew from this coffee shop
00:53:02.840 they also are these christians with this with this house church that's incredible just the power of
00:53:08.480 prayer they're uncompromising on the truth while also loving you and also being your friend and
00:53:16.700 building that relationship with you that's incredible yeah it was it was so powerful and
00:53:22.080 it was it was one of it was a key part of my return to faith to to see that there are people
00:53:28.880 that truly demonstrate the love of jesus wow that's kind of it's very similar to rosaria
00:53:35.220 Butterfield, if you're familiar with her, she lived her life as a lesbian in a relationship
00:53:40.460 for a very long time. And then it was the hospitality of the Christians who lived next
00:53:44.560 door, who invited her into their home and just loved her, answered her questions, but also
00:53:51.400 stood strong on the truth and told her the truth about the gospel and what God's word says. And it
00:53:56.120 was the combination of their hospitality and kindness with their anchoring in the truth that
00:54:02.280 eventually God used to bring her to himself. And so that's just a really good lesson for all of us.
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00:55:38.760 You and your wife, you're married, still married, and now Christians, and now you've become this
00:55:45.340 person who shares your incredible testimony online, trying to help people with their own
00:55:49.200 struggles, telling them about the truth of the gospel. Is this still something, this feeling
00:55:54.960 of being trapped in the wrong body that you still find yourself struggling with today?
00:55:59.640 Or do you feel like the Lord has completely rid you of those feelings?
00:56:03.420 He has amazingly, completely rid me of those feelings.
00:56:08.080 That was something that I struggled with my entire life.
00:56:12.060 It was so strong in me, obviously, to cause me to do such permanent damage to my body
00:56:18.560 in answer to that.
00:56:19.860 but when i when i recognized what caused the feelings and when i recognized that it was not
00:56:29.660 something i was born with and that it was a product of past experiences and things it it made it easy
00:56:36.800 for me to do the work necessary to completely dissolve it because it didn't completely go away
00:56:43.500 just because I recognized where it came from. But with the love of Jesus and the help of God,
00:56:51.140 I was able to do the personal work necessary to push it the rest of the way out of my system.
00:56:59.760 Yeah. I think once we realize that God is the only immutable one, His characteristics are
00:57:08.080 immutable and they don't change. And yes, we all have a sin nature that we're born with,
00:57:12.900 but these parts of our identity or the very strong temptations or feelings or what we feel oriented
00:57:19.580 toward don't define us. They're not unchanging and they don't tell us who we are. Only the
00:57:29.220 immutable creator can tell us who we are and the identity that he gives us in Christ trumps any
00:57:36.020 other identity that we have. And it's so counter to what the world tells us about, okay, however
00:57:41.160 you feel in the moment is who you are and trying to change that or repress that is a form of
00:57:47.840 oppression that you need to be freed from by liberating yourself and just pursuing them.
00:57:53.140 You tried that. You tried that because you felt that way too. And then you found, okay,
00:57:58.340 this actually didn't give me the, all the satisfaction that I was looking for ultimately.
00:58:06.160 Yeah. There was a time where I felt like it did give me all the satisfaction I was looking for,
00:58:10.780 But yeah, there is an absolute benefit to learning how to surrender.
00:58:19.460 The concept of surrender.
00:58:21.740 And a lot of people think that means giving up control.
00:58:25.940 But when you're surrendering to God and what God's desire is for you, it's not actually giving up control.
00:58:34.140 In fact, God loves us so much and wants the best for us.
00:58:37.620 and he created us the way we were surrendering to God's will and his design for us is actually
00:58:44.820 freedom for us and that's what I've experienced when I detransitioned and surrendered to the fact
00:58:50.160 that I am male it allowed me so much more freedom in the world to to be able to live life as the man
00:58:58.260 I was created to be to absolutely truly love and cherish the body the temple that I was provided
00:59:06.000 for this life. You know, something in the New Age spirituality world, you're constantly striving
00:59:12.000 for what's after this life. Where are we going after this life? Understanding that you're more
00:59:16.920 than just this body. You're this consciousness that will go on forever. And that's all that
00:59:23.120 New Age is about. And coming back to Jesus, it's like, I finally can live this life, not spending
00:59:31.740 so much of it worrying about what's coming next, but actually truly cherish this body
00:59:38.360 and this life and live so happy and free.
00:59:42.140 There is an absolute freedom in surrendering to God's design.
00:59:47.580 Absolutely.
00:59:49.160 Can you tell me what advice would you give specifically to parents out there whose kids,
00:59:56.240 whose teens, or even their adult children who say that, you know, I'm sure,
01:00:01.740 Either I'm struggling with this and I know that it's not right, but I really feel this way.
01:00:07.320 Or I know there are some parents out there whose child really believes I was born in the wrong
01:00:12.580 body. If you don't affirm this, then they're going to hear the same thing that your wife heard that
01:00:17.880 this, that, you know, I'm going to commit suicide if you don't support me. Can you give some advice,
01:00:23.840 some wisdom, some encouragement to parents who might be in that situation right now?
01:00:27.620 Yes, I love this question because being who I am and doing what I do, I do get reached out to by a lot of parents. I get a lot of emails, a lot of messages on Instagram from desperate parents who want answers, who want information.
01:00:45.300 And what I've perceived is that they perceive me as someone who has come out of it.
01:00:52.120 So clearly I must have the answers.
01:00:54.340 And so they come to me asking, is there anything I can tell my trans kid that will snap them
01:01:00.100 out of this?
01:01:01.440 And my answer is, no, there's not.
01:01:06.480 But there is hope.
01:01:07.780 For one, I want all parents of trans kids to know that the majority of kids identifying
01:01:13.560 as trans now are because of social contagion, which means it will go away eventually. They
01:01:19.160 will grow out of it. The majority of them now will. Contrary to what the trans ideologues want
01:01:26.880 to say, that only 1% actually regret it in detransition, we are seeing such a large number
01:01:32.780 of young kids jumping on this transition train now because of social contagion and the idea that
01:01:39.920 it's going to make them happier, that there is also likewise, or because of that, going to be
01:01:45.920 a tremendous number of desisters and detransitioners when they come out of it. So I give parents that
01:01:52.480 hope to hold on to of knowing that there is very good chance your kid is going to grow out of this
01:01:58.120 after a few years. And to those who are struggling with their kids, a lot of kids, if they sense that
01:02:06.200 their parent is not in agreement with their trans identity, not using their preferred pronouns and
01:02:13.600 things, they will cut the parents off. And this comes at the advice from their therapist as well.
01:02:19.420 You need to cut your parents out. They're not supportive of you. And once you're cut out of
01:02:24.560 their life, your ability to influence them with good is minimized. You can still pray for them,
01:02:30.880 and that's wonderful. But if you have no contact with them, you're not going to be able to
01:02:35.720 provide them much influence or help as it is. So one of the number one suggestions I give to
01:02:43.620 parents now is to maintain the connection. Keep that connection open with your kid. I know it
01:02:50.640 goes against your convictions and your beliefs, and you don't need to falter on your own convictions
01:02:57.340 and beliefs. Maintain that awareness of what you know to be true. You know what you birthed. You
01:03:02.300 know your son is a boy and always will be you don't have to go to falter on your own conviction
01:03:09.100 about that but do whatever you have to do to keep that connection open family is one of the it's
01:03:16.600 like the most important thing on this earth is the family connections the family unit the enemy
01:03:23.680 satan is constantly trying to attack that and he's doing that with this this trans identity
01:03:28.680 and convincing kids to cut their parents out of their life.
01:03:31.740 That's how he's severing family ties.
01:03:34.160 And so the best thing as a parent you can do, in my opinion, from my personal experience
01:03:39.120 and what I've observed, is to maintain that connection with your kid, even if it's uncomfortable,
01:03:44.000 even if it requires you.
01:03:45.940 I mean, you don't have to use their chosen pronouns because that would be lying.
01:03:50.520 You would be being dishonest to yourself and them by doing so.
01:03:54.440 but try to find ways to maintain peace and connection and that love and your kid will
01:04:01.020 sense that and as they grow older or if they're an adult even they will witness that i witnessed
01:04:07.600 this with my own parents my my parents maintained a connection with me even though they completely
01:04:12.700 disagreed with what i was doing they knew what i was doing was wrong and defying my biology and
01:04:17.860 everything but they stayed connected to me and i watched that i watched their love much like the
01:04:24.620 people the christians in the coffee shop whose love i witnessed continue on and that was what
01:04:31.160 allowed me when i came out of my trans identity to return to my family had i just had i completely
01:04:40.760 disconnected from them and not had that connection maintained who knows what might have been
01:04:47.780 different in my life. Maybe I wouldn't have detransitioned as early as I did or something.
01:04:53.920 I don't know. But yeah, I think the most important thing parents can do is to maintain a connection.
01:05:00.380 You're not going to change the kid's mind. You can't talk them out of it.
01:05:05.820 Well, thank you so much for lending your insight. And thank you so much for sharing your testimony
01:05:10.280 and how you are helping others see the truth about biology and identity and the freedom that
01:05:15.440 they can find in Christ. I really appreciate that. And we've got your information, the description of
01:05:20.920 this episode, so people can find you on social media and follow you. I really appreciate you
01:05:25.960 taking the time to come on. Yeah, I really appreciate it too. And I just self-published
01:05:32.580 the book called Embracing the Man Within that takes my story and uses it as lessons for men
01:05:40.720 who struggle with shame and grief and an inability to love who they are. And I just, I would love if
01:05:47.820 as many people as possible could read that because I, I really believe there's a lot of good
01:05:52.580 information there. Yeah. Embracing the man within. Thank you so much for taking the time to share.
01:05:58.620 Thank you so much.
01:06:10.720 You