EPISODE 078 | On Gender and Transition: How Much is Enough?
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Before we dive in, this is your trigger warning. We discuss various areas of trauma, including sexual trauma, throughout this conversation. This content may cause distress to some listeners. In addition, we discuss adult topics with adult language, so make sure the kids aren’t around when you listen.
On the surface, this episode is about one woman’s story of gender transition. Underneath, it’s about the struggle to find comfort in your own body while dealing with the pain caused by cultural conditioning rooted in shame.
Today’s guest is Winter Breedlove. Winter is a friend from long ago - in our college days, we ate fried chicken, went to Nashville Pride, and worked on the college newspaper together. Now, Winter is currently on a cross-country trip to L.A. where she’ll pursue a more transgender-friendly life than what she’s found in Nashville, Tenn.
This interview took place before she left Nashville - a place she’s from, the place she left to pursue a career in New York, and the place she came back to to regroup after trauma unfolded. She tells us about when she decided to transition, what led up to that decision, the obstacles she’s faced for over two years while transitioning, but also the parts that are going well.
She admits her transgender narrative is not the “normal born this way,” story. So we spend the episode unpacking her own narrative and how she’s taken control over it to guide her life for the first time in her life. Winter controlling her own narrative looks like amazing healing from a lifetime of shame and what she refers to as programming.
We cover everything from instant gratification and perfectionism culture to being sent to conversion therapy as a child growing up in a conservative Christian home. We briefly look at the impacts of unrequited love, asexuality, and drugs to hormone therapy and what adequate transgender healthcare looks like.
On almost every topic we cover, you can apply Winter’s question of, how much is enough?
This episode is not only about LGBTQ+ rights and Winter’s lived experience, but it’s about empowerment and feeling good about who you are, what you’re doing, and being true to yourself, whatever that may look like. As humans, we confront barriers and must manage expectations of other humans, as Winter explains. The struggle often divides us, but can also bring us together in a shared understanding of what it means to be human - what it means to be ourself. And if we’re living in a way that’s untrue to ourself, how we can transform to live more authentically.
Episode Highlights
Getting to know Winter Breedlove
Winter’s evolving career and what it was like living and working in New York
Why Winter came back to Nashville
Exploring when Winter’s gender identity crisis started
Controlling her own gender narrative, which involves coping with trauma
How Winter began her transition from finding the right, accepting job to vocal coaching
The most challenging aspects of a gender transition in Nashville
finding supportive healthcare
managing expectations
being misgendered
Being impatient with how long the transition is taking
What it means to gain control over her life
Working with a fashion stylist, make up artist, and life coach
Pursuing stand up comedy while competing with the drag queens on Instagram
Lifelong penis consternation
Where genitalia shame came from
evangelical family
being a rape survivor
healing from unrequited love
How the culture of political correctness has hindered finding adequate therapy and mental health care
What it was like being sent to ex-gay therapy
The good things about Winter’s gender transition
Vocal coaching
Temp jobs
Donation
Becoming a visual person
Living with undetectable HIV
What happened when Winter was diagnosed and how it became a non-issue
Asexuality and the role of hormones and a tumultuous relationship
What the future holds
Donating to Winter’s gender transition
About Winter Breedlove
Winter Breedlove is an aspiring stand up comedian from Franklin, Tenn. who’s navigating a gender transition.
Donate to winter
If you’d like to help Winter complete her gender transition, donate to winter-breedlove on Venmo.
Or, she has a GoFundMe for her first Facial Feminization Surgery.
