Below is the transcript, please note that this is a computer-generated transcript.

Intro

So this is the first ever episode, and I've been talking about this for so long. But you know what? The more I try to figure out how to start a podcast and what the best gear was for podcasts, the more I procrastinated. But this is what this podcast is all about, right? What are my mental models that are holding me back from recording this first episode? And if I dig deep enough, I can find that I'm holding on to this deep-rooted belief that my thoughts and ideas will not be welcomed by the world. And this is many reasons, like I don't always feel worthy enough. Or I get reminded by the adults in my life growing up that my theories were cute but not proper in the real world. And of course, not a fear that I have is that my voice sounds very male, which causes some dysphoria as a trans woman. So I wanted to start exploring that with all of you by sharing my story of how I came out, or, as I like to call it, how I invited you in. Welcome to the models. We live by podcast. The podcast that explores how overcoming the mental models we all hold on to can help us grow to become better people.

Ambiguity

If I would have one word to describe my youth, it would be ambiguity. Pentecostal commune moving to Israel. Mother becoming Jewish but claiming that she was already Jewish. Brothers getting a bar mitzvah. But when it was my turn, we were all of a sudden Christians again. Oh, and there was the sexual abuse and the first Gulf War. But those deserved their own episodes.

Gender Ambiguity

Growing up with this ambiguity has prevented me from understanding that my gender ambiguity was not part of that. In other words, if I had a healthy household, I would not have put my gender identity under the ambiguous category, if that makes sense. My story is the same as many trans women story. I liked wearing girls clothes. I liked wearing my mother's clothes and her necklaces and her earrings. I also hung out mostly with my girlfriends. One of my report cards in primary school even mentions that as a concern. But you know, it's the eighties, right? So of course it's a concern. I think the first time I linked it to my actual gender was when I was in a group home and I was about 16. Some of the girls in our group home put makeup on me and a group leaders wrote a report saying that I have an identity crisis. I did, but my parents were also incredibly homophobic and transphobic, so I got angry and acted out and yelled at the staff and their audacity. Sure me, they were not speaking the truth.

Context 1

When I was young in the nineties, my classmates used to love to sing this song. It goes like this. Hi, it's Anton. Well, I worked in an bordello for smokers. 9 to 5 is high. An all about wife. Of course, most of you don't speak Dutch, but if you do, you may remember this song from the 90s. It loosely translates into he's a transsexual. He works in a brothel from 9 to 5. He is a converted woman.

Coming Out Four Times

I tried coming out four times in my life. I remember I was involved with some Christians and it kind of felt like a warm blanket because I went through a lot of rejection in my life. And these Christians were so nice to me, and they always gave me attention. So I went to church with them and sang their songs, but it never really stuck. One day I wanted to talk about my feelings and I asked for some help if there was somebody that could point me in the right direction. Little did I know. They were pointing me to a conversion therapy center in Amsterdam. I wanted to talk about my gender identity, but they asked me right away if I liked boys. I messed around with a couple of boys when I was young, and I knew that I was mostly attracted to women, but I would not rule out being attracted to men. I didn't really have a word for it then, but I guess you could call it bisexual. I remember this guy sitting in front of me with ginormous hands and I felt so unsafe. So without asking, he put his hand on my head and started praying for me. It took all my courage to actually go somewhere and seek help. So when my first experience turned out like this, I closeted myself again. The second time I tried to come out was by sharing it with one of my queer friends. I thought surely she would understand. Surely she will give me encouragement. So I was at this Center for specialist psychotherapy and it was inpatient and it just felt like a safe space to do. Well, I'm sure she had no clue why I was actually asking it, but the opposite happened of what I was hoping for, and she told me about her sailor friend that went through a transition and he looked super masculine and she would never advise to do this. And that is probably a bad idea. This is not a comment on my friend, by the way. This is the early 2000 and there were a lot of misconceptions about the trans community. Around that same time I talked with some doctors, but late nineties, early 2000, and the focus was on medically transitioning as fast as possible, which I was not ready for.

Meeting Jesus

So after I was in patient for about 18 months, I started college. And I met my wife. Wife, unfortunately, we split up after four years and I would say that we were not in the best place to have a relationship with each other. From what I know, she is pretty happy right now, and so am I. With my current wife, we've been married for almost 10 years this November right now. Anyway, when my ex-wife and I split up, I felt very bold and actually started transitioning together with my primary care physician and my psychologists. This was also a time where I really took a lot of my trauma seriously from when I was younger. Remember that I mentioned the war and some sexual abuse. After being in the process of transitioning for a couple of months, I realized that I wasn't in a healthy place, not physically and not mentally. I decided to take an indefinite break from transitioning and finding a way to be happy first, which I did. I did not want to use my transition as a crutch. I know for some people that can be very helpful, but in my case, it was not. During this time I also met my wife Kim and girl was I in love and I still am. I also met Jesus in a pretty hefty way. This kind of deserves an episode of its own. But let me try to break this down very briefly. One day I was having coffee with a girl and I was kind of into her, but she was Christian and I'm just Jewish, you know? And she wouldn't date me because multiple reasons, but also because I wasn't Christian. So I just said if you were just not Christian, it would have been so much easier. And she said, well, if you would be Christian, not only would it be easier in this situation, but you would also find a life that's more fulfilling. So I just laughed and told her, that's never going to happen. I mean, I was known to be the person that used pretty aggressive tactics to discredit Christianity. She just said, promise me one thing. When you go home tonight, pray that Jesus will show up in your life. So I told her I can do that, but I'm literally going to look at the ceiling because I don't believe a word of what I'm going to say. And she said, that's fine. So that evening, I went home and I got reminded that I promised her that I would pray. So I looked at my ceiling and said to Jesus, show yourself if you're real. And I went to bed and didn't think of it anymore. So this was on a Sunday. And that Thursday I would give my life to Jesus. So on Monday, a colleague comes to me and says, hey, mish, why do Jews not believe in Jesus, not smoke cigarettes with this girl for a couple of years? Every break and ever did she talk about Jesus with me? So I told her what I thought. And she shared a little bit about her life, which was pretty cool. And on Tuesday, another colleague came and he was all giddy and happy. And I ask, hey, what's up? What's going on? And he's like, Ah, you wouldn't be interested. This is a long story. So I said, go try me. So he said, well, we just found a new church and we've been out of church for a while and this is so good. I'm really happy. I like the people. I like the community. I really feel seen. Like I had no clue that this guy was Christian. As the matter of fact, he's another colleague that I smoked cigarettes with during break time for a couple of years. Never did he talk about Jesus. And on Wednesday morning, I went to my landlord because he had a guitar and he asked me to fix it. So I knocked on the door. But my landlord was not home. His wife was home. You got to understand, this family is from the American painter. I know that. Sounds like I just coughed up some phlegm, but it is a denomination in the Netherlands that is extremely, extremely conservative when it comes to female roles. So it is very inappropriate in that culture to invite me in when a woman is alone by herself. But she did. And embarrassingly enough, I thought that had a meaning that she may be into me. Anyway, she showed me what a guitar was. I fixed the guitar and then it was a little bit awkward because she was obviously not into me. She was just very nice. And then I saw some books by John Calvin on the bookshelf. I'm like, so you guys like Calvin a lot? And then she looked me in the eyes and says, do you want to have a tea? I'm like, OK, I'll have a tea. She took me to her living room, maybe some tea, shared the gospel with me and gave me a Bible and I could not believe what just happened. I really started to think maybe my prayer that I prayed that Sunday was coming to fruition. So that evening, I went to bed at practice. I was in a post-hardcore metalcore band and we were recording that evening, not like professionally recording. We were just recording on a Zoom audio interface. No, not the Zoom video conferencing. It's a brand. It's a brand. It's geeky. You, you don't care. So I really wanted to get the lyrics right of this cover that we did by a band called under oath, and the song is called I don't feel very receptive today. I think this song is about drugs and the singer struggling with drugs. But I really identified with the song at that moment because at that moment underoath was a Christian band. Even though Jesus's name is not mentioned in this song, they're talking about so many spiritual concepts. Like part of the song says, this door has been shut for days. And it's all too familiar, which really sounds like my depression. And then the singer continues and I just crack a window. Can't I just shake it off? And it's this liberation, this window that I see cracked open that shows me that there's freedom right there to grasp. He ends the song with saying, it's time to open up the door. I realized that I was talking about myself. It's time for me to open up the door to Jesus. But I wasn't quite there yet because next day I was called in for a meeting with my boss. I was a teacher at that time, but this year was a very rough year for me. And because of that I was a very, very bad teacher. Like I was salty in front of the class. I was depressed every single day. I didn't take care of myself. It was a bad look for the school. It was a bad look for me. It was bad for the students. It was just good for me to not be among the students and they gave me some administrative work to do in the background. Anyway, I came to the meeting hoping that they would give me some hours to teach again because I was coming out of my all time low. However, it was a mess of a meeting. There was a school inspector at the meeting and I drank the previous night, so I quickly took some aspirin in the morning on an empty stomach and mid meeting. I had to run out to throw up. It was terrible. My boss, my team leader and the school inspector all say, well, we don't think it's good for you to go back to work in front of a class anymore. As a matter of fact, we think you should quit, and that was not quite what I was expecting. So I went home Super depressed and I just took a nap because I didn't know what to do anymore. And as I drifted to sleep, I had a dream. I had a dream of that girl that I had coffee with at the beginning of the week. We went into this building and she right away ran into a room and everybody was happy in his room. Everybody had, like good conversations and they were all laughing. I'm like, wow, that sounds amazing. Let me go in as well. But something was stopping me from going in there. So disappointed. I turn away from that room. And I hear footsteps behind me and I turn around and I see my sister-in-law running past me and she's in tears. And I'm asking her, hey, what's going on? Are you all right? And as we're talking and I give her a hug to comfort her, her boob grazes my arm and she looks at me and tries to make an advance at me. And I'm enjoying it at that moment until I snap out of it. I'm like, what? This is my sister-in-law. What am I doing? So I just run away out of that building, hop in my car, and I am in full tears right now. And I keep on yelling over and over and over again. I'm not worth it. I'm not worth it. I'm not worth it. So in real life, my phone starts ringing and I see that it's my team leader. And she says to me, hey, Mitch, do you have a second? I'm like, sure, what's going on? I just had a terrible nightmare, so I'm a little bit out of it. So she tells me, OK, I'll keep this short. I just want you to know. That you're worth it. So I hopped out of the bed. I felt disgusting. I was in my underpants and I'm like, OK, Jesus is real because what just happened this week is just too bizarre for words. So I sat on my couch and I thought to myself, how, how do you do this? How do you give your life to jesus? But I figured, you know, since I just prayed to the ceiling, I can pray to Jesus and tell Jesus, hey, can we be buddies? But I felt disgusting, as I said before. So I went to go get a shower because I felt like, before I go to Jesus, I need to make sure that I'm clean. You know, it's like this silly thought if I think back of this. Anyway, I was holding the doorknob to my shower and an audible voice in my head just says, come as you are. So I went back to my couch and I rolled the cigarettes and lit its and gave my life to Jesus right there, sweaty and disgusting in my underpants, smoking a cigarette.

Context 2

So I often hear, the question or the assumption that because I met Jesus, that was the reason why I stopped my transition. I met Jesus because I was healthy and not the other way around. I didn't get healthy because I found Jesus. I found Jesus because I was healthy. And to me, this is very important. I don't want to use Jesus or my faith as a crutch to mental health. And I'm not saying that this is good for everyone, but I think for me it's very important that I found Jesus when I was in a happy and healthy place.

Napa Valley Experience

A couple of months later, I found myself in America. I visited some people in Simi valley, California. How random is that? My first visit to America and I go to Simi Valley. Sorry, Simi valley, folks. I had a lot of fun there, but it's definitely not an impressive town just because I gave my life to Jesus. Nothing really changed. So I still had my same lifestyle as I had before. And I had this big epiphany moment. I think I was in Napa Valley for a trip and I sat in this big lake just staring ahead of me, and I was just thinking about what the meaning of life was. So I know Jesus now writes, Jesus is pretty important to me. My Judaism is still important to me. And I'm pursuing relationships because I didn't want to feel alone. And just like I took a decision to take a break from my transition because I wanted to be healthy first and just like I wanted to start my relationship with Jesus off on the right foot, I wanted to start a relationship healthy first. So I decided I was going to give relationships a break and stop dating altogether. And about six weeks later, I flew from California to Virginia to meet with Kim. She was a friend that I met in Amsterdam around the same time that I became a believer. And we had some drinks together, but there was never a spark or so. So when I met her in Virginia, within a couple of days, we started sharing how much we hated relationships and how it's just nasty. And before I knew it, I was sharing all the bad things that I've done, not just years and years before, but literally what I've done weeks before. So that was July 15. We started dating July 21st, and Kim knew about my transition attempts, but it was kind of like put on a background because as I said, I was putting my mental health first, but I kind of started to closet myself again, not because of Kim, but because I really quickly started to work in ministry. After we dated for a while, I asked her to marry me in January, and then a year later I finally flew to America and we got married in November 2012. And as I said, I kind of closeted myself again because I started work in ministry and I knew there were a lot of anti trans and anti-gay sentiments in the church. And the church in America is definitely more anti queer than it is in the Netherlands. But I somehow thought it was a good idea to try to fight it from the inside. I don't to keep on repeating myself, but that's also an episode in the making, which is going to cover the topic. Why fighting something from the inside is a fallacy anyway. Any time when I was more convinced that I should transition, things would come up that would give me excuses to not transition like my kids were born. Oh my precious children. My children are one of the things that prevent me from beating myself up from that transitioning earlier. I love them so, so much and I'm so thankful that they have been born.

Pacific North West

So in August 2020, I started working at a pretty large church in the Pacific Northwest, and I was a worship pastor. One of the things that I wanted to do there was fight for women who were not treated equally. I remember in my interview process for that position, I had to fill out some forms. I mean, I already visited them. I already had three interviews. I kind of knew that I was the candidate that they were thinking about hiring. But one of the questions was about women, and another question was about homosexuality. What I thought about it and they emailed me actually and said, Mitch, we need to talk about your ideas about women in church and homosexuality. So I was kind of nervous because in my paperwork I said, I am married to a woman, but I don't think there's anything wrong with homosexuality. And the question about female leadership, I said, well, while I have the leading role in our marriage, I don't believe that is a template for everybody to use. It's different than everybody's families. So the lead pastor calls me, asks a little bit about homosexuality, and it moves on to the female leadership question and said that he's very excited about my ideas. And the reason why he was excited was because he was hoping to work on moving the church to a church that would allow women to lead. So I got excited and moved my family over in August 2020, but eight months later I stepped down, disillusioned and kind of like done with Ministry forever. I mean, a lot of things that happened there and I've made a lot of mistakes as well. The short of it is that I stepped down as a pastor and felt hurt. Oh my. Everything it hurts so, so much. And I feel it because it was just a little over a year ago, in March 2021, after I stepped down, my wife kind of stepped into a protective role and she essentially allowed me to become a hermit for a while. We also decided to move to Richmond, Virginia, to be closer to family and enrichment. The magic happened.

Context 3

Richmond is in the South and you may think of statues of Southern generals and angry people showing up with guns. But the real story here is that Richmond is extremely, extremely progressive. Yes, Richmond was the capital of the Confederate states. And yes, whenever gun legislation is on the agenda in Virginia, everybody shows up with machine guns and Ar 15, which is pretty scary. But besides those political things, this city is so extremely progressive. I can walk around here and older gentlemen open the door for me and say, ladies first. People make comments on the street about my heels and I just feel so, so safe here. It's a great city, so I don't know what Richmond's marketing problem is, but Richmond is a super cool city. It's got old buildings. It predates America since it was founded in 1720. It's got older people, younger people. It's got hipsters families. We have it all. Yes, Richmond still has some problems. It's still a historically segregated city. And that's something that they will have to grapple with for a while. But I do like the energy that is here.

Inviting My Wife

I don't know who was watching my kids, probably. Caroline Caroline, if you're listening to this, Thanks for watching our kids. But Kim and I were at the secret sandwich society in Richmond. We were waiting for our sandwiches. I think Kim at a salad. And I'll look him in the eyes. And I said, Kim, would you still stay married to me if I would have gender affirming surgery? And she just stares at me like, what is going on right now? I have no clue where this is coming from. But the reality is that being in such an affirming environment and really getting more and more in touch with my femininity has given me the opportunity to find my gender expression better. I was healthy. I felt in a safe place, and I don't know why. But even though I ask this big question to Kim there on the spot without Warning, I knew that she would love me forever. So from that conversation, we started to explore my gender a little bit. At that point, I thought I might be non-binary and I started having conversations with my counselor, but it became pretty clear that I wanted to be on feminizing hormones really quick while I was mentally pretty healthy. There was a lot of dysphoria going on. And I started longing for being on feminizing hormone therapy. Fortunately, Virginia is a informed consent state, and some of you may hate planned parenthood, but it was Planned Parenthood who hooked me up. And in August 2021, I had a conversation with their caseworker and she approved my case. And in September 2021, I started feminizing hormone therapy. And I'm recording this part of this podcast right now on August 23rd, 2022. So that's almost a year ago. I remember about one month in of my feminizing hormone therapy. I was sitting on a balcony on our apartment in Richmond and I was staring at a tree and I saw the three leaves move and it looked like a wave that was going over the trees. And I just sat there for it must have been 5 to 10 minutes. And I was just quiet. And that's when I started realizing it. My brain was completely quiet. My brain has never been quiet. It is always stuffed with ideas and business plans and frustrations, everything at the same time. But here I was sitting there on a balcony thinking nothing at all. Looking at the Leafs and just enjoying the beauty and I felt like I could see the colors in 3. D it's very hard to describe this experience, but it became an everyday occurrence from that moment on. That was the moment that I realized that my road to femininity was the right journey for me. Fast forward a couple of months later, I realized that I was not actually non-binary. For months, I've already introduced myself as a trans person, but then it just came out. I'm a trans woman. And then I started dropping the trans and I started saying, I'm a woman. Most of my friends just adjusted really quickly. They started switching from de them to sheer without even questioning it. Thanks, Caroline, again for being a superhero there. And it just felt really affirming. I really felt and I feel at home in my body. I recognize my legs, I recognize my arms. I really enjoy the feeling that I have in my body right now. I feel calm. I don't feel depressed. I feel happy. I am a woman.

Inviting My Family

One final thing had to happen, and that was kind of like coming out to the entire world, which was horrifying. Just saying first things first, we had to tell Kim's parents and I was super nervous. Not because Kim's parents are not nice. They are so, so nice. They're so loving, they're so friendly, they're so invested in our family. But, you know, they went to a conservative church. They historically voted conservative, and I just didn't see it go well. So my son was going on a week-long grandma camp and he has been correcting everybody in the world. That's my mother. It's she her name is me. She's, you know, super cute. But I was, like, worried that he was going to say that to his grandparents and that they would be offended that we never told them. But I was super afraid to do it. And fortunately, Kim gathered all her courage and FaceTime with her mother and had a super long walk and started telling the story to her. Meanwhile, at home. I was in a bathroom about to throw up because I was so nervous. I was so afraid of rejection. So I texted my friend Jen, you are definitely going to hear her on this podcast and she kind of like calm me down and walk me through it. And then my wife came home. She said that her mom said this. I obviously need a little bit time to think about this all. But we are the only parents that Mitch has and that's never going to change. We love Mitch, whether she is a man or a woman because Misha is our family.

Recognizing My Mental Models

And here we are today. Now, everybody knows that I'm a woman. I mean, I get hateful text messages every now and then to remind myself that I am a trans woman, of course. And I'm not going to say that transitioning has been easy. Going through life as a woman comes with a whole set of skills that I have to learn. Navigating the health care system that seems to be affirming but in reality is a little bit cringeworthy and a little bit painful. Finishing up my theology at a University that is not affirming. Yes, all those things have been hard, but it's been also so, so beautiful. And I had more beautiful conversations with people than bad conversations with people, people that I was prejudiced against, thinking that they were super conservative. So they are probably going to hate me. Ended up saying nothing is going to change. We love you as a woman. And people that I thought were progressive kind of like were weirded out by my decision. So you never know what to expect with people. But one thing I do know is that a lot of this comes down to mental models that we have. So mental models are this efficiency system that our brain has. Your brain tries to preserve energy by jumping to conclusions. For example, when you walk a street and you hear screeching tires, you do not want to think, oh, what do screeching tires mean again? And then look over and then see a car speeding at you and think, what should I do when a car is speeding towards me? Now you want your brain to be efficient and you want to jump out of the way right away because you want to preserve your life. The same system happens with a lot of smaller things in our lives and these efficiencies, we call them mental models and these mental models help you to make sense of the world. There's one problem, though, with mental models. If you don't challenge your mental models, if you never ask yourself, hey, are my mental models actually rights? Like kind of do a spring cleaning on your mental models. You never know if you're going to grow or if you're stuck in your old ways. And in the last couple of years of having conversations with people and in my research on inclusive leadership, I found out that mental models affect what we see, which in turn affects what we do. So there's this big guru in my field called Peter Sanjay. He wrote a book called The Fifth Discipline. And the third discipline in this book is about mental models. It's a whole section about mental models and I love it. But he said we can only change or improve what we are aware of. And as I said earlier, mental models affect what? We see and what we see affects what we do. So if we have certain ideas about a people group, that's because we have mental models about them. So if we view an entire subset of population in a certain way, that's our mental models affecting how we see those people. So let's keep it to myself and the example that I just use. I thought that most of my conservative acquaintances and friends were going to reject me because they were conservative. I had a mental model that affected how I saw the entire conservative group, which affected what I did. I avoided telling them. I avoided telling my parents for almost half a year, and then I still avoided telling some other conservative friends for a. Three more months. So if you can only change or improve what you're aware of, how can you become aware of your mental models? That's what this podcast is about.