Mapping Resources for the Trans Community w/ Stephanie Kolton

Step into the life of Stephanie Kolton, Executive Director at Patchwork Transgender Peer Support, a remarkable wife, mother, and transgender woman. With resilience and courage, she unveils her journey of coming out, transitioning, and facing discrimination from her family while maintaining a loving relationship with her wife. Listen closely as she shares the impact of her transition on her career and how she managed to uphold her professional life.

Finding the necessary resources as a transgender individual often presents a unique set of challenges. This episode explores the concept at Patchwork Transgender Peer Support, a non-profit organization that forms a trans-inclusive resource map that gathers all the aid available for the transgender community, from gender-affirming doctors to supportive seminars and potential clinics. We also probe into the intricacies of the legal aspects tied to offering these consultations and resources.

Connect & Follow Patchwork Transgender Peer Support
▶︎ WEBSITE  | https://www.transpatchwork.org
▶︎ INSTAGRAM | https://www.instagram.com/transpatchwork
▶︎ THREADS  | https://www.threads.net/@transpatchwork

Kitcaster Podcast Agency
Did you know that podcasts are a great way to grow your personal and business brand voice?

Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched!
Start for FREE

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Chapters

• 0:00 Stephanie Colton
• 16:25 Trans Community Resource Map Building
• 23:54 Support and Resources for Trans Community
• 36:05 Coming Out and Navigating Relationships

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Transparency Podcast Show.

Speaker 2: 0:04

How are you doing today, Stephanie?

Speaker 1: 0:07

Wonderful. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 0:10

Thank you for coming to the show. As we know, you are one of our listeners and then you have something to share with our audience and people who listen to the podcast. So, first thing, first, tell us a little bit about yourself. Introduce yourself a little bit.

Speaker 1: 0:35

Sure, my name is Stephanie Colton. I am a daughter, a mother, a wife. I am not going to tell you how old I am. Up until recently, I was focused entirely on raising my daughter. Now I am getting into really trying to give back to the community that has given me a home and given me a life.

Speaker 2: 1:04

Okay, let's dive into your transition story first. So let's say, let's start with your transition journey. How does it start, how does it begin and everything.

Speaker 1: 1:24

It starts a long time ago. Okay, I knew what I am. I knew that I was not born the way I should have been born at a very early age I think I was four or five by the time I knew, and by the time I was in school everything's supporting out into boys and girls and I knew I just I kept going to the wrong place, but it was not a good time to be that kind of a child, and so I hid, and I hid for a long time. I was in the closet for many, many years and I was. I came out actually because I wanted to get married.

Speaker 1: 2:11

It's really the short story, short end of it. I was dating the person who is now my wife and I knew that I couldn't go into a lifelong commitment with a secret. I couldn't go into it with a lie, and so I came out to her and it could not have gone better. My wife has been through this whole journey. All of our time together, my transition and everything has been my biggest supporter and my biggest support, and it's been. It's been 11 years now. I've been out and mostly proud. You know we all have our days. You don't have those moments where we're like, don't notice me, but for the most part, 11 years out and proud and never going back.

Speaker 2: 3:08

Where are you located, because I you know I'm in Southern California and you're from another state. Where are you located and how's that? Your hometown treating you as a trans woman?

Speaker 1: 3:24

Well, at the moment I'm in, I'm in the Southwest, I'm in New Mexico. It is not my hometown. I was back to my hometown recently.

Speaker 1: 3:37

I made a little tour with my wife on the shore where I grew up. Just back in, every year we do a pride tour. We hit as many pride celebrations around the country as we can. We were in New York and New Jersey was right there, and that's where I'm from. It's a. It's a much different place from when I grew up and I think if I were growing up there now I would not have been in the closet. I think I would have had the comfort at that point to express myself fully. But New Mexico is a lovely place. New Mexico has accepted us and taken us into their into its own and and said you know, here, have a home with us. And yeah, it's. I would say everyone should come visit New Mexico. But one of the things I like is that there's not a lot of traffic on roads.

Speaker 2: 4:36

I see. So let's rewind back a little bit to your relationship. So when you're, when you came out to your current wife now, how is she react? Like we were already in a relationship.

Speaker 1: 4:51

Yes, there was a moment of silence and then she said you know and you know paraphrasing it was 11 years ago. But she said to me you know you need to be who you are and nobody gets to tell you otherwise. And then over the next several years, she kept pointing out things that she should have recognized as being not your typical guy. I see, I should have known that you did. I should have known that. I should have known that.

Speaker 2: 5:32

But she's, she's acceptable and everything and all that. What about your own family? Or let's say, before you got into this, starting this nonprofit, you do have an employer you work for. Does it house experience on that?

Speaker 1: 5:53

Well, for the last five years I've been a full-time mom. My daughter is. She's the light of my life. She is the when I'm my worst days. A hug from her is the best medicine and makes everything feel better and I just don't care anymore about anything. There could be, you know, elephants parading through the living room and if she's given me a hug I wouldn't notice. It's just the best thing that's ever happened to me. And before that I was well. Before that I was casting around a bit because I needed something and I I tried a little day trading and then I realized I hate working with people who would sell their mothers for a dime. And I tried. I was working as a speechwriter for a while and realized I don't like being very close to politicians. But most of my career was spent in pre-hospital care, in emergency medicine, as an EMT, in medic.

Speaker 2: 7:01

Okay, so coming out as a Stephanie, it didn't really affect you much or like like other people have more dramatic effect, like they probably got fired, lost their job or or not able to find a new job or some sort of like that. Right, you're kind of.

Speaker 1: 7:26

Implement employment wise. It was very easy because I was working from home at the time and I was out and about every day, but none of the people I saw in my everyday life were responsible for my paycheck. So in terms of my employment, it was it was I really was very lucky. Other ways not so much, but I don't like to dwell.

Speaker 2: 7:55

Okay, and how about your family member Like are they supportive of you? Did they probably see the sign to like your wife now?

Speaker 1: 8:08

Mostly. My my mom is my best friend. Oh thanks Her. Her only issue with me coming out was that she felt a lot of her discrimination, that I didn't feel comfortable talking to her about it when I was a kid and she understood that when I was younger our home life was not exactly nurturing. When my father was in a picture it was. It was not a safe environment and after I was dealing with all of the pressures of being in the closet and trying to contend with who I was and trying to contend with external pressures that were, that were at times extreme and got into a lot of destructive, self-destructive behavior and wound up with a foster family for a little while, and I'm still very much in touch with them.

Speaker 1: 9:13

My, my father, my foster brother, is just the best. When, when, when I told him, when I came out to him, he said I knew something was different, because I've never seen you this happy, and I cried. And he's still. We talk every day. His mom, my foster mom, we talk all the time. My foster dad we lost in the early days of COVID, but I still have the last text message that he sent to me, which was right after I came out, and he said I don't care, you'll always be my kid and I will always love you. And every time I see that, that text message when I'm scrolling through and cleaning out old stuff that I don't need it, it just it makes me cry. My sister and I don't talk. We haven't talked in over 10 years now since she found out and I have some other family, some some biological family, that are not not in my life anymore. My mom and I've got my foster family and I've got my wife and my daughter and you know that's, that's all I need.

Speaker 1: 10:31

What else do I need I need? I need our trans family. That's it.

Speaker 2: 10:34

Yeah, that sounds so hard warning when you say that, yeah, so, and your, your daughter, your kids, it's from the same marriage, right? Yes, oh, okay, and then she is not. I mean she is very, very acceptable and like in a loving family, right.

Speaker 1: 11:09

She, she only knows one thing she knows that she has two mommies who love her to the ends of the earth and back. She knows that both mommies are ready to read a book and, you know, have pillow fights and talk with stuffed animals and draw and paint and get dirty in the backyard. And that's what kids should know. That's what that's. All kids really need to know when they're four Is that their family, their parents, love them and will always love them, and it's okay to get dirty once in a while.

Speaker 2: 11:45

I see yeah, so I'm happy for you. So now we're going to kind of dive into your nonprofit organization and when you reach out to me, you, you want to share that with me. So I want you to share with our audience, like from the beginning, what give you the idea and what's the reason behind it to start with this nonprofit organization.

Speaker 1: 12:15

Of course. So the organization is called Patchwork and we are working up to capacity to bring free online peer support to every trans, non-binary, gender, non-conforming and intersex person with an internet connection. We are looking to grow and evolve from there, but that's really that's our bread and butter and that's where we're starting, and this, honestly, this was my wife's idea. I have been for the last several years facilitating peer support groups and I've really struggled with how little support there is for our community and how hard it is to find the services and the professionals that we need just to feel comfortable in our lives and especially over the pandemic and over the lockdowns. But even before and since, finding our community is always so hard. There are so few of us and we are so far flung that it's not always possible for us to find centers for us to go to. We can find queer community centers and there may be a few trans people there, but when you look at support groups, they'll have maybe up to eight people, but usually five or six. Sometimes they're very hard to get to.

Speaker 1: 13:46

As everyone knows, our community is not affluent the opposite of affluent and sometimes the travel costs or logistics to get to an in-person support are a great barrier for us to overcome.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Many support groups, as all trans people know, are run by hospitals or medical groups and you have to pay to get it and even though it's maybe $10 or something like that, if you're working three jobs just to make rent, $10 means everything.

Speaker 1: 14:23

So what we're hoping to do is to bring that support to everyone so they can access it on their phone, on their tablet, on their computer, and be able to have the community be able to feel the support and the love of other trans people, other non-binary gender, non-conforming and intersex people, and be able to gain the benefit of the experience of those who have been out longer, who have for those who choose some type of physical or medical transition, who have more further in the process, and really create the family that we're all a little starved for in our society.

Speaker 1: 15:10

And that's what we're hoping to do and we are hopefully planning, hopefully launching this November. Our website is active and I thank you very much for including it in your notes. Our website is active and anybody is welcome to come to the website and we have a way for you there to contact us and tell us what groups that you're interested in. We have a bunch of different groups that we are training our facilitators for and, of course, if anybody wants to volunteer, be trained as a facilitator themselves or help with the running behind the scenes of patchwork. We want this to be a community organization, a family organization, and really our strength is from trans people.

Speaker 2: 16:02

Right, so do you? I remember last time, when we talked a little bit, you were thinking about also including some course resource online classes. Is that correct as a part of it.

Speaker 1: 16:21

We are looking to build a resource map. As we all know, sometimes finding even the simplest things can be ridiculously hard. Even beyond something like finding a gender affirming doctor or endocrinologist or therapist, finding things like an electrolysis. You know a lot of A lot of people outside the community don't realize that trans women and trans men, both who are planning to have any kind of bottom surgery, need electrolysis. We need gender affirming devices like breastforms and binders and packers and then and gaps, and sometimes these things are really hard to find. Even the little things like what's the supermarket in my area that isn't going to give me shit? Yeah, so we're hoping, and you can find lists of different things on the internet. On the internet, most, most organizations, most resources will have this. The same seven or 10 national groups and they'll have a couple of local groups. Local queer community centers are great resources. They'll have a few of what's local to them. Planned Parenthood has great resources for what's what they have connections with, but there's nothing thing bringing it all together and there's a lot that falls through the cracks.

Speaker 1: 17:44

In my own experience finding an electrolysis, there was a woman in the next town over for me who was retired but would work for trans people out of her home, but nobody knew. One person knew and then a couple of people knew and finally got out there, but nobody knew for years. So we're asking the community to come to us and help us build this map. Tell us every resource that you know. Help us find where all the affirming and accepting services are the doctors, the therapists, the electrolysis, the clothing stores and everything Clothing swaps and all of it. We want all of it.

Speaker 1: 18:30

We want to build a map that everybody can use and, as you mentioned, we are actually starting to put together seminars for the community. We're hoping eventually we'll be able to run the monthly. At the moment it's a little bit catch-a-skatch again because it does depend a lot on partnerships that we can put together with other organizations, but we will be offering seminars in the next three to six months specifically for survival, for survivors, for people who have come through the crucible of violent crime and sexual assault. We will be offering seminars. We've made arrangements with a group that just does this, that just does survivor services for the trans community, and they'll be coming to us and providing seminars a couple times a year and we're hoping to expand. We're hoping to have legal name change clinics, document clinics we're hoping to do transmask, non-binary and trans femme, gender affirming cosmetics and hopefully a little bit of maybe one or two voice clinics. I don't know why I could use that.

Speaker 1: 19:58

Thank you, we're really looking to just bring it all together and give the community the access they need to the services and the information and the help that we all need.

Speaker 2: 20:10

Okay, so it sounds like a directory, and is this only because you mentioned how people, wherever they have Wi-Fi? So is this going to be also like international mapping?

Speaker 1: 20:25

I would love for us to be able to have an international map. I don't know how practical that is right now. We do have one person who's exploring what the requirements would be for us to be registered as a nonprofit in the EU. That may be a very long process, but if anyone outside the US wants to send us resources, we'd be happy to put them on our map and add them to the list of everything else that we're putting together.

Speaker 2: 21:02

Also because I haven't. I didn't hear anything on the legal side, like are you guys planning to provide some legal consultations or whatnot? Because, for example, let's say, they face we face discriminations or wrongfully, determinations or even name change. Sometimes you need a representative on the legal side.

Speaker 1: 21:30

I would love to be able to do that. Unfortunately, giving legal advice is a very specific professional occupation with very specific requirements for licensing and everything else, and neither me nor anyone else at Patchwork Well, actually, I'm not sure we do have one lawyer, but we're not legal professionals and we're not qualified to give legal advice. What we can do is help people find resources to keep saying resources. What we can do is help find out people find qualified legal counsel where they are, and in order to be able to do that, we need other trans people to tell us where the legal counsel is that that is willing to work with our community. We all know the big ones Lambda Legal, aclu, the Transcendental Law and Education Center but I know there are a lot of smaller lawyers that are up to the fight of defending trans, non-binary gender, non-conforming and intersex people where they live, and we're hoping to connect with them and hoping to be able to add their contacts to our list.

Speaker 2: 22:42

Right, Okay, and what about you thinking about bringing this into like a in-person sort of resource meeting? Like you know, we all have every city, every corner or state has their own pride month event. So are you planning to like, say, have a booth or some sort of like that in those type of events?

Speaker 1: 23:12

Yeah, we are actually hoping to be at pride events in different places and hopefully over the next couple of years people will be seeing a lot of media conferences. Assuming I can find a babysitter we are hoping to be at different pride events. We are hoping we'll have the budget for pride events. It can be very expensive doing events all over the country, but we are up to the challenge and we're going to work towards being at least every major pride event that we can reasonably access.

Speaker 2: 23:54

Okay, so I use this organization currently looking for sponsorship or fundraising that sort of type of activities.

Speaker 1: 24:05

We are with the caveat that the IRS has not yet come through with our 501C3 status. They are a bit backlogged because they are a bit understaffed. I've talked to a couple of people there and they were very apologetic and, excuse me, very understanding of our plight and not being able to. I mean, we can take donations but there's no tax advantage for the person donating. They're very, very apologetic and very understanding and working as quickly as they can, but they are very backlogged and I understand that because, honestly, at this point, so Once our 501C3 is is cleared by the IRS, we will be happy to take donations from anyone who has a sincere interest to help the trans community and to help provide support, free support for the trans community, and if only the best implementation come soon.

Speaker 1: 25:04

I think you know one thing that we shouldn't discount, especially considering that the trans community is, for lack of nice, flowery language, a very poor demographic. We are all kind of dirt effing poor, so many of us are hanging on the edge. Money is not always the best thing that you can give. If someone can give their time, if someone is willing to be go through our training program to become a facilitator and is willing to give two hours a month or four hours a month facilitating support groups, that is a huge, huge help that helps us reach more people and offer more support, offer more home and more family and more community to as many trans people as we can, and we will never discount the immense wealth of that can be had emotionally and and and and communally from volunteerism.

Speaker 2: 26:13

Right, yeah, I kind of agree with you that, with that. So I I'm, I'm blessed for that, I able to kind of learn and kind of put myself in an OK position. So if you know I am, when you ready, I'm ready to sign up for that two hours a month. For you know, I'm just going to share my experience and I mean real estate. If there's anything I can provide or skill that I can share, I don't mind doing that. That's a lovely Thank you so much, of course, yeah. And what about trans or non-binary youth? Do you have anything towards that program like that? Because I realize the newer generation, like Gen Z's and maybe part of small part of the late millennials, they are more identify themselves and it's non-binary. And I'm not, I don't have kids, I'm not too sure what the school likes for them right now. Do you know anything about that? And do you have programs towards more like a youth?

Speaker 1: 27:30

We do. We have, we will be when we launch. We will have facilitators and we'll be able to staff many different groups. We will have three different groups for different non-binary. Third, gender and and age and our identities. We also have someone who's going through a training program now who will be offering a youth group in another I actually think they're, I think we're going up to 21.

Speaker 1: 28:01

It's it the numbers get a little little twisted in my head, but it is correct on our website and we're hoping to work with other organizations to be able to offer more support to the, to the younger people in our, in our, in our community.

Speaker 1: 28:20

I think, I am hopeful that this is a good time to be. I know, considering the current political climate, it doesn't seem like it, but I'm hoping that this is a good time to be a young out trans person, I'm hoping that the visibility that we've built over so many years will make it easier for them to find the rest of us, find community, find happiness, finds comfort with themselves and who they are. And I'm hoping that we can provide some small part of that at Patchwork through our youth and support group, through the non-binary, the gender queer, the gender fluid groups and the age and our groups and hopefully with connections we're looking to make with other organizations, local and national, that have more services for young people and more capacity to work directly with young people that we may not be able to do at the moment.

Speaker 2: 29:22

Okay, since you talk about politics, current politics, climax I, there's a, a, I'll say, tiny group. I don't think it's a large group, it's a tiny group. The mainstream media call it decent, the transitioning group, right. So I think so far that I seen nonprofit or advocates group, we kind of forgot about a group like a small group, like this transitioning. So I think that might be a group, can start somehow somewhere, because I'm not, I'm not sure the you know like everybody's reason for transitioning or circumstance is different. I'm sure that goes along with the transitioning. So I think they might need some resource, counseling or supports. What do you think on that small group?

Speaker 1: 30:27

The best information we have is that the majority of the main reason that people detransition is either because it is medically necessary. There are some people who react poorly to hormone therapies. There are some people who have complications after gender affirming surgeries and are forced to detransition because of that and because the other reason, major reason because people are persecuted where they live. Children don't feel safe being out. Adults don't feel safe being out their people are fearful of losing their homes, their jobs, their families and they make the decision that it is better to hide who they are until they're in a safer place to be out. The best information we have is that detransition is a very small part of the trans community less than a percent of the last count. But there are voices in the media who like to check in one or two people who want to make a very strong political statement against the entire trans community because of one or two stories that they will repeat and they will twist and they will repeat again.

Speaker 1: 31:47

My experience in trans support groups is that we very often have people who have had a need to treat a transition.

Speaker 1: 31:58

I can think of one woman in particular that I've known in a couple of different groups she's come to a couple of different groups that I've run.

Speaker 1: 32:08

When she chose to have a medical transition, she chose to start hormone therapy and in the course of starting hormone therapy, something about the estrogen triggered a horrific response and she only discovered that she had a genetic blood disorder. Because she went on estrogen and she can never go on it again, and she had a difficult road ahead of her. She chose to detransition because she could not deal with the emotional strain of not being able to have the hormone therapy that she needed, that she felt she needed for herself and that was necessary for her. Thank you went back into the closet and years later she wound up in a much healthier place and, even though she's not able to have hormone therapy, she is living out in proud and progressing through a transition that works for her. Not everybody who de-transitions comes back to it some do, some don't but they all need support. And even if you are not, even if you are not choosing or feeling compelled to have a medical or physical transition, you're still trans and we still open our arms to you.

Speaker 2: 33:31

Yes, I agree with that very much because, to all people that we interview, or from my personal friends, everyone transition. It's actually start from inside. Now, you know, dress up or anything. It all became, started, become the journey from inside. So what you just said is doesn't matter a person outside looking whatever or whoever they look, as long as they're internal inside, is thinking they're not aligned with their biological gender than their consumption.

Speaker 1: 34:08

Yeah, yeah, one of the things that we talk about in one of our groups in particular which is not your typical support group, our core group that everything in Patchwork started from is actually one as a deep listening circle which is the best analogy I could give you is that it's kind of like Bible study for trans.

Speaker 1: 34:37

There's obviously we're not we're not by studying the Bible, but we take one topic and we dive into it and we discuss how that topic resonates with us and between us and we explore it. And we have talked many times in deep listening circles about three basic phases of transition. There's the internal transition, which is coming to terms with who you are inside. There is the local transition telling friends and family. And then there is the outward transition, when we come out to the world, whether or not we decide to wear gender-forming clothing or not, or change our bodies, or change the hormones that our bodies are running on, or just, I don't know, wear a unicorn with a trans flag hanging off of it. Whatever makes you happy. Those are, those are the three stages that we see internal, local and then external.

Speaker 1: 35:39

Yeah, and one is a very well set right way to do it, any of three of them.

Speaker 2: 35:44

Yes, and again, based on my own experience, some people can go to all you know, go through all three stages, or some just stop in the middle one, which is okay to, due to family or job, whatnot. Yeah, yeah, so that's very good.

Speaker 1: 36:05

Some people come out at different times to different people. My wife was the first one I came out to when we were dating. As I said, my brother was the last person I came out to. I knew in my heart that he would accept me and he would still love me. I was scared to death that our relationship would change, and so he was the last one that I came out to, and it was he was. It was the best reaction I could have ever hoped for, and all of my worrying was for nothing, and I'm glad that it was.

Speaker 1: 36:42

But, as you know, many of us will come out to our partners or will come out to our siblings or our family, and it may be two or three years or never, before we come out to co-workers and employers and houses of worship. If we are people of faith or that, we, it may be years before we find the the strength within us to open, to go out to a pride event and declare ourselves there's no right way to do it and there's no timeline. One of the things we are very often saying in support groups is that transition is a marathon, not a sprint. You settle in for the long haul because it can be. It can be a lifetime or it can be a flash in the pan. There's no rule. You know what. You have to be guided by your heart and what feels right, and nobody else gets to say what feels right for you.

Speaker 2: 37:44

Yeah, so I have a. I just thought about a question. When you mentioned about your your, you told your wife now, first, I have a few friends or heard from the guests on the show that they, when they came out to their wife or partners, girlfriends, they, you know, things got got, got gone south. So I want to see if you have any advice or any sort of things that they can be aware before they do that or how. Yeah, just share your, your, your experience on that.

Speaker 1: 38:31

I think the the two things that get you in hot water fastest are telling people how to raise their kids and how to manage their their relationships. But what I will say is, having had the opportunity to work with people in our community who have been in relationships that have not been able to survive a transition, the most important thing is protecting yourself and being true to yourself. A relationship. If you come out to somebody and they are not accepting, you, can't just go back in the closet. Well, you can try, certainly, but it's always going to be there. If the relationship can't survive transition. You need to be focused on your own health and safety. If the relationship can survive the transition, it's not going to do so if you're not focusing on your safety and your health. You can't be there for someone else if you are not there for yourself.

Speaker 1: 39:45

First, when I was working in emergency medicine pre-hospital care, one of the things we used to say all the time was don't rescue the rescuer. You can't be there for someone else if you're putting yourself in danger. The same thing goes true for our relationships. I can't be there for my wife if I'm in a bad place I have to get myself straight and she can't be there for me if she's in a bad place.

Speaker 1: 40:15

I think the one thing that helps us always come back to that is communication, whether it's just between partners or partners with a third party, like a professional therapist. If you are a family who are people of faith, then whoever your faith leader is but communication is always key and knowing yourself is always key. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't. My wife and I have had our rough patches and we've been very lucky that we're both really focused on just talking and making space to communicate with each other and to talk about how we're feeling about things and how we're experiencing things, and making sure that when we do that, it is a non-judgmental space. I think that has been a great boon for us. I would encourage anyone who is feeling pressure in the relationship to find a way to have open and safe communication and that, if you're recognizing that a relationship is not healthy for you, that you have a sincere discussion with yourself about what your priorities are and what is going to help put you in a healthy and safe space.

Speaker 2: 41:42

Very well said. You mentioned about website for your nonprofit. Do you, are you guys on social media or any kind of platform that people can reach out or subscribe to your newsletter or something like that?

Speaker 1: 41:59

We are. We can be reached through our website, transpatchworkorg. We can also be found on Instagram and threads at transpatchwork. We can be emailed through any of those or direct message. Our social media manager is having a little bit of an issue with Instagram bouncing our ads back constantly. Apparently, advertising free online peer support for trans people is, as META has told us now four times, promoting a hostile political agenda. Wow has refused to run our ads, which is why many of you have not seen us on social media so far. Our social media manager, who is a volunteer, is working very diligently in their time to try and get META to understand that offering health and wellness to a marginalized and oppressed community is not threatening anyone. Maybe they should just go stick it. I probably should say that, but it's not.

Speaker 2: 43:18

The algorithm? It's not. Yeah, I need to retrain the AI, need to retrain.

Speaker 1: 43:25

Yeah, a little sensitivity training for the algorithm would not be a bad thing.

Speaker 2: 43:29

Yeah, so any last words, anything you want to share before we close out this episode?

Speaker 1: 43:42

I think the only thing really that's left for me to say which is what we believe at Patchwork and it's how I end every support group that I run and that is to tell everyone this is your community and your community is your family. Your family is our strength and you are seen, you are heard, you are valid and you are loved. I wish you all safe, healthy and happy lives.

Speaker 2: 44:14

Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm very happy that you guys put this out Okay, so thank you for listening and watching for our episodes, and we will catch you next time.