Choosing Joy on Hard Mode: Testifying at the MO Capitol
Time to practice what I preach! An overview of the many ways I searched for, chose, built, and found joy in what should have been a terrible day.
By last Thursday afternoon, I knew this Monday was going to be a bad day. The Missouri House Emerging Issues Committee had scheduled hearings for 8 anti-trans bills, and our state advocacy organization was rallying a crowd to come testify.
As the advocacy chair of PFLAG Greater St. Louis, I immediately got to work helping arrange carpools, writing testimony, and sending out an email invitation to our distribution list. This is not by any means my first trip to the capitol, but it’s my first since I’ve doubled (tripled!) my commitment to focusing on joy.
I recently read an outstanding piece by Sebastian Barr. Notably, he talks about how we map a brain pathway between advocacy and feeling bad so frequently that we assume if we feel good we’re doing something wrong.
I took a hard look around me and made a decision: I do not owe misery to this movement. I am not any more effective as a martyr. I am not failing as an advocate if sometimes the answer to “how are you?” is actually “good!”. I highly recommend you all check out the article as a whole.
In the spirit of this decision to be steadfast about my decision to protect and choose my own joy, I figured Monday would be a good day to give you a more detailed overview of the strategies I use to actively choose joy when the rubber meets the road—and in Jefferson City, Missouri of all places. Talk about a trial by fire.
Time to practice what I preach!
The Lead Up
Monday’s hearing started at 4:30, so I know it was likely to go extremely late into the night. I knew I was going to need time to refill my batteries and get some rest, so I blocked off my calendar all day Monday and on Tuesday morning in advance so I’d have time to rest.
I also let my wife and friends know that Monday was going to be challenging and ask them for specific kinds of support in advance.
I also texted my friends from around the state to see if I’d get to see them when we gathered in Jefferson city. I was excited to catch up!
The best thing I did, though, was decide to write this article. I thought this could be an impactful piece, and started planning. As I went through my weekend, I came up with ideas of nice things I could do for myself, strategies for taking care of myself and others at the capitol. I was under no illusion that going to the capitol would be fun, but I wasn’t ruminating on how horrible it was going to be—I was brainstorming all the ways I could take care of myself.
In short: I didn’t allow this hearing to hang over my head. I didn’t allow Missouri republicans to take my joy away.
The Night Before
Whenever there’s a big political stressor in my life, my favorite coping mechanism is to unplug completely and spend the day cooking. This was no exception. Rather than agonize over what-if’s and nit pick my testimony, I turned off my tech and spent most of the afternoon and evening cooking an elaborate meal for my friends. Homemade pasta, ricotta meatballs, from-scratch garlic pull-apart bread, THE WORKS! It was so good to spend the night feeding the people I love.
The Early Hours
I set an ambitious early-morning alarm. When it rang, I turned it off. I rolled over and curled up with my wife and my dog and stayed in a warm, loving space for a little while longer.
Then, I opened my blinds and I read my book. No blue light before sunlight is a rule I follow every day, but was especially crucial to follow today. Didn’t jump into any news, texts, or planning, just existed for a few more minutes.
Once I got up, I got myself some water and set up a tarot reading to spend time reflecting on the day ahead.
I spent some time thinking about where I would find my strength and how I might share that strength with others.
Then I started thinking about STRENGTH!! By that, I mean I went to the gym. Moving my body, feeling strong and empowered, has helped me so much since the election to reclaim a sense of power.
Out on the Town!
Next, I took a long walk in the park with a shelter dog named Little Emma (WHO IS PERFECT AND ADOPTABLE!!! CALL CARE STL ABOUT HER, STL PEEPS!) to give her a break from the more stressful shelter environment. Being out in nature and spending some time helping out (without having to socialize) was awesome.
After a break for some lunch, I took our Chief Barketing officer, Oliver, to an important business meeting (the dog park) where he did some paperwork (licked a tree) while I wrote my testimony for the night’s hearing. It was good to get to watch my dog be cute and meet many cute dogs while preparing to bare my sole for an uncaring committee.
Final Preparations
About an hour before it was time for me to leave for the hearing, I took a long shower, shaved, and spent time picking out an outfit that made me feel powerful (and handsome!). I listened to some action-packed music and told myself I was preparing for battle when I applied my aftershave. In many ways, I was. War paint, armor, supplies, I was ready to go back to the front lines.
I met up with a few trusted friends and advocates to make the trip together—I knew if I drove alone, I would spend each 2-hour car ride stewing and stressing. Instead, I was the designated DJ and spent hours putting together a popping playlist to get us all in the right mood. We swapped stories, laughed, and kept each other sane along the way. After two hours, we could see the capitol in the distance. The wait was over. I could feel in my body that we had arrived.
My Testimony
We raced into the building, hugged a few familiar friends, and within moments I was bustled into the hearing room and told that I was third in the order to testify. I sat down next to a friend and spent the next 90 minutes hearing mostly terrible things about my community. I heard the bill sponsors speak, I sat through the expert testimony and the “expert” (with the most disrespectful of air quotes) testimony from the other side. Then, I was up.
I spoke in opposition to a ban on gender affirming care for transgender youth (technically, a bill to remove the sunset clause on our existing ban). I was the first transgender person to come up and testify on the bill, and I shared much of the story of my own transition—humanizing myself for those who saw me only as a political football. I spoke about how different my life would’ve been if I’d had access to this care during puberty. I spoke for 3 minutes before I ran out of time and headed out of the room to make space for the next testifier to sit.
If you want to check out the video of my testimony, it’s here, though warning that I do talk about sensitive and triggering topics, including briefly about my experiences with suicide.
I exited the doors and immediately was swarmed by familiar faces pulling me in with pride, tears, hugs, and chocolate. Trans kids telling me how cool it was to see me up there. Parents thanking me for standing up for their kids. I hugged as many people as I could, then headed through the mob to one of the two packed overflow rooms to watch the livestream of the testimony.
You might be noticing by now that a big theme of what made this day so survivable is the community I had with me here. To be surrounded by so much love served as an important reminder: the grass is always greener where you water it. These are relationships that I have put love and effort into, and they are constantly bringing love and support back to me.
The Rest of the Hearing
Comments on the GAC ban took five and a half hours. There were 4 individuals present in support of the ban, and over 100 there in opposition. Every person I spoke to mentioned how meaningful it was for them to realize how big this community was—how many people had their backs. We cheered, we heckled, and we held each other through the many hours of testimony.
We also listened to our bodies: people took walks outside, we ordered the biggest pile of domino’s I’ve ever seen, and people paid attention to the testimony on the livestream in an amount that felt healthy for them.
I took a break in the hall to lend a sci-fi book I’d brought to a kickass trans kid looking for a distraction, then to do a tarot reading for a new friend. We talked about her goals for her future and what it looks like to rest right now. As we waited, different representatives popped in to donate piles of snacks and games from their offices or to thank us for showing up.
The Second Bill
At 10:15pm, the hearing of the second bill—3 different trans athlete bans targeting a whopping total of 8 transgender athletes in the state of Missouri—began. In overflow hearing room 7, the peanut gallery was pushed over the edge of the sanity cliff. We heckled that livestream like I have never heckled before. The bills sponsors echoed hateful, misogynistic, transphobic rhetoric that was tremendously challenging to hear, but together in that room, we laughed hysterically and got each other through the absolute horrible absurdity of that bill.
By the time the three stooges sponsors proclaimed themselves staunch advocates who were passionate about equality for women’s sports teams, then subsequently couldn’t name a single female athlete or women’s sports team and hadn’t ever watched a women’s sports game, we were absolutely CACKLING.
Spending the next two hours gathered together around a bag of clementines and laughing at the sheer madness of what we were experiencing together was extremely cathartic for me and for many of the folks in that room.
Listening to My Body
Just before midnight, testimony was continuing with no end in sight and I was hitting a wall. My eyes were closing, my body was heavy, and I knew I hadn’t planned to testify on the second bill. While some folks were planning to stay the night in the capitol, or were steadfastly determined to make it to the end of the hearing, I was exhausted.
So I rounded up my carpool and we hit the road, guilt-free. We had a two hour ride home and had already done so much good. It doesn’t help anyone if we destroy ourselves in the process.
I spent the first 20 minutes chatting with my group, checking in, processing what we’d heard, and then I promptly passed out in the back seat. The hearing didn’t end for another hour, at around 1:00 in the morning.
Battle Recovery
After arriving home at 2am on the dot, I imagined myself once again as a heroic adventurer—this time returning to my fort with a new crop of battle scars. I put on some “mood music” and washed my face clean of the detritus of the day. Reminding myself slowly but surely that in the most immediate of ways, I was safe now.
I read 2 pages of my book to slow my brain down, come back to baseline, and I finally came to rest.
Results
Well, did I do it? Did I stop myself from having a bad day? Nope! I woke up this morning exhausted, and will have a lot to process from the litany of terrible things my elected officials said about my community.
But did I have a good day? Yes! I got to catch up with so many friends, I got to give and receive countless hugs, I got to meet some really cool activists from around the state and around the country. I also got to show up and support my community, give a testimony that made a difference for at least some of the people who heard it, and remind myself of just how massive our showings of support are.
So many of our experiences, especially in the advocacy landscape, are going to fall easily into both the “bad day” and “good day” buckets. Our lives are a mix of both. But you are not a bystander in your life. (Sometimes) You have the ability to draw boundaries around what gets added to the bad day bucket, like me deciding to leave the hearing “early”. You also have the ability to choose joy and add things into the good day bucket, even on a day that’s “supposed” to be bad.
I also know that I am refusing to let the hate in that room dominate my thoughts, to spin my wheels wondering what I should’ve said differently or how I could get through to people that seem so set in their bigotry. They don’t deserve to take over my thoughts, my life, like that.
All in, I’m not out here to calculate a numerical average and do the math to figure out whether yesterday was actually good or bad. It was both. It usually is. All I know is that I get to decide where to put my energy, my intentions, and my focus. I spent the lead up to the hearing planning how I was going to take care of myself.
I spent the hearing listening to my body, getting support, and taking what I needed. I will spend the days following the hearing reflecting on what went well, what I need to recover, what I can do better next time. In short, at every turn, I am choosing to find joy, and this is what will continue to carry and sustain me through hearing after hearing, day after day, doing everything I can to fight for the community I love.
That’s all for now. I’m off to take another nap!
With love and strength as always,
Ben
Thank you so much for this, it is something I look forward to implementing on my own hard days. This was inspirational ❤️
Hayley, a trans gal in Florida!
Thank you Ben. Best article of yours that I have read so far. That’s saying a great deal, because they’re all wonderful.