Episode 12
Still the Same Person
October 25, 2022
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On this episode, Lyndsay Soprano sits down with Amanda Williams-Falk to discuss her wife coming out as transgender a little over 2 years ago.
Lyndsay opens up the show by discussing the fact that we all have challenges in our relationships, no matter what type of relationship they are, whether with our partners, our sweeties, our friends, family, or coworkers. Nothing is without challenges in our lives, right?
And sometimes those challenges can completely blindside you. She can speak to this from a CRPS perspective, but also through the gobs of challenges that I have been faced with in this life since I was a little girl. And as her listeners have already heard and unfortunately will continue to hear about the challenges she has faced. She has just scratched the surface of her traumas.
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Lyndsay talks about how grateful she is for this show and how dedicated she is to helping people through this special place she has created for her guests and listeners. These stories are not hers, they’re yours. And being a guest on this show is not about her timeline.
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Lyndsay speaks of acceptance, stress, traumas, sadness and the heaviness that comes along with that.
But now she’s taking this heaviness on with a different approach, and it’s because of this show. And it is one that has boundaries and that is a challenge. Boundaries are challenges for everybody.
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She thanks her listeners and guests, feeling honored ad blessed to help each other heal…together.
So, on episode three of our show here, the episode was The Joy of How You Fit. Soprano spoke with a transgender woman named Abby, whom she’d known for 20 years. And as mentioned in her episode, when she met Abby, she was a man. And she spoke on the episode about her journey and the story of transitioning from a man to a woman that started somewhere in about like two, two and a half years ago. They talked about having the right to be who we are. They talked about having the right to. Love who we love.
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Lyndsay introduces her guest is Abby’s wife, Amanda, who has her own story, and who also met Abby when she was a man.
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Lyndsay opens by having Amanda talk about the timeframe of Abby’s coming out as a trans woman. The signs, if there were any, what this experience had been like for her, how it’s affecting her, their relationship, their support system, or potential lack thereof.
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Amanda comes right of the gates saying it was a complete shock when Abby came out to her. There had been a couple of cues she got the weeks leading up to Abby coming out to her.
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She spoke about not seeing that there were red flags popping up everywhere. It was very subtle. And discusses pronoun use that can help us understand and how we should follow.
Since her pronouns are always going to be female because a transgender person is and always has been transgender. Even before transition, they were presenting as the gender that they were assigned at birth, because that’s what they were told their whole life.
So being transgender, she doesn’t believe is a choice. Deciding to transition is definitely a choice. But that person is and basically always has been transgender, just whether we knew it or not.
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Amanda mentioned that she got as far as thinking that maybe Abby was cross-dressing, because what she saw in their Amazon account were some female clothes, and she changed her underwear also by that time to just more form-fitting. So, she came out to Amanda, and was just hit with a ton of bricks, and was speechless.
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So apparently she’d use, like, FaceApp was popular a while back, and she’d use that app to switch her face. It was like a gender-swap picture app. She took a picture of her face, and it swapped her to a female, what she would look like, theoretically, if she was female. And she looked at that and said, oh, that’s what I want to see when I look in the mirror.
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Amanda mentioned that there were a couple of things that Abby had said to her when she came out that were pretty upsetting.
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One of the things that Abby said was, maybe she wouldn’t transition. She didn’t think that she would be pretty as a girl.
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Abby is not the type of person who really wants to attract any type of attention to herself in general, which Amanda thinks is starting to change now that she’s more comfortable in her own skin. When she came to Amanda it was obviously something that Abby already had been thinking about for a long time, because as you guys talked about, Abby does not rush things.
She does not make rash decisions. She does not do almost anything up until this point of me knowing her quickly.
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Lyndsay states that’s why it was so surprising to her on Abby and her episode about her talking about her time and how fast it was.
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Amanda goes on to talk about how she gave her strong support and encouragement and that if that’s [transitioning] something that she wanted to do, she was 100% behind her.
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She’s still the same person. This is still the same person that’s true. That Amanda has known and loved for 17 years now, and she’s Amanda’s favorite person in the world. She doesn’t love her in spite of being transgender. She loves her because of everything that she is. And just through the transition, she’s just become more of who she already was, and you can just see more of her personality coming through. “I’m just loving and supporting my partner who I agreed to love and support for life,” she closes.
Amanda went on to talk about another part of the process that was difficult for her to hear. Abby had said, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to socially transition, but she said that she didn’t want to be Abby’s husband anymore, but that she would rather be her wife.
It was heartbreaking.
[00:26:45.820]
Amanda goes on to talk about how people look at them and treat them. She loves that people think they’re cute because they are. They notice people noticing them and sort of just give an encouraging smile as like, “I see you and you’re cute.” They haven’t received really any negative attention or negative feedback by any means.
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They talked about whom they needed to come out to in person and then went from there.
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Lyndsay talks about them going to see sex therapist and/or gender therapist. She explains that process to Lyndsay.
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Amanda talks about a number of great stressors that she went through prior to the transition decision and that was the least of the things she was stressed out about.
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Amanda talks about their communication after Lyndsay asked if their communication had gotten better or if there had been a change.
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They conclude the show with Amanda speaking directly to the audience about other people being faced with the same situation. “I do also want to say that if somebody in the situation did not decide to stay with their partner, that’s also a valid choice. I don’t think that staying with your partner just because you think that’s the right thing to do is necessarily a good decision. Like, everybody deserves unconditional love and support, and, like, if you’re staying in the relationship just because you think you should, that’s, to me, on par, is not getting a divorce for the good of the kids. And it’s like, is anybody really coming out better in that situation? Or would it be better if you did decide to part ways and you can both try to find something else that works better for you?” said Amanda.
Let’s get to the heart of how to heal. With you by my side.
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