Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 4 · Ep. 735

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Kimberly Anderson [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom

Guest [00:00:43] Lead

Kimberly Anderson [00:00:43] thou me on the night is dark.

John Dehlin [00:00:48] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Live Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is Monday, April 24, 2017. We're joined together on Facebook Live, but we'll also be sharing this afterwards on the podcast and on YouTube. But we're so very, very excited to have someone who I've wanted to have on the podcast for at least a year or two. Her name is Kimberly Anderson. But before we dive in, I'm going to go ahead and just make a few announcements. These announcements really important, so bear with us listeners. Thanks for joining us. For those who are interested, we just wanted to make sure that we always talk about some of our upcoming events because many people find lots of value in these events and we want to make sure people know about them. We've had a few new decisions, so several Mormon Stories events coming up. May 4th through 5th will be in Fort Collins, Colorado. That's going to be fabulous. July 7th through 8th we're going to have a Texas retreat. So imagine two full days in Texas. We're going to be in Dallas, but we want Austin, Houston, San Antonio and even Oklahoma City and surrounding cities to join us. We're going to have a lot more info, but July 7th and 8th we're going to be in Dallas. August 11th through 12th we're going to be doing a mixed story, a mixed faith marriage all day. It's actually going to be a day and a half workshop. So August 11th through 12th, it actually may be two days. I think it's changing but Dr. Julie de Azevedo Hanks and I are teaming together to do an entire two day event focused on couples who are in mixed faith marriages. That's going to be August 11th to 12th. We're really excited about that. September 14th and 15th will be in Seattle, Washington. So we hope Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, all represent there. We're going to be in Australia October 20th through 22nd. Please join us if you're interested. We're going to take a few days before and just kind of tour Australia. And we're going to be at a great little retreat center in Australia. And then to round out the year, we've decided to add the Bay Area to our agenda. So we don't have exact dates yet for November, but those of you who are in, oh, I don't know, San Francisco, Oakland, Bay Area, Sacramento, maybe even Fresno, if that's not too far away, we would love to do something in Northern California. So anyone with any questions, please feel free to email us@mormonstoriesmail.com Please register for these events. If we don't have the registration pages up now, we will within the next week. And we're just really excited about those events. We want to go ahead and just thank all our listeners to Mormon Stories Live, to Mormon Transitions, to the other Open Stories foundation projects like Mormon Matters, a Thoughtful Faith and Mormon Mental Health. We had the best quarter we've ever had as a foundation. We actually had, I want to say, something like 700,000 downloads and views in the month of March alone. Just this crazy number of downloads and YouTube views. We're growing, growing significantly. And we just want to make sure everyone understands that all this is done through the Open Source Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit that makes all this possible. So if you love these programs, if you want to see them continue, if you enjoy the podcast, we want you to please take a minute to become a monthly subscriber or donor to one of these podcasts or to the Open Stories Foundation. All donations are tax deductible and they're transparent. Our finances are transparent and they go towards keeping the podcast alive. And that's why we're able to do this. So that's a lot of news and I appreciate everyone's patience as we pay the bills, so to speak. And now we are going to turn to the reason we're all here today. We are here to interview someone who I really admire, someone who I think is brilliant and fascinating and completely worth learning from. Her name is Kimberly Anderson. I came to know Kimberly because she was the leader of the more of the Mama Dragons. What did you call it? The Mama Dragon Storybook. What'd you call it, Kimberly?

Kimberly Anderson Introduces Herself

Kimberly Anderson [00:05:37] Well, I'll plug it. Please plug it just for a moment.

John Dehlin [00:05:41] Yes.

Kimberly Anderson [00:05:43] So it's really important to understand that. So this is my project. It's the Mama Dragon Story Project. And it is it's a suicide prevention effort designed to reach the new mom whose child has just come out to Them. I photographed over 85 women. Each of those women wrote me an essay about their love for their child. And so it's a resource manual designed to reach out to the new mom. I am the creator and the organizer and the photographer and editor of that project alone. I don't, I'm not the, I'm not, I don't represent the mom of Dragons in any capacity. Just an individual who happened to be extremely, extremely fortunate to have been invited into this group and done this project. And people are using it in the most extraordinary ways. And there's lots of spin off. Oh, and if I can just really quickly mention, I received the Spanish translation of all the essays and my introduction, I received that two days ago. So this next week or so, I've got spring break coming up between classes. I'm going to be laying that out and we're going to get the Spanish speaking version or the Spanish version of the Mama dragonstroy project asap. The Portuguese version is underway. The Tagalog version for the Philippines is underway. And so things are happening and it makes me very, very excited.

John Dehlin [00:07:04] Yeah, absolutely. And I'm excited too. And we did feature you guys in a previous episode of Mormon Stories.

Kimberly Anderson [00:07:11] And thank you so much.

John Dehlin [00:07:12] Yeah. So anyone who wants to check out the mom and Dragons episode of Mormon Stories, if you haven't already, Kimberly was on there with several other wonderful women. But that's how I met Kimberly, as a mom and dragon. But it gets. But there's more to the story, as always. And so Kimberly, I liked how we described her. Kimberly is a self actualized woman. And to be honest, we could just stop there and just say that Kimberly is a wonderful, brilliant, thoughtful woman who has an amazing life story. And that would be adequate to justify what we're gonna do is another epic Mormon Stories interview. The reason why I don't stop there is because this is not just an epic, individual, brilliant person story. This is also covering an important, a very important and timely set of topics that I think we've been wanting to discuss and that need discussion for many, many years and for many years to come. And so in addition to Kimberly just being a wonderful person, having a great story, she, Kimberly lived as she's made the change from living 45 years as a Mormon man to living openly as a woman. And so some of the themes that we will be discussing today, some of the opportunities for many of us to learn, including myself, are around issues around transgender topics, intersex topics. You know, when we talk about lgbtqia, oftentimes we're talking about lgb, lesbian, gay and bisexual people. But what we, what we often do is forget that some of those other acronyms are their own, deserve their own topic, their own treatment, their own discussion. And so we're going to be talking about these topics today as well. And I'm just going to say that listeners who have listened enough to Mormon stories know that sometimes I try and assume the sometimes I'm just ignorant. Sometimes I just don't know what I'm talking about. Sometimes I'm learning things for the first time. And, and sometimes I'll ask questions that may seem impolite or impolitic or whatever because I want to have the discussion about how to healthily talk about some of these topics. And today is going to be all of that. We're going to be talking about Kimberly's wonderful life, but we're also going to be talking about very sensitive issues around gender, transgender, intersex, sorts of topics. And there are going to be times where I ask questions, probably where I ask inappropriate questions, where I ask questions that are uncomfortable, that maybe I shouldn't even ask. Sometimes I may do that intentionally, sometimes I may do that unintentionally. And so what we're going to say at the very beginning, and by the way, some of you may text questions or comments as well, meaning well, but not realizing that sometimes there are topics that you need to tread lightly on or not tread at all on. And so we're just going to say at the outset that for this very important discussion, I may ask questions that should or shouldn't be answered. But what Kimberly's going to do is she's going to thoughtfully and carefully correct and educate me and the rest of us anytime a topic comes up where we sort of cross that line. And so that's a lot of disclaimer, it's a lot of announcements, but I think all of it's important. So, Kimberly, before we dive in, first of all, welcome back to Mormon Stories.

Kimberly Anderson [00:11:00] Thank you. Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:11:02] Thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. And Kimberly, why don't we begin by you just sort of adding on to whatever I said to just sort of, I don't know, clear the air or lighten the mood in terms of the seriousness, but also the importance of what we're going to be talking about today and how we approach it,

Kimberly Anderson [00:11:28] lighten the mood. Well, I actually will just start by saying thank you. First of all, it's a tremendous opportunity. And I consider you now a friend. And so friends talk, friends screw up and Friends help each other. There's an interesting thing that's happened to me over the past few weeks. I've been hired as staff at the Sacramento Native American Health center to run and facilitate a two spirit healing circle. And at the Sacramento Native American Health center, all of the staff wear a lanyard with their IV badge. And many of the staff have taken additional training to learn how to be a safe person. And on their lanyard, they have a little pin that they wear that indicates to the general public, I am one of those people that you can approach to ask questions and talk about Native things with, and I will not be offended that you are asking me those things. And I thought, dang it, we need one of those. We need one of those pins, like in the LGBT community, to be able to signal to people that I'm one of those safe people that there aren't going to bite your head off, that aren't going to get mad, that aren't going to be offended easily when you come to me and ask questions about topics that you may not know about. On the other hand, and this is crucial to remember, not every member of the community is willing to educate. Not every member of the community has the energy left to educate. This is a tiring, exhausting, personal trek. I don't know if it's adequate to say how exhausting this is to constantly be going out every day and be worrying about, who do I have to talk to, who doesn't know this? Who's going to ask me that on and on and on. And so many people justifiably have decided, I'm not going to be that person. I don't think it's my job to educate you. And really, it isn't their job to educate you. It's the general public's job to educate themselves about things that they don't know about. So even though today I'll be that safe person, I may not be that safe person the next time you see me. But assume, never assume, that every member of the LGBT community is willing to be that educator for you. So this term of treading lightly is super, super important. Oh, and also, I learned something from Grant Palmer. I had the beautiful chance to meet with him for a few hours last month, and he told me about this idea of radical patience. When I heard those words come out of his mouth, it sat with me, and I thought, okay, this is something that I need to really incorporate into who I am in every aspect of my life. I need to really be willing to practice radical patience. Some people aren't ready to do that. Some people have already done that, and their radical patience has expired. So, just as a. As a. Since we're doing all kinds of disclaimers and all kinds of education right out of the gate here, that'll be the first thing that I'll say is, today I'm a safe space. Today, I'm an open book, but I reserve the right to rip out pages and to redact certain things. So if I seem hesitant at times, it's because I'm trying to protect some semblance of my own integrity. Also, I have relationships that are ongoing and existing that I want to protect and I want to respect. So. Yeah. So that kind of. I'll just stop there and let you. I'll just pitch back to you.

John Dehlin [00:14:56] That's beautiful.

Kimberly Anderson [00:14:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:58] Yeah. And if we could think about it, like, imagine a classroom of nine white people and a person of color. Can you imagine? We don't think about, like, hey, person of color, why don't you tell us all what it's like to be a person of color? Like, it's not necessarily, let's just say, a minority's job to educate the majority. It puts a lot of pressure on them. There's not just one minority experience. I've heard the term. For example, if you've met one transgender person, you've met one transgender person, you've never, like, there's no such thing as the transgender experience. And so there are all sorts of problems with this model of, hey, minority, help teach us. You know, and it's more than just the fact that we're too lazy oftentimes. So I tell you, I believe that this story is going to save lives. I thank you so much for being willing to assume this role. And I love that you're reminding us that that doesn't give us free rein to sort of assault you with questions for the rest of time immemorial and to invade your privacy or anyone else's, for that matter.

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:05] Exactly. Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:16:07] Now, one of the things that you and I talked about, what we were gonna try and do, is from the beginning, talk about the things that. That from. In terms of your personal life, your personal space, we're not going to talk about in depth or even necessarily superficially. And this is important not only to respect your privacy, but to start giving us a sense for things that we should be careful about asking when we're meeting anyone who happens to be lgbtq, trans, or anything else. Right. So do you want to list, or do you mind if I list? The things that we're not going to be asking you in depth about in terms of your personal.

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:53] Yeah, absolutely, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:16:54] Okay, so you mentioned surgery. Now again, we have the option of talking about these things broadly, but in terms of your personal life, things that we want to really be sensitive about or even maybe not even talk about your personal, if there have been any surgeries, not digging into that, if there have been any diagnoses. And I think this relates at least to the intersex sort of question, not necessarily saying, well, what diagnosis do you have? Because that could be really personal and offensive and unnecessary in your case, you've been previously married and so you have a, you have an ex spouse, an ex wife that we'll be talking about. We want to respect her privacy.

Kimberly Anderson [00:17:41] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:17:42] Anything regarding your sex life is something that is just, you know, you just don't want to be asking anyone about their sex life. Right. You do have children. And so we want to be really sensitive about respecting their privacy. And then genitalia, obviously someone who's just trying to learn and is curious is going to want to like, well, let's talk about genitalia. But again, would you ever do that in any other context? And so this is just sort of basic common sense and politeness. But I just want to make sure and warn listeners, please don't be asking questions around those topics in your comments, if that's okay. Now, do you want to add anything to that, Kimberly?

Kimberly Anderson [00:18:24] I do, as a matter of fact. A lot of the things that are off limits today I'm happy to talk about with people in a one on one situation. But I kind of like this idea that you kind of have to earn me. Not that I'm, you know, all that. But if you want to, you know, ask me and learn things about me, you know, this is going to be a two way street. I'm going to learn things about your life that you may be uncomfortable asking or me asking you. Same with, you know, back and forth. I look at it in terms of forming a friendship. Look at it in terms of forming a multi year conversation with people. Look at it in terms of forming a long term relationship that will transcend any sort of personal issue with me or personal issue with you. This is something that I look forward to. I engage with people regularly and I think to myself, this is someone I'm going to know for 30 years. I'm willing to invest a lot of me in you for the next 30 years.

John Dehlin [00:19:25] So yeah, just, just that's, yeah, love it. I love it. And to be honest, I wanted to interview you for some time, but. But it was cool that we got to spend some time together, you know, beforehand. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:19:38] And yes, we had a wonderful two and a half hour lunch. And that doesn't mean everyone gets two and a half hours of John's time. I feel very blessed that I got that that day. And I won't say where we went, but it was one of my favorite places in Logan that you can order hot wings.

John Dehlin [00:19:52] I loved it. All right, so perfect. I think we've got some good ground rules under the way. So if you're ready, why don't we go ahead and dive in and let's start where you want. Obviously, I want to start by just talking about your, you know, to the extent to which you have sort of a traditional Mormon heritage that precedes you.

Adoption and Early Childhood

Kimberly Anderson [00:20:16] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:20:17] So let's dive into your story, Kimberly.

Kimberly Anderson [00:20:21] So I was born in 1968. I was born actually here in Sacramento where I'm sitting now. I was born to a single mother and who had me in her custody for about five weeks. And then for circumstances that I don't know, I have not met her and spoken to her about this. But she decided to give me up for adoption. And so I was placed into state custody for, I think, four to five weeks before my adoptive parents took custody of me around the, oh, gosh, end of November, beginning of December. And at the time, my father was teaching at UC Davis. And so we moved to Davis, California. And I actually know the address of the house that they occupied. And I've been to the home and I've stood in front of it and kind of had a little moment of, you know, this is kind of where my journey begins. My dad got a job in Logan at Utah State, I'm sorry, in Fort Collins, Colorado, at Colorado State University. And then he was hired at Utah State in Logan, where I removed there in 1978. The reason I know that year so specifically is I remember watching Star wars in Fort Collins and Empire Strikes Back in Logan. So everything revolves around Star Wars. My students have heard me say that before. I am certain I will make at least one more Star wars reference today. So I grew up, I did most of my growing up in Logan. My mother, her parents were LDs or my adoptive mother, her parents were LDS with a rich, rich, rich pioneer heritage. My father's parents have a rich pioneer heritage as well. They settled St. George and then were part of the Hole in the Rock project expedition. And we can have lots of, you know, other words to Describe Holland Rock. But they went and settled in southwestern Colorado, south of Durango, and we still have the family farm there. They're still trying to eke out a living in the patch of dirt that is south of Durango, and we have a rich pioneer heritage in that area. I was adopted and then sealed a year later in the Oakland temple. And that kind of plays a significant role in my faith journey.

John Dehlin [00:22:40] How was that?

Kimberly Anderson [00:22:42] Well, I decided actually to resign my formal membership. I resigned the name of my former self's membership, and that kind of could be its whole.

John Dehlin [00:22:53] Okay, okay, well, we'll talk about that in the future. Okay. But. But you were. But you were sealed to your parents?

Kimberly Anderson [00:22:57] Sealed to my parents in Oakland, yep. And raised a very, very, very traditional Mormon home. Baptized at 8. And there's kind of a funny story about my baptism. I remember coming out of the font and standing on the steps dripping wet, and I said to myself, oh, I'm perfect. And then I went, oh, shit, now I'm not perfect.

John Dehlin [00:23:19] What did you mean?

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:21] Guilt and shame just poured on me that I was prideful and I was boastful and I was arrogant about my. I've arrived at my state of perfection. And in that moment of arriving in my state of perfection, I sabotaged myself and I'm no longer perfect.

John Dehlin [00:23:37] Yeah. Yeah, I can relate to that.

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:39] So that eight year old child, in the glorious moment of baptism, everyone's there around you and everyone's excited, squashing yourself. Just. It was. And I think I realized in that moment that's like, oh, something's. Something's up, something's up. That's not making sense.

Guest [00:23:58] Sure.

Being Assigned Male at Birth and Early Gender Awareness

John Dehlin [00:23:59] Now I'm gonna start with one of the most delicate questions. I guess. I guess it's. I guess we can say that maybe. Maybe we could say the gender that was handed to you or given to you as a child was male. Is that the way you'd say it? Or how would you say it?

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:16] So the transgender and the intersex community have this phrase that we like to use. It's called assigned male at birth or assigned female at birth. And you can also call that your assigned gender.

John Dehlin [00:24:26] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:26] And that's kind of the way that you talk about it, because your gender is not something that you. You chose as an infant at least.

John Dehlin [00:24:35] Right?

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:36] Right. As a newborn child, you pop out, oh, look, there's the presence of an X, there's a present. Or in this terms, that would. Oh, there's a penis. This is a little boy. Oh, there's a. There's a non penis. This is probably a little girl, right? So, yeah, the doctors assigned you that gender. Your parents certainly assigned you that gender. And they may have assigned you that gender before you even came out. Nowadays with what, ultrasounds and three da, da, da, da.

John Dehlin [00:25:01] So, no, you're getting the room pink, and, you know, you're getting blue. You're getting the room pink. You're buying the baby shower. Baby showers. I mean, your gender's been picked for you in many cases.

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:10] And so. Oh, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:25:12] No, no, no, no, please.

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:13] Oh, it's interesting. So I'm enrolled right now in a marriage and family therapy program. And in the very, very first class, it was called life development of the lifespan. Lifespan development class. And in that class, I learned about this phrase called identity foreclosure. And I read about the description and I went, oh,

John Dehlin [00:25:34] tell us what that means. Tell us what that means.

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:36] So identity foreclosure. It's an interesting phrase. Identity, clearly, is all the things that make you you. And then there's this idea that foreclosure is attached to the end of that. Now, if you've ever bought a home, if you've ever sold a home, if you've ever had a mortgage of any kind, you understand that there's this thing looming over you, this institution looming over you that is ready to foreclose, that's ready to come in and remove from you forcibly this thing that you've reached for and tried to earn. In the case of identity, it's the same idea that you have this thing that you think is yourself, but in the background, there is either an institution or an organization or people that are ready to swoop in and take from you this thing that you have innately that is yours. And so I feel early on, or they're ending this relationship with your own identity. So this identity foreclosure is. You may have your own identity. You may think that you know who you are, but other things, external situations, don't allow you to become those things that you. That you know that you are. And I think this identity or this concept of identity foreclosure goes way beyond gender. It goes way beyond any kind of a gender identity or a misidentified or misassigned gender at birth. It goes way into the orthodox religious communities. It goes way into all kinds of different aspects of who we are. You know, just talking about gender or identity foreclosure, now, I'm certain that there are people in the audience that are going, wow, this happened to me in this way, this way, in this way. And none of those things had anything to do with gender.

John Dehlin [00:27:11] Maybe you're a woman and you wanted to be a police officer.

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:14] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:27:15] Professor. Maybe you're, maybe you're a man and you wanted to be a stay at home mom, you know, but.

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:21] Or if you're short, you wanted to be an NBA all star.

John Dehlin [00:27:24] Right, Exactly. Or if you're light skinned, maybe you want to be dark skinned. Who knows? Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:28] Something.

John Dehlin [00:27:29] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And maybe your spiritual inklings were different than kind of whatever religious institution you were raised in. And so you never really felt in harmony with the spiritual stuff you inherited, whatever that might be, so.

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:44] Exactly. So it can be multi shades of. Multi colors of an infinite meaning of everything. It's just, it permeates everything. And because it's so ubiquitous in our lives, I was honestly surprised that I hadn't heard this phrase before.

John Dehlin [00:27:58] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:58] I read this and I'm like, this is amazing. So this idea of identity foreclosure, I want to write a paper about it. I want to present at Sunstone if I can, please, Lindsay. I'm sure she'll, I'll pitch it right there. But this idea of identity foreclosure in the LDS community is super, super powerful.

John Dehlin [00:28:17] Totally agree. Okay, so the, so the gender you were sort of assigned at birth.

Kimberly Anderson [00:28:21] Assigned male at birth. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:28:22] Was male. Now how did that play out in your early years as a child? Did you have disharmony in your mind between how you thought of yourself and what had been assigned? When did that first start feeling out of sync for you?

Kimberly Anderson [00:28:40] So for a long time I kind of wasn't sure how that all kind of trickled out. But as I'm, you know, in this program where you examine, you learn how to examine others, you're forced to examine yourself. And so through this process, I've kind of gone back and I've re. Looked at a lot of things and I can honestly say that there was kind of never a moment where I didn't know. I always felt that there was some sort of discord, that there was some sort of mismatch and I didn't really know what that was. And I think it's important to remember that, you know, I was born in 1968 and the language that existed at that time broadly just did not exist for, for people who weren't quite sure about who they were internally not matching with their external presentation also being very well.

John Dehlin [00:29:23] What would the language have been in the 70s? Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:29:27] Well, so you would have had words like transsexual, which is a word that's not commonly used anymore. The word that they use now is called transgender. You would have had words like transvestism or transvestite, which has really negative connotation for many people, although transvestitism is a normal aspect of human development. And you would have also had words like cross dresser, which, again, have really negative connotations in any kind of an orthodox religious belief. But as far as human development and human experience, cross dressing is very, very natural. Ask any woman at BYU in the 50s and 60s when the first time they were able to wear pants to class was, and they will tell you this was a momentous event in their life. So this idea that we cross dress, everyone does this.

John Dehlin [00:30:11] And did the LDS Church, let's just say the early 70s, mid 70s, have any apologies around any policies around either transgender concerns or intersex sort of concerns?

Kimberly Anderson [00:30:24] So as far as I'm able to dig, and most of the Bishop's Handbook number one is available online, I think that that language kind of introduced itself in the late mid to early or mid to late 80s, the transgender aspect of elective transsexual surgeries, et cetera, et cetera. I think that was the first time that language was really introduced into the LDS space, and I think it was probably forced onto them through some events that they may have had no control over.

John Dehlin [00:30:53] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:30:54] And I believe that there is a author of note who was coming out with a wonderful volume about these things, and that story will be fully told later on in another. In another venue.

John Dehlin [00:31:07] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:31:08] So I don't want to. I don't want to talk about that too much, because I don't want. Yeah. I don't want to blow the. I don't want to spoil the ending.

Intersex, Transgender, and Understanding the Difference

John Dehlin [00:31:13] And then the only other thing I'll just ask is, as I understand it, the way that they used to handle intersex sort of related issues with children regarding surgery and birth is very different now than how they might have handled it 30 or 40 years ago.

Kimberly Anderson [00:31:29] Well, I'm not even exactly sure about that. There's. I have dug and dug and dug, and I have not met other people who have had this type of an experience. I haven't read any literature. It just doesn't exist. I don't know how things were back then. I barely know how things are now.

John Dehlin [00:31:47] Okay. Okay. No, that's fine. I mean, the one thing I've heard is that if a child maybe explain to us really quickly tell us what intersex means and how that's different from transgender.

Kimberly Anderson [00:31:57] So intersex Intersex is an interesting word. Even in the intersex community, even in the medical community, the word intersex is kind of loaded. You can safely say that There are between 30 and 34 different individual diagnoses, medical diagnoses, that are encompassed within this idea of intersex. So intersex, even though it is a state of being and it is an identity, it only is an indicator that there's something else that has been diagnosed by a doctor. So a person may have a specific diagnosis that relates to external genitalia. They may have a diagnosis that relates to internal genitalia. Their diagnosis may refer to the inability to either produce or to absorb to accept certain hormones, either testosterone or estrogen. Their diagnosis may have nothing to do with any of those things, but have to do with other things, like a chromosomal marker that manifests itself in either internal or external genitalia. Very, very, very rarely does intersex mean the presence of both external male and external female genitalia. Very, very rarely. So this idea that intersex is hermaphrodism, that's a huge misnomer. And even the word hermaphrodism or hermaphrodite is kind of looked at as this negative word that's not used any longer. And intersex or intersex person or intersex experience is the proper way to talk about that.

John Dehlin [00:33:27] Okay. And just. And this will just. This is my understanding. So someone, for example, can be born, let's just say chromosomally, xy, which would be male, but because of some condition, they don't develop external male genitalia. And so they look like a female baby to their parents. And so they're assigned a female gender at birth based on the appearance of their genitalia, even though their chromosomes may actually be technically male. Is that an example?

Kimberly Anderson [00:33:57] It is. And that person can identify their entire life as female into their adulthood as female. It may not necessarily provoke a sexual. I'm sorry, a gender identity crisis.

John Dehlin [00:34:11] Right. In fact, you cannot even know that they're intersex. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:34:15] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:34:16] There are genetic males who think they're females have always thought they're females in reality, and oftentimes they're not able to have kids.

Kimberly Anderson [00:34:24] Right.

John Dehlin [00:34:24] But they never realize that genetically they're male.

Kimberly Anderson [00:34:27] Right. However, let's be very careful. Women who may not be able to have children, this does not indicate that that person is intersex.

John Dehlin [00:34:36] Right, of course.

Guest [00:34:36] Of course.

Kimberly Anderson [00:34:37] So never my policy now, you can't assume anything about anyone, ever. Only know what they've told you to their face, Right? So, yeah, the lack of a uterus, the lack of the ability to conceive and bear a child does not in any way indicate that that person is intersex. However, there are intersex women who are genetically male that do not have the presence of ovaries or uterus.

John Dehlin [00:35:06] Right. And then just a couple other examples. So there can be people born with a partial, you know, a partial male penis, a penis that's inside. And then what would ambiguous or mixed genitalia. What would some examples of that be?

Kimberly Anderson [00:35:23] Well, there is actually. There's a ton of resources online. One of the things that's actually quite stunning to learn about is this tool called the phallometer Ph L L O meter. And if you Google Fallometer, you're gonna see a little tiny ruler that has a pink and a section in the middle that's like, who knows? And then a blue end, and they measure the clitoris, and they go, okay, underneath this size is gonna be a girl. Over this size, it's gonna be a boy in this gray zone. What are we gonna do, Mom? What are we gonna do, dad? What are we gonna do, doctor? Dr. Jones, what do I do with this child? So the Fallometer is an actual thing that's used. There are stage, not to get too graphic, but the male penis has a urethra, and the urethra typically ends at the tip of the penis in the center. But that urethra can exit the shaft of the penis at many, many locations along the shaft of the penis. That condition is called hypospadias, and that historically has been looked at as an intersex condition. However, even hypospadias is not so cut and dry, let's say, as to whether or not it is a true intersex condition. So that's what I mean when I say that even in the intersex community of individuals and medical practitioners, there is kind of this gray area. What situation constitutes an intersex diagnosis and what does not? So that's why it's somewhat nebulous.

John Dehlin [00:36:51] Right. And just to kind of. And just to kind of drive this home back to your story. You do identify as intersex. Is that correct?

Kimberly Anderson [00:37:03] So one of the things that I want to make sure that I talk about is that there's lots and lots of undiagnosed characteristics, lots and lots of research that's going on today about the transgender brain, about the transgender hormonal experience in utero. And, you know, my experience is my experience I can't say. So this might be one of those frying pan. And anyone that's in school with me knows what frying pan means. My situation, it's very careful not to pathologize the individual. And one of the things that I don't want to kind of open up to the world is any kind of a special little X, y, or Z. But my experience is that I. I fully believe that the transgender person falls under the intersex umbrella. I also believe that the intersex umbrella or the intersex individual can have a completely valid transgender experience if they are assigned the wrong gender at birth and decide to transition later. And that's the way I look at my situation, is I inhabit characteristics of both sides of this. And actually, to say both sides is incorrect because there are infinite sides to this story or the situation. Many intersex people decide not to change their external gender or their external gender presentation. Many intersex people choose not to have any kind of normalizing surgeries. It's actually the most. One of the most fascinating things of human development that I've run across. This idea that I was born this way. I had this epiphany at some point, and then I either choose to or not choose to make a change or make a direction correction. Wow. Direction correction. That's like a.

John Dehlin [00:38:53] That was great.

Kimberly Anderson [00:38:54] That was awesome.

John Dehlin [00:38:54] I love it.

Kimberly Anderson [00:38:55] Love it.

Growing Up Mormon with a Hidden Identity

John Dehlin [00:38:56] Okay, so as a. As a young Mormon child assigned the gender of male bears.

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:02] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:39:03] You're growing up knowing that there's something not right, but. But. But trying to just be a normal kid. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:11] Trying to remain invisible. That's the way I look at my childhood.

John Dehlin [00:39:15] Talk about that, if you don't mind. Especially within the Mormon context.

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:18] Well.

John Dehlin [00:39:19] And just the childhood context right now.

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:21] I want to be careful, too, because at some level, I do have a relationship with my parents, and I think that they. Either they might watch this or my siblings might watch this. I don't know. It's largely immaterial whether or not they see it or not. But I want to make sure that I respect their privacy and I honor their role and all the things that they did for me as parents. I learned early on that messaging from my parents and from my siblings and from church made no room for someone who felt different. There was no room for someone who felt different. In fact, the messaging was very damning. It was very hateful. It was very painful. And so I learned just to kind of hold my head down, keep my head down, stay out of the way, not cause any Trouble. This kind of went into my. Even into my wardrobe for an entire year. I think it was my. Either my. I think it was my eighth grade year. I wore a gray hooded sweatshirt, like, every day of junior high at South Cash junior high. And I wore it so often, it became the butt of jokes in my family, and they named it the gray thing. And I took my picture for school that year wearing the gray thing. Just. It was like the only thing that I had that I could pretend I was invisible within. And the great thing has been the butt of jokes up into my adulthood. And I don't know. Well, of course they don't know, because I've never expressed this to them ever. But that gray thing was like my shield. It was my armor. It was the only thing that made me feel like I didn't stand out. Because the first thing that you. Or the last thing, rather, that you want to have happen, you want to draw any attention to yourself. The last thing you want to do is draw any scrutiny to yourself to let other people see into you and wonder, oh, something's different with that person. I wonder if they're transgender, or I wonder if they're secretly harboring this secret, or I wonder if they're really this. You just want to hide. And there are many identities in life that we can occupy that make you want to retreat and to hide. In my case, it was my gender confusion or my state of gender. That confusion made me want to not extend myself and be vocal, I guess. So that kind of plays into even me sitting down right now with you. This is like I'm being incredibly vulnerable. This is incredibly nerve wracking for me. And I. I know a lot of people would look at me and go, oh, she's got it all together. What is she talking about? I'm like, okay, whatever. You guys don't know. This is serious business. You know, coming out and talking about your story and explaining your vulnerabilities and really just kind of laying a lot of it on the table face up. So I do appreciate the audience, and I do appreciate the opportunity, but at the same time, this is, like, super, super nerve wracking.

John Dehlin [00:42:23] Yeah, I understand. I can only imagine. And I hope we can all be respectful to that and also be just really appreciative and grateful for what you're. What you're doing well.

Kimberly Anderson [00:42:37] And I would displace that gratefulness to anyone that allows you into their life in a very sensitive situation. But thank you. I do appreciate that. But that. I think that that courtesy, you should Be willing to grant that to anyone that lets you into their sacred space.

John Dehlin [00:42:57] Absolutely.

Kimberly Anderson [00:42:58] So just to kind of move forward, I guess I don't want to get bogged down a lot.

John Dehlin [00:43:01] No, no, it's good. So your concern as, let's just say a young child or a young Mormon boy.

Kimberly Anderson [00:43:10] You can say that.

John Dehlin [00:43:10] That's a young Mormon boy. Was. Was not to present as male versus female. It was just to stay invisible.

Kimberly Anderson [00:43:17] Oh, and just keep my head down, do my chores, do what I was told, try and get good grades, do the science fair, project on time, not complain when we have to get out of bed at four in the morning to go around up the horses that got out at night. Just do our thing and stay out of the way.

John Dehlin [00:43:33] Were there things that people expected of

Guest [00:43:36] you,

John Dehlin [00:43:38] thinking of you as male, that you weren't comfortable doing and didn't like? Were there things that you wanted to do that people associated with being female that you felt like you couldn't do? Did you have any of those sorts of dilemmas as a child or as a young teenage?

Kimberly Anderson [00:43:59] Yeah, as a matter of fact, yes. So my dad's research animal was the horse. He taught animal science. And so we were raised on a horse farm, which was a wonderful, wonderful way to grow up. A lot of responsibility, a lot of work, and put a lot of hell of a lot of fun. I mean, honestly, we grew up in southern Cache Valley where there were no fences and no homes and we could just ride and ride and ride and we did. We rode all the time. And we rode in the fairs, we rode in the parades, we rode in the horse shows. My kind of secret little dream was to ride in the horse shows. And as the, as a girl, I wanted to be a barrel racer. I didn't want to do, you know, the calf roping and those other things that I did never do because they were very, very male. However, had the chance been offered to me to, you know, do barrel racing, which is a traditionally girls Western sport, I would have loved to have been a bare racer. I would have loved to have run, to have ridden English pleasure in a more feminine costume. I would have loved to have ridden Western pleasure in a pink hat and boots. That wasn't going to happen, largely because I was just too afraid to express anything about myself to anybody. It was just buried way, way, way deep. Even deep enough that I couldn't see it at times.

John Dehlin [00:45:19] Absolutely. How did it affect your relationship with your peers?

Kimberly Anderson [00:45:31] I was very introverted in middle school. I was very introverted, my brother, very gregarious. Very outgoing. My older sister, very popular, very outgoing. And I just kind of in that middle child. Plus, let's not forget I've got adoption stuff swirling around.

John Dehlin [00:45:50] Yeah,

Kimberly Anderson [00:45:53] I just stayed out of the way. I saw my siblings be occupying the role of kind of the popular ones and so I kind of accepted my role as just kind of backing away. Now. That did change a little bit in high school as I kind of found my crowd of kids to hang out with. I was in the marching band, Mount Christ High School and we. I love that experience. However, within the context of the marching band, I played the trombone, but I wanted to be a rifle. I wanted to play the flute, I wanted to play the clarinet. I wanted to play those and occupy those roles that were very stereotypically female.

John Dehlin [00:46:35] Those rifles spinning around the rifle.

Kimberly Anderson [00:46:36] Oh, the rifles. That. Yeah, you're doing the things. And now they do swords and they do all kinds of crazy stuff. But back then it was just, well, I guess maybe they did swords, I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:46:44] And it was women. It was girls.

Kimberly Anderson [00:46:46] Only girls. Yeah, only girls. And within the context of the band, I had tons of friends who were all in the color guard. I loved my color guard friends largely because I was able to kind of be in their world, learn about, you know, what it's like to be a girl, what it's like to occupy that role as a woman in a very non threatening way. So in that regard, I was super, super popular with all the color guard girls. There was no shortage of me having a date on Friday night or Thursday night or having. Or Saturday night or whatever night. There was no shortage of girls that I could go hang out with because they loved me, because I was not a threat. I was completely sympathetic to their issues and their problems and I wanted to learn about them. What kind of boyfriend. I'm like the perfect boyfriend. Oh, plus yeah, whatever. I didn't even want to go. I didn't even want to go there sexually because I was terrified of my own sexuality. I didn't even know what that was.

John Dehlin [00:47:44] So in that case, the law of chastity is really convenient. Right. Because it says just don't go there.

Kimberly Anderson [00:47:50] Right. The law of chastity, you just remove the word law and it was just like the way of survival is chastity. That's the way I looked at it.

John Dehlin [00:47:57] Yeah. Yeah.

Guest [00:47:58] Interesting.

Teenage Years, Shame, and Living a Double Life

John Dehlin [00:47:59] Was there, was there any point, let's just say up through your teenage years where you want, where you felt desires to express, you know, dress or act in a, you know, as female in terms of gender. But you, but you just couldn't. Did you have desires to put on a dress or you know, put on makeup or any of that stuff? Or did that not occur to you at that, at that age?

Kimberly Anderson [00:48:27] So the answer is yes. The long answer is 24. 7.

John Dehlin [00:48:31] All the time.

Kimberly Anderson [00:48:32] All the time.

John Dehlin [00:48:33] Okay. But you know, did. Was. Is that something where you would, where you would try and do that secretly and not let anyone know or did that not happen in those early years, childhood, teen years?

Kimberly Anderson [00:48:45] So it's interesting. My, my family, we would do like theater things and we had small traveling little singing groups that we would do productions and little singing, sharing things like at the nursing home or at the church or whatever. So we have like outfits and costumes in a room in our house. Excuse me, there's a coke burp. And we kept all those costumes in our furnace room. And so I knew where all those costumes were. And so the furnace room kind of came my place where I could go through those boxes and find those articles of clothing that my sister may have worn. A performance. I remember one time I was in the furnace room trying on some clothes and my mother was downstairs and she must have heard me in there and she knocked on the door and she opened it up and she saw me in there dressed. I held my foot against the door, didn't want her to come in, turned the lights off, didn't want her to come in. I was completely embarrassed. She opened the door and found me in this state of being and she asked me what I was doing and I said I wanted to know if I was taller then my sister. And she said, oh well, we don't do that, that you should go change immediately. We don't do those things. And so, you know, looking back as a parent and putting it into the context of who she was and who she is and putting it into the context of society at the time, of course she's going to have that reaction. Of course, looking at it through parents eyes in society now I would suggest, and I would hope that if a parent found their child, you know, cross dressing in secret, that they should just completely remove any shame and any guilt associated with that.

John Dehlin [00:50:27] Say, how fun, how awesome.

Kimberly Anderson [00:50:29] Well, not even go there, not even promote it or be ecstatic about it, but just look at it as an opportunity for a conversation. Here's my chance to learn more about you. What is this? You know, tell me about this. Why do you do this? What are your motivations for doing this? What do you hope to gain from this? Is there anything about you that I should know that I don't know already. I think that we kind of tend to overreact with the. Oh, I'm a great ally. I'm a great parent. Let's get you signed up for the makeup classes, and let's get you into the rifle spinning classes, and let's get you. When really that's not where the child is mentally, because a lot of times a child doesn't even know themselves where they're at. And I've heard many, many parents be like, oh, so are you gay? And the child goes, no. Are you trans? And the child goes, oh, no, that's not me. Mainly because of this internalized transphobia. Internalized homophobia. They know that. That parents not a safe place. They know that the world's not a safe place, so they just protect themselves by just denying everything. And that's what I did. I just like. Nope. Nope.

John Dehlin [00:51:29] Okay. So did you feel a lot of shame when you had that experience with your mom?

Kimberly Anderson [00:51:34] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And that shame, even speaking about it now, I can feel that shame in that moment.

John Dehlin [00:51:43] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:51:45] Which. Which again, might. Might be unfair to the person who I felt was shaming me or guilting me into those feelings because that was, you know, the early 80s.

John Dehlin [00:51:59] Yeah, of course, it's way, way different. What can any parent do? But the best that they know how at the time, they know it.

Kimberly Anderson [00:52:07] And the mind frame that both of my parents were in was not accepting.

John Dehlin [00:52:11] Oprah always says, when you know better, you do better. Hopefully, you know, hopefully. What about. What about was. Was there ever. Did it ever reach a point, let's just say pre mission, where it was like a thing, where it was like mommy and Daddy's little secret. There's a. You know, there's a problem here. Or was it. Were there only just little small hints or instances? But it never actually got to the point where, like, mom and dad are wanting you to go to a therapist or to a doctor or, you know, pathologizing. It is a problem.

Kimberly Anderson [00:52:51] Right. So, no, there wasn't. I learned my lesson very quickly to hide. And it was never an issue. In fact, when I spoke with my parents about this, you know, a couple of years ago, they said things like, we never knew. You never said anything. We wish we would have known. We could have gotten you help. And in the back of my head, I'm thinking, thank God you didn't know, because you'd have sent me to a therapist that would have shocked the living shit out of me with a car battery.

John Dehlin [00:53:17] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:53:17] So in A lot of ways, I kind of look at my fear as being the thing that preserved me. I was able to kind of get through childhood, get through young adulthood in relative anonymity and stay away from all those things that may have. That they may have sent me to. That would have more than likely been very, very damaging.

John Dehlin [00:53:37] On the other hand, I don't think it would. I don't think we could overest, over. Over sort of emphasize the possible complexity or even harm that you must have experienced by feeling the need to hide and lie, like 24. 7. And I don't mean you were a liar 24 by 7.

Kimberly Anderson [00:54:00] I just mean I will admit that completely.

John Dehlin [00:54:03] So talk about that, what that does when you feel like you have to hide and lie for like 15 years, 20 years, 45 years, 45 years.

Guest [00:54:12] Right.

John Dehlin [00:54:12] What's that like? What is that shitty.

Kimberly Anderson [00:54:15] It's awful way to live? And those. Those issues of trust and of lying to myself and of hiding have had repercussions throughout my professional career. It had significant repercussions in my marriage, which I feel terrible about. I don't want to excuse and to justify my behavior as not being someone that told the entire truth the entire time. I tried to be the best person I knew how to be, but lying to preserve who I was was just my way of being. You know, you go in for that Temple Recommend interview and they ask you, are you honest in your dealings with your fellow man? And I'm like, well, I'm sitting here in front of you wearing a suit and a tie. So, no, I'm not honest. I'm lying through my teeth about who I am to you every single day. And so the way that I would answer that question was, I'm doing the best that I can, Bishop. I'm doing the best that I can. President.

John Dehlin [00:55:14] Right?

Kimberly Anderson [00:55:15] And then that they're like, oh, but we all do the best that we can. And it gets all chummy. And I'm like, just. If you only do. Just shut up. Just leave me alone.

John Dehlin [00:55:26] Is there an impact of having to lie to everyone else? And you sort of. I think you mentioned this a tiny bit. You said, is there a degree to which you learn to lie to yourself or you get out of touch with yourself about who you are? Does it not only affect your relationships with others, but does it affect your honesty with yourself?

Kimberly Anderson [00:55:46] Oh, completely.

John Dehlin [00:55:47] How is that. How does that work?

Kimberly Anderson [00:55:49] I don't know how it works, but I know how it manifests itself. Yeah, I went through my entire junior high in a fog like A literal fog. I remember two days of junior high school. The one day was when the sex or the health teacher talked about sex ed. The one day. And the other day that I remember was. I don't remember that day. Yeah, junior high was a fog. And then I kind of got in with the band and I met my group of people and I started to kind of learn who I could be. And then I started taking photographs for the high school yearbook. And that was a real huge source of validation for myself that I actually had something that I could do that other people respected and had thought it was cool that I was the yearbook photographer. And that kind of plays out in the rest of my life in many, many ways. But lying to myself and hiding from myself, even amongst my inner, inner circle of friends, I never came out to anybody. I think I came out to one of my girlfriends in high school and she didn't quite understand what it was I was talking about. I will always think highly of her. She tried to do the best that she could with me, but I think in a lot of ways it was just. It's just too. It's outside of our experience. And what do we do with those things? We just kind of put them aside. Not that she put me aside because she was a dear friend for a long, long time.

John Dehlin [00:57:25] But there has to be a degree to which you either learn to shut down your inner emotions.

Kimberly Anderson [00:57:31] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:57:32] Or to self medicate. And that could be through drugs and alcohol, or through just avoidance, sleeping, depression, staying busy. There are lots of ways we can numb, right?

Kimberly Anderson [00:57:44] So staying busy was never a problem. And I think that that was also a saving grace. Between band practice, between performances, between the horses, between school, between practicing. We were always doing something. My parents kept us very, very busy. Probably another thing that allowed me to get through my teenage years. I did have one or two flirtations with suicidal ideation, but the fear of doing it wrong, the fear of inducing the wrath of my mother, kept me from even enacting or formulating a suicide plan. So, yeah, just keeping my head down and staying busy kind of got me through all that ugly stuff. And, you know, I shouldn't even say ugly stuff because I don't know that it was ugly. Because I was so numb, I didn't self medicate. Later on in high school, junior, senior year, we did drink a lot of beer and I did smoke a lot of pot, but I never bought a stitch of it, either alcohol or marijuana. But I. And we didn't. I shouldn't say we smoked a ton of Pot. We smoked pot enough that I know I knew what it was like. I knew what to expect when I was gonna smoke, but I did not smoke it enough to self medicate my pain with.

John Dehlin [00:59:00] It was just what kids did during the pandemic.

Kimberly Anderson [00:59:02] It's just what we did. It's what some kids did, I should say.

John Dehlin [00:59:06] Right, right, right. Yeah, I didn't. But, yeah, I'm sure a lot of kids in my ward did when I was growing up. And we're about the same age. We're almost the same age. What about your role with Heavenly Father, your spiritual life, your inner life, your prayer during those teen years? Did this even come up? Did you believe in God? And if so, did this come up in your prayers with Heavenly Father, Mother?

Faith, God, and Inner Conflict as a Young Person

Kimberly Anderson [00:59:33] So the concept of God was something that I knew I was supposed to know. I was taught that I was supposed to love this person. I was taught that I was supposed to have a relationship with this person. But I was also taught that this person hated me, that this person felt that who I was in my inner core of my being was going to damn me to hell. So I grew up largely in fear of God and being grateful that I did not have a relationship with God. And trust me, I tried. I checked off all the boxes. I did all the work, I did all the prayers. I did all the reading. I went to seminary. I was in Scouts. I was a deacons quorum president, teachers quorum president, priest quorum president. I was an Order of the Arrow recipient in Boy Scouts. I got to be the Life Scout three marriages short of my Eagle Scout. So one thing that is actually pretty interesting was when I went to go get my patriarchal blessing, I was terrified to get it. I was terrified to get it because I was worried that, oh, okay, here's God. He's gonna speak to me. He's gonna lay down the hammer dead. Name person. Here's what's going on with you. And I was terrified that my secret was going to come out and that I would be forced to kind of reconcile all these things. And I sat in that chair and he put his hands on my head and the blessing came out. And I'm just like sitting there cringing, going, is it next? Is it next? Is my truth next? In other words, is this patriarch going to reveal God's will to me through the patriarch? Is it coming? And when it never did, I'm like going, well, clearly two things are going on. Either God's not there, or God doesn't care, which hurts more. So I kind of got the feeling that God wasn't there. My young teenage shelf laden to the point of breaking dozens and dozens of times growing up, the minute that blessing ended, my shelf is broken, gone.

John Dehlin [01:01:39] You were in your heart of hearts, you were hoping that maybe there'd be a reference to you being a female soul, a female spirit.

Kimberly Anderson [01:01:48] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:01:49] Something that would give you a sign of God's knowing of you and understanding of you.

Kimberly Anderson [01:01:55] Exactly. Instead of a roadmap of maleness, that's what I was given.

John Dehlin [01:02:00] Mission and marry a beautiful young woman in the temple.

Kimberly Anderson [01:02:04] Children.

John Dehlin [01:02:04] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [01:02:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:06] Okay. Oh, that's so heartbreaking and so really quick. I'm curious. You said that you were taught that God hated you, and I don't mean to make that literal, so to speak, but I would guess that there wouldn't have been a lot of conversation around issues like transgender topics in the 80s, and so I'm surprised that it would have even come up. So what was the Mormon language that, you know, what were the topics that gave you the sense that maybe God hated you in the Mormon context?

Kimberly Anderson [01:02:38] Spencer W. Kimball's Miracle of Forgiveness.

John Dehlin [01:02:41] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [01:02:41] A book that I have dedicated many hours of my life to birding many copies of.

John Dehlin [01:02:46] Did he talk about this in there?

Kimberly Anderson [01:02:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:02:49] Transgender. What was said in there? If you don't. If you know or.

Kimberly Anderson [01:02:53] I kind of tried to purge that from my mind, but I will talk about it in as much as I can remember it. Just something about how they would call them so called transsexuals. I think that's the first instance where I heard this phrase so called was the miracle of forgiveness. And they talk about, like, women who think that they're men or men that think that they're women or these so called transsexuals. And I'm just like, what? And then there was this giant chapter about the crime against humanity. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, what's this? Clearly, I'm not fitting all these other roles. So if you think that because I don't fit this other slot of existence, that I then inhabit this slot of existence that's pedophile and a social demon and someone that should be drowned in the depths of the sea with the millstone around their neck, holy crap. Thanks a lot, Prophet Kimball. Because at the time, Spencer W. Kimball was my prophet. These messages are extremely damaging. They strip away any sense of self worth. They strip away any sense of self value. They lay a layer of questions about deity. They lay on top of a layer of questions about prophecy. They lay a layer of question about validity of all the things that I've learned. And they just put the gospel truths inside this bubble of just layers and layers of things that I knew weren't true. You can't say these things about me because I'm 15 and I've never seen another person naked other than in gym class. I've never had a sexual experience with any other person, not even masturbation. So how can I be condemned to hell by somebody who doesn't even know me, by things that I've never even experienced or I've even heard about?

John Dehlin [01:04:57] So super harmful. And the stakes are so raised because we're taught as Mormon doctrine that the prophets speak with God. And so it's not just some old man spouting out an opinion. It's by the voice of God or by my servants. It is the same.

Kimberly Anderson [01:05:20] So here I am listening to these things and thinking, okay, these Is this the conference? Is this the general conference where they're going to finally talk about me? Is this the general conference where they're finally going to talk about things that give me a glimmer of hope into my path through this world? Six months. Nope. Six months. No, no, no, no. Year after year after year, and I'm like, what? God is really trying my patience.

Guest [01:05:49] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights.

Kimberly Anderson [01:06:12] When with the the wounded heart, anger or mouth, I draw myself apart, searching my soul.

Part 2 of 4 · Ep. 736

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

Kimberly Anderson [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom Lead thou me on. The night is dark and I am far from home. And at this point, you know, I decided to go on a mission. I did have a really, really good cultural experience on my mission. I had a lousy spiritual experience on my mission. But I went to South Korea, and I love. Anybody that knows me knows I love South Korea. I've been back there twice more as a journalist working. I've interviewed North Korean refugees that have escaped to South Korea. And these people's plight in North Korea is near and dear to my heart. I eat Korean food all the time. I had a wonderful I shot over 3,000 slides on my mission, which, you know you're not supposed to do. Boxes and boxes and boxes of slides. I had a great experience on my mission, yet at the same time, I was completely invalidated as a human being. I was ignored as a spiritual creature. Nothing in anything I ever. Oh, and okay, so this is kind of a fun story. I'm serving in a little tiny branch on the coast of South Korea in a little tiny squid fishing village called Jumunjin, and my companion is a Korean elder who was the branch president. So the nickname that they gave the companions of the branch presidents were or was the branch president's wife. So when I heard that nickname applied to the companion of the branch president, I'm like, oh, here's my chance to at least internally see myself as something other than male within the gospel context. I'm like, this is awesome. So, of course I had access to handbook number one and habit number two, because those things were out and available. And so I started reading about, you know, what's going to happen to me, what could possibly be the extension of my church activity, you know, should I choose to pursue other gender options. And the things that were in the handbook weren't very pretty, especially within the context of somebody trying to desperately make this all work.

Language, Attraction, and Identity in the 1980s

John Dehlin [00:03:00] So did you even have the language in the 1980s to think of yourself as transgender? No. So you weren't when you were, like

Kimberly Anderson [00:03:11] trying anything else, of any other identities.

John Dehlin [00:03:14] How did you think of yourself then? Let's just say you're. You're 17, 18, 19. You didn't think of yourself as, oh, my gosh, I'm transgender. I really. I really identify as female, but I was given this male identity. How would you have described your situation?

Kimberly Anderson [00:03:32] So I would describe my situation as learning about transsexuals and cross dressers and transvestites through media such as the Phil Donahue Show, Sally Jesse Raphael, and those people were. And I call them those people. This is how deep the transphobia is in me. I would look at those people and I would say, that's not me. I'm not a freak. I'm not a circus performer. I'm not an act to be examined inside of a fishbowl. I just want to live my life. I don't want to go on a TV show and prance around wearing weird clothing. So I really distanced myself from any of those identities. I just saw myself as a normal human being that probably should be living their life as a woman and not as a circus freak. Now, clearly, my attitude towards the transsexual community, the transgender community, the transvestite community, the cross dressing community, and the drag community whose I've all thrown under the bus just there, Those attitudes have changed tremendously. But as a young teenage boy, I was scared to death of them. Terrified.

John Dehlin [00:04:40] Okay, so you weren't at that point, like, oh, no, you didn't have the language of the vocabulary. Okay, really quick. So it sounds like in your personal prayers with Heavenly Father, there wasn't enough communication for you to feel like you developed much of a relationship. True.

Kimberly Anderson [00:04:57] I feel that God let me down.

John Dehlin [00:05:00] Okay, you were trying to get communication, just nothing was coming.

Kimberly Anderson [00:05:04] Yeah, you know, I'm doing all the things I'm supposed to do and pray, and there's just like this big empty spot in the universe that God's supposed to inhabit, and I don't see him there. I don't feel him there.

John Dehlin [00:05:13] And did you. Was there even a miracle you would have asked for at the time? Did you have the language or self concept, even have a miracle you could hope for?

Kimberly Anderson [00:05:21] Like, yeah, dear God, please let me wake up tomorrow as a girl.

John Dehlin [00:05:25] That's what your prayer would have been all the time. Okay, that was your prayer all the time. Really quickly, were you ever attracted to males or females during sort of your adolescence up through your teen years?

Kimberly Anderson [00:05:38] So that's actually pretty interesting. I felt a deep fascination with women, mainly because they were my template. They were my.

John Dehlin [00:05:48] You wanted to be.

Kimberly Anderson [00:05:48] Yeah. They were my workbook. They were my way to kind of figure out how I felt I was supposed to be. I hung out with as many guys as you could ever want to. I was never attracted to a single one of them. If any of them are watching now. Sorry, guys. I was never attracted to men. I was attracted to women in that they were these fascinating creatures that I wanted to learn more about. So I didn't even give myself permission to even think about being attracted to men. Not only that, but it just wasn't there. It just doesn't exist.

John Dehlin [00:06:23] So even sexual attraction towards women, it sounds like you may have just kind of been shut down sexually. Is that fair to say? Or. As a teenager, you know, I think

Kimberly Anderson [00:06:34] I did probably have romantic inclinations. I had girlfriends and, you know, we made out and we had fun doing those kinds of things. I don't know if I ever identified as a lesbian, though.

John Dehlin [00:06:49] But even though.

Kimberly Anderson [00:06:49] Even though internally, I guess if you think about it, I'm identifying as a female, I'm having romantic attractions to women, then clearly I am a lesbian. But that didn't even enter my framework.

John Dehlin [00:07:00] You did date women. And you.

Kimberly Anderson [00:07:02] Tons of women.

John Dehlin [00:07:03] And you made out.

John Dehlin [00:07:04] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:07:04] Okay, cool. Again, this isn't me trying to get scurrilous details, just trying to understand what you were experiencing internally.

Kimberly Anderson [00:07:11] No, no. And I don't want to make light of it because this is a chance to educate.

John Dehlin [00:07:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Another question really quick. It was my inclination when I've met some trans individuals to go, what was your name before? And what I think I've learned is that that's not just something you just ask, that there are sensitivities around asking about what someone's name was. Will you talk about that sensitivity then? You don't even have to talk about your name if that's something you don't like to talk about.

Kimberly Anderson [00:07:47] Well, I'll talk about. I won't give you my dead. It's called a dead name because that person is now dead. And that's kind of a. It's a really harsh. It's a really harsh name for that name. I don't like the phrase dead name, but that's really kind of what it is. The reason I don't like that phrase is because I want my children not to think of that person as dead. I want my children to think of that person as me, but in a different wrapper. So I don't really like the name or the Word dead name. But that's what it's called. A lot of times. The dead name within a transgender person's experience will be the only name that you're known by officially. By the state, by local governments, hospital records, dental record, dental office. So you go to your dentist and you. Or your hospital, you go to see the doctor, and they call out your dead name, and you're like, oh, I am really attached to that name. So that dead name can be super, super triggering. Yeah. Don't never ask a trans or an intersex person that's changed their identity. Never ask them their dead name. It's super, super personal. My dead name plays an interesting role in my church membership. And I don't know if you want to jump into that now or if you want to wait and do that later.

John Dehlin [00:09:10] Regarding the temple and stuff, you mean.

Kimberly Anderson [00:09:12] Well, not. Not necessarily the temple, but in terms of resignation.

John Dehlin [00:09:14] Oh, no, let's not talk about resignation yet. But it's good. It's good to just know that. Just basic thing.

Kimberly Anderson [00:09:22] Yeah, the dead name is. A dead name is a super sensitive topic. The other thing that's super sensitive is. Can you still talk in your old voice? Oh, I'd love to hear your old voice. Could you just please talk to me?

John Dehlin [00:09:35] Don't do it.

Kimberly Anderson [00:09:35] Please. No, just don't do it.

John Dehlin [00:09:39] Now, I will be. And we'll be getting lots of stuff towards the end, just about rules and norms, but are there sensitivities around talking about your. I don't want to say your former self, even. So here I am just trying to figure out how to talk. Like, if I were to say, how did that boy feel? Is that appropriate?

Kimberly Anderson [00:10:02] I think so.

John Dehlin [00:10:02] What's the appropriate way to refer to your life when you were presenting as male?

Kimberly Anderson [00:10:08] I think in this context, it's completely appropriate. Absolutely appropriate. But I think in the future, for people that are watching now and people that will watch later, I think it's something that you really need to address openly with the person you're speaking with. How would you like me to talk about your former life? How would you like me to refer to that person that you came from? How would you like to do I. Can I give that person a name like Henry? Can I give that person a name like Jack, or can I give that person a name like X, you know, or Mr. X or Ms. X or whatever? You know, let that person you're speaking with guide that discussion. That's really, really critical to kind of give them the power to allow you to refer to their Old self in the way that feels comfortable to them.

John Dehlin [00:10:56] Got it. Okay. Brilliant. Okay, so there is one question from our listeners that I think is really good. There's several, actually. So listeners, feel free to type in questions or comments. So many people are saying things like, thank you for sharing your story, that people are loving this. Bethany writes, you're a beautiful soul. Haley writes, wow, so much knowledge. Brandy writes, love you and your bravery. Darian writes, so articulate, so beautiful. Such an incredible wealth of knowledge. Tons of positive comments. Let me just share Meg's question because it ties into what we're talking about. She says, kimberly, I've only known you as who you are, and that is as a beautiful, amazing woman. I find myself having a hard time imagining my trans or intersex friends any other way than who they are and always have been. And then this is her question. Do you feel that this is insensitive? And I think what she means is insensitive to your former self. Let me finish that sentence. Do you feel like this is insensitive? Am I erasing the past? Do you know what she means by that question?

Kimberly Anderson [00:12:19] Who asked that question?

John Dehlin [00:12:20] Was that Meg Megab Howe?

Kimberly Anderson [00:12:22] Yeah. Do I think that's insensitive? No, I think it's incredibly sensitive.

John Dehlin [00:12:31] What's she getting out there?

Kimberly Anderson [00:12:32] I think what she's getting at is she wants to acknowledge that you came from a place that they don't know, that the things that you did and lived and experienced as a form or iteration of yourself, those things are incredibly valid to who you are as a person today. And so I think what she's asking is, how can I? You know, I only see you as this person now, yet I know that you had such a rich experience as a former person. How can I honor that former person? Or do I dismiss that former person by not seeing them now? I think that's what she's asking. I know Meg's heart, and nothing in that question is insensitive. You know, it's funny with. And I'll just speak to my own experience, which really. And this is kind of all you can do. I'm only one individual that's only lived one life with two versions of it. Well, more than two versions, but we won't get into that. My career as a photojournalist, my career as a fine art photographer, my career as an educator, university professor, it was all under my dead name. All my publications, all my citations, all my research, everything that was done prior was in a different name. So, you know, here I am now, living as openly as a woman with a completely new name. I changed both my first and my last name, and we can talk about names later. So how do I access this former person? I was published on the COVID of Dialogue as my old name, and I'm published on the COVID of Dialogue as my new current name. I don't know that anybody else has been able to say that. I've also been collected by the BYU Museum of Art. They commissioned a significant piece from me that took over a year to complete, and I published that under both names. And that body of work is in the special collections at BYU in the Museum of Art. So if a diligent viewer wants to know my dead name, I encourage them to go to byu. Go to the Museum of Art, look for Kimberly Anderson's Great Salt Lake Project, and they will learn a lot about who I am as an artist and. But also who I was before. And then you can Google and find out things. Kind of bringing it back to Meg's question, though. Is it insensitive? I think it's only insensitive if it comes from a heart. That's insensitive. I think it's insensitive if you're. If you're looking to ignore or dismiss that former person as an act of hostility. I would never consider it insensitive if you're doing that because you are honoring the current version of that person. For a long time, I was afraid to death of people finding out about this former version of me. I'm still afraid of that. I have a lot of people in my life that I've never talked about this with, like hundreds. My next door neighbors don't know this about me. I've never talked to them about this. It's just not a thing that I talk about now. If they thought or they've figured it out, whatever that means, or if they've had thoughts about it or, you know, that's great, but it's never been brought up to me as an issue by anybody now. So if they know they're choosing to honor my current self, if they don't know that, that's fine too. I don't think. Boy, I'm dragging this way out.

John Dehlin [00:16:19] Oh, that's great. That's great.

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:21] And Jake, by the way, Jake, Meg's husband says he loves you too.

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:27] I miss you guys.

Mormon Theology and Its Conflict with Gender Identity

John Dehlin [00:16:29] Okay, so it's fair to say that then and now the Mormon plan of salvation has no place for gender fluidity or changes in gender, any of that sort of sense. So without talking about now, it's pretty clear that you probably had a hard time placing yourself in the plan of salvation, even as a Mormon missionary. Is that true?

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:55] Absolutely. And I think there's an interesting story, and I won't, you know, divulge too much, but I remember laying in bed after I was married, laying in bed with my wife on my back, just talking to her about stuff, as, you know, couples do. We were talking about my situation and I came out to her 100% disclosure before we were married. So she knew this was a thing in our relationship and we dealt with it in many ways. But I remember laying in bed with her staring at the ceiling and talking about polygamy. And Carolyn Pearson's book the Ghost of Eternal Polygamy made me remember this story. How has polygamy affected my life being raised and living most of my life as an LDS man? Well, polygamy affected my life because I saw, excuse me, my only avenue was possibly being assigned female in the hereafter. And since I was sealed to my wife, maybe I will be sealed to her as a sister wife in the eternities. That was the only way that we could make sense of what was going on with me and have it fit within the gospel context. It was just like I'd sliced it a million ways from zero and that's it. That's the only route I had.

John Dehlin [00:18:15] Crazy.

Kimberly Anderson [00:18:16] Ironically, the planet.

John Dehlin [00:18:18] Well, I don't mean that the theology is crazy.

Kimberly Anderson [00:18:22] Yeah, okay, I could add some words to that, but I won't because I'm polite and I love my. I love my tbm. I'm not saying this sarcastically. I love my believing friends. I really honestly do. And they know that. The thing about the plan of salvation that's interesting to me is the very last Sunday school lesson I ever taught. I taught it about the plan of salvation. And I challenged my class of 17 and 18 year olds to use all the resources that they had at their disposal to try and find out all the components of the plan of salvation. Where are they? We know the chart, the pre existence, the veil, the earth, the da da da da and the three and the thing and the staircase. And I said, let's find where in the scriptures all these components exist. Ready, set, go. And they could use their iPad, their phone, the media center to get their. They can do it. That night I had a meeting with the bishop with my wife and I took my temple recommend out and I slid it across the table to him and I said, bishop, I'm done. I said, you need to release me. And here's my temple recommend, because none of it's true. And that was kind of. That was kind of the first time where I was in the face, so to speak, of any of my church leaders as far as resigning. You know, several. A couple of my bishops, we talked about things, and I'd been outed in one of my wards by a. By a ward member. And so that was kind of brought to the front.

John Dehlin [00:19:53] Hey, Kimberly, I don't want to jump over important parts of your story, so can we.

Kimberly Anderson [00:19:57] Oh, sorry, sorry.

John Dehlin [00:19:58] Can we jump back and then come back to this?

Kimberly Anderson [00:20:00] Oh, let's jump. Let's jump.

Serving a Mission While Suppressing True Self

John Dehlin [00:20:02] Okay, so you're. So I just wanted to know that. I just wanted to know how ironic it must have been to be a missionary and you're teaching the plan of salvation, but you don't know your own place. That was my.

Kimberly Anderson [00:20:15] Oh, yeah. So thank heavens I was in South Korea, where I didn't have a chance to convert billions of people.

John Dehlin [00:20:20] Right. You're just taking lots of photos. Exactly, yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:20:22] Eating lots of kimchi.

John Dehlin [00:20:24] Okay. And. Okay, so you did serve a mission. Anything else? You want to talk about your mission as it relates to your experience? Before we kind of move on to post mission, we cover the main stuff as it relates to your story.

Kimberly Anderson [00:20:40] You know, I think the only thing that. Oh, so this is interesting, actually. I never wore a suit my entire mission. I wore slacks and a tie, cardigans. That was my gender rebellion. If you have a photograph of me on my mission wearing a suit jacket, I will give you $1,000. That picture does not exist. And one of my cardigans was even pink. So that's how far I went to

John Dehlin [00:21:09] Rebecca, were you ever bullied either in high school or on your mission, Were you ever bullied?

Kimberly Anderson [00:21:14] You know, so that's interesting. An interesting question.

John Dehlin [00:21:17] We had.

Kimberly Anderson [00:21:18] My family had really high social stature. I was well respected as an individual, and the things that I was able to accomplish, and I was able to keep my head down. So, no, I was never bullied openly, but I did have one extremely traumatic experience in Scouts that involved hazing that I don't talk about openly, but I have shared in private.

John Dehlin [00:21:42] But that wasn't necessarily because of perceptions they had about your gender. Gender identity.

Kimberly Anderson [00:21:47] Well, that brings an interesting psychological component into bullying. Who do bullies pick on? Do they pick weak? Do they pick on the different. Do they pick on those that are perceived as being bullyable? You know, how do you. How does a bully select their target? So I don't. I don't know if gender or sexuality played into the bullying aspect of that. I don't know the answer to that question. All I know is that I was never sexually assaulted, never physically assaulted, never, never picked on.

John Dehlin [00:22:15] I do remember you mentioning me, I think, at lunch, that you did. You did play basketball, at least. At least a little bit. So you. You had at least some athletic abilities, some physical stature. You know. You know what of what people would have expected for a man, I guess

Kimberly Anderson [00:22:32] you could say, well, I was tall and I could pass. I was not a selfish basketball player. And so I was good in practice. Yeah, I sat the bench, I rode the pine, a lot of games and decided not to continue. I made the varsity team as a junior, and I didn't even try out. That's how desperately they needed me for the practice team.

John Dehlin [00:22:55] Okay, but as far as you're aware of never explicitly bullied for your gender identity or any of that sort of thing?

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:04] No, no. Which, again, is quite remarkable either. That speaks to the community that I grew up in as being somewhat. I grew up in a good place. I grew up in Cache Valley in the South. Now, some people didn't have such a great experience, but I have to say, in all honesty, it was a good way to grow up. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:24] Okay, so when you. So you come home from your mission, where'd you go to college?

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:31] Utah State.

John Dehlin [00:23:32] Okay, so you're an Aggie twice over.

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:33] I'm a boomerang Aggie.

John Dehlin [00:23:35] All right. And so what did you. Did you hope that. You know, a lot of LGB people go on their missions thinking God's going to fix. Fix them. I never get a sense that you wanted God to make you stop feeling like you were female. Is that true?

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:55] No. I never asked for that.

John Dehlin [00:23:56] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:57] I never asked for those feelings to leave. I only asked for the miracle of the universe to transform me into the person I should have been.

John Dehlin [00:24:04] Okay, so that's a different dynamic than wanting to be changed.

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:08] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:24:09] Wanting to undo who you felt you were, which is what many LGB people end up asking God to do. Yeah. Okay, so when you leave your mission, do you have this sense of. I was hoping for some change that didn't happen. Did you have that type of feeling that LGB people sometimes have?

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:28] I don't know if I had that feeling or that expectation, but I certainly thought that if this was. This was the chance to do it. Here I am two years in the service of the gospel, in the service of the church, and the service of God. If God's gonna fix me, here's his chance.

John Dehlin [00:24:43] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:44] Some people might say you didn't pray enough. You didn't fast enough. And to them, I would have differing things to say, but, you know, God had his chance, and God. God didn't take his chance with me.

John Dehlin [00:24:54] Right. Were you. Were there ever times on your mission where you. Other than, like, the cardigan, where you had this deep desire to dress, to kind of dress as female, or did you just kind of focus 24 7. But. But you would never. Were. There were never opportunities to actually do that? Is that right?

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:15] Like, yeah, I would say living in. Living in the missionary apartments in Korea. It's very cramped. It's very small. Your life is very. Your life is quite public.

John Dehlin [00:25:24] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:25] So the only way that I could. Excuse me. Whoa. The only way that I could really connect with the feminine side of me would be to have really good relationships with the sister missionaries, which I loved. And I. I have friendships with many of them now.

John Dehlin [00:25:46] Sure, sure. Okay. So when you get off your mission, you said that your shelf kind of broke with your patriarchal blessing and just God not appearing a God, appearing indifferent or apathetic or not in the know. But by the time you got off your mission, was your testimony strengthened, weakened? Was it over? How would you describe your testimony once you got off your mission?

Kimberly Anderson [00:26:12] Desperate.

John Dehlin [00:26:14] Desperate. Take action.

Kimberly Anderson [00:26:16] I had a desperate testimony because I knew that I was kind of in this slot of church membership. I wanted to make sure that I was able to, you know, kind of live a normal life. I knew what was expected of me as far as my family was concerned, my parents certainly. So I was desperate to have a testimony, and it just didn't come.

Returning Home, College, and Pressure to Marry

John Dehlin [00:26:43] So what would have been expected of you would be to go to college and marry a woman since you were at least emotionally and spiritually attracted to women. I imagine that wasn't a repulsive idea to you.

Kimberly Anderson [00:26:57] No, not at all. In fact, I met many, many, many wonderful girls in college. Not that I was a player, but I had some deeply profound, loving relationships with some girls in college, several of which I'm still friends with today. But I would fall in love. I would fall in love. Now, this is an interesting concept, and I find myself squirming in the moment, talking about love, because I don't know that I fully understand what love is, especially within the context of kind of my journey. But I found myself wanting to marry several different women. And then I found myself coming to the realization that, okay, this is a significant part of who I am. This is never going away. This cannot be cured. It can't be treated. And I'm not gonna be able to hide it for the rest of my life. So I really owe it to these women not to ruin their lives. So I would get really, really close, really, really close to marrying or even asking these girls or even thinking about asking these girls to marry me. And then I would chicken out out of respect and honor to the rest of the rest of their life. I didn't want to. I didn't want to. I didn't want to ruin their life. I didn't want to ruin the children's lives that we would have. And that is not to say that I feel like I've ruined my former spouse's life. I certainly. I certainly don't think that I've ruined my children's life, and I certainly don't look at my marriage as ruining my life because.

John Dehlin [00:28:42] But at the. But at the time.

Kimberly Anderson [00:28:44] Mm. At the time, I was terrified of getting married because I was terrified of burying me for an indefinite period of time, and I was terrified of ruining their lives, the women.

John Dehlin [00:28:58] So you would get close to you getting close to engagement or engaged?

Kimberly Anderson [00:29:02] Never got engaged. Never got engaged.

John Dehlin [00:29:04] Got close to engagement, and then you would bail in the relationship?

Kimberly Anderson [00:29:06] I bail. And I hurt some people by doing that.

John Dehlin [00:29:09] Sure.

Kimberly Anderson [00:29:09] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:29:11] And how. What did you pursue academically at Utah State?

Kimberly Anderson [00:29:16] So I was a music sterling scholar at my high school, and so my mother. In trombone and trombone. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:29:21] Nice. So you played. Did you march with the Aggie band?

Kimberly Anderson [00:29:24] I never marched with the Aggie band, although I played in the Bee jazz band, the Tuesday Thursday band.

John Dehlin [00:29:29] Fun.

Kimberly Anderson [00:29:30] Which was a. I miss being a musician tremendously.

John Dehlin [00:29:36] So someday I want to see you play the trombone.

Kimberly Anderson [00:29:40] You'll have to talk to Karen Penman about that because she has my trombone, and I think she sold it.

John Dehlin [00:29:44] Oh, no. Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:29:45] But I can. I'm sure we can dig up a trombone somewhere. Yeah. I was Allstate in every. I marched in every band you could possibly think of all through high school. I was in the Lagoon show band for a summer, a highlight of my.

John Dehlin [00:29:56] Oh, wow. Cool.

Kimberly Anderson [00:29:57] So fun. So much fun. So I thought about going into music. By this time, I had been a photographer in the school newspaper, the school yearbook for three years. And so I kind of had a choice to go into photography or into music. And I kind of looked at the career path that I wanted to choose, and I chose photography. I also looked at the career path that I wanted my mother to have the least influence in. And so I also chose photography kind of as a way to distance myself from my mother. And that might sound mean, but I really wanted to be my own person. My dad really wanted me to go into agriculture and go into animal science or some form of working with animals or horses. That didn't appeal to me at all. So I enrolled at Utah State, right, immediately after high school. I convinced my parent to let me defer admission for a school year. And I went to two quarters of Utah State. And then I did my third quarter. I was an intern as a photographer at the Tooele Transcript Bulletin, a newspaper in Tooele, Utah. And by then I'd had a full year of photographing for the Statesman for the Cache Citizen, which is the old Cache Valley newspaper, student run newspaper. I don't even know if it's still in existence anymore. And I'd worked as a stringer for Associated Press. I worked as a stringer for the Tribune of Deseret News and then worked as an internal for the Transcript Bulletin. And I was a photographer. And then I went on my mission.

John Dehlin [00:31:26] That was before your mission, right?

Kimberly Anderson [00:31:28] That was all before my mission, Right. So on my mission, I took a Nikon F3. I took a Nikon FM2. I took 105, 1.8, I took a 300. I took a Strobe. I basically had my newspaper kit with me on my mission. And I shot Fuji Provia and Velvia and 100d and 400. These are old films that don't. They no longer exist. I shot roll after roll after roll after roll.

John Dehlin [00:31:53] Excellent. So cool.

Kimberly Anderson [00:31:56] It was how I survived my mission, quite frankly.

John Dehlin [00:31:58] Yeah, I can imagine. And so you carried that into your time at Utah State. It was journalism as a major, but photography was your thing.

Kimberly Anderson [00:32:08] And I went through all those courses and I realized there was more to being a photographer than being a newspaper photographer. So I actually changed my major to fine art and I finished the fine art courses and I graduated with a bachelor of Arts in 95.

John Dehlin [00:32:20] Okay. All right. And so you graduated single, not married?

Marriage, Family Life, and Ongoing Concealment

Kimberly Anderson [00:32:26] No, we actually got married in December.

John Dehlin [00:32:29] So tell us about meeting your. Your former wife.

Kimberly Anderson [00:32:34] So she was a childhood friend, a long, long, long time childhood friend of one of the sister missionaries that was on my mission.

John Dehlin [00:32:41] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:32:43] So we. I was invited to a party at the graduation party for a friend at the University of Utah. And I went to meet this girl that was on my mission to just kind of be there and hang out with her. And this friend's friend was at this party, and I'm like, whoa, there's something. There's something rather amazing about you. And we sat, as we do in Mormonville, we sat till two in the morning just talking about life. And I think probably the only time I ever heard God speak to me and this isn't too personal tonight. And she knows that this happened, so I'll share it. I remember taking her home to her parents house. She still lived at home. She was a student. BYU student. No, she had graduated and she was working. That's right, she graduated from BYU and she was working and she was living at home. And I took her to her house and she got out of my car and she walked into her house and as she's opening the screen, I'm seeing it right now vividly as she's opening the screen door. Something in the back of my head said, that's the girl you're gonna marry. And I'm like, well, where you been?

John Dehlin [00:33:50] So you felt like that was kind of divine.

Kimberly Anderson [00:33:54] It was something. It was, it was the only time in my entire life I've heard God say to me something specific.

John Dehlin [00:34:01] Okay. And so you, in spite of all this, there was never a point where you felt like marriages is something that I'm going to be able to enjoy. You sort of just said it's going to happen. I just don't know with who. And how is that exactly? Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:34:16] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:34:17] Well that's, I mean that's a benefit, I guess, over what many lg Mormons probably fear. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:34:28] Well. And I knew I had the luxury of living as a man so I actually could get married to the person I wanted to because same sex marriage back then was not even. Well, I mean it was dreamt of, but it wasn't even in the conversation.

John Dehlin [00:34:39] Right, right. So did you. So you guys just had a normal courtship and fell in love, Is that fair to say? Or was it not a normal courtship?

Kimberly Anderson [00:34:47] Oh no, it wasn't normal because I got terrified two or three times

John Dehlin [00:34:52] of that. All that conversation of the ultimate eventual.

Kimberly Anderson [00:34:56] Eventuality that we could ruin each other's or I could ruin all of our lives.

John Dehlin [00:35:00] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:35:01] And I remember sitting with her up above the Capitol and on Enzyme Peak and talking about this very openly, very candidly. And we said, okay, well let's, I think we can make this work. Let's move forward.

John Dehlin [00:35:14] Do you remember? And you don't only share what you're comfortable, the types of language you would have used to express your situation by that point. Because again, in the 80s you didn't even have the language to describe what you were saying.

Kimberly Anderson [00:35:28] 90s and there's America Online and there are some transgender chat groups and things like that.

John Dehlin [00:35:34] How would you have told her the situation? How would you have described it?

Kimberly Anderson [00:35:38] I probably talk to her in language like, I'm not sure how this is going to play out in my life, but inside my core, I feel like I don't identify as a man. I think I can do this for a long time, but I don't know. There were a lot of I don't knows, and a lot of it's okay being thrown around in that conversation. Oh, excuse me. That was a quick burp.

John Dehlin [00:36:01] So she loved you and you were able to say, I look to you like a man, but inside I feel like a woman. But I still want that. I still love you, and I still want to marry you. Are you interested? Right, right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:36:16] And she said, let's do it.

John Dehlin [00:36:17] What was that like? And did she. How did she sort of. Do you know how she thought or justified in her mind, that decision? Was it just love? Is that as simple as that? Or how did she, in her mind, do you think, overcome your biggest fear that she would reject you once you told her the truth?

Kimberly Anderson [00:36:40] I don't want to tell her story.

John Dehlin [00:36:41] Yeah, that's fair.

Kimberly Anderson [00:36:45] I certainly have a lot of thoughts about that, but I don't think it's fair to her to tell her story.

John Dehlin [00:36:49] Okay. And we have.

Kimberly Anderson [00:36:50] We have talked about this actual event right now, and we have an agreement that I won't tell that part of her story.

John Dehlin [00:36:56] What was it like for you to have someone say, I love you anyway, I want to be with you anyway?

Kimberly Anderson [00:37:01] Terrifying.

John Dehlin [00:37:02] Really? It wasn't, like, ecstatically amazing. Oh, my gosh, she loves me anyway. What was it like? Why was it terrifying?

Kimberly Anderson [00:37:12] Because I knew. Well, again, adoption issues and rejection issues by birth mother. So that's still swirling around. I knew that the possibility of rejection was incredibly high. I knew the possibility of this not being something that we could deal with and handle and cope with and thrive with was a real possibility. I saw the culture was extremely negative and condescending and downright hateful. And so I was terrified. I think I was also terrified to open my heart because I knew that the pain of having that love taken away would hurt tremendously.

John Dehlin [00:37:58] Makes total sense.

Kimberly Anderson [00:37:59] So I have always been afraid of love, and I'm still afraid of love today.

John Dehlin [00:38:05] Yeah. So, yeah, you must have sort of said, even if I'm getting the thing I want most, it's probably doomed to failure. It's probably too good to be true, and I don't want to get my hopes up too much because I could be rejected and devastated. Is that fair to say?

Kimberly Anderson [00:38:26] So I would back up and I would say you used the phrase, the thing I want the most. That was not the thing I wanted the most. That was the thing I wanted the second most. The thing I wanted the most was to make it wake up magically tomorrow. It's girl.

John Dehlin [00:38:38] Right. Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:38:39] So second. Excuse me. So second best isn't bad. I'll settle for second best.

John Dehlin [00:38:45] But even then, you. You probably. There's a part of you that was already building up walls as a skeptic, that you don't want to set yourself up for failure and disappointment.

Kimberly Anderson [00:38:55] Very much so.

John Dehlin [00:38:56] Yeah. Because you've been building up internal emotional walls the whole childhood and adolescence, Right?

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:03] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:39:04] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:04] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:39:06] All right. Okay. So. But you did it. You didn't run away. You married her.

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:13] She married me.

John Dehlin [00:39:14] What do you mean?

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:18] Well, we married each other. That's not fair. We married each other. I felt like I married up when I married her. I'm going to cry. I married up.

John Dehlin [00:39:33] What do you mean by that?

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:34] I had such zero self worth, zero self esteem. And to think that someone would. Oh, wow. To think that someone would accept me, someone that I disclosed everything to. To think that that person existed at all, and to think that that person would choose me. I didn't think it was gonna happen. I didn't think it could happen. In a lot of ways, I probably thought it shouldn't happen. So, yeah, she married me. I got lucky and she married me.

John Dehlin [00:40:13] Jana. I wasn't gonna mention this until. Until that reaction I just experienced with you, but Jana wrote. You just lit up talking about her. She must be super special. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth or prime you, but that was Janice reaction as she watched you talk about your former wife.

Kimberly Anderson [00:40:35] I will never disparage her. I will never disparage her. She has a very. She's the mother of my kids. She put up with me for 20 years. She chose me when she didn't have to choose me. She chose me. In light of all of my shit, all of my baggage. I think in many, many ways, I'm probably still in love with her, quite frankly. But I know that the termination of our relationship, it was bound to happen. We have an amicable divorce. We are friends. I will go see her and stay with her at times when I'm in Salt Lake.

John Dehlin [00:41:17] Wait, let's not get there yet. We're getting there.

Kimberly Anderson [00:41:19] Oh, sorry.

John Dehlin [00:41:22] It's only because I. It's only because I want to make sure we don't cover some of the important parts of your story. So is that okay? I'm sorry I cut you off. Will you forgive me?

Kimberly Anderson [00:41:34] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:41:35] Okay, so you get married in the temple.

Kimberly Anderson [00:41:37] I'll forgive you, but I need.

John Dehlin [00:41:39] Yeah, have a sip. Okay. So you get married in the temple, right?

Kimberly Anderson [00:41:44] We got married in the Joseph Smith building.

John Dehlin [00:41:47] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:41:48] By her father.

John Dehlin [00:41:49] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:41:50] With the temple in the background. We were sealed a year later.

John Dehlin [00:41:55] Okay. Okay. And was there up until this point, had you ever had a conversation with an ecclesiastical leader about transgender sort of issues? No.

Kimberly Anderson [00:42:11] I would say no, but I would say the word F before the word no.

John Dehlin [00:42:16] Okay. Because you're not. Tell me why.

Kimberly Anderson [00:42:19] By that time, I knew that the environment was hostile. I knew that this would be something on my records. I knew that this was something that would haunt me for the rest of my life. And I also knew that there was not a damn thing anybody could do about it.

John Dehlin [00:42:35] By the mid-90s.

Kimberly Anderson [00:42:39] Oh, I buried it. I buried it. I buried. Although it's funny, when I came home from my mission, I immediately started growing my hair out. This was the era of Bono and U2 and Joshua Tree, and he had his ponytail, and I'm like, damn it, I'm an artist. I'm gonna grow my hair out.

John Dehlin [00:42:53] And that's a way to express a little bit of a female identity. Right. Okay. So you grew long hair. You realized it wasn't safe to talk about this with anyone in the church at all. Disclose to your wife, but fiance, wife, probably not a lot of other people. Probably not your parents or siblings or.

Kimberly Anderson [00:43:21] Oh, no, no, not my parents, not my siblings. No. They wouldn't find out for 20 more years or 15 more years, probably.

John Dehlin [00:43:28] Okay, so you just kept it really?

Kimberly Anderson [00:43:30] We kept a button down.

John Dehlin [00:43:31] Okay. And what was. Was there anything about getting sealed in the temple that was. I mean, I'm just guessing you're going to be identifying with Eve more than Adam. You know, was there anything about the temple, marriage itself, or the endowment that triggered you or that impacted you in terms of gender, gender identity?

Kimberly Anderson [00:43:55] I just know the sitting on the men's side of the temple and looking over at the women's side, I'm like, oh, how come I'm not over there?

John Dehlin [00:44:04] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:44:04] That was kind of. That was kind of a spiritual confirmation, I guess, maybe a spiritual confirmation bias that I needed to be over there with the girls. But I think in the temple ceremony and in the temple ceiling, specifically to my wife, I think what I identified with was normalcy. I didn't identify with Adam, and I didn't identify with Eve. I just identified with normalcy. This is what's normal for me to do. Therefore, I will do it.

John Dehlin [00:44:35] Got it. This is just me projecting my own questions. But I could imagine you hoping for when you're given your new name, that you're given a female name. Was that even a thing in your mind or is that me projecting my own?

Kimberly Anderson [00:44:52] No, that's probably some projection. I think in that moment, of course, I was 19 years old and getting ready to go on a mission, and I didn't even think that I saw the new name coming.

John Dehlin [00:45:03] Yeah, because you're not warned, really.

Kimberly Anderson [00:45:04] It's just out of the blue, I'm like, whoa, here and there and shield and oil and woo and. And then new name. I'm like, all right, this is the. This is the gig.

John Dehlin [00:45:12] Okay, Got it. Yeah. You wouldn't have been given any warnings. Really? Yeah. Okay, so you get married and what,

Kimberly Anderson [00:45:20] I have a new name now?

John Dehlin [00:45:21] Sure.

Kimberly Anderson [00:45:22] And it's mine. I chose it. And it's age appropriate and it's race appropriate and it's one I love. So I chose my new name.

John Dehlin [00:45:29] Yeah, that's the way to do a new name. If you're gonna do it.

Kimberly Anderson [00:45:32] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:45:33] So what. Is there anything you are comfortable or want to tell us about what it's like being married to a woman as a Mormon, when you feel. When you know inside you're a woman, but you can't express it? What's that? What can you tell us about what that's like?

Kimberly Anderson [00:45:52] I can only tell you what it was like to be married to her.

John Dehlin [00:45:54] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:45:56] And it was like any other marriage. It has its ups and its downs. We had amazingly incredible experiences, and we also fought like cats and dogs, or worse, cats and dogs on fire. So there was always an undercurrent that this was going to blow at any. It's like living on Mount St. Helens, honestly. It's like living on the top of a volcano that's ready to go. And I think we both knew it and we both just kind of did what we needed to do to get through our times of challenges. It was extremely frustrating for me because I felt at times that I was given encouragement early on, before we were married, that things would be different than they were and she would be a little more accepting than she was. And I didn't see that extended to me. I'm certain also that she felt that I probably extended to her promises and things that were said that I was unwilling to extend back to her. So I really want to try and treat that with a complete or as fair as I possibly can. Because as in any marriage, you know, we all have our stuff and some of the stuff is the one partner's fault and the other, some of the stuff is the other partner's fault and some of the stuff is both partners fault. So I, you know, I don't want to get too specific, but I will say being married to her was incredible, both in terms of incredibly positive for me, but also in terms of incredibly sad for me. And I think that she would say the same thing, quite frankly.

John Dehlin [00:47:37] Sad? Why?

Kimberly Anderson [00:47:40] Because I knew I wasn't realizing I wasn't able to express my full potential or my full state of being.

John Dehlin [00:47:50] So you're married in disguise kind of?

Kimberly Anderson [00:47:52] Well, yes.

John Dehlin [00:47:54] Married in public disguise.

Kimberly Anderson [00:47:57] Well, it's a very convenient public disguise because I played a very good straight man. I had Land Rovers, I was a photographer, I worked in the outdoors, I camped, I'd sleep in the dirt in the Arctic Circle. You know, I travel the country doing all these great things for these off road companies and you know, building trucks

John Dehlin [00:48:15] and

Kimberly Anderson [00:48:18] just all kinds of very male centered activities. But underneath kind of this, this person is like, are you doing this because they're hiding who you truly are or are you doing these things because you really enjoy them? And I have to say it was probably a combination of both. I still love my Land Rovers, I still love going to sleeping in the dirt. I spent 20 years photographing great Salt Lake and that's not something you do if you're afraid of getting a little dirty. At the same time, I think I enjoyed my solace and my solitude in the middle of nowhere because nobody was judging me because I was free of society. You know, looking at me and going, oh, that's a freak. Oh that's wrong. Oh that's not how that's supposed to be. So back to getting back to the idea of what it's like to be married. You know, we were in, we lived in Portland and we had a wonderful ward, we had some dear, dear, dear friends and my wife was the young women's president. And so we had these amazing young girls come into our home and our home was very open and conversation flowed very freely. And so, and I was never excluded from any of the meetings that they ever had in the home. And so I kind of felt like I was in there as kind of a quasi unofficial advisor. You know, they would ask for, they would ask questions and I would give them my opinions and my Wife never told me not to. I think she appreciated the help and the insight, and I certainly appreciated the chance to engage with, you know, teenage girls in a. In a kind of a mentoring or a parenting capacity. At that point. My children were 2 and 4, you know, 3 and 5, 4 and 6.

John Dehlin [00:50:02] So I was gonna ask about that. So you guys did decide to have children?

Kimberly Anderson [00:50:05] Mm. She had two children. We had two children. And they're wonderful kids. I love them to death.

John Dehlin [00:50:14] What are some of the issues that a trans individual and. Or an intersex individual has to think about? So not asking you to disclose anything private. Is this a space where we could just quickly talk about for people in that situation, what are commonly some of the things that have to be thought about? Let's not just have kids. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:50:35] Well, I think the problem with the question is it's not common. Every individual's choices will be completely different from anybody else's. So I don't know if you can say that there are common things through each of them. I think probably the most common thing would be whether to have children or not. Do you want to commit to this? It's way more bigger. There's my Cache Valley public education coming in, but it's way more important than just getting a dog. I think trans youth, prior to transitioning, have questions of, do I harvest eggs? Do I save sperm? Do I want to commit to freezing these materials so that I can have biological children later on? I think the intersex individual, they have a completely different set of challenges. Are they able to produce sperm? Are they able to produce eggs? Are they able to conceive and bear a child? Many intersex people are not able to do those things. In fact, most intersex people are not able to do those things. That's part of the condition of being intersex. However, that being said, there are people who are intersex who have been able to do that. Other considerations would be, for a trans individual, at some point, do you envision a transition? How are you going to explain this to your children? How are you going to ensure that your children don't reject you? How are you going to make sure that you have raised them in a way that they. They accept you as an individual instead of you as a gender or a gender presentation? So there are lots and lots of questions. Do you stay together after having children and transitioning? Can you and your spouse navigate that space? You know, some transgender people who do transition, their spouse chooses to remain with them. Their children see them as a new role as maybe mom, second mom, or aunt, or some trans women who have children. Their children call them mad. Mad like mother and dad. You know, my children still call me dad, and they're the only people I will ever let call me dad. Will never steal that from them or anything.

John Dehlin [00:52:56] Sort of male gendered. Right?

Kimberly Anderson [00:52:58] Well, they call me dad. They don't send me Father's Day cards, which is actually okay. However, they don't send me Mother's Day cards, which is also okay, because I don't want to impinge on or take away from or diminish their mother's role. I would in no way, shape or form dream of doing that. I would not. That would make. No, that's not gonna happen. I respect her role for what it was, and I respect my role for what it was, especially in their perception of what those roles were.

John Dehlin [00:53:34] But this gives us a taste for the. All the different things you have to think about when you decide whether or not to have a kid. Because what if you transition after publicly? And then how is that confusing for the kids? Can the marriage survive? I mean, it's probably an incredibly intense set of considerations. If you even want to take the time and have the energy to think through it. All right, well.

Kimberly Anderson [00:53:58] And those considerations don't just come and go. Those considerations are present. Those considerations are present. And they last and last and last in our relationship now with my family and my. I still call them my family because they're my family.

John Dehlin [00:54:14] They still exist, and we'll come to that. But in spite of all that, and in spite of just how hard marriage is, let alone dealing with the marriage, with all these other issues on top, you guys decided to have two kids. Are you comfortable talking? I think I remember at one point you referencing the birth being particularly difficult for you to watch your wife at the time conceive or bear the children. Do you want to talk about that? Are you comfortable talking about that?

Kimberly Anderson [00:54:52] Yeah, I don't want to share too much because, again, it's, you know, this is her story of childbirth.

John Dehlin [00:54:56] No, not her story. How you felt.

Kimberly Anderson [00:54:58] I can share my experience.

John Dehlin [00:54:59] How you felt watching her.

Kimberly Anderson [00:55:01] Oh, just. So there's a incredible euphoria, as any parent who's watched and been present for their children being born. Just an incredible sense of, oh, I'm gonna cry. Try to hold them back. There's this incredible sense of miracles occurring right in front of your face. There's an incredible sense of urgency. Is the child okay? Instinctively, I'm looking to see, okay, 10 fingers, 10 toes, proper genitalia is being expressed are things where they're supposed to be. So that was like my first, second, and third consideration. Of course, you know, having my wife's comfort and her needs taken care of are right up there along with the child's. And then underneath all that just amazingness is this really dark level. Should be me. It should have been me.

John Dehlin [00:56:03] What should have been you giving birth to those children.

Kimberly Anderson [00:56:06] It should have been me. Not that I want to take that away from her, of course, but. But in another realm, in another existence, in another something, alternate reality. It should have been, or it would have been me bearing those children, delivering those kids.

John Dehlin [00:56:23] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:56:24] So I'm able to compartmentalize those emotions because I don't want the amazing, beautiful, rich experience of watching your children enter the world. I don't want to. Dammit. I don't want to ruin that experience with my own shit because it's thick and it's there. But this needs to be its own miraculous thing.

John Dehlin [00:56:54] And it was hard to see someone else doing what you felt was your role. Right. Thank you for sharing that.

Kimberly Anderson [00:57:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:15] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower lights.

Kimberly Anderson [00:57:37] When with the words wounded heart, hanger or mouth, I draw myself apart, searching my soul.

Part 3 of 4 · Ep. 737

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under Support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

Kimberly Anderson [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom Lead thou me on. The night is dark and I am far from home.

Career, Children, and Coping Strategies

John Dehlin [00:00:51] So you have the two kids and you're active in the church. Your career sounds like you were a super successful photographer. Journalist.

Kimberly Anderson [00:01:01] I was a B lister.

John Dehlin [00:01:03] What does that mean?

Kimberly Anderson [00:01:04] I was never an A lister. I was never star. I was always picking up the breadcrumbs from the big players.

John Dehlin [00:01:09] No, but you told me you you did photography for Mercedes Benz Land Rover.

Kimberly Anderson [00:01:14] I did all kinds of fun jobs for all kinds of great clients.

John Dehlin [00:01:17] Give us a sense for some of the oh so drove to the top

Kimberly Anderson [00:01:22] of drove all through Canada for a week and a half photographing for Toyota and for arb, a company from Australia, and photographing for all these off road magazines. Shot tons and tons of studio product for companies that made winches and shock suspension systems and just all kinds of fun product for the off road, aftermarket off road community. Tons of stuff. A company called Warn W A R N I photographed their location work and their studio work for years and had a blast flipping Jeeps over, getting things muddy, breaking parts, rescuing people from being stuck. I flipped two Land Rovers over on their it's two of my own personal vehicles on its on their sides and having a blast doing it and just met the most amazing people and some of those people are friends now after I've gone through this transition and just had a really rather remarkably fun and fortunate career. Didn't make a ton of money. I'd like to think that I made a lot of money, but I really didn't make a lot of money. I always relied on my wife's teaching to be the steady income stream and the steady source of benefits and insurance.

John Dehlin [00:02:43] But it's no small feat to be a professional photographer and to be able

Kimberly Anderson [00:02:47] to that's the damn truth.

John Dehlin [00:02:48] To be able to be able to earn a living from your life, your passion, your art, basically. Right? How many artists get to earn a living?

Kimberly Anderson [00:02:58] Not many. And being an artist and being a commercial photographer are kind of two separate things and it's kind of. I'll step into professional photographer slash professor mode.

John Dehlin [00:03:07] Thank you.

Kimberly Anderson [00:03:08] There are two different things.

John Dehlin [00:03:10] So it wasn't. You didn't consider it art?

Kimberly Anderson [00:03:12] No, no.

John Dehlin [00:03:14] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:03:14] No, because I'm working for someone else. This is not my heart and soul being projected onto the page. This is someone paying me to do a job. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:22] Got it.

Kimberly Anderson [00:03:22] My art came much later, actually, and it was hard to make that change.

John Dehlin [00:03:27] Is it okay to call them artistic skills, though?

Kimberly Anderson [00:03:30] I think so, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:31] Okay. Artistic skills, but not your art. Okay. No, you've already referenced this, but it seems to be a very stereotypically male sort of genre, off road vehicles, Automobiles that you were kind of involved in. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:03:48] I would not have been able to inhabit that world as easily as I did if I had tried to do it as a woman.

John Dehlin [00:03:53] Yeah, yeah, Very stereotypical. Did that genre choose you, or did you choose that genre?

Kimberly Anderson [00:03:59] Well, it's kind of both. When we moved to Portland, I had an old 1966 Land Rover and kind of got in with the Land Rover club up there, and we did tons and tons of off roading in the Tillamook Mountains. And then I got a different Land Rover and met a group of guys that we modified them and changed things and fixed them and made them better. And I sold that one and got another one. And before long, I got 1,000 slides of us off roading with all this equipment. And I'm like, I should be doing something with this. So I put together a body of work and presented it to this company, and they're like, oh, let's start using you. And so that's kind of how that started.

John Dehlin [00:04:35] Got it. Okay. If you're comfortable, talk about how your desire to express yourself. Is it okay to say as a female or in feminine ways, if and how that started to manifest itself in your marriage over time, that would have been a strain. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:04:57] So I always had long hair, so that was never an issue. Always shaved my legs. Never an issue. Oh, Was never an issue.

John Dehlin [00:05:07] You always shave your legs as a man?

Kimberly Anderson [00:05:08] I always did. Always did.

John Dehlin [00:05:10] Wow. Okay. And I.

Kimberly Anderson [00:05:12] And I palmed it off, or I passed it off as me being a biker. I was a mountain biker.

John Dehlin [00:05:17] Got it.

Kimberly Anderson [00:05:18] Right.

John Dehlin [00:05:18] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:05:19] But then I got rid of my mountain bikes, but I still shaved my legs.

John Dehlin [00:05:22] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:05:24] Okay. So that. So two ways immediately, as a married Mormon father, you could still have long hair and you could shave your legs.

Kimberly Anderson [00:05:32] Right.

John Dehlin [00:05:33] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:05:36] What other ways could I do that? Within the context of passing as straight? Not much. But I started to develop a wardrobe I started to actually develop a professional network as a woman. Started taking a few small jobs here and there.

John Dehlin [00:05:56] What do you mean by that? So that's even before that. Did it start by you maybe in private, dressing a certain way? Would that have started at some point in the marriage where you would have a space where you could have certain set of clothes and dress a certain way and that was your own little private world that you could express yourself in, or did that come later? No.

Kimberly Anderson [00:06:20] So this was the Internet starting at this point. And so you start to make community and meet friends and people online and have those discussions. So that was probably the start of me developing and inhabiting a female space, was an online presence.

John Dehlin [00:06:38] That's the AOL stuff you're talking about.

Kimberly Anderson [00:06:40] Yeah, exactly. And I think that's. There's a correlation now with the gaming that a lot of trans and gender non conforming and gender non binary people will construct an avatar or create a character that's female based or female identified or female presenting as kind of an extension of who they are online. I hear that that's very, very common.

John Dehlin [00:06:58] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:07:00] But within my own space. Yeah. Creating a female identity on America Online, that was like big. That was major.

John Dehlin [00:07:06] Was that a group?

Kimberly Anderson [00:07:09] So, no, I had a. I had an old. I had a male identity that people could email me and I could do professional correspondence with as a man. Then I also created a second screen name as a woman. And so that was the first iteration of me playing with what name do I choose? How do I choose a name? What does it mean to me? Does that name fit? Right. And also meeting other gender diverse people online. And so it was kind of my first foray into a larger community, one that I was really terrified of, one that I was really at arm's length with and that I did not want to engage with at the fear of going to hell.

John Dehlin [00:07:59] Right. So I, you know, it didn't occur to me how important the rise of the Internet would be to your story.

Kimberly Anderson [00:08:04] Tremendously important. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:08:08] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you were able to sort of begin expressing yourself with alternate identities online, get to know other people, start to develop a language and a vocabulary.

Kimberly Anderson [00:08:20] Right. And start to understand who I was.

John Dehlin [00:08:22] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:08:23] Start to admit who I was.

John Dehlin [00:08:25] Right. Or acknowledge who I was to yourself.

Kimberly Anderson [00:08:28] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:08:29] Yeah. Okay. And so that would have, that would have grown over time and then that

Kimberly Anderson [00:08:37] manifestation grows into me. You know, learning about the. Learning about Nordstrom and finding about how to get a personal shopper so that person I could confide in and they would shop for me. And I would set a certain time to go and try on things and see if things would fit. And learning what size I was, learning what style I made want to occupy, just developing a very thin female identity for myself. Expressing that. Figuring it out. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:14] Without your wife really knowing you were doing this or.

Kimberly Anderson [00:09:21] Well, it wasn't a big secret. I mean, I had a space in the house where I could have my things, But it wasn't anything that we were like. It wasn't a giant. It was not a giant part of our existence. It was something that I probably and I think for. Yeah, it was something that was quiet, I kept quiet.

John Dehlin [00:09:41] It was compartmentalized.

Kimberly Anderson [00:09:42] She. Very compartmentalized.

John Dehlin [00:09:43] She knew there was this thing about you, but she probably just. I'm guessing she probably just ignored it and pretended it wasn't there.

Kimberly Anderson [00:09:49] Well, and I think in many ways, again, I don't want to tell her story, but I think my sense of it is that she, as long as she didn't see it, she was okay with it. And she had used that language. I think that she felt that it was going away or had gone away or that this identity was something that could be managed. And so I think that, I think. And I think for her self protection too. Okay, I'm gonna stop there because that's telling her story, not telling my story.

John Dehlin [00:10:20] But it would make sense if it was just sort of like every marriage probably has those things where you, you know that there are certain things that aren't ideal or that aren't what you thought or that aren't, but you just kind of focus on, you know, with confirmation bias, you focus on the things that you want and that you care about.

Kimberly Anderson [00:10:43] And you had lots of other things that were amazing about our marriage. We had other things that were issues. And so this underlying issue that's going to blow the volcano up, that underlying issue, we would just keep a lid on it. We would pretend it didn't exist. We wouldn't talk about it, we wouldn't acknowledge it. I would hide it. I would pretend it didn't exist.

John Dehlin [00:11:05] Man, it makes perfect sense. But in private, you were. It sounds like in private you were aware that that part of you was growing.

Kimberly Anderson [00:11:11] It was getting bigger. Yes, it was manifesting itself. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:14] And at some point you've got, you're learning how to shop, you're learning your size, you're learning your style, you've got a place where you have your clothes. And then I'm guessing there's a point

Kimberly Anderson [00:11:24] where, and I'm still presenting as a

John Dehlin [00:11:27] Man presenting as a man.

Kimberly Anderson [00:11:28] But maybe, yeah, in my day to day life.

John Dehlin [00:11:30] But maybe there would be times in private where you would just go ahead and close the door, lock it, and dress up how you want it.

Kimberly Anderson [00:11:36] Is that so? I think it's important to not fetishize it. Not that you are, but I think it's important for people to understand what does that mean?

John Dehlin [00:11:46] And how does someone know when they're doing that?

Kimberly Anderson [00:11:48] So for years I was like, oh, I'm desperate to just be a cross dresser, because I can manage that. Oh, I'm desperate to be a transvestite because I can manage that.

John Dehlin [00:11:56] What's the difference between transgender, cross dresser and transvestite?

Kimberly Anderson [00:12:01] It depends who you're talking to.

John Dehlin [00:12:03] Right. What's your understanding of those terms?

Kimberly Anderson [00:12:06] So the transgender component is very. It's very core. It's very. I want to change my entire existence to be a gender that I'm not assigned at birth. It's every. Every facet of my life. I'm willing to give up everything I own, everything I do, everything I am, everything I can possibly become to change, to be a different human being, different presentation. Cross dressing and transvestism are very, very close. I would say that cross dressing is the desire to just wear women's clothing, maybe in an attempt to identify more closely with women, maybe sometimes as an attempt to identify as a woman, but never wanting to give up your male identity.

John Dehlin [00:12:56] So in theory, there can be just a straight heterosexual male that inside identifies as a male, but that just has a desire to dress like women.

Kimberly Anderson [00:13:05] Exactly. And I think the transvestism, and some people might differ with me in this, but I think that the transvestism, there's a sexual component. There is. There is a fetish component, there is a sexual gratification component to the dressing up as a woman. Whereas as a transgender person, it's not about sex, it's not about sexual relief, it's not about sexual satisfaction. It's only about who I am.

John Dehlin [00:13:31] Because a trans female couldn't be straight or lesbian. Right. So it's. It's separate from sexuality.

Kimberly Anderson [00:13:39] So that's crucial to make clear that gender identity and sexual attraction are not the same thing.

John Dehlin [00:13:48] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:13:49] And a lot of people get that mixed up. It's really. So there's this. There's this chart you can look at online. It's called the Gender Unicorn. And the Gender Unicorn is something that I share quite a bit, and it has these different components of gender. There's a. It explains it very, very, very well. But yes, gender expression and sexual identity. I'm sorry, Sexual attraction are two different things.

John Dehlin [00:14:16] Got it. Okay. Very helpful. And so you're saying at the time, there was a point where you were thinking of yourself more as someone who liked to cross dress than as a. Than as a trans female?

The Weight of Denial and Desperate Suppression

Kimberly Anderson [00:14:31] No. No. I was desperate to not be a transgender person because I knew it would ruin everything. I knew I would lose everything. So I was desperate to only maybe think of myself as a crossdresser, to only maybe think of myself as a transvestite, because then I could manage it within the context of a heterosexual marriage.

John Dehlin [00:14:55] Okay, so there was a long period of time where you did not think of yourself as transgender.

Kimberly Anderson [00:15:00] No, and in some ways, I still don't. Even though here I am, I've made this gender journey. I've crossed the river from one to the other. So I am a transgender woman. I've made a change.

John Dehlin [00:15:16] And there's still part of you that. Still

Kimberly Anderson [00:15:21] part of me still. I identify as a straight. I identify as a straight cisgender woman, too. But I don't know how I can reconcile those two things in my head. It's such a. At the same time that I say that I don't know how I can reconcile them. It makes perfect sense.

John Dehlin [00:15:38] Sure. Okay. And so as this identity inside of you is growing, it grows to the point where you have Internet female. Internet identities, female clothes at home, and you're thinking that cross dressing is kind of more who you are. Tell us how it then grows.

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:03] So. No, I'll stop you there. I didn't think that cross dressing was more who I was. I knew that I was going to make a change.

John Dehlin [00:16:08] Oh, okay. You knew that was gonna happen?

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:10] Absolutely. I knew it was gonna happen, but I was desperate for it not to. So I tried to think of myself.

John Dehlin [00:16:14] You were pushing that off. You were pushing that off and trying to sort of meet the need through cross dressing to avoid the ultimate transition.

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:22] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:16:22] Yeah. Because it could ruin everything with the kids. Wife. Right, right. Okay, so talk about how it grew to the point where it started really reaching a breaking point.

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:33] Well, so I was teaching at this point. I'm teaching in the university setting.

John Dehlin [00:16:37] So you moved back to Utah or.

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:38] So we've done Portland for eight years. We've done Vegas for two years. And I'm struggling, struggling, you know, with this internal thing, and moved back to Utah, and it's starting to get crazy big and bigger than I can manage, you know? And I come to this awakening that this is really, truly who I am. This is really, truly Him. Who I am at the core of my being, inside me is completely. I'm female. I feel female. I want to express that female identity. I come to this realization that that's who I'm supposed to be. That's who I've always been. And so we're going to move on. And I started to move on in ways that I didn't disclose to my wife. I started teaching at. So this is actually an interesting component to my story in terms of the LDS Church and Mormonism. At this point. I'm teaching adjunct at uvu, Utah Valley University in Orem. And I'm also teaching adjunct at byu, Brigham Young University in Provo.

John Dehlin [00:17:41] Provo. Okay. So stuff's getting real.

Kimberly Anderson [00:17:50] So Monday, Wednesday, I'm at byu. Tuesday, Thursday, I'm at UVU teaching essentially

John Dehlin [00:17:56] similar classes on photography.

Kimberly Anderson [00:17:59] Photography, yes.

John Dehlin [00:18:00] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:18:00] And I get a call from Snow College in Ephraim,

John Dehlin [00:18:06] Eastern Utah. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:18:07] Ephraim. Well, it's central Utah. Vernal is eastern Utah.

John Dehlin [00:18:12] Okay, okay, okay. Central.

Kimberly Anderson [00:18:13] Yeah. Vernal is where my favorite person is from. From rural. Do we know. Okay, I'll stop there. Lisa Hacking.

John Dehlin [00:18:22] I love you. Yes. Lisa Hacking. I knew who you were talking about. No, Paul, too.

Kimberly Anderson [00:18:27] By the way, she burned some copies of Miracle of Forgiveness for me the other day and sent me pictures as a. Go get them, girl.

John Dehlin [00:18:35] Shout out to Lisa and Paul. Absolutely.

Kimberly Anderson [00:18:38] Lisa and Paul Hacking. And I have a thousand people I should shout out to, but I just thought of Lisa being from Vernal.

John Dehlin [00:18:44] That's really funny I mentioned eastern Utah.

John Dehlin [00:18:46] It's my own fault.

Kimberly Anderson [00:18:46] Yeah. Thanks, John. College in Central College in Central Utah in Ephraim. It's two hours from where I'm living at that point in Riverton. And so Snow calls me and I'm like, would love to. And I'm like, thinking to myself. So I accepted the teaching position at Snow contingent upon a couple of things.

John Dehlin [00:19:08] Around what year? Are you comfortable saying what year this is?

Kimberly Anderson [00:19:10] Oh, gosh, I'd have to look at my CV to know exactly what year. But probably 2010, 2011.

John Dehlin [00:19:21] Six or seven years ago?

Kimberly Anderson [00:19:22] Oh, no, no, no. Not even that far ago. Probably more like 2013.

John Dehlin [00:19:26] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:19:26] Really think about it.

John Dehlin [00:19:27] So about four years ago.

Kimberly Anderson [00:19:28] Yeah, not too far.

John Dehlin [00:19:30] Not too long ago. Not too long ago. So four years ago, you were still outwardly identifying as a male.

Kimberly Anderson [00:19:35] Hi. BYU at uvu.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] Okay. Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:19:38] And then Snow calls, and I'm like, okay, let's. I'll take this. Let's do this. But I need to make sure I can arrange My schedules with BYU and uvu. So my supervisors at BYU and uvu, they're good friends, put their heads together and they decided to stagger my schedule so I could do BYU and UVU Monday, Wednesday, BYU in the morning, UVU in the afternoon. And with the, with the agreement or with the idea, they didn't have to agree to anything. It was just that they were helping facilitate me doing this thing at Snow College. They were, it was. And they were kind. It was kind of them to do this, quite frankly. They didn't need to, but they did it. They got me on a Monday, Wednesday, so that I could drive to E from Tuesday, Thursday. So when all those logistics kind of fell into place, I called Snow back and I said, alright, I will do this, but I want to let you know some things about me. And I said, I would like to teach at Snow College as Kimberly. And she said, okay, dear, dear, dear friend from snow. She talked to her supervisors and it kind of went up the chain and it came back down. They said, we'd love to have you. And I'm like, yes. And at the same time, I'm like, oh, shit.

John Dehlin [00:20:51] You had not talked to your former wife about.

Kimberly Anderson [00:20:53] No, I was doing all of this without her knowledge.

John Dehlin [00:20:56] She was living the Mormon dream, just thinking this little thing would maybe never resurface.

Kimberly Anderson [00:21:02] And I'm thinking, all right, we're moving forward.

John Dehlin [00:21:05] Okay? And that's just hard on a marriage. Anytime there's this wedge of like two lives, whether it's anything, you know, that just makes it very, very hard on a marriage. Right. How do you be intimate with someone you're supposed to be? Emotional intimacy means you feel safe. You can talk about anything. You tell them everything. And when you're keeping things from the person you're supposed to love most, that just can't be good for marriage. But we'll jump back to that. So Sno college says yes, and so

Kimberly Anderson [00:21:39] I have to put my money where my mouth is and went down there and did it.

John Dehlin [00:21:49] So you would, would you? So on which days of the week?

Kimberly Anderson [00:21:53] So Wednesday, Thursday, I'd be at Snow.

John Dehlin [00:21:57] Would you. Would you dress before you left the home or would you?

Kimberly Anderson [00:22:02] I would, because at that point, both of my kids are in high school and my wife is teaching, so she's out of the door. And this class in Ephraim didn't start till like 11, so I had time to actually change and get ready at home, in my home, drive to Ephraim, teach, and then drive home. And then on the way home, I would find a place to change, either in the car, in a rest area. If it was cold, I leave the car running, you know, and this is kind of. This sounds kind of weird and perverse to the people that may not be familiar with how this kind of might play out in someone's life in a real life example, but it was. If I ever had a choice to use a public facility and possibly have it be a problem or use my own vehicle to change in, I always, always, always defaulted to using my vehicle. In an ironic kind of a twist that people think that trans people are trying to invade the bathrooms, Trans people are doing everything they can to not

John Dehlin [00:23:09] invade the bathrooms, to stay away,

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:13] both out of respect to the community at large, but also in protection, self protection.

John Dehlin [00:23:20] So I'm just gonna try and put on my empathy cap for a second and just wonder what this must have been like for you. Emotionally schizophrenic. Well, on the one hand, I can imagine you being so excited that for the first time in your life, you get to actually express the gender you've always wanted to express.

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:40] Right.

John Dehlin [00:23:41] So on that. And do that in a professional setting, which is, like, even probably an extra level of cool. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:49] Well, an extra level of validation for myself as a woman and as a professional.

John Dehlin [00:23:53] Right. So that's doubly powerful. And you're. You're scared crapless that your. Your wife and kids might find out.

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:02] Not to mention my students or.

John Dehlin [00:24:05] Or anyone. Anyone in Provo.

John Dehlin [00:24:07] Orem.

John Dehlin [00:24:07] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:08] Or Ephraim.

John Dehlin [00:24:09] Or Ephraim. That they won't know that. Yeah. That. That they'll just. And you're, like, having to deal with, will I be able to pass off. Will I. Will I actually.

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:18] Giant discussion. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:19] Will I give the wrong cues? Will I refer to myself as male in some way or. Or not answer to my name when I'm called? Something I'm just trying to imagine. And anytime there's this secrecy of not wanting your wife or kids or students to find out, and it feels dirty and bad. But why would it feel dirty and bad when you're just trying to be your authentic self and yet you're having to lie and hide and changing your car, like.

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:53] But by this point, John, I've had a lifetime of lying.

John Dehlin [00:24:57] Right, Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:58] I have a lifetime of being someone else.

John Dehlin [00:25:00] Sure.

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:01] So I'm. This is like my normal modus operandi. It's just what I do.

John Dehlin [00:25:06] Right. Yeah. But still, like, it must have been an intense moment for you.

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:15] Well, it's semester.

John Dehlin [00:25:19] You did it for one semester.

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:20] One Semester.

John Dehlin [00:25:21] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:22] And then I taught a summer. Then after that semester, I taught a summer semester at uvu and I kind of did a soft transition there. I was only teaching one class and I told them, I said, I'm making a transition. And then the following year, I was offered a full time lectureship position. And I went in to the department head and told them what I wanted to do, what I was planning on doing, and they were completely supportive. My immediate supervisor, completely supportive. All the faculty at uvu, completely supportive and very discreet and very respectful. And all of my students that knew me from before, because, remember, I'd had many of my students in my classroom before. I'm getting them during this transition and I'm getting them after. I don't know that I had one personal pushback to me, to my face. There was undoubtedly a lot of chatter going on behind my back. If it was negative towards me, I don't know because I never heard it. So people were very supportive and very discreet and very. They just allowed this to happen in a bubble of safety. And so I will forever be indebted to. To snow to those fabulous people there. I will forever be indebted to the wonderful faculty at UVU and those students that had me in that year or two period. They are some of my most favorite people and teaching experiences I've ever had in my life. It was a. I can't hear you.

John Dehlin [00:27:07] Oh, no. I muted for a second, so I missed, I think. I want to make sure. And I understand there was a time at UVU where you transitioned.

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:15] Yes, yes.

John Dehlin [00:27:16] From male to female while you were teaching.

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:19] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:27:20] And you're saying the students and the faculty and the staff were lovely to you during that transition?

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:27] 100%.

John Dehlin [00:27:29] That's so amazing. And these were a lot of Mormons, I'm guessing.

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:32] Lots and lots of Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:27:33] And this is before Caitlyn Jenner. Right. So this is before this issue really rose to the. Probably the public consciousness, to the level that it has.

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:43] I think one of the reasons that I was able to do that in such a loving environment with such little pushback is because I had always tried to operate with the highest degree of professionalism teaching. You know, I had slip ups and I did stupid things, but for the most part, I tried to connect with my students in a very genuine way. I tried to do the best I could in all of my teaching capacities. I went above and beyond in any chance to help and, you know, set up darkrooms or repair equipment or to procure equipment or to, you know, Mentor students away from the classroom or. I was constantly doing more and more and more and more, not because I knew I would need to prove myself, but because I really, genuinely thrived on that role as being the kind of professor that could. That knew they could make a difference. And it really helped some people kind of carve out their space in life. And so I think from the faculty, they saw that in me. The offices where we had. Our offices were very. We had little cubicles, but the roof was open, the ceiling was open. And so whenever I would be counseling a student or talking about classes or personal problems or they needed just a break or place to hang out, I always had M&Ms. I always had chocolate. I always had a listening ear. I always gave the best advice I could. And so I think the faculty that were in that office area, they saw this, and they knew this about me, and they knew that it was genuine. They knew that this was not an act. And I think as an artist community, we can really empathize and inhabit other people's space. It's just part of what we do as artists. We can see this larger picture of the human experience. And they were granting me that space or that opportunity to make that transition.

John Dehlin [00:29:44] Wow. I mean, in some ways, it almost sounds like an idyllic transition as far as the transition goes professionally.

Kimberly Anderson [00:29:51] It was completely idyllic. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:29:54] That's great.

Kimberly Anderson [00:29:54] And then. And then balance that with me having to hide and lie and, you know, change and be not this different person at home and keep that part of my life away.

John Dehlin [00:30:08] And you. And. And again, I know you don't want to tell your. Your former wife's story, but you didn't. Did you consider just sitting down and saying, listen, I need to do this. This is what I'm gonna do? What kept you from feeling comfortable doing that?

Kimberly Anderson [00:30:24] The end of our marriage.

John Dehlin [00:30:25] You just. You figured it would wreck your marriage.

Kimberly Anderson [00:30:27] I know. I knew it would. There. There had been enough language and enough messaging and enough. I had given her enough reasons to distrust me through lying and manipulation and hiding things from her that I knew that if I was going to do this, that the marriage would. Would be over. I'm trying to be as vulnerable and as honest as I can about my own misbehavior.

John Dehlin [00:30:53] Of course. Of course. Yeah. I mean, like I think we noted, you learned a lie from a very, very young age. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:30:59] But again, I don't want to. I don't want to justify that. It just became a natural way of being, a natural way of operating.

John Dehlin [00:31:08] No, that I don't. I hope this. This. This comparison doesn't offend you, but.

Kimberly Anderson [00:31:13] No, no, no, not at all.

John Dehlin [00:31:15] But like a teenage boy in Mormonism, if he's got one of those Nazi bishops that's asking him every 10 minutes if he masturbates, you're not going to just always get the sacrament taken away and have your mission jeopardized. It's a rare kid that's going to want to face that assault, be a disappointment to their parents, be embarrassed in front of their peers, get denied admission and be viewed as an embarrassment for the ward. So how do most Mormon males, young males in that situation, deal with it? They learn to lie, and they just lie to their bishop. Right. And so this is one of several instances where, because the church has policies that don't fit certain people's lives and realities, where, you know, we don't. Of course. Of course, we're all agents of responsibility and we have to maintain ethics wherever we can, but there are instances where an institution almost grooms us to be deceptive as a matter of survival. Right?

Kimberly Anderson [00:32:16] Yeah. I feel like I was groomed to

John Dehlin [00:32:17] lie as a matter of survival, Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:32:19] I certainly was. I was groomed to hide as a function of survival. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:32:24] Yeah. Yeah. So again, you probably made mistakes, and I'm not trying to justify those, but.

Kimberly Anderson [00:32:29] Oh, no, no, no. And everyone makes mistakes. Some of the mistakes that I've made have been pretty egregious. And, you know, I don't want to minimize the damage or the harm that some of those things have done. At the same time, I think it's important for people to understand that those lies of either commission or omission happen as a. As a matter of survival.

John Dehlin [00:32:53] Right? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And so was there. So how did. How did this come to a head with your former wife?

Coming Out and the Collapse of a Marriage

Kimberly Anderson [00:33:05] So this is the funniest part about all this. I'm driving to school, and my neighbor pulls up next to me in her car, and she looks over at me and I'm changed. At this point, I'm Kimberly. At this point, she looks over me. She doesn't recognize me, and I'm like, oh, crap. So I put on my sunglasses, and traffic from Riverton to Orem is really kind of busy in the mornings. So we ended up next to each other several times, and I'm like, oh. And we actually, when she was at. She was. She was going down there for a conference or a symposium or something, and I called her and I. And I. And I just said, you know, you need to know this is what's going on. And she asked me, does your wife know? And I said, yeah, she does. And I told her that she does. I told her that she knew because I thought that if I told her that my wife knew that she wouldn't go call her because she would think, oh, it's no big deal. When in reality, the opposite happened. She went home and she called my wife. My ex wife told her everything. And then I'm confronted with this completely terrible situation that I've lied to my ex wife. I've lied to our dear, dear, dear family friend who I still love to death. In fact, her husband was my companion on my mission. In an ironic way. Sequence of events, and then I've got this, the fallout. You know, what do I do now? My. My. My secret is out. So tremendous strain on our marriage. Clearly, it's understandable. My ex wife knows that I've been doing this.

John Dehlin [00:35:02] You've been doing it for at least a year.

Kimberly Anderson [00:35:04] At least a year, yes.

John Dehlin [00:35:05] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:35:09] And sometimes in secret, and sometimes in not so secret. I think looking back, I left a lot of clues that I tried to let her know this was going to happen. But for someone who's adept at ignoring things, she would not see them. And for someone who's adept at lying, she probably would see them and blow them off and not want to accept them. So, again, not trying to tell her story or put words into her mouth, I'm taking a lot of responsibility for the way that I did things wrong.

John Dehlin [00:35:40] Sure.

Kimberly Anderson [00:35:43] And one of the reasons, quite honestly, that I'm willing to kind of own up to a lot of this shit is I don't think I'm a product of my environment. You know, if we're gonna say that it's okay for Brigham Young to be a racist, if we're going to say it's okay for Joseph Smith to be a polygamist because he was a product of his times, then I'm going to justify my behavior because I was raised in an environment. Now, I really don't believe that Joseph Smith was a. I believe that he thought he was doing the right thing, and he was. And Joseph. So maybe I'm drawing the wrong analogy to throw church history into this. Maybe that's.

John Dehlin [00:36:30] But you're just saying that you. We're all products of our culture. You are included.

Kimberly Anderson [00:36:35] Well, I think that we are. I think ultimately, ultimately, Brigham Young was a racist and Joseph Smith was a lying son of a bitch.

John Dehlin [00:36:43] He misused his power.

Kimberly Anderson [00:36:44] That's exactly right. And so to the same Degree of accountability that I will hold those people. I will hold myself accountable as well.

John Dehlin [00:36:50] Sure, yeah. So when it came to a head, what happened?

Kimberly Anderson [00:37:03] Boy, I don't know if I can really answer that question. Not out of hesitancy, but kind of out of maybe. I don't remember it all clearly. I know that she had talked about getting an attorney. I know that she. So basically, by this point, I'm living downstairs. We're not in the same room anymore. She knows that this change is inevitable. We've seen it coming for a few years now, but at this point, it's really coming to a head. All the lying and the pretense and the hiding. It can't happen anymore. And it's now out there, and people in the ward are seeing me coming and going. She knows I'm coming and going. She knows I've been lying to her. And the school year was coming to an end, and I said, okay, I won't teach anymore. As Kimberly, I'll stop doing this. And what that meant to me. Oh, and this is interesting. Going back to kind of this idea of becoming better people, improving ourselves. It also shut down the communication channels in our marriage completely. We did not talk about anything like this ever again. She knew where she was at. She knew where I was at. I knew where she was at, and I knew where I was at. And the communication. We felt that the communication would serve no good. So we both just shut down. And at that point, I think that we both knew that there was no rescuing the situation.

John Dehlin [00:38:41] If I could have interviewed you at the time and asked you this question, what would you have said? If I could have said, kimberly, do you want to remain married to your. To your current wife? If you could. If she could have a change of heart, if she could theologically and morally accept this, and if she could love a woman, what would your advance have been?

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:05] Hell, yes. Sign me up.

John Dehlin [00:39:07] You wanted to stay married.

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:08] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:39:11] Okay, okay. So you wanted to stay married. You were still. You were still in love. Still am, still are.

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:25] But that puts her in a really super awkward position of responding to that question or that statement by saying, if you love me enough, why did you keep doing this? So that would be the honest answer from the spouse. If you wanted to remain married, if you love me that much, if you knew you were going to give up everything, why go ahead and do it anyway? And then the trans or the intersex person that needs to make a change will respond by saying, I was going to. I saw no other option. That's how real this is, that's how strong this is.

Reaching a Breaking Point and Choosing to Survive

John Dehlin [00:40:00] Was there a breaking point for you before you decided to start publicly transitioning where you felt like you. It wasn't sustainable? Like, I'm sure that trans kids, trans youth, trans adults, there's probably a higher prevalence of suicidal ideation. I don't know that, but I'm guessing that that might be true. Is there a sense where you just can't hide any longer or it might get really dangerous?

Kimberly Anderson [00:40:35] So having been working with the mama dragons at this point and knowing issues about trans suicide and LGBT suicide and heightened risk, and becoming very familiar with Caitlin Ryan's work at this point and being able to self regulate well enough, I knew that suicide was really not a place I wanted to go. I could see that my life was kind of developing and kind of a different purpose. And so I didn't want to. I didn't want to end that possibility prematurely by entertaining thoughts of suicide. And so having a. Having a reason to live was like, was super important. Having this project, you know, I talk about this book with my mama dragons and I say, this book saved my life. That project did save my life. And in that regard, it's a suicide prevention effort. Starting with me. It prevented my suicide.

John Dehlin [00:41:39] Right, right, right, right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:41:41] So that's why I'm such a strong advocate of sharing the mom stories, because when we find acceptance from the moms, it all trickles down. And that's proven, you know, scientifically with Dr. Ryan's work. It's proven anecdotally with thousands and thousands of women that I've never met and with a lovely group of women who I have met. So that's a super long answer to your question that I can't remember. Oh, was there, was there a break? Oh, living. Living publicly and having it be an issue. Ask me that question again and I'll see. What I didn't. What I didn't leave it. What? I didn't answer.

John Dehlin [00:42:16] No, I was just wondering whether you reached a breaking point where you couldn't remain publicly male if you just.

Kimberly Anderson [00:42:25] So what it's. What it boiled down to was I had such an. Such an outside of the home female presence that I literally had transitioned in 60 to 70% of my life outside of the home. And the only place that I had not transitioned was in the home and at church. So the majority of the time I'm teaching, I'm exhibiting, I'm publishing, I'm getting work. All that activity outside the house is as Kimberly. And then church on Sunday and Life inside the home. Excuse me. Very, very gender neutral or male.

John Dehlin [00:43:05] Right. Yeah. So it was sort of a. You were just slowly building and building in your life.

Kimberly Anderson [00:43:14] Yeah. There was a kind of a. There was kind of a point of no return.

John Dehlin [00:43:19] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:43:21] And lots and lots of people that have made this transition. That's kind of the metamorphosis that happens is you develop this other side of you, and it develops to this point where you kind of are out of control. And it has its own energy and it has its own thing that you're just kind of along for the ride. Now, not to disembody yourself from your own life, but at the same time acknowledging that, you know, life takes a hold of you and you've put all this energy into this other Persona. And so life's gonna grab onto that and take it along with life or with it. And are you gonna come or are you not gonna come?

John Dehlin [00:43:57] Sure. Yeah. And you decided to go with it?

Kimberly Anderson [00:44:01] Well, I had to.

John Dehlin [00:44:02] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:44:03] I had no choice.

John Dehlin [00:44:04] Had to. Yeah. So I guess it was just a matter of time before the marriage ended then.

Kimberly Anderson [00:44:12] Well, and like, I kind of had known for 20 years that this at some point would come to an end. And she knew that as well. We didn't know exactly the method. We didn't know, you know, specifically, you know, who would be telling us this or in what capacity that knowledge would come to us. We didn't know the extent of the harm that it would do to different people. We didn't know that we would. There were so many unknowns, but we just kind of always knew that this was in the background as a maybe, possibly, kind of should have, maybe. And then, you know, this fateful day comes where this decision is put in front of you and you say yes or no.

John Dehlin [00:44:56] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:44:56] And even though she probably said no for a lot longer than I said yes, and she probably still would say no, ultimately you have to decide who you're living your life for. And, you know, what's your hierarchy of need? Are other people's needs higher than your own? Is your instinct for self preservation greater than the instinct to serve and to subvert yourself?

John Dehlin [00:45:24] Right. And you chose you.

Kimberly Anderson [00:45:29] I did.

John Dehlin [00:45:31] Yeah. But people shouldn't. Ideally, people shouldn't have to choose between their gender identity and their love. Right. And their family and their faith. Right. Ideally,

Kimberly Anderson [00:45:49] I would agree with that. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:51] Yeah, I would have.

Kimberly Anderson [00:45:52] I would have chosen. I would have rather chosen not to have had to make those choices.

John Dehlin [00:45:56] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:45:57] But the role that was assigned to me at birth, the role that was assigned to me in the church, the role that was expected of me growing up, the roles that I ultimately realized was shown very graphically that I could not continue the role that my alternate role that I needed to pursue. That choice was made so cut and dry that I had no choice.

John Dehlin [00:46:21] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:46:23] Me personally had no choice. Now, that is not the same for other intersex or transgender people who have decided to make a choice.

John Dehlin [00:46:31] Right, sure. Yeah. And so at some point, I imagine you have to break the news to the kids. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:46:42] So, yeah, my son at this point is on his mission, and I think he'd seen some signs while I was teaching at uvu. He was attending UVU the year I was teaching, and he has told me, again, I don't want to tell his story because it's his to tell. He kind of thought some things were up. I think my daughter was blindsided.

John Dehlin [00:47:05] So they had no clue. No idea.

Kimberly Anderson [00:47:08] I think, you know, we tried to have a really open and honest household, but there were some things that we chose not to talk about. And so I think that even if things subtly had happened in the background, the ultimate epiphany or the ultimate knowledge that, yeah, your dad's not going to be your male presenting dad anymore. That think was a huge shock. I don't know if I can say that it came out of the blue, but I can say that clearly it was a shock.

John Dehlin [00:47:44] Sure.

Kimberly Anderson [00:47:45] Because that news was kind of wrapped up in this other news of. By the way, your parents are also going to get a divorce.

John Dehlin [00:47:51] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:47:52] So it's like. Oh. And

John Dehlin [00:47:56] it's like heavy stuff.

Kimberly Anderson [00:47:58] Way heavy stuff. And quite frankly, I think I put off coming to any conclusions about myself until the kids were out of high school or nearly graduating out of an effort to kind of get them in a place emotionally where they would be able to understand what was going on, you know, mentally, physically with me, emotionally with their parents. Not to say that I'm a martyr. Not to say that I'm an example of how parents should do this. I'm just saying that as our marriage organically developed and as things came to light and as choices were made and as betrayals were committed, things ultimately ended up happening the way that they happened. Could it have happened better? Who's to say it happened the way that it happened?

John Dehlin [00:48:52] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:48:53] Yeah. I'll own it for what it is and for what it was.

John Dehlin [00:49:00] And so to choose you, you lost your. The marriage to the love of your life, and you had to disrupt the lives of your kids, and that must have been terribly difficult.

Kimberly Anderson [00:49:14] Still is terribly difficult every day. It's terribly difficult every day. It's a nightmare that I gave up. Now, I hate to engage in what we call the oppression Olympics, because ultimately nobody wins that oppression Olympics. But my list is long. Of things I willingly gave up and things that were taken away from me. My list is very long,

John Dehlin [00:49:42] and not for the sake of trying to brag, but just for the sake of having people understand. Maybe. Can you talk about some of those things just so we can understand what you mean?

Kimberly Anderson [00:49:55] Well, growing up as a straight white man with education and means, you give

John Dehlin [00:50:00] up all that privilege. White, white, straight male privilege.

Kimberly Anderson [00:50:04] Now, there are some people that say that transgender people have no male privilege, but I feel like I was a recipient of a great deal of privilege. Whether we call that male privilege or not, it doesn't matter to me. I know that I gave up a lot of it was in elders quorum presidencies, I served in. I had all the callings that had all the power in the church. Gave all that up. Gave up my career as an educator. When my ex wife told me not to teach anymore, and when she. So just to rewind just a bit, when she told me not to teach as Kimberly anymore, I chose not to teach anymore. That was my answer.

John Dehlin [00:50:44] Even though you were separating or divorcing? Mm.

Kimberly Anderson [00:50:47] Even though I knew that was happening, I knew that I needed at least a year to kind of earth nine months to wrap some things up. So in order to buy me some time, I just chose not to teach. In the meanwhile, I did actually start substitute teaching in this. In the Jordan school or in the Grant or. No. What school district was I in? Jordan school district. I was subbing in the Jordan school district, and I love subbing. Elementary school kids are great. It reminded me of raising my own kids.

John Dehlin [00:51:18] But you love being a. You love being an adjunct teacher at a university.

Kimberly Anderson [00:51:22] Absolutely. I loved. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:24] So that would have been a big sacrifice for you.

Kimberly Anderson [00:51:26] And it was a big sacrifice.

John Dehlin [00:51:27] So you gave up your career. You gave up your white, straight male privilege?

Kimberly Anderson [00:51:35] Gave up my home. Gave up. Inside my home was my studio and my dark room. So now I can no longer. I'm a film photographer, so I can't do that.

John Dehlin [00:51:43] You mean you develop? You develop.

Kimberly Anderson [00:51:45] I shoot and develop my own film and make my own prints. So I need a darkroom, a large, well equipped darkroom to do that. And when we sold the house, that all went into storage so I could no longer pursue the kind of fine art photography I was doing. Gave up my marriage, gave up the close familial relationships with my children, even though we're super close now, there was a giant rift where I didn't speak with them for weeks. And that's their process to go through. And so I don't want to demand any kind of performance on their part. It's their journey, and I have to honor that.

John Dehlin [00:52:21] Yeah. Just imagine as a kid, being told, you know, your dad is transitioning.

Kimberly Anderson [00:52:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:27] I mean, that would be incredibly difficult for a kid.

Kimberly Anderson [00:52:34] So I honor their path in life and in spirituality. Both of my children are still active in the church. My son finished his mission honorably. My daughter's preparing to go on her mission to New York. And I can't tell you how thrilled I am that they are turning into the kinds of people that we raised. You know, I raised them to be these people. I raised them to want to serve. I raised them to want to improve themselves in a. In a gospel or a spiritual setting. So.

John Dehlin [00:53:09] And in some ways, you raised them to believe the LDS Church was true and that the LDS prophets spoke with God and that their policies were gospel.

Kimberly Anderson [00:53:18] That language never occupied our home, but

John Dehlin [00:53:21] that's what they're going to pick up,

Kimberly Anderson [00:53:22] but implicitly, by taking them to church every Sunday. Yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:53:26] And so in that sense, that's gonna be a dynamic, right? Yeah. Just. I mean, financially, career, marriage, relationship with kids. And then what about. What are you comfortable sharing about your relationship with your parents and siblings?

Kimberly Anderson [00:53:48] So my siblings, I haven't spoken with any of my siblings in almost two years. I spent a couple of hours with my parents at Christmas, and that was the first time I spent any time with them in two years. They have made it very clear to me that they want little or nothing to do with this new version of me. And so, again, out of self preservation, what I've been forced to do, I've been forced to adopt this idea that my bar of expectation with my family is set at zero.

John Dehlin [00:54:26] So you kind of lost your parents and siblings in a way.

John Dehlin [00:54:34] True.

Kimberly Anderson [00:54:35] But in a way, I never felt like I had them because, again, adoption issues.

John Dehlin [00:54:40] Right. But still, I'm sure there's a lot of adopted kids that still say, I love my mom and dad.

Kimberly Anderson [00:54:46] Absolutely. Now, again, I'm not speaking for all adopted kids. I'm just speaking for me and my situation.

John Dehlin [00:54:50] No, I know. Maybe that made it easier for you in some ways, but still, I mean, you. In some ways, you've lost almost everything that mattered to you. Is that. Am I over dramatizing it, or is that how you feel.

Kimberly Anderson [00:55:09] I don't know if I want to use that language because I'll cry, but that's basically what's happened. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:17] And so when someone.

John Dehlin [00:55:18] And.

Kimberly Anderson [00:55:19] And I can't use that language because I still have my relationship with my children, which is the most important thing in my life.

John Dehlin [00:55:26] Your relationship with your children.

Kimberly Anderson [00:55:27] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:55:29] That's why I said almost. But I mean, it's.

Kimberly Anderson [00:55:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:31] If there were a pie chart, the. I mean, maybe the kids is the

Kimberly Anderson [00:55:36] most important one is the biggest part. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:55:38] So it's the biggest slice of the pie. But lots of pies gone.

Kimberly Anderson [00:55:42] Mm.

John Dehlin [00:55:42] Yeah. Oh, my gosh. And so when somebody, like an irresponsible Pat Robertson or somebody is like, oh, these people just choose it. These people are just strange or something happened. I mean, what would your reaction be to someone who said, this is just choices you're making. This isn't who you are. This is just bad choices you're making?

Kimberly Anderson [00:56:11] So let's remind ourselves that it's not Pat Robertson saying those things. It's our own Mormon church leaders.

John Dehlin [00:56:17] Sorry, we don't have to go to the 700 Club, right?

Kimberly Anderson [00:56:20] No, we can go to Salt Lake.

John Dehlin [00:56:22] And so when really invalidating things are said that might imply that you would just choose to do this to yourself, what would your reaction be?

Kimberly Anderson [00:56:34] They don't have any comprehension what that statement means within the context of a real person's lived life, their lived experience. That that statement is made out of ignorance and arrogance, and it holds no water with me. Again, radical patience, holding space for people that are.

John Dehlin [00:57:01] That are uneducated, that are products of

Kimberly Anderson [00:57:03] their time and unwilling to become more educated. Huh? Now, don't get me wrong. I wake up every day raging, raging, raging, raging to the core of who I am. And I rage all day long. And I go to bed raging, seething with anger at so many things. But I take that, and I'm channeling that energy into other things that will make the world better.

John Dehlin [00:57:36] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights.

Kimberly Anderson [00:57:59] When we With a wounded heart, anger or malice, I draw myself apart, Searching my soul.

Part 4 of 4 · Ep. 738

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

Kimberly Anderson [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom

John Dehlin [00:00:43] Lead

Kimberly Anderson [00:00:43] thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home.

Faith Crisis and Leaving the Church

John Dehlin [00:00:50] Before we talk about what you're doing, about the future, can you share what all this did to your Mormon faith? And if it's a process, talk about that.

Kimberly Anderson [00:01:05] So for someone whose shelf was broken as a teenager and he tried to constantly rebuild it for 40 years, 45 years, and having it be rebroken over and over again, not by myself, but by the institution that I was trying to be part of, I honestly think that the church broke my shelf. I didn't break my shelf. The church's version of God broke my shelf. The church's version of a man who speaks for God broke my shelf over and over and over. So at some point, I'm going through the motions of church activity. I was a choir director for four wonderful, beautiful years. I loved my ward choir. We had a wonderful, talented group of singers, our ward, who gave me their best and I tried to give them my best. And the Christmas programs that we did and the Easter programs that we did are some of the highlights of my church membership. Wow. I didn't think I was gonna go there today with the choir. I love being the choir director and I was a damn good choir director. I took a conducting class at BYU so that I could become a better choir director. And my mom, she was a musician her whole life and she taught voice. And so this was part of our. This was part of our existence. So what was it like? What was that process like?

John Dehlin [00:02:33] So in some sense your shelf was breaking. In your teenage years, your patriarchal blessing, you still served a mission, but at the same time you're fulfilling callings, holding a temple recommend, being active in the church.

Kimberly Anderson [00:02:48] I was a dang good member of the church for a long time.

John Dehlin [00:02:51] For 20 plus years. You're an adult, faithful, active, tithe paying member. I'm guessing.

Kimberly Anderson [00:02:57] I started to not pay my tithing about, oh, let's say eight years ago.

John Dehlin [00:03:02] Yeah, but she did, right?

Kimberly Anderson [00:03:06] But I spent, I gave a. I gave the church, a lot of my General Electric stock.

John Dehlin [00:03:12] Sure. So did. Did you have a. Did you. During the past several years, have you had. Have you still had to go through a faith transition or a crisis of faith? And if so, what did that look like?

Kimberly Anderson [00:03:27] So my crisis of faith is a crisis of existentialism. My very being is a crisis of faith. So my crisis of faith started when I was 10, 12, 15, 18, 25. I mean, every day was a faith crisis. Now, that is not to say that I tried to make sense of it. I prayed and hoped for it to all be true. But as I would dig and read church history things, what it did is it just confirmed for me that I was right all along, that my faith crisis of my own self is independent of this other column of faith crisis that most other people experience. So my secondary faith crisis, although I have to say I did have a spiritual faith crisis. I think I remember laying on the couch downstairs and playing out all the scenes from the Willie Martin Company, which my wife's ancestors were in, playing out the scenes of the Hole in the Rock company that my direct ancestors were in, playing out the scenes of the Swedish family named Anderson splitting when the brother, one of the brothers, joined the church, and that rift in their family history. I'm playing all these scenes of pain on the ceiling of my basement all night long for two nights in a row. Scenes of church history pain and scenes of personal history pain, not to mention my own issues. So, yeah, I went through a significant moment where it was clear to me from a logistics point of view that the church was not true, that all of the bullet points that we've been taught in seminary that were tools of the adversary that Sandra and Gerald Tanner are using to take us away from the church, that all those things that the September Six were disciplined for, that all those things that taught us were church lies, those were actually all true, verifiably true. And I do remember laying in bed again with my former wife, laying in bed and looking at the ceiling laying next to her, saying, none of it's true. None of it's true. Long pause of silence. And I said, none of it's true. She said, what do you mean? And I kind of went through just two or three things. Long pause of silence. And this part of her story I will share because this is actually probably relevant to a lot of couples that are going through this. She didn't lean over to me. She didn't even turn her head to me. She looked straight up at the ceiling and she said, it doesn't matter to me whether it's true or not. And at that moment, I knew that our relationship was over. That was the moment that I knew we were done. And I think that was the moment that she knew that we were done too.

John Dehlin [00:06:30] So she. A lot of people are asking, so she remains a believer, right?

Kimberly Anderson [00:06:34] Yeah. And I support that. I'm okay with that. She actually is a quite a good advocate for me. She. She is the connection now for me with my parents. She's the connection with me now for my siblings. She's the connection now with me to her side of the family. Many of those people who I have nothing but fond memories of, many of them who have treated me nicely with kindness. My dear niece getting married in the temple next in June. She's invited me to the reception, and it can't be to the one in Salt Lake, so she's invited me to the one in Seattle. How much more accepting can you be? You know, these are people that I love dearly and have nothing but the fondest thoughts of. I clearly can't engage with them the way that I would as their brother in law or their uncle. So those relationships are broken, but slowly, those relationships are forming in different ways. And every time one of those relationships forms, I'm. To use a phrase, I'm eternally grateful because I am.

John Dehlin [00:07:39] So you have been able to maintain some friendship with your ex wife, Drew?

Kimberly Anderson [00:07:43] Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:44] Okay. So you haven't lost her as a friend, just as a partner. Mm. Okay. Well, that's. That's nice.

Kimberly Anderson [00:07:52] It's remarkable, quite frankly.

John Dehlin [00:07:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:55] That's great.

John Dehlin [00:07:56] Okay, so she remains. And I. People are asking. She remains an active, faithful, believing member.

Kimberly Anderson [00:08:03] She remains an active member.

John Dehlin [00:08:05] Okay.

Kimberly Anderson [00:08:06] I don't. I don't know. Her faith is. I don't know where her belief is.

John Dehlin [00:08:09] Okay. That's fair. Okay. And so you did have to have sort of a second deconstruction of your faith, and you've concluded, what about the church's truth claims?

Kimberly Anderson [00:08:22] It's all bullshit. Whoa.

John Dehlin [00:08:29] Care to mince words?

Kimberly Anderson [00:08:33] No.

John Dehlin [00:08:34] Is there? Is there? I'm guessing there's actually a deliberateness in your choice of words. And I guess I would ask you, now that you see the life that you've led and the church's LGBT policies, and specifically its TEA policies.

Kimberly Anderson [00:08:54] Or lack of TEA policies.

John Dehlin [00:08:55] Or lack of TEA policies.

Kimberly Anderson [00:08:56] And I think we'll talk about that a lot more tomorrow.

John Dehlin [00:08:58] Yeah. My guess is there's some anger in there about what the church does to people. Do you want to talk about that a little bit.

Kimberly Anderson [00:09:07] At the risk of alienating people that I love, and at the risk of alienating people who I want to connect with in the future with my projects. True believing members of the church, I probably shouldn't go further because I want to be a person that they're safe to talk to now. By me saying it's all bullshit, I probably just burned that opportunity moving forward.

John Dehlin [00:09:28] But talk about the pain behind it, because if you just talk about why you feel so passionately, I think that helps people understand why you would talk like that.

Kimberly Anderson [00:09:37] I've given myself up to a situation and to a system that ultimately isn't true. I've sacrificed my life for something that is demonstrably false. My life as it sits today is the result of a long, long, long series of chains of lies that were

John Dehlin [00:09:53] told to you, that were told to

Kimberly Anderson [00:09:56] me, and I retold to other people. So in many ways, I feel like I was betrayed, and I am part of the betraying. I'm working in Native American spaces for the past several years and currently now in Sacramento, and I'm tired of feeling like I need to apologize and clean up the mess that the church has created in so many spheres. I'm constantly apologizing for the Mormons. Oh, yeah, you messed up that. Sorry. Oh, yeah. You pulled people out of Navajo homes. Sorry. Oh, yeah. The people are killing themselves because they're gay. Sorry. Oh, yeah. You can't admit that there are transgender people in the church because you've only said it once verbally. Ever. Sorry. I'm cleaning up these messes all the time. There's too many messes to clean up. I'm just. I'm tired of it.

John Dehlin [00:10:45] Not to mention Prop 8 for the Californians. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:10:48] Oh, holy shit. I don't even get me started.

John Dehlin [00:10:50] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:10:51] When I saw that documentary that, like, laid out all the documents, I'm just like, this is. This is unbelievable. So we were in Utah at that time, and we were really largely insulated from what Prop 8 was all about. And I remember being at Aspen Grove summer camp down near Provo and speaking with a couple from California about Prop 8. It was that summer, I think it was going on, and we learned more from them about Prop 8 than we ever heard in church here in Utah.

John Dehlin [00:11:20] Yeah. Yeah, a lot of messes. So you're tired of cleaning up the messes?

Kimberly Anderson [00:11:26] I don't know that one person can ever clean up all the messes. I'm trying to clean up the messes that are in my immediate reach.

John Dehlin [00:11:33] Yeah. And in some sense, it's just fair to say, look at the church with compassion and say the church is just. It comes from a culture of ignorance around transgender, intersex, LGBT issues. And so, of course it's going to be ignorant. At the same time, when the church is billing itself as God's one true institution on the earth with direct communicative access to God, then all of a sudden, that doesn't match. You can't cause so much pain and collateral damage and claim that God's at the helm. Those two things just at some point, don't, don't.

Kimberly Anderson [00:12:12] Well, and at this point, I've heard enough about direct communication with, you know, public affairs, with general authorities. We have direct lines into the quorum of the 12. You know, I know that President or Elder Holland has read many of the stories from my book. The GA's have met with many of the mama Dragons and have heard these stories of pain and death. At this point, to me, it's an act of belligerence from the church. They're in active opposition to a situation that they should be extending nothing but love towards. It's an act. It's actively. It's not passive any longer, and I know too much to know. It's not passive. It's very active.

John Dehlin [00:12:52] Meg Abhow, we did an interview with Megan Jake that we're about to release, and she actually mentions in her interview telling D. Todd Christofferson that the church had blood on their hands for how they.

Kimberly Anderson [00:13:03] It's true.

John Dehlin [00:13:04] How they have mishandled this situation over the past several decades. So really quickly, what is the. And we'll talk about this tomorrow. For those listening, we're going to be having a panel on these issues tomorrow around noon, and then we're going to interview. We're going to interview at least two more people who identify as trans.

Kimberly Anderson [00:13:29] Oh, awesome.

Church Policy on Transgender Members and Its Harm

John Dehlin [00:13:30] But what is the church's policy right now regarding transgender issues? And how is it wreaking havoc in the life of its trans and intersex members?

Kimberly Anderson [00:13:43] So the church has no trans policy. The church has no intersex policy. The only thing that's mentioned in the church openly about transgender people is in disciplinary court, actions that are outlined in handbook number one. So that's the only place that transgender is even mentioned.

John Dehlin [00:13:58] Is it something like you can. Well, what is the policy? Do you remember? So isn't it that if you have sex reassignment surgery, you're subject excommunication? Is that so?

Kimberly Anderson [00:14:10] It's actually a little bit more nebulous than that. The language incorporates words such as elective transsexual surgeries and may be subject to discipline. So lots of slippery language that I see crafted by attorneys to give plausible deniability and at the same time, give local leaders the green light to do whatever they want. So there's a huge range of interpretation how that is understood. And amongst transgender people that I know in the church, that huge range of tolerance is also seen. Wonderful accepting experiences in one hand, damaging, rejecting, marginalizing experiences in the other hand, anywhere along that spectrum. So the lack of a transgender policy is actually the biggest problem. And you know the court that the church has filed an amicus brief in regards to the Gavin Grimm case. They're becoming very, very clear on where they stand as far as transgender people's existence is concerned.

John Dehlin [00:15:23] Where is that? What is that stance?

Kimberly Anderson [00:15:25] Their stance is that they should not be allowed to exist in the public space. The transgender people should not be allowed to use public restrooms and by extension, other public mixed spaces.

John Dehlin [00:15:38] For listeners who just don't even understand the basics of this issue, explain why the bathroom issue is so essentially important and what it's about, what it's not about.

Kimberly Anderson [00:15:52] Well, I'll tell you what I think it's about. And I think it's about fear. I also think it's about control from the trans person.

John Dehlin [00:15:59] What's it about? Why, survival.

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:01] It's about survival.

John Dehlin [00:16:02] Talk about that.

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:02] It's about being able to exist in the public eye and go about your day to day business and let your body function as it's supposed to function. If I talk to transgender youth all the time who go to school and don't drink so that they don't have

John Dehlin [00:16:19] to go use the restroom, go drink water.

Kimberly Anderson [00:16:22] Don't drink water during the day or before school so that they don't have to go use the restroom. I know transgender youth who are holding their urine during the school day, and that can lead to health problems. It can lead to urinary tract infections. There are health risks to this, not to mention mental health risks of having your existence denied as worthy of being recognized. It's not about safety in restrooms. If it was about safety in restrooms, a different set of laws that already exist would be more enacted, would be more regulated, or would be more enforced. It's not about bathroom safety. It's about control, and it's about the trans person's ability to exist in the public space.

John Dehlin [00:17:13] And so, and this is going to sound obvious, but let's just say a woman assigned as female at birth transitions to male. Why does she need to. Why can't she just keep going into a female bathroom? I know that this is. It has an obvious answer, but can you. Can you explain it so that someone who's not really trying to. Can start to see that point of view of why that's so important?

Kimberly Anderson [00:17:44] So let's just pretend we take the trans component out of that statement. Why is it important for women to feel like men won't enter their restrooms? So why is that inappropriate?

John Dehlin [00:17:56] So a woman feels safe if a

Kimberly Anderson [00:17:59] man does not enter the restroom. A woman should and probably do feel safe when. When they know men won't enter the restroom.

John Dehlin [00:18:06] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:18:07] So when a trans man who is a man and who looks like a man, and even if they might not look like a man, because that's this whole giant thing if that person enters the restroom. And boy, I got like five different threads going in my head, and I can just only imagine what the comments on the side are saying.

John Dehlin [00:18:31] Let's just say there's a woman who's like, I'm uncomfortable.

Kimberly Anderson [00:18:33] I'm probably not mad enough to address this issue the way it should be addressed.

John Dehlin [00:18:38] Sure, of course. And I know these are very hard questions I'm asking and kind of insensitive, but in some ways they're not insensitive.

Kimberly Anderson [00:18:46] This is in the scope of education. This is all good.

John Dehlin [00:18:48] So if a woman says to you, I'm uncomfortable with someone who lived. I'm uncomfortable with someone who lived as a man for 40 years coming in the bathroom, they look to me kind of like a female, but also kind of like a male. And they were a male for 40 years, as far as I'm concerned. And I don't want them looking at me or like, that's uncomfortable. What would you say?

Kimberly Anderson [00:19:13] Well, the first thing I would say I would address is their fear. Why are you afraid? What are you afraid of? Because maybe they do have legitimate fear in the end.

John Dehlin [00:19:22] What if you're looking at me? What if you're looking weird at me?

Kimberly Anderson [00:19:24] You know, why can't I look at you and think anything that I want? I have the right to perceive anyone the way that I want to. I don't, however, have the right to exclude people from a space that's legally entitled to belong to them.

John Dehlin [00:19:36] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:19:37] So. And honestly, the bathroom thing is so fraught with, like, quasi laws and just societal expectations that I don't even know if a bathroom law was on the books, if it could be enforced. So why is it important? Why is it so important? There are Zero instances of a genuine transgender individual assaulting another individual in the restroom. Zero. Trans people, conversely, are attacked and injured and murdered in restrooms at a disproportionately higher rate than the general populace. So the source of the fear is actually inverse of what it is publicly. It's the transgender person who lives in fear every day of being assaulted in the bathroom.

John Dehlin [00:20:29] If you, Kimberly, were to actually go into a male bathroom, I'm guessing that could be very dangerous.

Kimberly Anderson [00:20:38] Maybe. I hope not. I'm nearly six feet tall. I'm five' eleven. I weigh just over 200 pounds, and I was raised as a man, so I. On a farm, don't forget.

John Dehlin [00:20:50] No, you could defend yourself. I could defend myself. Not everyone.

Kimberly Anderson [00:20:53] Exactly. That's the difference. That's the difference.

John Dehlin [00:20:56] And so it's. It's certainly safer for you to. To go in a female bathroom than a male bathroom. Absolutely. But what's. What's. But. But it's also important to mention that it's 100% safe for a female.

Kimberly Anderson [00:21:11] I would think so, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:12] To go into a female bathroom.

Kimberly Anderson [00:21:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:14] Right.

John Dehlin [00:21:14] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:21:15] And I'm probably not going down the right road or the using the right language that you want me to, but there's no right road. Yeah. This is just a discussion. It's a conversation. I think, ultimately, what I want to do with this whole bathroom thing is hopefully help people to understand that the transgender person or the intersex person that has made a transition, all they really want to do is go take care of some business and wash their hands and leave.

John Dehlin [00:21:43] Yeah. They just want to go to the bathroom.

Kimberly Anderson [00:21:44] They want to go to the bathroom.

John Dehlin [00:21:46] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:21:47] You know, if they're peeking through the stall, call the cops.

John Dehlin [00:21:50] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:21:50] Call the security, call whoever. Slam the book on that person, because they're acting in ways that are against the law anyway.

John Dehlin [00:21:59] But in theory, a lesbian woman can do the same in a female bathroom, and a male and a gay man

Kimberly Anderson [00:22:06] can do the same thing in a bathroom.

John Dehlin [00:22:07] Or a straight man. Or a straight man. Or a straight woman could be peeking at it. I mean, what's more likely? That a trans woman would be peeking at other women or that a straight woman would be peeking at a trans woman in a bathroom.

Kimberly Anderson [00:22:22] So I'll tell you what's more likely. I'll tell you what's more likely. Your children are more likely to be abused by members of their family that they know and that they trust and that they. And that they love. They're more likely to be abused by ecclesiastical leaders that they know and that they love and that they trust. Not by transgender people.

John Dehlin [00:22:39] Absolutely. Absolutely.

Kimberly Anderson [00:22:41] That's what's more likely.

John Dehlin [00:22:42] The overwhelming majority of abusers are straight

Kimberly Anderson [00:22:45] males in positions of authority and trust.

John Dehlin [00:22:48] Right. Yeah. That's beautiful. What can. You know, I think the church's handcuffs are. Joseph and Brigham didn't think a lot about trans issues, and they didn't know about intersex issues in 1830 and 1840. And even though we claim to be a church of modern revelation, there haven't been a lot of sections added to the Doctrine and Covenants.

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:12] I've been waiting for 40. I'm 48 this year. I've been waiting 48 years for Revelation about me, and there's nothing.

John Dehlin [00:23:17] Nothing. There's just policy. There's lawyerly policy changes.

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:23] So that 48 years of silence tells me that God doesn't care and God doesn't listen.

John Dehlin [00:23:27] Or God's not in Mormonism. Not actively managing Mormonism.

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:32] I'll go there. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:23:34] Yeah.

Kimberly Anderson [00:23:35] Or take the nihilist point of view. God is dead. There's Nietzsche.

John Dehlin [00:23:40] Right, Right.

John Dehlin [00:23:40] There is no God.

John Dehlin [00:23:41] Yeah. But I mean, if Christ is all about leaving the 99 to protect the 1, you know, where is Christianity on issues like trans issues, intersex issues. And by the way, I heard someone characterize being intersex as extraordinarily rare. Talk to us about that perception that intersex is an extraordinarily rare condition.

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:12] So intersex. And I was going to do numbers tomorrow, but we'll do it today too. So intersex. And again, remember that the definition of what constitutes an intersex diagnosis is nebulous. So the number is actually also nebulous. But the best statistics that we have are it's between one in 1500 and between one and 2000. Somewhere in that range. One birth with ambiguous external genitalia for every 1500 to 2000 live births.

John Dehlin [00:24:42] One in 1500. Right. I'm going to be the.

Kimberly Anderson [00:24:45] That would be the low side and the high. Or the high side. And the low side would be 1 to 2000, which roughly corresponds with the amount of naturally born redheads in a Caucasian society. Oh, there's that word in a white society.

John Dehlin [00:24:58] Right, right, right. So it's. It's. I mean, it's as common as being redhead, basically. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:07] If not. Yeah. If not close to.

John Dehlin [00:25:10] Yeah. So that's. I mean, obviously, can you imagine, you know, redheaded people not being able to have access to certain rights or privileges or. Or full fellowship in a church or, you know, access to the priesthood or Access to marriage or a bathroom or whatever. No one would stand for it. Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:30] Or their own human dignity by escaping genital mutilation when they're a child.

John Dehlin [00:25:34] Right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:35] Which is a human rights issue.

John Dehlin [00:25:37] Absolutely, absolutely.

Kimberly Anderson [00:25:39] Which is why I choose to call myself a self actualized woman, self determined woman. Because self determination is a human right. I have the right to determine for myself who and what I am.

John Dehlin [00:25:49] Yeah. And I just wanna. It was just, I'm just gonna, we're kind of wrapping up, but I'm just gonna say that it was so hard because I didn't know how to advertise this. I don't. You know, if I think about you, Kimberly, and your story, you are a professional photographer. You're, you know, you're a parent, you, you, you taught at a university, you're

Kimberly Anderson [00:26:11] a professor at the church's university.

John Dehlin [00:26:14] Yeah, yeah. You're a humanitarian, you're an artist. Like your life, you know, you have children, you have friends, that your life is so rich that in some sense, even though this has dominated so much of your life, it's just one part of your life. And your story, your story stands as this incredible testament of courage, of courage, of integrity in many ways, of, of strength, of resilience, of love. And so I can totally see why the last thing we want to do is like. Mormon stories episode 742.

Kimberly Anderson [00:26:55] Oh, is that what I am?

John Dehlin [00:26:56] Kim Anderson, trans woman. You know what I mean? What a terrible.

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:01] Or you could say Kimberly Anderson, photographer. Yay.

John Dehlin [00:27:05] I mean, yeah, it minimizes all the other stuff.

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:07] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:27:08] Yeah. It's such a complex thing because you have this big, beautiful, huge, epic life. And here we are, Here we are just like, okay, we're gonna talk about this one thing, your gender, right. It's so, it's kind of complicated, right? And in some ways minimalizing or insulting or stereotyping. And I'm simultaneously acknowledging that and apologizing and just saying you're beautiful and brilliant and powerful, you know?

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:35] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:27:37] And so many of the people listening are writing the same comments.

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:40] Well, I love them all.

Life Today and Words of Wisdom

John Dehlin [00:27:44] So where are you now? Tell us really quickly, where are you now? What are you doing with your life now that you're no longer being a professional photographer full time, no longer a professor. What are you doing?

Kimberly Anderson [00:27:54] So, sold the home, bought a Dodge, big Dodge diesel truck. And I bought an Airstream, a 31 foot long Airstream. And I ran away from my problems for about nine months. Just drove around the country trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And Looked for an area of the country that I could live in my Airstream year round. And I figured that since I was from Sacramento and I have so many super, super, super close friends here, I would move to Sacramento and try and carve out a new life. So I'm visiting with my friend Kristin Montgomery, whose home I'm in. She and I are talking about school, and her son had just graduated from the University of San Francisco. And I start thinking to myself, you know, I've been doing all this Trevor training. I've been doing the Mama Dragon Project. I've kind of become this touchstone for LGBT issues within Mormonism and suicide prevention. And I'm starting to have a little bit of a voice, but I'm really not trained. I'm really not trained to give people the right kind of advice in the right way at the right time. And so I thought I really should get a degree in some form of counseling or psychotherapy or something. So we looked at the University of San Francisco. They have a Sacramento campus. So I'm living here south of Sacramento, about 45 minutes. And I commute into Sacramento twice a week to go to school and get my marriage and family therapy degree. I'm just finishing the first year. It's about a two, two and a half year program. And then I have 3,000 additional training ship hours, supervised training hours, and then I can take the exam, licensing exam, and then I can practice in the state of California. I will ultimately end up with an lpcc, which is a more portable kind of a form of a Marriage and Family Therapist accreditation. So my goal is to come back to Utah and specifically work within the LGBT population and their families with the youth, and specifically to be a gatekeeper within the transgender community so that I can help facilitate trans youth have access to hormones and surgeons and, you know, moving forward with their life legally and mentally as well as physically. So that's where I'm at. My life now has very little to do with photography. I will re engage with photography as time and space allows. But right now, I've just kind of shifted all my energy and all my focus into becoming the best therapist that I could be, becoming a better human being, learning from my mistakes, growing from missteps that I've made along the way, becoming accountable for my own self and working through my own inner demons so that I can be the best therapist that I can be when I'm ready. That's what I'm doing.

John Dehlin [00:30:46] And I've had lots of talks with you about psychology related topics. You're taking your training very seriously.

Kimberly Anderson [00:30:51] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:30:53] And you're learning a ton and you're going to be a top notch. Well, I mean, you're already working with Natasha as a coach.

Kimberly Anderson [00:30:58] Oh, that's right. So I'm working. I'm working with her, doing some coaching with Symmetry Solutions, for sure. I'm also working with the Sacramento Native American Health center, doing some group work with them. Plan on doing as much work within the community as I can. I met yesterday with a lovely, lovely woman from San Francisco. Her name is Erica Anderson. She's a transgender psychiatrist and professor at ucsf. And she's got some things that she's doing down in the Bay that I'm excited to work with. I'm doing a presentation in Palo Alto at the end of this month on another LGBT panel, and I'm honored to be invited to go do that. Coming to this place in your life where you've given up and you've lost everything or had it taken away from you, you kind of have to dig deep and figure out, you know, what am I about? Who is this new person and what's this new person going to do with their situation? Am I going to wallow in self pity? Fortunately, I'm in a state of mental health and mental capacity where I don't go there, by the grace of God go I. Right. So I want to be able to use my privilege as a somewhat healthy person to help those that may not be in that same space.

John Dehlin [00:32:15] Beautiful. And I think you're going to bless and change and save so many lives.

Kimberly Anderson [00:32:21] Well, if I do that, that would be wonderful. Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:32:24] I think it's gonna. I mean, it's already started with your life and your friendships. It's extended with the Mama Dragon Story project, and I think this interview is gonna extend that and amplify it. And then I think your trajectory, your career trajectory is going to just drive that home even more. So I am so honored to be a part of your story, Kimberly.

Kimberly Anderson [00:32:49] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:32:50] Small part of your story.

Kimberly Anderson [00:32:51] Well, and so the thing about the first Mormon Stories episode, that I really want to say thank you again, because part of my nine months of running around the country, running from my problems, was doing those presentations in local areas. So the ability to have that stand as a bookmark on your site takes a lot of the pressure off of me to try and do that on my own time. So thank you.

John Dehlin [00:33:15] My pleasure.

Kimberly Anderson [00:33:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:17] All right, so I'm going to let our listeners know. I want to thank everyone who's joined us live. I Don't know if you'll be surprised about this or not, Kimberly, but Facebook is telling me we've reached 137,541 people so far with over 10,000 views just from this live presentation. We've had over 31 shares. 317 comments. This is definitely one of the most successful Mormon Stories live events we've ever had. So this has really made a. Made an impact. And I think it's going to continue as we release this. But so thank you. This has been wonderful. Thanks to everyone who's been listening. So many wonderful comments. Hey. Hey, Kimberly. If you're ever having a down day, I want you to go to the comments on this podcast live feed and read all the beautiful, wonderful things.

Kimberly Anderson [00:34:15] I have so many lovely friends that people are sharing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:34:19] Yeah, the love is pouring out on the Facebook live feed. I want to thank everyone for listening. What I want to ask you to do is the way we always end. I mean, I want to let our listeners know that tomorrow we'll be having a panel with several trans individuals.

Kimberly Anderson [00:34:36] Wonderful people.

John Dehlin [00:34:37] And so that's going to be great. It's going to be around noon. Margi, my wife, is going to join us, and that's going to be great. And then we'll be doing two more interviews with a few trans youth.

Kimberly Anderson [00:34:50] Oh, awesome.

John Dehlin [00:34:51] Yeah, they could talk about what that was like, handling that transition in their adolescent years, which is a different story than in your adult years.

Kimberly Anderson [00:35:00] Well, in a different place in time, too, right?

John Dehlin [00:35:02] Yeah. So I think that'll be powerful. I think we've got two great interviews coming up, and so please tune in to those and tomorrow. But Kimberly, I'd like to end as we always try and do on Mormon stories, and I just want to hear you share what you believe in. Now, what's your testimony? And I don't mean religious testimony. I mean your life testimony. If you had to share some parting wisdom or reflections or values, what would you share to close?

Kimberly Anderson [00:35:37] So June Buck, Kristen's dog, just showed up. Hi, Juni. What would I share? Words of wisdom. I would say that everyone's life has a noble purpose. And if you don't know what that noble purpose is, you're wasting your time. And it's up to you to decide when you're going to engage in a hunt to figure out what that noble purpose is. Not to say that my life has its noble purpose yet, but I believe working in anti suicide and mental health is a noble purpose. And so I'm Very excited to do that. My spiritual beliefs, as I've deconstructed Mormonism, I've kind of deconstructed God and man made religion. And so my personal take on religion is that anything that God wants me to know doesn't need to be spoken through a man. I also personally believe that. The English language, so it's actually spoken quite eloquently. I believe in Third Nephi when he. He talks about Jesus praying using language that can't be written. And I believe that that language does exist. And I believe that that's the language that God communicates to us using. Unfortunately, I think the context in which that passage was written is not spiritually binding on anyone. But I do like that sentiment quite a bit. I think that you're still a believer of sorts, of a believer in, a grand architect of some sort. I am a strong believer in synchronicity. I don't believe in happenstance. I don't believe in chance. I don't believe in coincidence. However, I'm not a fatalist. I don't believe that, you know, there's someone up there pulling our puppet strings. I think we're in charge of our own destiny and the onus is on us to find what our destiny should be and to help create that destiny. But I think that when God speaks to me, he speaks to me through my heart. And having been a musician and a trained musician and still a fan of music, I believe that God's, whatever God is, speaks to me through music quite a bit and to my heart through music. So, yeah,

John Dehlin [00:37:53] what would you want said about you? Just sort of your eulogy or on your tombstone or with your grandkids. What would you want said so as

Kimberly Anderson [00:38:04] an artist, your legacy is something that you're always constantly worried about. My burial plans are to be cremated and scattered around the various points of the Great Salt Lake. So there will be no tombstone. But at my funeral or at my memorial service, if words to this extent are used, I will be happy. She tried to do her best. That would make me happy.

John Dehlin [00:38:31] If there are any kids. Who know that they're not cisgendered, is that the right way to say it?

Kimberly Anderson [00:38:45] So gender non binary or gender non conforming?

John Dehlin [00:38:48] If there's a gender non conforming kid out there that is struggling and maybe they're in a Mormon context and they're trying to figure out how to deal, is there some. I know this is short, but like, if you're going to give them some opening advice or perspective, what would you

Kimberly Anderson [00:39:06] say to them to thine own self be true. And it's important to find out who you are, and it's important to find out within what context you are able to safely be true. And so, as a trans, as a transgender youth, or gender non binary or gender non conforming youth, you may not be in a safe space to begin to express those things. So know within your core who you are and love that person. And then seek for safe spaces that you can explore and help to realize that person and find that core group of people that you can trust, open to them slowly and safely. That's my advice.

John Dehlin [00:39:52] And to the parent or sibling or grandparent or friend or church leader or teacher, to that gender non conforming child or adult, what advice do you have for them?

Kimberly Anderson [00:40:09] This will be the most important thing I say all day.

John Dehlin [00:40:13] End with it.

Kimberly Anderson [00:40:15] Accept and love first, understand later.

John Dehlin [00:40:23] You don't need to understand to love and accept. That just makes it so simple. It almost seems too simple.

Kimberly Anderson [00:40:33] That's the problem, is it is too simple. People don't think it can be that simple or it should be that simple. The problem is that people want to base their acceptance and their love predicated on their understanding. They get that the order is backwards.

John Dehlin [00:40:46] If I could just read enough and think about it and really get it, then I'll show you my love and acceptance. And that's not. That's backwards.

Kimberly Anderson [00:40:53] And with any member of the LGBT community, what will happen is you will only gain that understanding through conversations with these people. Conversations, honest and frank conversations, will only happen when. When they trust you. And they will only trust you when they know they have your unconditional acceptance and your unconditional love. You gotta work backwards from the problem. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:13] Beautiful.

Kimberly Anderson [00:41:14] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:41:15] Well, Kimberly, I think we are about to hit four hours, so I think we did our work today.

Kimberly Anderson [00:41:19] Yes. Yes. I was hoping for a six hour marathon, but I'll settle for four. No, I'm honored to have an hour. I honestly am honored to have an hour.

John Dehlin [00:41:30] Facebook shuts off at four hours, so we would. It would cut us off after four. So I stretched you about as far as I could. We started around 15 after, so I'm pushing.

Kimberly Anderson [00:41:40] Oh, yeah, we better hustle. But thank you. Honestly, thank you. Thank you, thank you.

John Dehlin [00:41:45] You are beautiful and you are brilliant and you are wise, and I love you. And thousands of people love you and you honor Mormon stories by being on the show.

Kimberly Anderson [00:41:57] Thank you. I do appreciate it.

John Dehlin [00:41:59] Keep shining your beautiful, brilliant, wise light to the world.

Kimberly Anderson [00:42:05] I will.

John Dehlin [00:42:06] All right.

Kimberly Anderson [00:42:06] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:42:08] All right. Thank you. Kimberly Anderson, we love you and thank you so much to all our listeners who have been tuned in very patiently. We've still got close to 100 people who are here four hours later.

Kimberly Anderson [00:42:22] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:42:22] Thank you. But again, it's been thousands who have tuned in. Nobody's got just four hours in the middle of the day, but we've had over 10,000 people tune in during the four hours, and that's. I don't know that we've ever had quite those numbers. So thank you to everyone who's tuned in. Thanks to everyone who's made comments. Thanks to everyone who's been supportive. So many friends are sending kind comments. Thank you for that. Thanks to everyone who supports the Open Stories Foundation. Again, your donations make this possible. We are transparent. The money goes towards the mission of the nonprofit. It supports the wonderful staff that we have with Amy Grubbs and Cody Layton, and it allows us to hold events like the ones we talked about at the beginning of the show. And it lets us continue the various podcasts that we have and content to help support people who are not orthodox or who are leaving religion. So please keep supporting us. Just go right now. MormonStories.org hit the donate button. Sign up for whatever monthly donation you can, and we'll be able to keep doing this kind of stuff, and we'll do it as long as you support it. And no one's getting rich, but hopefully we're changing a lot of lives. So thanks to everyone who supports us. And Kimberly, again, we love you and we can't wait to talk to you again tomorrow.

Kimberly Anderson [00:43:46] Oh, yes.

John Dehlin [00:43:47] All right. So everyone tune in tomorrow if you want to learn more, get more Perspectives. Again, when you've met one transgender person, you've met one transgender person. There are several other perspectives we'll share between tomorrow's panel and the two more people we plan to interview. So thanks for joining us. Tune in again. Love you all. Have a great day and we'll see you guys again soon here on Mormon Stories. Take care, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:44:18] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the lower lights

Kimberly Anderson [00:44:34] to make me whole. When with a wounded heart, anger or malice I draw myself apart searching my soul.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.