September is Bisexuality Visibility Month, and I’m excited to kick it off with this week’s guest, Steve Spencer (he/him). Steve is award-winning bi+ and HIV advocate, researcher, and consultant. Steve is a bi, HIV positive man who is doing so much work to advocate for bi+ visibility and action against HIV stigma, and I was eager to have him on to give voice to all of this.

In this episode, we hear Steve’s personal story of discovering his biness at age 13 but then being told by a well-intentioned but uninformed therapist that he was gay and did not need to pretend he was bi. He went on to spend the next 13 years repressing his biness. Steve shares with us what coming into his biness has been like for him, his experience as a person with positive HIV status, and guides us through wider conversations about biness, HIV, and so much more. I so loved getting time with Steve and think what he’s doing is so important, and I’m just so excited to be able to invite you all in to the conversation.

About the guest:
Steve Spencer is an award-winning bi+ and HIV advocate, researcher, and consultant based on Gadigal Land, Sydney, Australia, and he is a proud ambassador of Qtopia Sydney and the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation.

Steve sits on the board of Australia's national peak HIV body, NAPWHA, and is a leading advisor, researcher, and university lecturer in bisexual health and HIV, working with The Kirby Institute, UNSW, and Johns Hopkins University. Steve also uses his large social media following - perfecting the art of discussing serious messages with a sprinkling of thirst traps - to advocate for bi-visibility and action against HIV stigma.

Self-acceptance, community, courage, and empathy are at the core of Steve’s advocacy and you can follow his work on Instagram @ssstorven.

For more, visit www.secondadolescencepod.com and @secondadolescencepod.

This week’s guest is Tyler Tetreault, MD (he/him). In this conversation, Tyler shares with us about his journey as a transgender man who transitioned during his residency, and how his personal experience has lit a fire to create more space for LGBTQ+ folks within orthopedic medicine. I was so touched by Tyler and his story and the work he’s doing now, and am excited to invite you all into the conversation.

About the guest:
Tyler (he/him) is a pediatric spine surgeon based in Los Angeles, CA. Orthopedics is one of the least diverse specialties in medicine - as a transgender man who transitioned during residency, he learned first-hand how important community and representation can be. Now as a practicing attending, he serves as a Board member for PrideOrtho, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving LGBTQ+ representation in orthopedics and mentoring future LGBTQ+ identified individuals into orthopedic surgery. Outside of work, he can be found running and spending time with his wife and dogs.

For more, visit www.secondadolescencepod.com and @secondadolescencepod.

This week’s guest is Morgan Henry Kerr (she/her). Morgan joined us to talk about all things ups and downs of being a queer person trying to conceive. Morgan shares her own personal journey creating her family, and shares about the work she's doing to support other queer people through the Trying to Conceive (TTC) process. This conversation is particularly helpful for those of you with birthing bodies, interested in navigating this path to parenthood, but I also found this chat to be super helpful for all queer people interested in pursuing parenthood through this process.

About the guest:
I'm Morgan Henry Kerr aka MAMO. I'm a creative, community builder and proud queer mom from the pacific northwest in perimenopause and preschool era, ha! I'm also a 14x unsuccessful IUI (intrauterine insemination) turned non-bio mom who along with my wife has experienced the infuriating and beautiful ups and downs of the fertility world and TTC (trying to conceive) process. The becoming parent phase is layered, complex, A LOT. It can also be an opportunity to deeply heal and make it the most empowering time of your life. This is why I created a container that helps queer couples make their TTC journey more efficient, more celebrated, more connected, more fun. Connect and learn more at @iam_mamomhk, and you can download your FREE Queer TTC E-Book here.

For more, visit www.secondadolescencepod.com and @secondadolescencepod

This week’s guest is Archie Arnold (he/him). Archie has a powerful story of being someone who just recently in his early fifties came to full understanding of his identity as a gay trans man. Archie lets us into his own story of uncovering his true self during the COVID pandemic and what his process has been like to deconstruct and reconstruct his experience of identity. We talk about the complicated dialectic of holding both envy and joy for other LGBTQ+ folks who have experiences we didn’t or don’t, the healing work of reconnecting with our child self, and so so much more. His story is one that illustrates the power of exploring who your most true and free self is at any age. I feel so grateful to Archie for coming on and am excited to invite you into the conversation.

About the guest:
Archie has spent his life working in the nonprofit and public sectors in a variety of areas: affordable housing, workforce development, behavioral health, and higher education. As a grant writer, he's secured approximately $30 million in funding for these various causes. Outside of work, he is a dad and a husband and his greatest joy is his little nuclear family. @genuinely_archie

For more, visit www.secondadolescencepod.com or @secondadolescencepod.

This week’s guest is Rohan Shirolkar (he/him). As a husband and new father, Rohan’s story has taken him to a place he didn’t see possible at its beginning, growing up as a gay boy in India in the 1980s/1990s. On this episode, Rohan shares with us his story and journey of navigating and understanding his identity, confronting and healing from anti-queerness, and eventually getting to the place of feeling such sense of freedom today. I SO loved getting to have Rohan on the show, and was so moved throughout this whole conversation.

About the guest:
Rohan Shirolkar is a 42-year-old Clinical Research Professional residing in Miami with his husband and their newborn daughter. He is a listener and admirer of the Second Adolescence podcast, and finds its Instagram posts deeply relatable. Rohan is eager to share his journey of growing up as a gay child in India, confronting anti-queerness during his college and professional life, and experiencing profound transformation after meeting his husband 15 years ago. @RohanShirolkar (IG)

For more, visit www.secondadolescencepod.com and @secondadolescencepod.

This week’s guest is artist and actor, Mod Becher (he/they). I actually met Mod out in real life while being a patron at his workplace, which we go into, and it eventually led to me sharing about the podcast and unbeknownst to me Mod was navigating a pretty pivotal time and would go on to become a listener of the show and eventually wanted to come on to offer their own story as a way to help others who have been navigating his own tumultuous journey’s of finding themselves. I SO loved getting to connect with Mod and was so moved throughout this conversation, and am so honored to get to invite you all into it too.

About the guest:
Mod Becher (he/they) is trans masculine actor and artist from just outside LA, moving to the city at 19 years old. His work is often focused on the representation of the gender spectrum and LGBTQ+ community. He’s starred in a variety of projects spanning from the stage to the set and is currently working on a collection of various drawings in hopes of putting on his first art show. You can keep up on Instagram @modermelon (:

Hollywood Fringe Festival: www.hollywoodfringe.org

For more, visit www.secondadolescencepod.com and @secondadolescencepod.

This week’s guest is diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging leader and practitioner, SJ Janjua (they/them). In this conversation, SJ leads us through their own personal journey and how this has led them to doing the work they are doing now to create spaces that their younger self needed.

About the guest:
SJ Janjua (they/them) is the founder of Empowered for Equity Consulting, where they use their passion and expertise in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging to help equip others with the tools to create inclusive spaces in schools and workplaces. SJ is a proud queer/transgender/non-binary/biracial person who uses their lived experience to guide their consulting work. They spent 5 years teaching high school level English in the US and abroad at the start of their career, and eventually left the classroom in pursuit of a master's degree. They obtained their degree in International Education and served as a classroom evaluator, curriculum developer, and a teacher trainer in the years following. During their work at a non-profit afterschool program, they began their formalized Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging work in the education space. They specialize in providing workshops, trainings, and strategic planning support to schools and organizations on creating LGBTQ+ inclusion, creating and fostering spaces for belonging, integrating restorative practices, and empowering folks to go beyond performative allyship.

Learn more about SJ and their work at: www.empoweredforequity.com.

Get their recently released eBook, TRANSparency: Advocating for Your Transgender Child at School.

Join their email list HERE.

For more, visit www.secondadolescencepod.com and @secondadolescence.

This week’s guest is artist Alonso Yáñez (he/him). Alonso shares with us about his own continuous journey of reckoning with and healing from the layers of shame that have existed and taken shape for him. He highlights the shape-shifting quality of shame, the tendency for queer people to develop various kinds of strategies to counter shame and gain value and validation elsewhere, and so much more. Alonso talks about still not being on the other side of shame, still not being where he wants to be, but does so because he believes in the power of all of us sharing where we are in our own journeys and owning that we are enough at every stage of it.

ART SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT: On May 18, 2024 his first virtual art show opens: Quite Spectacle. It is opening in the Artsy platform and running from May 18th to August 18th at https://www.artsy.net/show/dama-gallery-quiet-spectacle.

About the guest:
Alonso is an artist from Mexico City. An avid reader of fiction he is interested in exploring ways to tell stories through images and translate emotion into color. You can connect with Alonso and follow his art at @laber.intos.

For more, visit www.secondadolescencepod.com and @secondadolescnecepod (IG).