What Lisa taught me

A few weeks ago I had to have a conversation that I had been putting off for years. I had to talk to my Southern evangelical parents who never really accepted my gay sibling about my transgender child. Differences aside, I’ve remained close to my parents, especially my mom. I credit my mom with a lot of the things that have made me successful and happy in life. 

But I was a cisgender, heterosexual woman who was friendly, tall, outgoing, thin, and achievement-oriented. I was the type of daughter my mom would have ordered if there were such a system. 

You can never know how much of these things impact a parent’s love until that same mail-ordered daughter has a transgender child. 

The last time I had talked to my parents about my brother, my father categorically told me that “God didn’t create gays.” So I didn’t have high hopes of talking facts or persuading them to see the world the way I do. 

Add to that, I’m pretty aggressive as parents of transgender kids go. We don’t change or shrink or hide my beautiful, fabulous walking rainbow to make anyone feel better about their limited beliefs. Having her in your life is a privilege not a right. 

At this moment in time, I was reading Lisa Cron’s latest book Story or Die: How to Use Brain Science to Engage, Persuade, and Change Minds in Business and in Life. The point of this book is how we try all the wrong tactics to change someone’s mind — or user behavior — and why it backfires so substantially. It all has to do with how our brains are wired. 

I was reading it deeply because I was working with Lisa to put together a first-of-its-kind course on her framework. 

In short: Facts do not work. Facts feel like an attack. They light up the same parts of the brain as a physical threat, in fact, because we used to need to belong to groups to survive. We evolved to react aggressively to facts. 

Lisa has a framework for how to use story, instead, to persuade, and I decided to try it out for my call with my parents. 

I got deeply empathetic, examining what matters most to them. I wrote out long answers to what they desire most to be their most authentic selves. What they fear most. What they are doing now, and my call to action that will benefit them. How the change I was asking them to make would benefit their most authentic selves. I looked at their misbelief, the truth I wanted to convey, what I hoped their realization would be, leading to a transformation. 

I wrote all this out, one hand on Lisa’s book, reading and re-reading it. I came up with the story that would anesthetize the “trans people aren’t real” trigger in their heads and would allow them to listen. 

We got on the call. And I went through it all, shaking. 

Their authentic self I was trying to play to: Yes, they are evangelicals who believe it is their role to pass judgement on folks. But also, if there’s another belief that competes anywhere near as highly in their heart and brain, it’s the love they have for their kids and grandkids. That they have sacrificed for them. And they want to be the people who put their kids and grandkids first. I also wanted to appeal to the pride that they had in not voting for Donald Trump. They could and would go against the evangelical in-crowd. That they question. 

I laid it all out. And made a clear ask: You don’t have to change your beliefs, you don’t have to march in a parade, but you do have to call Eli by the right pronouns the 10 days or so a year you see us. That’s it!

And my dad — the same one who said “God didn’t create gays” — was confronted with story, not facts, or rather, facts wrapped in story. Transgender suicide rates, yes. But also Eli ripping a ponytail out of her hair the second said she leaves school because low ponytails are “boy hair.” By Eli refusing to let me tie her hair back at night to keep tangles out because, “I CAN’T DREAM IN A PONYTAIL!”

If you take this course, you’ll learn from Lisa that specifics matter. They have to be able to see it. They could see Eli pleading with me to let her have tangles instead of “boy hair” so she could dream. Who doesn’t want their grandchild to dream?

They listened. And they asked questions. And my father said he thought he could use the right pronouns. My mom who was more resistant said she already found she was starting to use them as they talked. My mom — my mom!! — said she didn’t think it was her role to impose her beliefs on others in this case. 

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My siblings were stunned when I told them. My brother thought maybe he’d go back home for Christmas this year, if my parents were able to make such a dramatic shift.

They blamed and shamed my parenting when I took Evie to the Women’s March and when Paul moved in with us without us being married. But now, they complimented my parenting. They said it was clear, even if they didn’t agree, that I was putting Eli first and acting out of love. They said they admired it. And they thanked me for seeing their love of their kids and grandkids enough to have the conversation. 

I got off the phone in a stunned state of shock. 

Sadly, Lisa Cron isn’t a wizard or a hypnotist, she can only help you craft the best possible argument. My parents called me two weeks later to tell me they’d gone back on all they said. They now believed that God makes men and women and doesn’t make mistakes. And so they couldn’t use Eli’s pronouns. 

And so, I cut off contact with them. 

I wish this story ended differently. It’s so heartbreaking. It’s hard to witness the limits of your parents’ love. It was a painful lesson of my own cis hetero privilige within my own family. 

But here is where this exercise still helped: I saw them move. And so I hope they will again in future. Maybe for longer than two weeks. Maybe for good. I know what finally dislodged them from that place. And I know I gave it the best possible shot I could have. And so, I feel like I can do what I need for Eli with a clear conscience. 

Do you want to give something your best shot? Whether it’s changing the mind of someone who won’t take a vaccine, your kid about not texting and driving, your spouse about your plan to take off for some you time, a journalist to write about you, an investor to fund you or a customer to take a chance on your product?

If my parents could glimpse trans kids as “real,” this framework can do almost anything. 

In our exclusive seven-week course, Lisa Cron will explain the brain science behind all of this, explain her framework step-by-step, and we’ll even role play and test it out. 

Think of how many times a day you need to talk someone into something. Whatever you are building, whatever your dream is...You will need to convince others to come along. I truly believe these seven weeks will become your secret weapon that gives you a disproportionate advantage. 

Sure it’s great for business. But if my parents finally chose love, what I’ve learned from Lisa will have been worth everything to me.

What advice or support can you offer fellow members today?

• Who can I ask for honest feedback on my job search?
• What do I do with my 13-year-old who is too old for day camps but not old enough to get a job?
• Examples of clear, firm, achievable expectations I could impose on my kids?
• I need help speaking up