The Grief No One Talks About: What Parents of LGBTQ Kids Are Really Mourning and Why It's Valid
Episode 263 •
31st March 2026 • More Human. More Kind. | Parenting LGBTQ Kids, Unlearning Fear, Becoming More Human • Heather Hester | Advocate for Parents of LGBTQ Teens
What happens when the grief you carry isn't about losing a person, but about losing the world you thought your child would grow up in?
In this second episode of the grief series, Heather goes where most parenting conversations won't: into the tender, often-shamed space of mourning expectations. She explores why parents of LGBTQ kids frequently carry a grief they feel they aren't allowed to name — the exploding movie reel of the life you imagined — and why acknowledging that grief is actually an act of deeper love, not a betrayal of it.
Then she widens the lens. The doom-scrolling at 2 AM. The bone-deep fatigue. The frantic bargaining of "if I just call one more representative." Heather names what so many of us are feeling but can't articulate: we are collectively grieving. And she connects it directly to the stages of grief explored in last week's episode about her sister Corinne.
But this episode doesn't leave you in the heaviness. Heather offers a profoundly practical antidote: curiosity. Through a real-time guided body check-in, she walks you through the physical difference between judgment and curiosity — and shows you how that single shift creates enough spaciousness to hold grief AND take action. To feel furious at injustice AND still lead with compassion. To sit in sadness AND show up at your kid's school board meeting.
This is where sustainable change lives. This is the sweet spot.
ACTION:
This week's Butterfly Effect micro-action: Put your hand on your heart for 10 seconds before you respond to anyone. Then answer from your actual self — not your panic.
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Transcripts
Speaker A:
In today's episode, you'll discover what is at the intersection of personal and collective grief.
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Welcome to More Human, More Kind, the podcast for parents of LGBTQ kids and anyone trying to stay human in a world that keeps hardening.
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I'm Heather Hester, and here we talk about fear, belonging, boundaries, courage, love, and what it means to protect what matters without losing yourself in the process.
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Your child doesn't just need a parent who's informed.
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They need a parent who is grounded and strong.
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Let's take a breath and let's begin.
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Welcome to More Human, More Kind.
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I'm Heather Hester.
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What do you do when the grief isn't about a person you've lost, but about the world your child has to navigate?
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When the heartbreak isn't a funeral, but a headline.
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When you realize you're not just mourning who's gone, but mourning what you thought this life would look like.
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That's what we're sitting with today.
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In this episode, you'll learn why the grief you feel as a parent of an LGBTQ child, even when you fully love and support them, is not only normal, but necessary.
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And how naming it actually deepens your ability to embrace your child.
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You'll discover how to recognize the signs that you're experiencing collective grief, not just stress or burnout.
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And why giving yourself permission to call it what it is changes everything.
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And you'll walk away with a powerful body based practice for using curiosity to hold your grief and take meaningful action without burning out or becoming what you oppose.
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So last week, I shared the story of my sister Corinne's birthday.
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And we walked through the five stages of grief together, not as a checklist, but as an ever shifting landscape.
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If you haven't listened to that episode yet, I'd encourage you to go back.
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It really does set the foundation for everything that we're exploring.
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But as I sat with that episode after it went live, and with the incredibly beautiful messages so many of you sent me, I realized something important.
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We aren't just grieving the people who have physically left us.
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We are grieving the expectations we held for our families.
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We're grieving the safety we thought our kids would have.
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And we are profoundly, heavily grieving the state of our fractured world.
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So let's start with the one that lives closest to home.
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When you are raising a child, especially an LGBTQ child, there is an invisible grief that parents often feel deeply ashamed to even admit.
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It's the grief of what we thought it would look like.
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And I want to fold so much space around this right now, because I know that just hearing me say that might make some of you flinch.
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You might be thinking, but I love my child.
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I support my child.
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Why would I be grieving?
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Because grief and love coexist.
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They always have.
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I often refer to this as allowing your movie reel to explode.
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It's mourning the timeline you had in your head, perhaps the wedding you had imagined, the casual assumptions about grandchildren, or even how your child would move through the world.
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It's the sudden realization that the world isn't as consistently seen, safe or kind for your child as you once believed.
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And it's sitting with the discomfort of that explosive mess, acknowledging each frame and then letting them go.
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It's the sting of realizing that some family members or friends simply refuse to unlearn their bias or hold space for your beautifully expanding family.
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Sometimes it's the grief of losing those relationships entirely.
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Recognizing that means you're expanding your capacity to hold many truths, many emotions at once, understanding that a loved one's refusal to unlearn their bias is often rooted in fear.
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Fear that is driven by long held beliefs, cultural expectations, a fixed mindset, or a combination of all of the above.
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I remember the first time someone named the agonizing pain I was feeling over this exact scenario as grief.
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It left me momentarily stunned.
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Because we are taught that grief is for a life lost, not a relationship altered or lost.
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It was a powerful, intensely healing moment for me.
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And I offer it to you as well.
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To the parents sitting in that very specific, heavy tension right now, I see you.
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You are allowed to mourn those expectations.
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And please hear me acknowledging that grief does not mean you do not fiercely love your child.
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In fact, naming it is exactly what clears the path to truly embrace them.
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And then there is the macro, the weight of the world right now.
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And here's what I've come to understand.
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These two griefs are not separate.
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The grief you feel for your child's safety and the grief you feel watching the world fracture.
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They feed each other.
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They live in the same room in your heart.
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We are bearing witness to intense division leadership that fails to take seriously the lives of our most vulnerable.
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The catastrophic failure of DHS and extraordinarily harmful rhetoric aimed at transgender youth, just to name a few.
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And I want to pause right here and send so much love and strength to every parent, every medical professional, every policymaker, every human being who was fighting for trans kids and for trans people in general.
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We cannot give up now.
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When we look at this through the lens of grief, our collective exhaustion suddenly makes so much Sense.
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Remember those stages we talked about last week?
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We get stuck in the anger stage, that cortisol fueled 2am doom scroll.
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We rage at the cruelty, the impunity, the casual disregard for human dignity.
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And that anger is valid.
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It's information.
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It means something matters deeply to us.
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But then we slide into that depression stage, the bone deep fatigue, where we wonder, does any of this even matter?
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The withdrawal, the numbness, the feeling of watching the world fall apart and being powerless to stop it.
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And then we bounce into bargaining.
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I just Donate more, call more representatives, share one more post.
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Maybe that will fix it.
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Maybe I can undo the damage.
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Does that sound familiar?
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It's grief.
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All of it.
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And the reason it feels so overwhelming is that most of us haven't been given the permission to call it what it is.
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We think we're just stressed.
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We think we need a vacation.
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We think something is wrong with us.
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Nothing is wrong with you.
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You are grieving and you are allowed to.
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So here is where I want to offer you something practical.
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Because it is so, so easy to let this kind of grief harden us, to let the anger calcify into bitterness, to let the depression turn into permanent withdrawal.
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To let the bargaining exhaust us into complete burnout.
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I believe deeply that we can advocate fiercely for our kids and our world without becoming what we oppose.
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The balance.
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It's not weakness.
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It is strength.
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And the pathway there is the very first pillar of the more human, more kind movement.
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It's curiosity.
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Curiosity is the ultimate antidote to judgment.
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It simply says, tell me more.
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I know we've been sitting in some heavy truths.
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So before I ask you to try something, I want you to take one slow breath with me.
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Just one.
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I want you to try something with me now.
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Wherever you are, in your car, on a walk, folding laundry, wherever it is, take a moment and notice how your body feels when you are judging yourself or someone else.
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Do you feel tightness in your chest?
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Is your jaw clenched?
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Is your breath shallow?
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Are your thoughts racing?
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Now take one deep breath and instead of judgment, ask yourself to feel curious.
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Ask the question I wonder or why?
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What happens in your body when you do that?
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What happens in your mind?
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Does the tightness in your chest release and that spaciousness begin to expand throughout your body?
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Does your breath deepen?
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Are your thoughts calm?
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When the world feels broken and your grief feels too heavy to carry, try creating space for curiosity, even just pausing and taking a breath.
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It doesn't mean compliance.
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It doesn't mean you tolerate harm and absolutely does not mean you stay silent.
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It simply means you refuse to dehumanize others and yourself in the process.
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And from that place of curiosity, something remarkable can happen.
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You can hold the grief and take action.
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You can feel the sadness and show up for your kids school board meeting.
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You can be furious at the injustice and still choose to lead with compassion instead of contempt.
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That's the sweet spot.
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That's where real, sustainable change lives.
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That's the beauty of growing your capacity to hold many truths.
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Before we close today, let's squeeze in the butterfly effect.
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One small shift, one gentle rebellion, or one micro move that changes everything.
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Your tiny action this week is to put your hand on your heart for 10 seconds before you respond to anyone, including yourself, and then answer from your actual self, not from your panic.
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This won't fix everything, but it will help you move one inch closer to who you want to be.
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If this resonates with you, you are not alone.
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Sitting with parental and collective grief is its own form of courage, which allows us to see that grief and love can exist in the same same space.
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And mourning expectations doesn't diminish love, it deepens it.
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My own grief and losing Corinne, among other losses, has taught me to recognize patterns in the collective.
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And naming them is the first step toward not carrying them alone.
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Next week, we wrap this series with the part I'm most excited about.
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The rituals, the repair, the messy and beautiful act of actually living alongside your grief.
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We'll talk about what healing really looks like and the sacred act of letting go.
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If this episode stirred something in you, please share it with someone who needs it.
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Text it to that friend who's been carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.
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Share it in your parent group, or post it on your socials.
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Grief thrives in isolation, and connection is how we break its hold.
