Does Your LGBTQ Child Actually Feel Your Love? Guidance for Parents Who Want to Close the Gap
Episode 287 •
19th June 2026 • More Human. More Kind. | Parenting LGBTQ Kids, Unlearning Fear, Becoming More Human • Heather Hester | Advocate for Parents of LGBTQ Teens
Join me on Substack for deeper conversations (and extra tools and reflections for paid subscribers!)
You already love your child deeply. But love that lives only inside you is invisible to the person who needs it most.
In this Friday Reset, Heather offers one small, powerful shift: moving from loving to demonstrating. For parents of LGBTQ+ kids, the difference between feeling love and making that love visible can be the difference between a child who wonders and a child who knows. Through a word of the week, a tiny action, and a micro-rebellion, Heather shows how imperfect, specific, consistent acts of demonstrated love are what actually create belonging.
In this episode, you'll learn how to:
Make the shift from feeling love privately to demonstrating it in ways your child can see and receive
Take one small, specific action this week that names and includes who your child actually is
Release the myth of the "right moment" and let love become visible now, imperfectly and on purpose
Press play to discover how one sentence, one brave choice, and one ripple this week can begin to close the gap between the love you have and the love your child gets to feel.
Hi, I’m Heather Hester, and I’m so glad you’re here!
Feeling uncertain or overwhelmed? Download my free guide to take you from Panic to Plan.
Listen to *NEW* episodes every Tuesday and Friday!
At the heart of my work is a deep commitment to compassion, authenticity, and transformative allyship, especially for those navigating the complexities of parenting LGBTQ kids. Through this podcast, speaking, my writing, and the spaces I create, I help people unlearn bias, embrace their full humanity, and grow their capacity for courageous, compassionate connection.
For parents, allies, and those pioneering a way to lead with love and kindness, I’m here with true, messy, and heart-warming stories, real tools, and grounding support to help you move from fear to fierce, informed action.
Whether you’re listening in, working with me directly, or quietly taking it all in, I see you. And I’m so glad you’re part of this journey.
More Human. More Kind. formerly Just Breathe: Parenting Your LGBTQ Teen is a safe and supportive podcast in a heartfelt and empowering space where a mom and advocate offers practical guidance and education to parents and allies, fostering empathy, kindness, love, and strong boundaries while supporting LGBTQ teens and the diverse LGBTQ community—including gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, transgender, and queer individuals—through conversations about mental health, grief, gender identity, sexual orientation, human rights, social justice, parenting, parent support, and meaningful LGBTQ allyship and allyship in action.
Mentioned in this episode:
Contact Hester Painting & Decorating for a consultation! https://go.hesterdecorating.com/mhmk
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podscribe - https://podscribe.com/privacy
Transcripts
Speaker A:
If you listened to Tuesday's episode, you know we spent some time in a question that feels simple but isn't.
Speaker A:
Does the person you love most actually feel it?
Speaker A:
Not do you love them?
Speaker A:
That part I already know.
Speaker A:
But are they receiving it?
Speaker A:
And if that question landed somewhere tender in you?
Speaker A:
If you found yourself sitting with a quiet not sure if you replayed a conversation or a moment at the dinner table and thought, I wonder if they knew you're in the right place, this is your Friday Reset.
Speaker A:
The Butterfly Effect.
Speaker A:
One small shift, one ripple, one brave little action that can change something important.
Speaker A:
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.
Speaker A:
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.
Speaker A:
Your child doesn't just need a parent who's informed.
Speaker A:
They need a parent who is grounded and strong.
Speaker A:
Let's take a breath and let's begin.
Speaker A:
Welcome to More Human, More Kind.
Speaker A:
I'm Heather Hester.
Speaker A:
Most of us learned to love the way we were loved, and we didn't make any changes, shifts, or updates.
Speaker A:
This means most of us are doing our very best with a template that we didn't choose.
Speaker A:
Maybe love in your family looked like showing up, providing, keeping the lights on, in the refrigerator full.
Speaker A:
Maybe it looked like tough conversations nobody wanted to have.
Speaker A:
Maybe it was quiet, present, but not demonstrative that love was real.
Speaker A:
I'm not asking you to dismiss it, nor am I asking you to analyze it, at least not today.
Speaker A:
Because here is what I want you to sit with today.
Speaker A:
Your kid is not you.
Speaker A:
They didn't grow up in your childhood.
Speaker A:
They're living in a different moment with a different nervous system, with different needs for how love has to sound and feel, to get through, to be felt, to be known, and the gap between how you love and how they receive it.
Speaker A:
That gap is not a failure.
Speaker A:
It's just a distance worth closing.
Speaker A:
The shift from loving someone to demonstrating love in a way that they can feel.
Speaker A:
That's not a grand gesture.
Speaker A:
It's not a speech or a letter or a family meeting.
Speaker A:
It's usually something much smaller.
Speaker A:
A sentence, a question, a moment where you choose to stay in the room instead of changing the subject.
Speaker A:
Small, consistent, and real.
Speaker A:
That's what changes things.
Speaker A:
So here is your butterfly effect for this very tender topic.
Speaker A:
Start with the word of the week.
Speaker A:
Demonstrate.
Speaker A:
Tuck this word into your pocket this week and let it show up when you need a nudge.
Speaker A:
Demonstrate, not feel more, not love harder.
Speaker A:
You're already doing that.
Speaker A:
Demonstrate love that lives only inside you is invisible to the person who needs it most.
Speaker A:
Demonstration is how love becomes evidence.
Speaker A:
It's how your kid stops wondering and starts knowing.
Speaker A:
So this week, when you feel the love and don't say it, when you think the proud thought, and keep it to yourself when you want to ask, but talk yourself out of it, ask yourself, how can I demonstrate this right now?
Speaker A:
Not perfectly, just visibly.
Speaker A:
Your tiny action this week is this.
Speaker A:
Say one specific thing to your child that includes who they actually are, not I love you at the end of a phone call.
Speaker A:
That absolutely matters.
Speaker A:
Keep doing that, but something more specific, something that names them.
Speaker A:
It might sound like I was thinking about you today, and I just want you to know I'm really proud of the person you are.
Speaker A:
Or I want to hear more about something that's going on with them, whether it's the person they're dating, the community they're part of, something that they're studying in school, or something that you know that they're excited about.
Speaker A:
It even works to just say, I see you one sentence specific.
Speaker A:
True.
Speaker A:
That's it.
Speaker A:
That's the action.
Speaker A:
Let it be small.
Speaker A:
Don't over complicate it.
Speaker A:
Small is how ripples start your micro rebellion this week is this.
Speaker A:
I will not wait until I feel ready to demonstrate my love.
Speaker A:
I will not wait until I feel ready to demonstrate my love.
Speaker A:
Because here's the truth.
Speaker A:
Ready is a myth.
Speaker A:
There is no perfect moment where the words feel easy and the timing is right and nobody is distracted and nothing is awkward.
Speaker A:
There's only right now, this ordinary ride, this car ride, this text you almost sent and then didn't.
Speaker A:
Love demonstrated imperfectly is still love received.
Speaker A:
So if the voice in your head says not now, it'll be weird.
Speaker A:
They'll know.
Speaker A:
I'll just do it later.
Speaker A:
Meet that thought with this.
Speaker A:
Later is not guaranteed.
Speaker A:
Now is what I have.
Speaker A:
Here's your line for the week.
Speaker A:
Write it down if that's your thing.
Speaker A:
Say it out loud if you need to hear it.
Speaker A:
Love is not what I feel.
Speaker A:
It's what they get to feel because of me.
Speaker A:
Love is not what I feel, it's what they get to feel because of me.
Speaker A:
When you wonder if your kid knows, when you replay a moment and wish you'd said something, when you feel the love so strongly but can't find the words, come back to that line.
Speaker A:
You're not trying to be perfect.
Speaker A:
You are trying to be present.
Speaker A:
And present is enough.
Speaker A:
If this week has stirred something in you, if you have found yourself thinking about a conversation you want to have, or a thing you've been meaning to say, or a distance you've been quietly hoping would close on its own, I just want to say this.
Speaker A:
You are not too late.
Speaker A:
You haven't missed your window.
Speaker A:
The relationship you want with your child is still possible.
Speaker A:
It is built slowly in exactly the kinds of moments we talked about today.
Speaker A:
Small, true, and consistent.
Speaker A:
You don't have to overhaul anything, you just have to start.
Speaker A:
And if you want to share your butterfly effect this week, I would love to hear it.
Speaker A:
Just one sentence that says this week I'm choosing to demonstrate love by fill in the blank.
Speaker A:
You don't have to figure all of this out alone.
Speaker A:
Thank you for being here, for doing this work, and for choosing to stay open even when it's hard.
Speaker A:
New episodes drop every Tuesday and Friday and click on the link in the show notes to join me on substack for deeper, more human discussions just like this one.
Speaker A:
And if this episode supported you, share it with someone who might need it too.
Speaker A:
Until next time, take care of yourself, take care of each other, and keep choosing to be a little more human and a little more kind.
