 together. Please let's welcome them to the stage. Hello everyone, I'm Joel Beanstra and my pronouns are he, him. I'm Tiger Neustrom, my pronouns are they, them, or he, him. And we just want to give some informed consent. There's a trigger warning here that we're going to be talking about gender and suicidality briefly, but ultimately as a happy ending. So we are going to get to a happy space, but we go through what life is sometimes. In fact, next year, Tiger and I will be celebrating 20 years of marriage, which is great. When we think about gender, most people have a basic understanding of gender. And it's a little different than, I mean, I had a certain idea when I was younger about what that meant. But now with recent research, we have a little bit more informed area of what gender is. Certainly we have this element of anatomical sex, which is about maleness or femaleness, what is assigned often at birth based upon one's physical characteristics. If you think that this is a simple binary between boys and girls, I want to inform you it's not. There's 1.7% of our population who are intersex, which means that they are born with both set of genitalia. And these people exist in the world. And so are we going to be representing and seeing the whole world? And we have to think about a wider spectrum in which people are on in terms of the nature of the world. Secondly, there's an element of attraction. In terms of attraction, it's who you are attracted to. And again, in a recent Gallup poll, a recent Gallup poll denoted that 7% of our population are not heterosexual. And so you have a certain understanding of what you think your world is often based on your own experience, but it's again a wider scope of what is actually happening in the world. Third, there's gender expression, or how we dress. Some of us dress more masculine, some of us dress more feminine. And depending on how that dresses and how we're seen, we may be identified as scenes of different gender than maybe we want to be. Or maybe we do want to be perceived differently. It's a choice that each one of us have. And finally, we have gender identity, which is how you conceptualize yourself in the world. We don't have a lot of time to go deeper on this, but there's a lot of research that's happening now and that's happening in recent history about these different areas. And we do have a QR code up there that you can check and see more resources from the creator of this image, which is Sam Killerman, and a lot of interesting more information about this work in this world. In terms of our marriage, we've really benefited tremendously by our faith and the principles of applied improvisation. Now when we say principles of applied information, you might ask yourself, what are those principles? Or a little more nuanced question might be, whose principles? Because if you look around this room, I dare say most people this room have identified certain principles of applied improvisation, and they're probably all different. In fact, Tiger and I have had different interpretations of this. Next slide, please. So, in 2009 Tiger did a literature review of all the things that were written about improvisation, and they distilled it down to three two-sided coins of core principles that essentially made up all of the essence of improvisation. And this is their interpretation of it. I disagree. I did a slightly different interpretation. Mine is only three, because I can't think as many, I can't remember as many things, but they essentially embody the same principles of presence, acceptance, and trust in terms of their alignment. And these are great for how I see the world. Tiger sees the world slightly different. You all have a different principle. I know a lot of you out there have seen your principles. They're fantastic, but they all just reflect their different lines. It doesn't mean that we need to be antagonistic because of our different lines. It just means that we get to learn more about each other by seeing how we see the world and how we see the world, and ultimately the underlying principles are the things that unite us and bring us commonality. So... Oh, sorry. One other thing. Tiger's about to tell more of our story. I'd encourage you to look at these principles and see how they interlace within this story. Still a little bit of the story. What is this? Some of you know the beginning of the story. Some of you don't. I've always been trans. For the first several years of my life, it wasn't that bad. And I was just always doing boy things with all the other boys. Even when I joined Girl Scouts, I remember my mom was on the phone calling to find pants so that I could wear pants when I went to the Girl Scouts. But it changed when I had my first comedian because my mom, there was no option for pants. I had to wear the dress, which is a whole other topic. But I had to wear the dress and I remember I was, as I was going, I was like, this can't happen. Like this can't happen. Everybody's going to see how wrong this is. This is so wrong. And I went. It was so confusing because I knew how wrong it was, but everybody else told me how right it was. And so that was really, really messed up. Jules told me I shouldn't say mindfuck. But it was a real mindfuck. Because apparently they're filming it. And then it's going to happen. There are no mistakes, Jules. So then I sort of was like, okay, well, I guess I'm wrong. And I was sort of like, okay, well, that's my innie talking. Severance, anyone? I highly recommend Severance. That's my innie talking. And we're just going to lock that away. And I sort of created this Audi that like, you know, I took the real parts of myself that were palatable to people and use those. And I found sort of curated this person that I felt like, oh, I could be that person. And like, I can get away with this and I can tolerate that. And then that was my Audi. And that's how I lived. And I was like, I didn't know I was good at school. I was smart. I was athletic. So I made a really good life. I'm like, I'm just going to make do with this, right? And I met Joel in college. On an improv team. On an improv team. And we built this really good life, you know. And I learned improv. I lived these principles. I went to therapy. I dealt with all my mom and dad issues. I dealt with suicidality. I dealt with all this self, much of this self-hatred. And we had this faith that was really important to us. And we created this really good life. And the life that we created, we moved to California. We grew up in Michigan. We moved to California. And I created this life and I never thought it was possible, partly due to these principles, right? I'm like, I don't have to live in fear. I don't have to do all these things. Coming to AIM was a big part of that. Coming here and being like, wow, I've never met people like me before. I mean, you're like me, but other than him, I've never had a community of people like me, right? And so all of these things made me see that what I had thought before was impossible is possible. Then, about seven years ago, like, trans became a thing. Suddenly I had a word. You know, I thought this was just something that was wrong with me, but then it was like, oh, like, this is a thing? There's a word and there's like a whole path and it was crazy. And initially I was like, okay, like, we've got these kids, we've got this life. Like, if I was young now, but I'm not young now, like, it was not happening. But, you know, my any wanted out. So I kind of kept moving forward on that. And the other thing is, with these principles, I knew that I could create something, you know? So the other piece was my faith. And I was like, oh, I missed a part, which is that we created this great life. We had this whole world. It was wonderful. But I was still, like, deeply suicidal every single day. My any was like, how do I get out in one way or another? Right? So that was a thing. But so then, oh, but my faith. And I was like, if this is bad, or this is wrong, like, I don't want to do it, you know? And I was sure about my relationship to God. I was sure about God. I was more sure about God and our relationship to God than I was about myself. And I was like, I don't want to do anything to jeopardize this. So I read through the whole Bible. And when I got to the end, what I realized is, like, oh, God is huge. God is mysterious. God is wild. God is way bigger and wilder than what I had been taught. And God has space for me. God has space. God goes after the 99, fires for the lost. God pursue agonizing the desert. Right after Jesus went back to heaven, Philip went and talked to the eunuch. And Philip went and baptized the Gentiles. And when he went back, everybody was like, why did you do that? And he was like, because the Holy Spirit was already there. Who was I to stop what God was doing? So that gave me confidence. And then with that confidence, I went back to therapy. And I went back and got those last couple super-cringy parts that I really wanted to exile and be like, oh, that's not really me. Brought them all in. And then it was like, okay, well, how do I get Joel on board? And I was really scared, too, because I was sure about this. You know, I had 10 plus years with this and with my family. I was sure about my job and my life and my kids. And I created this amazing life and I had a lot to lose. So I was very, very scared. But also, you know, we had really tried to build our family on these principles. We want our kids to know these principles, to live with these principles. And if I've been given this gift, you know, like we say in a scene, you know, the mistakes are curses, but they're gifts, right? If I've been given this gift, then, you know, who am I to just keep my Indian side? If I'm going to want my kids to live by these principles, then I have to live by them, too. So, you know, this was a process, but for purposes of the story. I went home and I said, Joel, I think I'm trans. And he said, okay, I mean, he did. He really did. He was like, that's fine, whatever, we'll work with it. He really did, all the way. I mean, he also, you know, then he got a little worried. So, there was a lot of, you know, and through every step of the process, I would say, I know you're afraid of this. I know you don't see it. I know you don't like it. And this is the thing, he's, you know, if I wanted to buy a new bookcase, he would be like, no, no, here's a million reasons why we can't. And then while he's at work, I buy the bookcase and he comes home, he's like, oh my gosh, I love it. So, this is not a unique to me being trans. But it was every step, because every step was, I think I need to do this. You know I've tried to not do this. I think I need to do this. But I'm sure about this. I'm sure about you as my scene partner. And if you say no, I'm not going to do it for now. I'm going to come back probably a month later and ask again. But for now, I'm not going to do it. And then he would say, he would say, well, you think you need to do this and I'm not going to say no. Yeah. And so the essence of it is that I was present to who they were. I loved them and I accepted them for who they were. And we build trust as a family together through this process. Right? I'm not saying this is true for everybody, but I am saying that if we can really live out these applied improvisational principles, they can be really transformative. And this topic no longer is about being brave. It's just about, oh, you have blue eyes? Okay. Right? This is just the truth that we're present to. And we build trust together as a community. We make a better world where everyone's welcome and belongs. Thank you.